V
Of course, no sooner had Bertram left them, than Pontycroft turned to the ladies, and said, “Well——?”
“Well what?” teased Ruth, trying to look as if she didn't understand.
“Boo,” said Pontycroft, making a face at her.
“He's delightful,” said Lucilla; “so simple and unassuming, and unspoiled. And so romantic—like one of Daudet's rois en exil. And he has such nice eyes, and such a nice slim athletic figure. Do you think it's true that his people have no hope of coming to the throne? I've felt it in my bones that we should meet him again, ever since that night at the Lido. I knew it was all an act of Destiny. How wonderfully he speaks English—and thinks and feels it. He has quite the English point of view—he can see a joke. Oh, I've entirely lost my heart, and if I weren't restrained by a sense of my obligations as a married woman I should make the most frantic love to him.”
Ruth lay back in her chair, and shook her head, and laughed.
“Oh, your swans, your swans,” she murmured.
“Dear Lady Disdain,” said Ponty, regarding her with an eye that was meant to wither, “it is better that a thousand geese should be mistaken for swans, than that a single swan should be mistaken for a goose. Oh, your geese, your geese!”
“Dear Lord Sententious,” riposted Ruth, “what is the good of making any mistake at all? Why not take swans for swans, geese for geese, and blameless little princelings for blameless little princelings? Yes, your little princeling seemed altogether blameless, an exceedingly well-meaning, well-mannered little princeling, but I saw no play of Promethean fire about his head, and when he spoke it sounded as if any normally intelligent young man was speaking.”
“Had you expected,” Pontycroft with lofty sarcasm inquired, “that, like the prince in The Rose and Ring, he would speak in verse?”
But next morning, in the most unexpected manner, she totally changed her note. Pontycroft found her seated in the sun on the lawn. It was a cool morning, and the sun's warmth was pleasant. Here and there a dewdrop still glistened, clinging to a spear of grass; and the air was still sweet with the early breath of the earth. In her lap lay side by side an open letter and an oleander-blossom. Her eyes, Pontycroft perceived, were fixed upon the horizon, as those of one deep in a brown study.
“You mustn't mind my interrupting,” he said, as he came up. “It's really in your own interest. It's bad for your little brain to let it think so hard, and it will do you good to tell me what it was thinking so hard about.”
Slowly, calmly, Ruth raised her eyes to his. “My little brain was thinking about Prince Charming,” she apprised him, in a voice that sounded grave.
Pontycroft's wrinkled brow contracted.
“Prince Charming——?”
“The young Astyanax, the hope of—Altronde,” she explained. “Your friend, Bertrando Bertrandoni. I was meditating his manifold perfections.”
Pontycroft shook his head. “I miss the point of your irony,” he remarked.
“Irony?” protested she, with spirit. “When was I ever ironical? He's perfectly delightful—so unassuming and unspoiled; and so romantic, like a king in exile. And with such a nice thin figure, and such large sagacious eyes. And he speaks such chaste and classic English, and is so quick to take a joke. If I weren't restrained by a sense of what's becoming to me as a single woman, I should make desperate love to him.”
Pontycroft shook his head again. “I still miss the point,” he said.
“I express myself blunderingly, I know,” said Ruth. “You see, it's somewhat embarrassing for a girl to have to avow such sentiments. But really and truly and honestly, and all jesting apart, I think he's an extremely nice young man, quite the nicest that I've met for a long, long while.”
“You sang a different song yesterday,” said Pontycroft, bewilderment and suspicion mingled in his gaze.
“La nuit porte conseil,” Ruth reminded him. “I've had leisure in which to revise my impressions. He's a fellow who can talk, a fellow who's curious about things. I hope we shall see a great deal of him.” She lifted up her oleander, pressed it to her face, and took a deep inhalation. “Bless its red fragrant heart,” she said.
“I never can tell when you are sincere,” Ponty hopelessly complained.
“I'm always sincere—but seldom serious,” Ruth replied. “What's the good of being serious? Isn't levity the soul of wit? Come, come! Life's grim enough, in all conscience, without making it worse by being serious.”
“I give you up,” said Ponty. “You're in one of your mystifying moods, and your long-suffering friends must wait until it passes.” Then nodding towards the open letter in her lap, “Whom's your letter from?” he asked.
“I don't know,” said Ruth, smiling with what seemed to him artificial brightness.
“Don't know? Haven't you read it?” he demanded.
“Oh yes, I've read it. But I don't know whom it's from, because it isn't signed. It's what they call anonymous,” Ruth suavely answered. “Now isn't that exciting?”
“Anonymous?” cried Ponty, bristling up.
“Who on earth can be writing anonymous letters to a child like you? What's it about?”
“By the oddest of coincidences,” said Ruth, “it's about you.”
“About me?” Ponty faltered, a hundred new wrinkles adding themselves to his astonished brow: “An anonymous letter—to you—about me?”
“Yes,” said Ruth pleasantly. “Would you care to read it?” She held it up to him. He took it.
Written in a weak and sprawling hand, clearly feminine, on common white paper, it ran, transliterated into the conventional spelling of our day, as follows:—
“Miss Ruth Adgate, Madam.—I thought you might like to know that your friend, H. Pontycroft, Esq. who passes himself off for a bachelor is a married man, eighteen years ago being married privately to a lady whose father kept a public in Brighton of the name of Ethel Driver. The lady lives at 18 Spring Villas Beckenham Road Highgate off a mean pittance from her husband who is ashamed of her and long ago cast off.
“Yours, a sincere well-wisher.”
Pontycroft's wrinkles, as he read, concentrated themselves into one frown of anger, and the brown-red of his face darkened to something like purple. At last he tore the letter lengthwise and crosswise into tiny fragments, and thrust them into the side pocket of his coat.
“Let me see the envelope,” he said, reaching out his hand. But there was nothing to be got from the envelope. It was postmarked Chelsea, and had been addressed to Ruth's house in town, and thence forwarded by her servants.
“Who could have written it? And why? Why?” he puzzled aloud.
“The writer thought I 'might like to know,'” said Ruth, quoting the text from memory. “But, of course, it's none of my business—so I don't ask whether it is true.”
“No, it's none of your business,” Ponty agreed, smiling upon her gravely, his anger no longer uppermost. “But I hope you won't quite believe the part about the 'pittance.' My solicitors pay all her legitimate expenses, and if I don't allow her any great amount of actual money, that's because she has certain unfortunate habits which it's better for her own sake that she shouldn't indulge too freely. Well, well, you see how the sins of our youth pursue us. And now—shall we speak of something else?”
“Poor Harry,” said Ruth, looking at him with eyes of tender pity. “Speak of something else? Oh yes, by all means,” she assented briskly. “Let's return to Astyanax. When do you think he will pay his visit of digestion?”