CHAPTER V
"I suppose you had better go," said Ferlie's mother. "One had not intended you to 'come out' so soon; but as it is impossible to tell what the future will hold for any of us, it will be better for you to miss no opportunity of meeting people and making friends. Peter will no longer be able to bring men down from Cambridge for us to know."
That took her off on a different track from Lady Cardew's dance invitation to Ferlie.
"Poor Peter," she said, "he looks so white and wretched and I am sure the thought of his ruined future is keeping your father back."
Ferlie said she had no heart for dancing. She, also, was looking white but as nothing had ruined her career it could only be caused by their common anxiety for Mr. Carmichael. As a matter of fact, when one has seen as little of one's father as had Ferlie it was not him one missed so much as his Presence and that which he stood for in a household.
There is no law that children and parents should be one flesh and it was with her mother Ferlie had corresponded; not with the man whose ideas on children's upbringing dovetailed with Mary's thread-bare creed concerning "Her that overcometh the pudding," with the added clause that should life not provide sufficient obstacles upon which to test the will they must be artificially fashioned.
In the end Ferlie went to Lady Cardew's dance, clad in virgin white, reminiscent of her confirmation, since Mrs. Carmichael's mind was nothing if not unoriginal and Ferlie did not really care.
White was not exactly the fashion for débutantes that Season, so it was unavoidable that she should look like a snowdrop which had somehow mistaken the time of year and arrived among a riot of summer flowers.
So, doubtless, would the young man have put it, lounging in rather a tired fashion in the vicinity of the Refreshments (liquid), had he possessed poetical leanings. As it was, conscious of the quickening of a somewhat jaded appetite for débutantes, he decided that he would dance this evening, after all.
Lady Cardew was greatly relieved by this decision. Girls were plentiful, men few; and she always prided herself upon eschewing that modern form of invitation which requests a girl to bring her "dancing-partner."
Ferlie was more fortunate than many in the possession of a brother whose good nature could usually be relied upon, although he did not describe himself as a dancing-man. But Peter had not been able to come to-night.
Lord Clifford Greville-Mainwaring, aged twenty-six, had lately, by an unforeseen railway accident, succeeded to his uncle's estate. For a wonder, not only were these considerable, but the means to maintain them were adequate. He was the Catch of the Season and perfectly aware of that interesting truth. Mammas had a furtive eye upon him; daughters a calculating one, as they weighed his tall but rather meagre proportions against the knowledge that Jack here and Eric there, if infinitely better-looking, were obliged to admit that their chins were their fortunes.
Dancers are born, not made. Ferlie was a Lucky One. Clifford Greville-Mainwaring began to enjoy her ingenuous enjoyment. She acknowledged very recent escape from school but wore a mystifyingly philosophical air which intrigued him. He had been fully prepared to initiate her into the mysteries of a first flirtation; always excepting, he supposed, the school music or drawing-master of ascetic or bulbous personal appearance.
But she had proved very unapproachable, even behind the most sheltering palms in the conservatory with its cunningly shaded lights. And he did not want to frighten her.
"There is something about you," he said, "which reminds one of a tune one has heard and lost and which one always hopes someone will come along humming so that one may recapture it for ever."
"But there are some tunes," Ferlie replied, "which, having recaptured, one would give a great deal to lose again."
His was not a very fertile brain and he clung passionately to his simile, which had struck him as perfect in its way; so passionately that anyone more sophisticated than Ferlie might have suspected him, with perfect justification, of being a little drunk. But she was growing sleepy and merely thought it exceedingly civil of him to insist on seeing her home.
His own car replaced the taxi that had brought her. She took leave of her hostess impervious to the launched arrows of half-a-hundred eyes.
Had Greville-Mainwaring not given his chauffeur leave of absence and so found himself obliged to drive the new Crossley, Ferlie might not have been so ready to accord him polite permission to call. So indifferent that permission. She was really uncertain of the correct procedure and, in her preoccupied state, took the easiest course, and then forgot Mainwaring in finding a letter from Cyprian awaiting her on the hall table.
Not till Lady Cardew put in an ecstatic appearance on the following Sunday afternoon did Mrs. Carmichael learn that her daughter had been considered "the success of the evening."
"Quite like an advertisement for Pompeian Scent or Powder, or whatever it is that is supposed to attract the elusive male," said Lady Cardew, warmly sympathetic with Mrs. Carmichael's reverse of fortune and very much alive to the possibility of doing her a real good turn. "My dear! Only imagine if something came of it!"
Mrs. Carmichael was a little fluttered. One had pictured Ferlie being introduced by her father, in due course, to the eligible officials of Burma. Though that dream had faded this was, to put it tritely, so sudden. And Ferlie's own silence seemed remarkable. Lady Cardew misread it.
"Girlish dignity, Linda. She could hardly assume anything on an evening's acquaintance, even if these modern young people waste very little time. And though there are the usual rumours that Clifford has been a bit wild, you and I, as women of the world, realize that it is better for a young man to have That Kind of Thing behind him than before."
* * * * * *
On the strength of this exciting conversation Greville-Mainwaring received a warmly uncritical reception when he casually arrived with his card-case the following week.
It must be confessed that, up to half an hour previously, he had forgotten Ferlie as completely as the tune so glibly cited on the night of the dance. He was going to a bridge party in the neighbourhood and the sudden recognition of her windows reminded him of a half-finished piece of work.
It might be amusing to take her out driving, with Briggs discreetly officiating at the wheel and the car half-closed. At any rate, he might as well see her again. Now he came to think of it, that unembarrassed survey of her fellow-creatures could not foreshadow Victorian innocence. And Clifford prided himself upon knowing the modern dancing girl for exactly what she was.
He was annoyed to find Ferlie "out." Gropingly, he fancied that she should have remained at home during calling hours, until his expected visit. Evidently, such a course had not occurred to her.
Mrs. Carmichael gave him tea at one end of the big drawing-room, full of Eastern spoil, and Peter strolled in for his, late, abstracted and unimpressed.
"I've heard that Ferlie is a decent dancer," he said.
And, "We shall always regret that if she, eventually, has a Season in Simla," said Mrs. Carmichael, "her father and I will not be there to see her a social success. Simla is always full of pretty girls, but, sometimes, I think that Ferlie has unusual charm."
Mainwaring, thwarted in his desire to see her again, began to agree. With Mr. Carmichael at home Clifford might, possibly, have been weighed himself in the balance and found wanting. The cooler judgment of Ferlie's father would not have placed the worldly goods, with which this young man might undertake to endow his daughter, favourably against the fact that he did not look as if he could ever have earned even a small portion of them on his own account, either in the past or future. The signs of dissipation on the not ill-looking, but weak, face must have stung to criticism the Puritan elements of a mind belonging essentially to the labourer who has borne the burden and the heat of the day. As things were, Peter took a more healthy interest in the make of the man's car than in his character, and Mrs. Carmichael saw no further than that here was a possibility of Ferlie's making up for that "K," lost to their branch of the Family.
Accordingly, Clifford Greville-Mainwaring began, rather frequently, to be found in the drawing-room of the house about to be sold over the Family's heads, and Ferlie, in a few hastily-bought frocks, frequented Thés Dansant and Private Views under the complacent eye of Lady Cardew; at which functions Clifford, invariably hovering, fascinated by her indifference to his marked attentions, waited to take her home.
Ferlie, too, waited for something these days, but nobody realized that it was the mail. Doubtful whether she realized it herself until that inevitable event from which, in looking back afterwards, she dated her "growing up."
Champagne-cup, mingled with the strains of "Wyoming" in a softly-lit private ball-room, made up Clifford's vacillating mind for him; the touch of his hands upon her thinly silk-and-chiffon-covered knees made up Ferlie's for her. There was no mistaking the passionate warmth of her refusal. Till this moment her swift glimpses of "Society," overshadowed as they were by anxiety for the future, had affected her only as part of a drugging dream. Now she awakened to the direction in which she was drifting.
"But you don't understand," said Clifford, too amazed for coherent thought, "I meant to ask you to marry me!"
"I know you did," admitted Ferlie gravely; "no one has ever asked me such a thing before, but I knew at once what you meant. And if you are disappointed I am very sorry that I don't want to."
She had a feeling that the rejection of one's first marriage proposal should be couched in more elegant diction, but, really, there seemed nothing more to say than just that. Marriage meant living with a person for always. She was quite certain that she did not wish to live with Lord Clifford Greville-Mainwaring for always. She enjoyed dancing with him but, when you came to think of it, dancing played an extraordinarily small part in one's existence. She was puzzled because Clifford did not seem to understand her point of view at all, and she wished he would sit further off. They were returning home in the Crossley, with Briggs driving. Later, Peter, descending the turn of the staircase, overheard Clifford's parting words.
"My dear girl, you don't know me yet! I shall go on coming until I get a different answer. That's the sort of man I am."
Ferlie decided it would be hopeless to explain the sort of woman she was, and wondered how often she could contrive to be absent when Clifford called in this optimistic fashion throughout the week. She was, somehow, inclined to surmise that his resolution would not survive a week's rebuffs and she wondered why she had not noticed before that he used some sort of scent on his hair. Meanwhile,
"That chap and Ferlie," said Peter, having faded away unnoticed to his mother's sitting-room, "are brazenly approaching matrimony to-night under the umbrella-stand. From what I could gather Ferlie seems to consider it an over-rated institution."
Mrs. Carmichael's embroidery dropped on her lap.
"You do not mean to say she is refusing him, Peter? When Lady Cardew and I have worked so hard."
"Oh, have you?" asked Peter. "Why?"
"It is a mystery to me," said his mother, "how short-sighted men can be. Do you happen to know his income?"
"I happen to have noticed his shoes," Peter retorted: "they are the genuine co-respondent article, and no mistake."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Do you like the chap, Mother?"
"What's wrong with him? There is nothing to dislike so far as I can see."
"That's just it," Peter admitted. "There is nothing to like or dislike—except his shoes."
Mrs. Carmichael decided that Peter was just being tiresome.
"It might mean a great deal to you if Ferlie accepted him," she declared. "He would be sure to make a settlement upon her—and if you could even borrow money, Peter, just now——"
Peter started slightly and began to whistle out of tune. Still whistling, he strolled to the door. On the threshold he broke off to say: "Well, of course, it's none of my business. To me there seems nothing to take hold of in the man, one way or another." A little pause, and then, "But it's Ferlie's pigeon, after all."
They waited for Ferlie to announce her dubious tidings, but, to her mother's surprise, Ferlie said nothing.
This was making Mainwaring too exclusively her pigeon. Mrs. Carmichael tackled her at the hair-dressing hour when the lights were low. Extracted confession.
"But, my darling, do you realize...?" So obviously, Ferlie didn't.
She stood behind her mother and her eyes sought the shadows of tapping branches on the window with a wistful strained expression. The mail that week was late....
Yes, she had resolved three years earlier that she did not want to marry. He had suggested that type of husband which men in her father's position were usually able to provide for their daughters and she had scorned the nebulous suitor. Did He remember?
It was a long time since she had heard of Muriel Vane. After her return from abroad Muriel had gravitated to a different "Set." There were Rumours. Lady Cardew palpably refrained from quoting them in the presence of the Spotless Young of the Right Set. If Muriel had attracted Cyprian what would he have thought of Phyllis?
Peter looked quite stern at any mention of that quite ordinary Christian name now. Ferlie wondered if it were principle or whether he still considered himself irrevocably yoked to Phyllis's memory...
What was her mother saying about Peter? Mrs. Carmichael's plaintive tones duetted with the singing of the kettle laying the foundations for her nightly cup of cocoa.
"And, of course, you must do just as you think best.... Poor Peter! Your father's convalescence is being so retarded with worry. Though, I'm sure, at my time of life it isn't very easy to begin to do without things. You, fresh from school, young and strong, will probably not miss luxuries.... And ... your happiness is all that matters, darling. I wouldn't for the world persuade you against your inclination.... Your father always says I've been too weak with my children.... I wonder whether Peter will ever get over it? Lady Cardew thought Lord Clifford Greville-Mainwaring such a desirable young man. Your father and I would have been so much relieved—for that Simla Season may never come off. I was relying on the Durrants, but Gwen Durrant will soon be leaving school herself. There was the question of your passage-money too. Do you know there are more than a million superfluous women in England...?
"... Well, good night, darling. Yes, I'm disappointed, but you mustn't think of Us; only of Yourself. No, thank you. I don't think I feel like cocoa to-night, after all..."
* * * * * *
Two days later, a Ferlie with brooding lips, who had twice circumvented Clifford's indications that he came of the Bull-dog Breed, sought Peter where he was engaged in discarding superfluous treasures for which there would be neither nor lot in the life to come.
"Are you sorry, too, about this marriage, Peter?"
He avoided her direct gaze.
"Girls do marry," he said, rather banally.
"I know they do. But there's such a thing as—being in love."
Peter sat back on his haunches, busily dissecting the corpse of a camera.
"I wonder!" cryptically. Said Ferlie, "You always thought queerly about these things."
"Perhaps I still think queerly about them. That is, if common sense is queer.... Phyllis professed to be in love with me. Of course you are naturally more religious. I suppose you inherit it from Mother. I do not mean that you are an orthodox Churchwoman—save the mark! But your sentiments are religious, Ferlie. Love, the Sacrament! ... and so on. I know that Love is a joke invented by Nature to enable her to work out her own ends. If you ask me what I think of Mainwaring I say he just can't be thought about. Whatever he's heading to be he has not got there yet. You could make pretty much what you liked of him. Also, you probably wouldn't see very much of him after that first honeymoon farce was played through. And then you could live your own life; one which might be made as interesting and as full as you pleased. And, you see, it isn't as if there were Anyone Else on the mat."
So that was what Peter thought about it. And now Ferlie knew.
In the light of which knowledge she opened a certain despatch-case and re-read the letters she had received from Cyprian since writing to inform him that she had left school.
The mining life seemed lonely enough and a thread of tiredness stole in and out of the neatly-formed syllables. Ferlie, with faint misgivings, asked herself whether Cyprian were not one of those men who might be described in a book as having made a mess of his life. Instinctive wisdom whispered that Muriel would have made a greater mess of it for him had she given herself the opportunity; but it was doubtful that Cyprian, even now, believed that. No credit to him to be so faithful to his ideals; it was just the way he was made.
"And if I had an Ideal," Ferlie told herself, "I could be faithful to it too."
At tea her mother asked her if she had a cold....
Articles of furniture were already beginning to disappear from the house; two valuable pictures had gone to Christie's. Ferlie suggested: "Margery wants me to go back for a few days. If you don't mind, Mother, I should like to go."
"Only till Monday, then," said her mother, rather miserably; "Next week the packing begins in earnest."
They were chivalrous to Ferlie in their studious avoidance of Clifford Greville-Mainwaring's name.
At the back of her brain flitted the ghost of a memory: the Zoological Gardens and a lion's cage. Somebody had told her that the bars of those other cages, the existence of which she had guessed at, were made of gold. Was Mainwaring unconsciously forging them now for her? She decided to discuss the matter with Margery. There was no nonsense about Margery. Her practical scrutiny of the situation might lay the spectres of those unborn dreams filming Ferlie's vision.
* * * * * *
And Margery, once approached, certainly made things sound simpler.
"You have no reasonable objection to the man?"
"I don't like his touching me."
"Do you like the thought of anyone's touching you? Not experimented yet?"
Ferlie shook her head, her face bent low over the glove-satchet she was sorting.
"Yet everyone, even in our effete, old-fashioned Guard of Die-Hards, has to tackle Sex in the long run," Margery reminded her. "Otherwise, how would the world go on? The Modern Aristocracy, alias The Smart Set which gets put on the stage, believes in facing more facts than usually exist. But it is a truth that, in marriage, familiarity breeds indifference to many matters one would have shied at the very mention of before."
"How do you know?" questioned Ferlie resentfully.
"I have watched my girl-friends marry and invited their confidences afterwards," said Margery with a retrospective smile. "Life is a muddle of rough and smooth for them all, whether they went into it with wilfully closed eyes or curiously wide-open ones. I'll tell you someone else who always seemed to me to be looking for sacramental happiness and getting terribly hurt when he found what he thought was trouble, just like you. The man who ought to have been your uncle and wasn't. I gather some folks have extra sensitive feet on the world's highway, and a too unshaken belief in the everlasting beauty of the hedge-flowers. By the way, do you know about that Vane woman he was so keen on when you were a kid at school?"
"Only that she turned out—not very nice."
Margery laughed queerly but did not pursue the subject.
"It's a mercy," she said, "that your Cyprian-man will have cut his wisdom-teeth by the time he sees her again. Do you ever hear from him now?"
"N-not lately."
"Well, his avuncular advice would probably coincide with mine if he were here. All men are like peas, and most women, when it comes to the Year-after-the-Wedding. Even Tristran and Iseult would have pretty surely grown fat at forty when the children were growing poetical. At forty everyone grows either fat or thin and begins to mistrust moonlight for reading the Book of Life by. In Cliff Mainwaring—I used to know him in his college days—you will have a husband who will never set the Thames alight, nor need to. And you'll live very peaceable in consequence. I shall expect to be asked to stay with you."
And that was what Margery thought about it.