"Fancy! Just fancy! Oh--I see. Is there some one else? Who is it, Savile?"
He smiled in his most superior way.
"My dear child, people don"t go about mentioning women"s names. Now look here, Dolly, I meant to be straight, so I told you right out."
She smiled.
"I wonder what sort of girl she is! Well, it can"t be Gladys: she"s much too hideous. That"s _one_ comfort!"
"You"re right, it can"t. Besides, it"s not."
"Well, Savile, you"re a dear good boy to come and tell me about it. And, the fact is, I was just wanting to tell you myself that perhaps we had better not be engaged any more. Just be pals instead, you know."
"Who"s the man?" He spoke sternly.
She began to talk very volubly.
"You know those people whom we met at Dinard last summer, the de Saules?
They"re French, you know. Well, Madame de Saules,--you can"t think how pretty she is,--and dear little Therese, and Robert have just come over here for the season. Therese is such a darling. You would love her. Only a kid, of course, you know, but...."
"And what price this beastly French boy? Now, listen to me. Foreigners are all rotters. I can tell you that if you"re engaged to him you"ll live to regret it. I speak as a friend, Dolly."
"Oh dear no! We"re not engaged! You don"t understand! Private engagements are not the proper thing in France. It isn"t done. _Oh_ no!
Why, his mother would write to my mother and then he would send a bouquet, or something, and then----"
"A bouquet! By Jove! Why, you"re more prehistoric than Aunt William!
Well, look here, if this little blighter keeps his place I shan"t interfere. But, mind you, if I see the smallest sign of----"
He rose to his feet.
"Of what?" said Dolly, rising and looking angry. "He"s a nice, handsome, polite, dear boy. So there!"
"I should only wring his neck, that"s all. Good-bye, old girl."
They walked to the gate together.
"It"s only for your good, you know, Dolly. I don"t mean to be a brute."
"Oh, it"s all right, Savile."
"Dolly, dear."
"Yes, Savile."
"I"m awfully fond of you, really."
"Of course, I know, dear boy. Come again when you can, won"t you?"
"_Won"t_ I?" said Savile.
CHAPTER V
ARTHUR MERVYN AT HOME
Sometimes Sir James would confide in his secretary, and become after dinner--he drank port--pompously communicative on the subject of the alliances his daughter might contract--if she would. As he became more and more confidential in fact, he would grow more and more distant in manner, so that if they began dinner like old friends, they seemed gradually to cool into acquaintances; and at the end of the evening--such an evening!--Woodville felt as if they had barely been introduced, or had met, accidentally, in a railway train. Yet he courted these _tete-a-tete_ as one perversely courts a certain kind of suffering. At least, Sir James talked on the _only_ interesting subject, and Woodville was anxious to know everything about his rivals; for, though he believed in Sylvia"s affection, he was subject to acute, almost morbid, attacks of physical jealousy. To see other men admire her was torture, particularly as he had to efface himself and be treated by her father as a faithful va.s.sal.
And he really disliked deceiving Sir James, whose open liking was evident and who thought him matrimonially as much out of the question as the gardener.
"Hang it all, Woodville"s a gentleman!" Sir James would have cried furiously at any suggestion that it was imprudent to leave the young man and Sylvia so much together. Sir James always remembered that Woodville was a gentleman and forgot that he was a man.
Men who indulge in inexpensive cynicism say that women are complex and difficult to understand. This may be true of an ambitious and hard woman, but nothing can be more simple and direct than a woman in love.
Sylvia suffered none of Woodville"s complications. She did not see why he should want to run away with her, still less why he should run away from her. Nothing could be wrong in her eyes connected with her love, for it was also her religion. Like most girls who can love at all, her life consisted, in fact, of this emotion only. She might go to the stores, wave her hair, buy new hats, ride in the Park, order dinner for her father (with great care, for he was a gourmet), read innumerable books (generally falling back on Swinburne and Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x), receive and meet innumerable people, go to the opera, and do many other agreeable, tedious, or trivial things; but her life was her love for Woodville. And she had all the courage and dignity of real self-surrender. Whatever he did was right. Whatever he said was clever.
Everything was perfect, so long as he was _there_. To his scruples, despairs, delights, and doubts she always answered that, after all, they were only privately engaged, like heaps of people. And since Woodville had this peculiar--she secretly thought insane--objection to marrying her because she was an heiress and he was poor, then they must wait.
Something would happen, and all was sure to come right. She did not wish to tell her father of the understanding at present, because she feared Woodville would probably have to go away at once. They would tell him when she was twenty-one. Only one year, and everything would be open and delightful.
A strong motive that kept Woodville there was jealousy. Sylvia, discreet as she was--no sparkling, teasing coquette--had yet all the irresistible magnetism of a woman who is obviously made for tenderness. But she showed as much deftness in keeping back her admirers as most girls do in attracting them. She had curious deep delicacies; she disliked nothing so much as to feel or show her power as a woman. Pride or vanity was equally out of the question in her love; it was unselfish and yet it was not exacting, as unselfish love generally is. So far as she knew, no unselfishness was required from him. With the unconscious cruelty of innocence she had kept him in this false position for years, looking happily forward to a rose-coloured future.
Was it consistent that, with all his scruples, Woodville had drifted into this romance?
A lovely girl of twenty and a remarkably good-looking young man of twenty-eight meeting every day, every moment, at every meal--she, romantic; he, the most impressionable of materialists! Surely nothing could be expected but (for once) the obvious!
The Greek banker, Mr. Ridokanaki, said to be one of the richest men in England, had of late begun to pay Sylvia what he considered marked attention. Huge baskets of flowers, sometimes in the form of silver ships, sometimes of wicker wheelbarrows, or of brocaded sedan-chairs, and filled with orchids, lilies, roses, everything that, in the opinion of a middle-aged banker, would be likely to dazzle and delight a nice young girl, were sent periodically to Onslow Square. These floral tributes flattered Sir James and Savile; Woodville said they were hideous; and Sylvia (who neither wrote to thank their sender nor even acknowledged them) always had them conveyed immediately to the housekeeper"s room. The Greek"s intention of marrying Sylvia was in the air. Woodville, Sylvia, and Savile were perhaps the only people who doubted the event"s coming off. Ridokanaki was a small, thin, yet rather noticeable-looking man of fifty, with courteous cosmopolitan manners. He had a triangular face, the details of which were vague though the outline was clear, like a negative that had been left too long in the sun. His slight foreign accent suggested diplomacy rather than the City; he was a man of the world, had travelled everywhere, and had the reputation of knowing absolutely everything. He was firm but kind--the velvet hand beneath the mailed fist--irritatingly tactful, outwardly conventional, _raffine_, and rather tedious.
He called occasionally on Thursdays (Sylvia"s day). Woodville was usually having jealous palpitations in the library while Ridokanaki talked strong, vague politics with Sir James, and drank weak tea poured out by Sylvia (who always forgot that he never took sugar). After these visits the powerful will of the Greek seemed to have a.s.serted itself without a word. It was his habit to express all his ideas in the most hackneyed phrases except when talking business, so that he seemed surprisingly dull and harmless, considering how much he _must_ know, how much he must have seen and done. He had practically made his immense fortune, and many people said that in his own line he was brilliant. It was also often said of him (with surprise), "all the same Ridokanaki is a very simple creature, _when you know him_." No one, however, had ever yet really known him quite well enough to prove or justify this description.
In the c.u.mbrous continental fashion he was working up to the point of a proposal, and something seemed to herald his future success. The servants were all looking forward to the wedding. Only Price, the footman, sometimes put in a word for poor Mr. Woodville. To say that the romance was known and discussed with freedom in the servant"s hall should be needless. The illusion that domestics are ever in the dark about what we fondly suppose to be our little secrets is still immensely prevalent among persons who are young enough to know better.
"All I can say is, that"s the man I"d marry if _I_ were a young lady, whether or no," Price would say, sometimes adding, "With all his flowers and motors, what _is_ the other gent after all but a sort of foreigner?
Mr. Woodville is the nephew of an English baronet. Give me an Englishman!"
To this the housemaid would reply--
"Foreigner or no foreigner, Miss Sylvia is no fool; and, mark my words, she would look all right in that house in Grosvenor Square!"
These dark sayings silenced Price, but they did not succeed in chilling his romantic enthusiasm, though the other servants took the more worldly view. Much as they liked Woodville, it could not be forgotten that Ridokanaki had the agreeable habit (at times practised by Jupiter with so much success) of appearing invariably in a shower of gold.
Trillionaire though he was, no hard-up n.o.bleman could be more lavish, especially in small things. Nowadays the romance of wealth is more fascinating than the romance of poverty, even in the servants" hall. And Ridokanaki was not, as they remarked, like one of those mere parvenus from South Africa or America. Belonging to an old Greek family of bankers who had been wealthy for generations, he had recently made a personal position that really counted in European politics. It had been rumoured that he might have married into a Royal if not particularly regal family. What he had done for Greece and England was hinted at, not generally known.
Sylvia"s impersonal att.i.tude, so obviously genuine, was a refreshing change to a man who had been for years invited with so much a.s.siduity and who knew that he was still regarded in London not without hope as a splendid match. Surely, he would suddenly turn round, settle down, and look for a refined and beautiful wife to be head of his house.
There was a feeling in the air that Sir James"s party, with its White Viennese Band, its celebrities, and general elaborate preparations, was really intended to be a background for the declaration. Undoubtedly, he would propose that night. All Sylvia thought about was, that she meant to wear the grey chiffon dress that Woodville liked, and he would think she looked pretty. She intended to conceal the little turquoise heart that she had bought herself (_from him_) in the Brompton Road in her dress, and to tell him about it afterwards.