"It would put him in a false position towards Rodrigg. Rodrigg will imagine that you are bribing him."
"_Bribing_ him!" Camelia straightened herself.
"Yes; that the price paid for his apostasy will be your hand," and this indeed was exactly what Mr. Rodrigg, with some alarm, was beginning to think.
"Apostasy! If the creature won"t be sincerely convinced we don"t want him!" cried Camelia.
"Very well, you have my opinion of the matter." Perior"s whole manner had of late been particularly irksome to Camelia.
Lady Henge meanwhile, seeing her son"s foe within the gates, most seriously and conscientiously, and openly, made good her opportunity.
She took her mental mastery far more gravely than Camelia took hers, and poor Mr. Rodrigg began to think that he was asked to pay a heavy price for his hymeneal visit when Lady Henge cornered him in the drawing-room and stupefyingly admonished him. Lady Henge"s arguments were all based on superbly moral grounds, and levelled with severity at the iniquity of individualistic theories, which she demonstrated to be scientifically and ethically unsound. He at times found it very difficult to keep his temper. But under the exquisite warmth of Camelia"s urgency his hopes were high. He could regard with humoring half compliances this pretty whim of his pretty Camelia. Camelia would have raged could she have known Mr. Rodrigg"s real impressions--impressions accompanied by the fatherly tolerance of that "pretty Camelia."
CHAPTER XII
Sir Arthur was back again on Thursday, alertly conscious of a half promise, and he intended to put it to the test while he and Camelia rode together in the afternoon. The party was made up: Mrs. Fox-Darriel, Gwendolen Holt, Sir Harry, and another young man--but Camelia did not go. The horses were already before the door, and she, fully equipped in riding costume, engaged before her mirror on the final details of veil and gloves, when Perior rode up; Camelia saw him through the window, and heard him decline to join their party, as he had come for Mary. Mary was not a good rider, nor could she be urged beyond the dullest trot, and Perior"s refusal was no doubt on her account. Poor Alceste! Condemned to Mary for a whole afternoon! In a rapid change of project Camelia dashed out of her habit and into her prettiest white dress, sent down a note to Sir Arthur pleading sudden headache, and commanding him to go without her, saw the five depart obediently, and placidly descended to capture Perior. Mary was getting ready; Camelia, as she pa.s.sed her room, saw her sewing a b.u.t.ton on a glove, her habit laid in readiness on the bed.
Camelia would have liked her ride; it was only from the impulsive wish for ten or fifteen minutes with Perior that she had sacrificed it, and she saw with satisfaction that Mary would take quite that time.
"Well, how do you do?" she said, finding him as usual in the morning-room, "I _think_ we have got him," she added, picking up the threads of their last conversation.
"That is Rodrigg, of course," said Perior, looking with a pleasure he could not conceal at her charming appearance. He felt for a moment like telling her that in that dress she was bewitchingly pretty, but checked the impulse with some surprise at it.
"Yes, I argued out the whole third clause with him yesterday," said Camelia, smiling her happiest smile, for she was quite conscious of those unspoken words.
"Dear me!"
"He seemed impressed--though you are not. Sit down."
"He seemed what he was not, no doubt--I haven"t the faculty." Perior spoke quite good-temperedly. Indeed, Camelia"s political manoeuvres did not displease him--consoled him in a sense. There was a pretty folly about them quite touching, and her earnestness seemed to vouch for some real feeling.
"Why should you imagine that he pretends?" she asked, taking the place beside him on the sofa and leaning forward, her arms on her knees.
"The man wants to please you," said Perior, looking at her white hands hanging idly together. He wondered again whether egotism or a real fondness for Arthur moved her.
The long delay of the engagement excited and made him nervous. It had usually been so easy to see through Camelia, and he did not like the perplexity. Still, the thought that she hesitated pleased him; she would accept Arthur, doubtlessly, but at least she would imagine that she cared for him. Camelia had gained some moral value in his eyes from that pause.
"Why should you imagine that he pretends?" she asked, feeling delightedly that the atmosphere was much less chilling than usual.
"The man wants to please you."
"Well, and what then?"
"He expects to marry you."
"Nonsense!" she said with a laugh of truest sincerity.
"Tell him that you are engaged to Arthur, and see." Perior"s curiosity made that little probe, and the eyes of both showed a mutual self-consciousness; both thought of the last scene in the morning-room.
"I can"t make the experiment yet, even to please you," said Camelia, satisfied that her cheeks showed no rising color. "Mr. Rodrigg is really attached to me. He would do a great deal for me."
"Your smile for all reward."
"Exactly."
"You are a goose, Camelia."
But she was pleasing him; her conceit amused him almost tenderly, and he laughed.
"You think me fatuous, no doubt," said Camelia, laughing too.
"Yes, rather fatuous. Not as clear-sighted as usual."
"Mr. Rodrigg knows that I could never marry him," said Camelia more gravely; "he can only hope for my smile, and, if he helps me through, I shall always smile."
"I don"t credit Mr. Rodrigg with the faintest flavor of such humility."
Camelia"s smile, confidently unconvinced, now shifted to a humorous little grimace. "He never really hoped. As though I _could_ have married a man with a nose like that!"
"I maintain that he does so hope--despite his nose; an excellently honest nose it is too."
"So broad at the tip! as though he had flattened it against adverse forces all his life. It is a plebeian trait, an inheritance from money-getting ancestors who held theirs conscientiously to the grindstone."
"Mine should show the peculiarity," and Perior rubbed it, "it has been ground persistently."
"Ah--a merely acquired tendency; besides, you are not going to ask me to marry you--so you may carry your nose fearlessly." Camelia"s eye, despite the light audacity of her tone, fixed him with a certain alert hardness.
Perior bowed, his hand on his heart. "Thanks for the intimation. I shall carry it quite fearlessly, I a.s.sure you."
Camelia laughed. "But I like your nose," said she, leaning towards him; and, very much as a kitten gives a roguish paw-tap, she drew a finger briskly down the feature in question.
Perior grew a little red, and drew back rather sharply.
"What a staid person you are," said Camelia, quite unabashed; "you don"t take a compliment gracefully, Alceste; not that it was a compliment, exactly, since your nose is not at all handsome; a poor thing but to my taste. I like its dominant ruggedness, and that nice lift in the bridge."
"Well, Camelia, I came to take Mary out riding, you know," said Perior, who still showed signs of uneasiness under her scrutiny.
"Yes, I know; you are so good to Mary. She is getting ready."
Camelia contemplated Perior"s paternal relation towards Mary most unsuspectingly, yet she really did not like it. She could not like anything that withdrew a very important tributary from the river-like receptivity of her existence. Mary"s narrow channel was quite unmeet for such a complimentary contribution, and Camelia was sincerely convinced of the mere charitableness of Perior"s att.i.tude. Then, above all, Perior was her own especial property; Mary might profit by him when she did not feel the want of him, and this afternoon she wanted him--very much, as it now struck her. To have sacrificed her ride for this bare ten minutes had been hardly worth while. She had not looked beyond the impulse of the moment, and the lonely hours stretched in long inconsistency before her. She thought of them now with some surprised dismay, and her eyes, still contemplating Perior"s nose, grew vague with conjecture. Perior certainly, despite his latter severity, would rather spend his afternoon with her than with Mary. He could not own to it, of course, nor would she force him to such an issue; but it might be managed--pleasantly for every one, for all three. Camelia"s life, so wide in its all embracing objectivity, had little time for self-a.n.a.lysis, little time therefore for putting herself in other people"s places. Her lack of sympathy was grounded on a lack of all self-knowledge. Therefore her mind turned the matter quickly in the direction that best suited the desire of the moment, good and bad being to Camelia external facts that either pleased or displeased herself, and she said without one inner compunction, "Shall I hurry her up? And I must see that she puts her hat on properly.
Mary has an unerring instinct for the unbecoming."
"Has she?" said Perior, in the tone that Camelia well understood as being altogether unencouraging and perhaps disgusted. "Don"t hurry her.
I can wait."
"See how unkindly I dress my best impulses," said Camelia, smiling. "I really want to help her, and to make her smart and tidy. A few touches of my fingers about Mary"s unfurnished forehead, and her face a.s.sumes a certain grace and prettiness. Alceste, you must not take my flippancy _au grand serieux_--you are in danger of becoming ridiculous, Alceste, I warn you of it." She had certainly succeeded in making "Alceste" smile, and with a rea.s.sured and rea.s.suring wave of the hand she left him, delighted with her own ability for forcing him to swallow her naughtinesses--for swallow them he must; she would feign nothing for him; she would exaggerate even the defects he saw so solemnly. She was quite sure now that she must not be left alone, and that Perior must spend the afternoon with her. She ran upstairs quickly, conscious of how prettily she sprang from stair to stair, of how charmingly with its silk and muslin rustle her white dress swayed about her, conscious even of the distinguished elegance of her white hand gliding up the hand rail; for Camelia had always time for these aesthetic notes, and her grace, her dress, and her hand were so many reasons for keeping Perior to admire them. Mary was quite ready, and looking really nice; a pretty color, and the dull fairness of her hair smoothed neatly beneath her hat.