"I--I think I"ll ask him to dinner."
"I wouldn"t. You said he drops his aitches. Weave," said Miss Palliser, "a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread, but whatever you do, don"t ask him to dinner."
"Why not?"
"Because ten to one it would make him most horribly uncomfortable. Not that that matters so much. But wouldn"t the faithful Robert think it a little odd?"
"Robert is too faithful to think anything at all."
"I"m not so sure of that. Personally, I wish you _would_ ask him to dinner--I seem to foresee a certain amount of amusing incident."
"Well, I don"t think I will ask him--to dinner. Perhaps he wouldn"t enjoy it. But as I"ve got to talk over his play with him, I should like to ask him to something."
"Ask him to coffee afterwards."
"Coffee hardly seems enough."
"It depends. Serve it festively--on a table, and pour it out yourself.
Offer him strange and bewitching forms of food. Comfort him with--with angel cake--and savoury sandwiches and bread and b.u.t.ter."
"I see--a sort of compromise?"
"Exactly. Society, my child, is based on compromise."
"Very well, then, I"ll write him a note."
She wrote it, and sent Robert with it to the library.
"I suppose," said she, "it"s about time to dress for dinner?"
"Don"t make yourself too pretty, dear."
Lucia looked back through the doorway.
"I shall make myself as pretty as ever I can. He has had nothing but ugly things to look at all his life."
Miss Palliser apostrophized the departing figure of her friend.
"Oh Lucy, Lucy, what an angelic little fool you _are_!"
CHAPTER XXIV
Half-past six, and Miss Harden had not yet appeared in the library. It was the first time that Rickman had pa.s.sed a whole day without seeing her. He began to be uneasy, to wonder whether she were really ill. At seven he was leaving the house as usual for his hotel when Robert brought him a little three-cornered note.
"Dear Mr. Rickman," it said (Dear Mr. Rickman!) "you see I have taken your advice, and given myself a holiday. I have spent it very pleasantly--reading _Helen in Leuce_. It would give me much pleasure if you would come in for coffee this evening, about eight o"clock. We can then talk it over.
"Very truly yours,
"LUCIA HARDEN.
"You need only send a verbal answer."
A verbal answer? No. That would never do. He could not trust himself with speech, but in writing he knew he was impeccable.
"Dear Miss Harden. How very kind of you! But I am sorry that you did not give yourself a complete rest. I should be sorrier, if I were not so grateful for the trouble you have taken. It will give me great pleasure to come in this evening at the time you name.
"With many thanks, yours very truly,
"S.K. RICKMAN."
He was not pleased with it; it erred on the side of redundancy; he had not attained the perfect utterance, the supreme simplicity. But he was obliged to let it go. Two hours later Robert announced that coffee was served in the drawing-room.
It seemed that to reach the drawing-room you had to cross the whole length of the house from west to east. In this pa.s.sage he realized (what his mind had not greatly dwelt upon), the antiquity of the Hardens, and the march of their splendid generations. Going from the Tudor Library into the grim stone hall of the Court House, he took a cold plunge backward into time. Thence his progress was straightforward, bringing him into the Jacobean picture gallery that cut the house from north to south. Here he paused, perceiving that the double line of portraits began with a Vandyck and a Lely. Robert stood with his hand on the bra.s.s rose k.n.o.b of an oak door; in his eternal att.i.tude of affection, mingled with immobile respect, he waited for the moment when Mr. Rickman should elect to tear himself from the Lely and the Vandyck. The moment came, and Mr. Rickman heard himself announced in a clear high voice as he pa.s.sed over the threshold.
He found himself in a long oak-panelled room; that room whose west window looked out across the courtyard to the east window of the library. It was almost dark except for a small fire-lit, lamp-lit, square at the far end. Lucia was sitting in a low chair by the fireplace, under the tall shaded lamp, where the light fell full on her shoulders. She was not alone. On a settee by the other side of the open hearth sat the young lady who had intruded on his solitude in the library. The presence of the young lady filled him with anxiety and dismay.
He had to cross a vast, dim s.p.a.ce before he reached that lighted region. With what seemed to him a reeling and uncertain gait, he approached over the perilously slippery parquet. Miss Harden rose and came forward, mercifully cutting short that frightful pa.s.sage from the threshold to her chair.
Lucia had not carried out the intention she had announced to Kitty.
She had dressed in haste; but in Rickman"s eyes the effect was that which Kitty had seen fit to deprecate. She had made herself very pretty indeed. He could not have given a very clear account of it, could not have said whether the thing she wore, that floating, sweeping, curling, trailing, folding and caressing garment were made of grey gossamer in white or white in grey, but he was aware that it showed how divinely her slender body carried its flower, her head; showed that her arms, her throat, and the first sweep and swell of her shoulders, were of one tone with the luminous pallor of her face.
Something in the dress, in her bearing and manner of approach, gave her the a.s.sured charm of womanhood for the unfinished loveliness of youth.
She introduced him to her friend Miss Palliser, whose green eyes smiled in recognition. He bowed with the stiffness of a back unaccustomed to that form of salutation. He hardly knew what happened after that, till he found himself backing, nervously, ridiculously backing into a lonely seat in the middle of the room.
The three were now grouped in a neat geometrical figure, Mr. Rickman, on the chair of his choice, forming the apex of a prolonged triangle, having the hearthrug for its base. He was aware that Miss Harden and Miss Palliser were saying something; but he had no idea of what they said. He sat there wondering whether he ought to be seated at all, whether he ought not rather to be hovering about that little table, ready to wait upon Miss Palliser. He was still wondering when Miss Palliser got up with the evident intention of waiting upon him.
That, he knew, was all wrong; it was not to be permitted for a moment.
Inspired by a strange, unnatural courage, he advanced and took his coffee from her hand, retreating with it to his remote and solitary position.
He sat silent, moodily looking at his coffee, stirring it from time to time and wondering whether he would ever be brave enough to drink it.
He waited for an opportunity of dispatching it unperceived. The presence of Miss Palliser paralysed him. He wondered whether he ought to say anything to her or to Miss Harden, or to neither or to both; he tried to think of something suitable to say.
Meanwhile Miss Palliser talked for all three. It seemed that she had dined with her friend on her way to an "at home" in Harmouth.
"Bread and b.u.t.ter?" said she judicially "N--no, I think not, thanks.
I"ve got to eat jellies and sandwiches and things for two hours straight on end. It sounds horrible, but I shall be driven to it. At the Flossers," she explained for her friend"s benefit, "you must either eat or talk; and if you can"t talk scandal you"re not expected to talk at all." And still talking Miss Palliser slowly bore down upon Mr. Rickman with a plate of bread and b.u.t.ter.
Mr. Rickman"s earnest and chivalrous endeavour to forestall her caused a rug to slide under his feet. It slid, and Mr. Rickman with it, for quite a considerable distance; and though Mr. Rickman, indeed, preserved the erect att.i.tude by a series of complicated movements (a superb triumph of muscular ingenuity, but somewhat curious and fantastic as a spectacle), his coffee cup flung itself violently on its side, and poured out its contents at the lady"s feet.
He looked at Miss Harden. She was smiling; for who wouldn"t have smiled? But her smile became almost tender in her perception of his distress.
Miss Palliser continued to talk.
"Ah," said Miss Palliser, "I was waiting for that to happen. I"ve been wondering which of us would do it first. I rather thought it would be me; but for pure, delightful unexpectedness, give me a parquet floor.
I wouldn"t mop it up with my pocket handkerchief, if I were you."