CHAPTER X. THE GAME OPENS.
Ce qu’on dit à l’être à qui on dit tout n’est pas la moitié de ce qu’on lui cache.
Agatha sent her maid to bed and sat down before her bedroom fire to brush her hair.
Miss Ingham-Baker had, only four years earlier, left a fashionable South Coast boarding-school fully educated for the battle of life. There seem to be two classes of young ladies’ boarding-schools. In the one they are educated with a view of faring well in this world, in the other the teaching mostly bears upon matters connected with the next. In the last-mentioned class of establishment the young people get up early and have very little material food to eat. So Mrs. Ingham-Baker wisely sent her daughter to the worldly school. This astute lady knew that girls who get up very early to attend public worship in the dim hours, and have poor meals during the day, do not as a rule make good matches. They have no time to do their hair properly, and are not urged so much thereto as to punctuality at compline, or whatever the service may be. And it is thus that the little habits are acquired, and the little habits make the woman, therefore the little habits make the match. Quod erat demonstrandum.
So Agatha was sent to a worldly school, where they promenaded in the King’s Road, and were taught at an early age to recognise the glance of admiration when they saw it. They were brought up to desire nice clothes, and to wear the same stylishly. On Sunday they wore bonnets, and promenaded with additional enthusiasm. Their youthful backs were straightened out by some process which the writer, not having been educated at a girls’ school, cannot be expected to detail. They were given excellent meals at healthy hours, and the reprehensible habits of the lark were treated with contumely. They were given to understand that it was good to be smart always, and even smarter at church. Religious fervour, if it ran to limpness of dress, or form, or mind, was punishable according to law. A wholesome spirit of competition was encouraged, not in the taking of many prizes, the attending of many services, or the acquirement of much Euclid, but in dress, smartness, and the accomplishments.
“My girls always marry!” Miss Jones was wont to say with a complacent smile, and mothers advertised it.
Agatha had been an apt pupil. She came away from Miss Jones a finished article. Miss Jones had indeed looked in vain for Agatha’s name in that right-hand column of the Morning Post where fashionable arrangements are noted, and in the first column of the Times, where further social events have precedence. But that was entirely Agatha’s fault. She came, and she saw, but she had not hitherto seen anything worth conquering. So many of her school friends had married on the impulse of the moment for mere sentimental reasons, remaining as awful and harassed warnings in suburban retreats where rents are moderate and the census on the flow. If there was one thing Miss Jones despised more than love in a cottage, it was that intangible commodity in a suburban villa.
Agatha, in a word, meant to do well for herself, and she was dimly grateful to her mother for having foreseen this situation and provided for it by a suitable education.
She was probably thinking over the matter while she brushed her hair, for she was deeply absorbed. There was a knock at the door--a timid, deprecatory knock.
“Oh, come in!” cried Agatha.
The door opened and disclosed Mrs. Ingham-Baker, stout and cringing, in a ludicrous purple dressing-gown.
“May I come and warm myself at your fire, dear?” she inquired humbly; “my own is so low.”
“That,” said Agatha, “is because you are afraid of the servants.”
Mrs. Ingham-Baker closed the door and came towards the fire with surreptitious steps. It would not be truthful to say that she came on tiptoe, her build not warranting that mode of progression. Agatha watched her without surprise. Mrs. Ingham-Baker always moved like that in her dressing-gown. Like many ladies, she put on stealth with that garment.
“How beautifully the Count plays!” said the mother.
“Beautifully!” answered Agatha.
And neither was thinking of Cipriani de Lloseta.
Mrs. Ingham-Baker gave a little sigh, and contemplated her wool-work bedroom slippers with an affection which their appearance certainly did not warrant. There was a suggestion of bygone defeats in sigh and attitude--defeats borne with the resignation that followeth on habit.
“I don’t believe,” she said, “that he will ever marry again.”
The girl tossed her pretty head.
“I shouldn’t think any one would have him!”
She was not of the campaigners who admit defeat. Mrs. Ingham-Baker sighed again, and put out the other slipper.
“He must be very rich!--a palace in Barcelona--a palace!”
“Other people have castles in Spain,” replied Agatha, without any of that filial respect which our grandmothers were pleased to affect. There was nothing old-fashioned or effete about Agatha - she was, on the contrary, essentially modern.
The elder lady did not catch the allusion, and dived deep into thought. She supposed that Agatha had met and danced with other rich Spaniards, and could have any one of them by the mere raising of her little finger. Her attitude towards her daughter was that of an old campaigner who, having done well in a bygone time, has the good sense to recognise the deeper science of a modern warfare, being quite content with a small command in the rear.
To carry out the simile, she now gathered from this conversational reconnaissance that the younger and abler general at the front was about to alter the object of attack. She had, in fact, come in not to warm, but to inform herself.
“Mrs. Harrington seemed to take to Luke,” said Agatha, behind her hair.
“Yes,” answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, proceeding carefully, for she was well in hand--“wonderfully so! Poor Fitz seems to stand a very good chance of being cut out.”
“Fitz will have to look after himself,” opined the young lady. “Did she say anything to you after I came to bed? I came away on purpose.”
Mrs. Ingham-Baker glanced towards the door, and drew her dressing-gown more closely round her.
“Well,” she began volubly, “of course I said what a nice fellow Luke was, so manly and simple, and all that. And she quite agreed with me. I said that perhaps he would get on after all and not bring disgrace upon all her kindness.”
“What do you mean by that?” inquired Agatha.
“I don’t know, my dear, but I said it. And she said she hoped so. Then I asked her if she knew what his wages or salary, or whatever they are called, amounted to, and what his prospects are. She said she knew nothing about his salary, but that his prospects were quite a different matter. I pretended I did not know what she meant. So she gave a little sigh and said that one could not expect to live for ever. I said that I was sure I wished some people could, and she smiled in a funny way.”
“You do not seem to have done it very well,” the younger and more scientific campaigner observed coldly.
“Oh, but it was all right, Agatha dear. I understand her so well. And I said I was sure that Luke would deserve anything he got; that of course it was different for Fitz, because his life is all set out straight before him. And she said I was quite right.”
The report was finished, and Agatha sat for some moments with the brush on her lap looking into the fire with the deep thoughtfulness of a cool tactician.
“I am sure he was struck with you,” said the mother fervently.
After all she was only fit for a very small command very far in the rear. She never saw the singular light in Agatha’s eyes.
“Do you think so?” said the girl, half dreamily.
“I am sure of it.”
Agatha began brushing her hair again.
“What makes you think so?” she inquired through the snaky canopy.
“He never took his eyes off you when you were playing the Count’s accompaniment.”
The girl suddenly rose and went to the dressing-table. The candles there were lighted, one on each side of the mirror. Agatha saw that her mother was still admiring her bedroom slippers. Then she looked at the reflection of her own face with the smooth hair hanging straight down over either shoulder. She gazed long and curiously as if seeking something in the pleasant reflection.
“Did she say anything more about Fitz?” she asked suddenly, with an obvious change of the subject which Mrs. Ingham-Baker did not attempt to understand. She was not a subtle woman.
“Nothing.”
Agatha came back and sat down.
“And you are quite sure she said exactly what you have told me, about not expecting to live for ever.”
“Quite.”
Then followed a long silence. A belated cab rattled past beneath the windows. There was apparently a cowl on the chimney connected with Agatha’s room, for at intervals a faint groaning sound came, apparently from the fireplace.
Agatha leant forward with her chin on her two hands, her elbows on her knees. Her hair hung almost to the ground. She was looking into the coals with thoughtful eyes. The elder tactician waited in respectful silence.
“Suppose-- ” said the girl suddenly, and stopped.
“Yes, my darling.”
“Suppose we accept the Danefords’ invitation?”
“To go to Malta?”
“Yes, to go to Malta.”
Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell into a puzzled, harassed reverie. This modern warfare was so complicated. The younger, keener tactician did not seem to demand an answer to her supposition. She proceeded to follow out the train of her own thoughts in as complete an absorption as if she had been alone in the room.
“The voyage,” she said, “would be a pleasant change if we selected a good boat.”
Mrs. Ingham-Baker reflected for a moment.
“We might go in the Croonah with Luke,” she then observed timidly.
“Ye-es.”
And after a little while Mrs. Ingham-Baker rose and bade her daughter good-night.
Agatha remained before the fire in the low chair with her face resting on her two hands, and who can tell all that she was thinking? For the thoughts of youth are very quick. They are different from the thoughts of maturity, inasmuch as they rise higher into happiness and descend deeper into misery. Agatha Ingham-Baker knew that she had her own life to shape, with only such blundering, well-meant assistance as her mother could give her. She had found out that the world cannot pause to help the stricken, or to give a hand to the fallen, but that it always has leisure to cringe and make way for the successful.
Other girls had been successful. Why should not she? And if--and if--
The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Ingham-Baker took an opportunity of asking Mrs. Harrington if she knew Malta.
“Malta,” answered the grey lady, “is a sort of Nursery India. I have known girls marry at Malta, but I have known more who were obliged to go to India.”
“That,” answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, “is exactly what I am afraid of.”
“Having to go on to India?” inquired Mrs. Harrington, looking over her letters.
“No. I am afraid that Malta is not quite the place one would like to take one’s daughter to.”
“That depends, I should imagine, upon the views one may have respecting one’s daughter,” answered the lady of the house carelessly.
At this moment Agatha came in looking fresh and smart in a tweed dress. There was something about her that made people turn in the streets to look at her again. For years she had noted this with much satisfaction. But she was beginning to get a little tired of the homage of the pavement. Those who turned to glance a second time never came back to offer her a heart and a fortune. She was perhaps beginning faintly to suspect that which many of us know - namely, that she who has the admiration of many rarely has the love of one; and if by chance she gets this, she never knows its value and rarely keeps it.
“I was just asking Mrs. Harrington about Malta, dear,” exclaimed Mrs. Ingham-Baker. “It is a nice place, is it not, Marian?”
“I believe it is.”
“And somehow I quite want to go there. I can’t think why,” said Mrs. Ingham-Baker volubly. “It would be so nice to get a little sunshine after these grey skies, would it not, dear?”
Agatha gave a little shiver as she sat down.
“It would be very nice to feel really warm,” she said. “But there is the horrid sea voyage.”
“I dare say you would enjoy that very much after the first two days,” put in Mrs. Harrington.
“Especially if we select a nice large boat--one of those with two funnels?” put in Mrs. Ingham-Baker. “Now I wonder what boat we could go by?”
“Luke’s,” suggested Mrs. Harrington, with cynical curtness. There was a subtle suggestion of finality in her tone, a tiniest note of weariness which almost said--
“Now we have reached our goal.”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Ingham-Baker doubtfully, “that it is really a fine vessel?”
“So I am told.”
“I really expect,” put in Agatha carelessly, “that one steamer is as good as another.”
Mrs. Harrington turned on her like suave lightning.
“But one boat is not so well officered as another, my dear!” she said.
Agatha--not to be brow-beaten, keen as the older fencer--looked Mrs. Harrington straight in the face.
“You mean Luke,” she said. “Of course I dare say he is a good officer. But one always feels doubtful about trusting one’s friends--does one not?”
“One does,” answered Mrs. Harrington, turning to her letters.