Cary Farquhar is the choicest--_unmarried_--girl I know! By Jove, she"s a corker!"
"She just did it to throw me off--to show me that _she_ didn"t want him!" I persisted.
The Angel shook his head and smiled inscrutably.
"When does she come?" he asked.
"Next week."
Aubrey pulled at his pipe.
"There will be something doing here next week, I"m thinking."
There was something doing.
First, I told old Mary that I was going to have company.
One ordinarily does not ask permission of one"s cook, but Mary was such a mother to me that I felt the announcement to be no more than her due.
"Who is it, Missus, dear?"
"Miss Flora Forsyth. Have you ever heard me speak of her?"
"Do you mean that blonde on the mantelpiece?" she asked, in the conversational tone of one who but pa.s.sed the time o" day.
"Mary!" I said.
She walked up to Flora"s picture, took it down, looked at it, and put it back.
"Well," I said, tentatively, "what do you think of her?"
"What do I think of her?" demanded Mary, wheeling on me so suddenly that I dodged. "I think she is a little blister--that"s what I think of her. And you"ll rue the day you ever asked her into your house."
Ordinarily one would reprove one"s cook for such freedom of speech, but I had brought it on myself. Therefore I saved my breath, put on my hat, and went out, ruminating and somewhat shaken in my mind to have the two household authorities against me.
However, true to my determination to make her visit as attractive as possible, I purchased at least a dozen sorts of fine French marmalades, jellies, sweets, and fancy pickles, such as schoolgirls love.
She had told me so many times how she had always wanted her breakfast in her room, but had never been able to have it, that I decided to give her that privilege in my house. I told Mary with some misgivings, and showed her the things I had bought. To my surprise, Mary a.s.sented joyfully. I never knew why until after Flora left. Then Mary told me.
I even selected the china she was to use on the breakfast-tray. It was blue and gold. Flora loved blue. Then I took a final look at everything, gave a few last orders, and dismissed all worry from my mind.
Her room, _the guest chamber_ of the Jardines, was fresh for her. No one had ever slept in that bed, fluttered those curtains, nor written at that desk. Flora would be its first occupant.
And how her blond beauty matched its pale blue and gold loveliness! It gave me thrills of delight to think of her in the midst of it all.
But of course it was Cary I loved. Flora simply fascinated me. She possessed the attractions of a Circe, but Cary was worth a million of her, and I knew it and I wanted her to have Artie Beg, or anybody else on earth she fancied. The whole proposition was as plain as day when I came to think about it. I was Cary"s champion, Cary"s friend, and intended Cary to win. Why, therefore, had I permitted myself to be inveigled into asking Flora to visit me, under the supposition that I was going to help her? It was not because Cary had begged me to. Not at all. It was Flora herself who had managed it, I reflected, and it gave me a bitter, uncomfortable twinge to realize that whatever Flora had wanted me to do, in our brief friendship, I had done, no matter whose judgment it went against.
Had the girl hypnotic power, or was I a weak fool to be flattered into doing her bidding?
I don"t like to think of myself as a weak fool, even for the sake of argument.
The two girls had hated each other at sight, as was natural. Cary admitted the reason with glorious frankness.
"Of course I hate her," she said, with a lift of her sleek brown head, "didn"t she usurp my prerogatives at the wedding? The best man belongs, for that evening alone, to the maid of honour--he can"t escape it--it is his fate. Common civility should have chained him to my chariot wheels, but with that white-headed Lilith at work on him, with her half-shut eyes, she had him queered before he even saw me. But wait. My turn will come."
Flora said to me:
"Of course I hate her, because _you_ love her. You love her better than you love me. You have known her longer--that"s the only reason!
She doesn"t care _that_ for you. It"s because you are married, and can give her a good time that she pretends to care for you. _I_ know. Oh, you may laugh and think I am jealous or insane or anything you like.
Well, then, I _am_ jealous, for I love you better than anybody in the world, and I want you to love me in the same way. I love you better than I love my mother--or my father--or even Artie Beg! And I am jealous of every one you speak to. I am jealous most of all of Aubrey, for you have eyes for no one on earth but him. I could hate him when I think of it."
At that I _did_ laugh, but she was a good actress, and said it as if she meant it.
Flora always acted as if she knew of my repressed childhood, and of how, all my life, I had thirsted for praise. No matter if it had been put on with a trowel, as hers undoubtedly was, I would have wrapped myself in its tropical warmth and luxuriance, and never paused to quarrel with its effulgence. While dear old Cary let her actions speak, and seldom put her affection for me into words. But she had been on the eve of sailing for a winter in Egypt when my hurried wedding preparations and frantic telegram arrested her. The party sailed without her, and she did not try to follow. And that was only one of the many sacrifices she had made for me, and made without a word, too.
She was a girl of thought and of ideas, but unfortunately she was a great heiress, and fortune-hunters had made her suspicious and cynical.
Only Aubrey and I knew how glorious she could be when she let herself out and expressed her real self.
The first thing Flora did to make me uncomfortable was to pump the Angel about Artie"s law-suit.
It was so intricate, so long drawn out, and so enormous in its proportions, that it bade fair to resemble the famous Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We had never mentioned it to Artie, but Flora, after a few reluctant words from Aubrey, persuaded Artie, in the easiest way imaginable, to tell her everything about it, from its inception. She told me she had even read half a dozen of her uncle"s law-books, which bore upon the knotty points Artie had described to her. Instead of arousing his suspicions of mercenary motives, her innocent manner and flowerlike face deceived him into believing that her interest was very commendable. She explained that she had always wanted to study law, but that her father wouldn"t let her, so that she always coaxed her friends to describe their law-suits to her, and then she read up on them by herself. Artie thought this was wonderful. So it was.
Cary would never listen to a word about it, nor read about it in the papers; nor could she be inveigled into expressing an opinion about it one way or the other. Her pride revolted from appearing even to know that he had such prospects, faint and distant though they were.
When Flora came, Mary put on her spectacles before she opened the door.
I noticed the look she gave all three of us. It did not speak well for Flora.
But, at first, her shyness and modesty left nothing to be desired. Her clothes were simple even to plainness, her voice soft and deprecating, and her manner deferential in the extreme. She was always asking advice, and where that advice was given, she always followed it.
Flattery could go no further.
Artie came to see her, morning, noon, and night. I was horrified to discover how far things seemed to have progressed, for, after all, it was Cary who _must_ have Artie if she wanted him.
Cary called on Flora once, and we returned it, but she did not come again. So I resolved on a dinner, and Cary promised to come. The others were to be the Jimmies, Bee, and three more persons so insignificant, so vapid, so entirely not worth describing that, in a race, they would not even be mentioned as "also rans." In short, they were the typical dinner-guests the hostess always fills in with.
I worked hard on that dinner. Flora offered to help, but Mary, without actually refusing her a.s.sistance, managed to do without it, and I did not realize until afterward how quickly Flora accepted her fate, and curled herself up luxuriously on Aubrey"s couch in Aubrey"s particular corner to read, while I bleached the almonds which she had offered to do.
Flora kept me well informed of the progress of Artie"s pa.s.sion for her, and I could do nothing. I was surprised at her confiding such details to any one, dismayed for Cary"s sake, and worried as to how it would turn out.
Finally the evening of the dinner came. I dressed and ran out to the kitchen to see if everything was all right, for Mary was so jealous she refused to let me engage an a.s.sistant, but doggedly persisted in preparing and serving the dinner entirely by herself.
To my surprise, I found the dining-room and kitchen shades pulled up to the tops of the windows, while every handsome dish Mary intended to use, and all the extra silver, were carefully placed on top of the laundry-tubs. Mary, apparently unconscious of observation, was flying around with pink cheeks, and the eyes behind the spectacles snapping with excitement.
"Don"t say a word, Missus," she said, sitting on her heels before the oven door. "I did it for the benefit of the rubber factory opposite.
They think I don"t notice, but look at them windows. Not a light in any of "em, but all the curtains moving just a little. Do they think I don"t know there"s a rubber behind every d.a.m.n one of "em? Don"t laugh, Missus dear, and don"t look over there, whatever you do. If they want a look at the things we eat, why let "em! They know what they cost, but I"ll bet they never do more than ask the price of "em, and then buy soup-bones and canned vegetables for their own stomachs."
Mary didn"t say stomachs, but much of Mary"s conversation does not look well in print.
"And just wait till I take in the "peche flambee"!" she chuckled.
"I"ll bet they"ll order out the fire department!"