"Oh!"
"Why do you say it like that?"
Hermione"s eyes rested a moment on the golfer who was bringing up the rear. He was younger than his rather set figure had at a distance proclaimed him.
"I was only thinking d.i.c.k Farnborough can"t abide Paul," said the girl.
"A typical product of the public school is hardly likely to appreciate an undisciplined creature with a streak of genius in him like Paul Filey."
"Oh, I rather love him myself," said the girl, lightly, "only as Sophia says he does talk rather rot at times."
With her hand on the tea-urn, releasing a stream of boiling water into the pot, Lady John glanced over the small thickset angel that poised himself on one podgy foot upon the lid of the urn.
"Sophia"s too free with her tongue. It"s a mistake. It frightens people off."
"Men, you mean?"
"Especially men."
"I often think," said the young woman, "that men--all except Paul--would be more shocked at Sophia--if--she wasn"t who she is."
"No doubt," agreed her aunt. "Still I sympathize with her parents. I don"t see how they"ll ever marry her. She might just as well be Miss Jones--that girl--for all she makes of herself."
"Yes; I"ve often thought so, too," agreed Hermione, apparently conscious that the very most was made of _her_.
"She hasn"t even been taught to walk." Lady John was still watching the girl"s approach.
"Yet she looks best out of doors," said Hermione, firmly.
"Oh, yes! She comes into the drawing-room as if she were crossing a ploughed field!"
"All the same," said Hermione, under her breath, "when she _is_ indoors I"d rather see her walking than sitting."
"You mean the way she crosses her legs?"
"Yes."
"But that, too--it seems like so many other things, a question only of degree. n.o.body objects to seeing a pair of neat ankles crossed--it looks rather nice and early Victorian. Nowadays lots of girls cross their knees--and n.o.body says anything. But Sophia crosses her--well, her _thighs_."
And the two women laughed understandingly.
A stranger might imagine that the reason for Lady Sophia"s presence in the party was that she, by common consent, played a capital game of golf--"for a woman." That fact, however, was rather against her. For people who can play the beguiling game, _want_ to play it--and want to play it not merely now and then out of public spirit to make up a foursome, but constantly and for pure selfish love of it. Woman may, if she likes, take it as a compliment to her s.e.x that this proclivity--held to be wholly natural in a man--is called "rather unfeminine" in a woman. But it was a defect like the rest, forgiven the Lady Sophia for her father"s sake. Lord Borrodaile, held to be one of the most delightful of men, was much in request for parties of this description.
One reason for his daughter"s being there was that it glossed the fact that Lady Borrodaile was not--was, indeed, seldom present, and one may say never missed, in the houses frequented by her husband.
But as he and his friends not only did not belong to, but looked down upon, the ultra smart set, where the larger freedoms are practised in lieu of the lesser decencies, Lord Borrodaile lived his life as far removed from any touch of scandal and irregularity as the most puritanic of the bourgeoisie. Part and parcel of his fastidiousness, some said--others, that from his Eton days he had always been a lazy beggar.
As though to show that he did not shrink from reasonable responsibility towards his female impedimenta, any inquiry as to the absence of Lady Borrodaile was met by reference to Sophia. In short, where other attractive husbands brought a boring wife, Lord Borrodaile brought an undecorative daughter. While to the onlooker nearly every aspect of this particular young woman would seem destined to offend a beauty-loving, critical taste like that of Borrodaile, he was probably served, as other mortals are, by that philosophy of the senses which brings in time a deafness and a blindness to the unloveliness that we needs must live beside. Lord Borrodaile was far too intelligent not to see, too, that when people had got over Lady Sophia"s uncompromising exterior, they found things in her to admire as well as to stand a little in awe of.
Unlike one another as the Borrodailes were, in one respect they presented to the world an undivided front. From their point of view, just as laws existed to keep other people in order, so was "fashion" an affair for the middle cla.s.ses. The Borrodailes might dress as dowdily as they pleased, might speak as uncompromisingly as they felt inclined.
Were they not Borrodailes of Borrodaile? Though open expression of this spirit grows less common, they would not have denied that it is still the prevailing temper of the older aristocracy. And so it has. .h.i.therto been true that among its women you find that sort of freedom which is the prerogative of those called the highest and of those called the lowest. It is the women of all the grades between these two extremes who have dared not to be themselves, who ape the manners, echo the catchwords, and garb themselves in the elaborate ugliness, devised for the blind meek millions.
As the Lady Sophia, now a little in advance of her companions, came stalking towards the steps, out from a little path that wound among the thick-growing laurels issued Paul Filey. He raised his eyes, and hurriedly thrust a small book into his pocket. The young lady paused, but only apparently to pat, or rather to administer an approving cuff to, the Bedlington terrier lying near the lower step.
"Well," she said over her shoulder to Filey, "our side gave a good account of itself that last round."
"I was sure it would as soon as my malign influence was removed."
"Yes; from the moment I took on d.i.c.k Farnborough, the situation a.s.sumed a new aspect. You"ll _never_ play a good game, you know, if you go quoting Baudelaire on the links."
"Poor Paul!" his hostess murmured to her niece, "I always tremble when I see him exposed to Sophia"s ruthless handling."
"Yes," whispered Hermione. "She says she"s sure he thinks of himself as a prose Sh.e.l.ley; and for some reason that infuriates Sophia."
With a somewhat forced air of amus.e.m.e.nt, Mr. Filey was following his critic up the steps, she still mocking at his "drives" and the way he negotiated his bunkers.
Arrived at the top of the little terrace, whose close-shorn turf was level with the flagged floor of the colonnade, Mr. Filey sought refuge near Hermione, as the storm-tossed barque, fleeing before the wind, hies swift to the nearest haven.
Bending over the Bedlington, the Amazon remained on the top step, her long, rather good figure garbed in stuff which Filey had said was fit only for horse-blankets, but which was Harris tweed slackly belted by a broad canvas girdle drawn through a buckle of steel.
"_Will_ you tell me," he moaned in Hermione"s ear, "why the daughter of a hundred earls has the manners of a groom, and dresses herself in odds and ends of the harness room?"
"Sh! Somebody told her once you"d said something of that sort."
"No!" he said. "Who?"
"It wasn"t I."
"Of course not. But did she mind? What did she say, eh?"
"She only said, "He got that out of a novel of Miss Broughton"s.""
Filey looked a little dashed. "No! Has Miss Broughton said it, too? Then there are more of them!" He glanced again at the Amazon. "Horrible thought!"
"Don"t be so unreasonable. She couldn"t play golf in a long skirt and high heels!"
"Who _wants_ a woman to play golf?"
Hermione gave him his tea with a smile. She knew with an absolute precision just how perfectly at that moment she herself was presenting the average man"s picture of the ideal type of reposeful womanhood.
As Lord John and the two other men, his companions, came up the steps in the midst of a discussion--
"If you stop to argue, Mr. Farnborough," said Lady John, holding out a cup, "you won"t have time for tea before you catch that train."
"Oh, thank you!" He hastened to relieve her, while Hermione murmured regrets that he wasn"t staying. "Lady John didn"t ask me," he confided.
As he saw in Hermione"s face a project to intercede for him, he added, "And now I"ve promised my mother--we"ve got a lot of people coming, and two men short!"
"Two men short! how horrible for her!" She said it half laughing, but her view of the reality of the dilemma was apparent in her letting the subject drop.
Farnborough, standing there tea-cup in hand, joined again in the discussion that was going on about some unnamed politician of the day, with whose character and destiny the future of England might quite conceivably be involved.