"Then," answered Cornish, "you have come to the wrong house."
Marguerite kept him waiting while she arranged biscuits in her saucer.
He set the plates aside, and returned to her in answer to her tacit order, conveyed by laying one hand on a vacant chair by her side.
Marguerite was in the midst of that brief period of a woman"s life wherein she dares to state quite clearly what she wants.
"Why don"t you marry Joan?" she asked, eating a biscuit with a fine young optimism, which almost implied that things sometimes taste as nice as they look.
"Why don"t you marry Major White?" retorted Tony; and Marguerite turned and looked at him gravely.
"For a man," she said, "that wasn"t so dusty. So few men have any eyes in their head, you know." And she thoughtfully finished the biscuits.
"I think I"ll go back to the bread-and-b.u.t.ter," she said. "It"s the last time Lady Ferriby will ask me to stay to tea, so I may as well be hanged for--three pence as three farthings. And I think I will be more careful with you in the future. For a man, you are rather sharp." And she looked at him doubtfully.
"When you attain my age," replied Tony, "you will have arrived at the conclusion that the whole world is sharper than one took it to be. It does not do to think that the world is blind. It is better not to care whether it sees or not."
"Women cannot afford to do that," returned Marguerite, with the acc.u.mulated wisdom of nearly a score of years. "Oh, hang!" she added, a moment later, under her breath, as she perceived Joan and Major White coming towards them.
"I have a letter for you," said Joan, "enclosed in one I received this morning from Mrs. Vansittart at The Hague. She is not coming to the Harberdashers" a.s.sistants" Ball, and this is, I suppose, in answer to the card you sent her. She explains that she did not know your address." And Joan looked at him with a doubting glance for a moment.
Cornish took the letter, but did not ask permission to open it. He held it in his hand, and asked Joan a question. "Did you see Sat.u.r.day"s Times?"
"Yes, of course I did," she answered earnestly; "and of course, if it is true you will all wash your hands of the whole affair, I suppose. I was talking to Mr. Wade about it. He, however, placed both sides of the question before me in about ten words, and left me to take my choice--which I am incompetent to do."
"Papa doesn"t understand women," put in Marguerite.
"Understands money, though," retorted Major White, looking at her in somewhat severe astonishment, as if he had hitherto been unaware that she could speak.
Marguerite took the rebuff with demurely closed lips, a probable indication that the only retort she could think of was hardly fit for enunciation.
Then Cornish drifted out of the conversation, and presently moved away to the window, where he took the opportunity of opening Mrs.
Vansittart"s letter. Mr. Wade, near at hand, was explaining good-naturedly to Lady Ferriby that, with the best will in the world, five per cent, and perfect safety are not to be obtained nowadays.
"MON AMI" (wrote Mrs. Vansittart in French), "I take a daily promenade after coffee in the Oude Weg. I sit on the bench where you sat, and more often than not I see the sight that you saw. I am not a sentimental woman, but, after all, one has a heart, and this is a pitiful affair. Also, I have obtained from a reliable source the information that the new system of manufacture is more deadly than the old, which I have long suspected, and which, I believe, has pa.s.sed through your mind as well. You and I went into this thing without _le bon motif_; but Providence is dealing out fresh hands, and you, at all events, hold cards that call for careful and bold playing. My friend, throw your Haberdashers over the wall and act without delay."
"E. V."
She enclosed a formal refusal of the invitation to the Haberdashers"
a.s.sistants" Ball.
Major White was not a talkative man, and towards Joan in particular his att.i.tude was one of silent wonder. In preference to talking to her, he preferred to stand a little way off and look at her. And if, at these moments, the keen observer could detect any glimmer of expression on his face, that glimmer seemed to express abject abas.e.m.e.nt before a creation that could produce anything so puzzling, so interesting, so absolutely beautiful--as Joan.
Cornish, seeing White engaged in his favourite pastime, took him by the arm and led him to the window.
"Read that," he said, "and then burn it."
"Of course," Joan was saying to Marguerite, as he joined them, "there are, as your father says, two sides to the question. If papa and Tony and Major White withdraw their names and abandon the poor malgamiters now, there will be no help for the miserable wretches. They will all drift back to the cheaper and more poisonous way of making malgamite.
And such a thing would be a blot upon our civilization--wouldn"t it, Tony?"
Marguerite nodded an airy acquiescence. She was watching Major White--that great strategist--tear up Mrs. Vansittart"s letter and throw it into the fire, with a deliberate non-concealment which was perhaps superior to any subterfuge. The major joined the group.
"That is the view that I take of it," answered Tony.
"And what do you say?" asked Joan, turning upon the major.
"I? Oh, nothing!" replied that soldier, with perfect truthfulness.
"Then what are you going to do?" asked Joan, who was practical, and, like many practical people, rather given to hasty action.
"We are going to stick to the malgamiters," replied Tony, quietly.
"Through thick and thin?" inquired Marguerite, b.u.t.toning her glove.
"Yes--through thick and thin."
Both girls looked at Major White, who stolidly returned their gaze, and appeared as usual to have no remark to offer. He was saved, indeed, from all effort in that direction by the advent of Lord Ferriby, who entered the room with more than his usual importance. He carried an open letter in his hand, and seemed by his manner to demand the instant attention of the whole party. There are some men and a few women who live for the mult.i.tude, and are not content with the attention of one or two persons only. And surely these have their reward, for the attention of the mult.i.tude, however pleasant it may be while it lasts, is singularly short-lived, and there is nothing more pitiful to watch than the effort to catch it when it has wandered.
"Eh--er," began his lordship, and everybody paused to listen. "I have here a letter from our clerk at the Malgamite office in Great George Street. It appears that there are a number of persons there--paper-makers, I understand--who insist upon seeing us, and refuse to leave the premises until they have done so."
Lord Ferriby"s manner indicated quite clearly his pity for these persons who had proved themselves capable of such a shocking breach of good manners.
"One hardly knows what to do," he said, not meaning, of course, that his words should be taken _au pied de la lettre_. His hearers, he obviously felt a.s.sured, knew him better than to imagine that he was really at a loss. "It is difficult to deal with--er--persons of this description. What do you propose that we should do?" he inquired, turning, as if by instinct, to Cornish.
"Go and see them," was the reply.
"But, my dear Anthony, such a crisis should be dealt with by Mr. Roden, whom one may regard as our--er--financial adviser."
"But as Roden is not here, we must do without his a.s.sistance. Perhaps Mr. Wade would consent to act as our financial adviser on this occasion," suggested Cornish.
"I"ll go with you," replied the banker, "and hear what they have to say, if you like. But of course I can take no part in anything in the nature of a controversy, and my name must not be mentioned."
"Incognito," suggested Lord Ferriby, with a forced laugh.
"Yes--incognito," returned the banker, gravely.
The major attracted general attention to himself by murmuring something inaudible, which he was urged to repeat.
"Doocid decent of Mr. Wade," he said, a second time.
And that seemed to settle the matter, for they all moved towards the door.
"Leave the carriage for me," cried Marguerite over the banisters, as her father descended the stairs. "Seems to me," she added to Joan in an undertone, "that the Malgamite scheme is up a gum-tree."
At the little office of the Malgamite Fund the directors of that charity found four gentlemen seated upon the chairs usually grouped round the table where the ball committee or the bazaar sub-committees held their sittings. One, who appeared to be what Lord Ferriby afterwards described, more in sorrow than in anger, as the ringleader, was a red-haired, brown-bearded Scotchman, with square shoulders and his head set thereon in a manner indicative of advanced radical opinions. The second in authority was a mild-mannered man with a pale face and a drooping spa.r.s.e moustache. He had a gentle eye, and lips for ever parting in a mildly argumentative manner. The other two paper-makers appeared to be foreigners. "Ah"m thinking----" began the mild man in a long drawl; but he was promptly overpowered by his fellow-countryman, who nodded curtly to Mr. Wade, and said--"Lord Ferriby?"
"No," answered the banker, calmly.
"That is my name," said the chairman of the Malgamite Fund, with his finger in his watch-chain.