CHAPTER FIVE
And that was the beginning of a most extraordinary phase of Brigit Mead's life.
For the next four months she saw Joyselle almost daily. She never broached the subject of her engagement being broken, its permanence was taken for granted by everyone, and Tommy's indefinitely prolonged visit to Golden Square would, if anything more than the fact of her engagement had been necessary, have explained her constant presence there.
Once Théo had urged her to set their wedding-day, but she had put him off and he had never again opened the question. That the young man was not, could not possibly be, perfectly satisfied with the state of affairs, she knew very well, but that, she told herself, she could not help.
She lived on from day to day, more simply and with less self-analysis, in spite of her curious position, than ever before in her life, for the inevitable day of reckoning seemed to be the affair of the Brigit of the future, whereas the Brigit of each day was concerned only with those particular twenty-four hours. It was enough to live in close companionship with the man she loved, and when, as occasionally she tried to do, she reasoned to herself about it, her mind seemed paralysed and utterly refused to make plans of any kind. So, twisting to her own purposes, as people do, the saying about the evil of the day being unto itself sufficient, she let time slip away unremarked and spring came.
It was a cold rainy season that year, with chill dark mornings and flickerings of pale sunshine later on.
People talked much about the weather, and pretty women shivered in their light finery. Tommy, who went home for a fortnight in April, reported that things in the country were deplorable.
"Everyone has colds, and Mr. Smith says there is diphtheria at Spinny Major. Green is disgusted, and from what I can gather from his cheery reports, everyone is going to be ruined by agricultural depression. The Mother of Hundreds has nine new pups—rather good ones."
This was at the end of April, and Lord Kingsmead was coiled in a big chair in his sister's room in Pont Street. Mr. Babington, his tutor, had just gone for a walk, poor man. Tommy's attitude to him had from the first been one of polite tolerance, and Mr. Babington's bump of humour being imperfectly developed, he in return regarded his charge with something like horror.
A boy of twelve, who knew only the very first principles of Latin (Mr. Babington was number three, the other two having proved unsatisfactory to their employer-pupil), and knew the multiplication table only up to "eight-times," disturbed his tidy little mind. There was, moreover, a youth in Sydenham who clamoured for Mr. Babington, and who was after that much-tried young Oxonian's heart. But Mr. Babington stayed on, for—there was Brigit, and in the evenings the tutor locked his door, smoked asthma cigarettes, and wrote sonnets by the yard to the Enchantress.
Tommy, of course, had at once perceived the first shoots of the hapless young man's baby passion as it sprang up in his heart—which did not make it easier to bear, but still Mr. Babington stayed on.
"He'll never go, Bick," complained Tommy that afternoon, after his remarks on Kingsmead. "I even tried smoking the other day, but he had a handkerchief of yours that you left on the hall table, and was so bucked that he barely noticed my iniquity. He is a poisonous person!"
"Yes, I certainly preferred Mr. Catt—but you didn't like him either."
"How could anyone like a fellow named Catt? I nearly choked every time I had to speak to him, and so did the Master." It was thus that the boy designated and addressed Joyselle. "He used to call him Minet. I have learned that rotten old multiplication-table, however, and Latin is easy. I do wish," he went on, gnawing at an ancient bit of almond-rock that he had acquired at the village sweetstuff shop at home, "that mother had had me well whacked when I was a kid. It would have saved me no end of trouble now."
Brigit laughed as she dabbed some cherry-coloured grease on her pointed nails. "Poor old Tommy!"
The almond-rock was an impediment to fluency of conversation, but after a moment Tommy mastered it and went on. "I say, Bicky, what's gone wrong with Carron?"
She started. "I—why do you ask?"
"Because I think he looks very ill. Saw him yesterday as I went out, and hardly knew him."
"Perhaps he's had influenza," she suggested.
She had not seen the man for weeks. He had been away several times, and when he had come to the house had not asked for her. The last time they had met they had, of course, quarrelled, and then she had forgotten him, as she forgot everybody and everything not brought directly under her notice.
In March he had gone to Monte Carlo to see her mother, who was visiting there, and Lady Kingsmead had told her afterwards that he had been wretched all during his stay. Brigit said she was sorry, but it is to be doubted if the afflictions of anyone, if not directly affecting herself, would at that time have given her any pain, and of all people poor Carron was probably the last with whom she could feel any real sympathy.
Tommy had a bad throat and was not to go back to Golden Square that night, but Brigit was dining somewhere with the two Joyselle men, and was to spend the night in the now so-familiar spare-room, with the coloured religious pictures on the walls.
Lady Kingsmead had returned to town that morning, but the perfect freedom she gained by Tommy's long stay with, and her daughter's daily visits to, the Joyselles, had long since overcome her first scruples about "those sort of people being after all quite the associates for Kingsmead," and had accepted Brigit's announcement for her intention with an absent nod.
"Very well, dear, and remind him not to forget that he is dining here on Tuesday. He really is most obliging, about playing, I must say."
"Yes, the poor creature has his qualities," returned the girl, drily. Twice during the past twelve weeks she had gone to Kingsmead for a day or two, and on each occasion her note, written to the violinist at her mother's suggestion, asking him down to dine and spend the night, had met with telegraphic acceptance.
"Good-bye, little brother."
"Good-bye, Bicky, give him my love." Tommy's small eyes beamed with fanatical affection, and Brigit kissed him again.
Then she went downstairs, picked up a passing hansom, and sped to Paradise.