LETTERS FROM A DÉBUTANTE.
Dearest Marjorie,—It is really quite time you gave me some more of your valuable advice. Thanks to you, I was not such an utter failure in my first season as I expected. After a month at home (my people loathe the new way I do my hair, and it seemed, I am ashamed to say, a little dull there), I have come to stay again with the Lyon Taymers at their country house.
You remember I refused the man who did conjuring tricks? He has written to me since to say he sees now how right I was—rather crushing! I also fully intended to refuse Captain Mashington. But he went to Dinard without giving me the opportunity, and I hear he has been playing tennis there the whole day with Mrs. Lorne Hopper. I am sure I hope he enjoyed it. She is what you or I would consider rather old, but is said to be perfectly charming, and of course looks fifteen years younger than her youngest daughter.
It seems rather strange, doesn't it, Marjorie, that after being so wonderfully sensible all the season, I should suddenly do something quite idiotic in September? However, I have; and I want you to help me out of it. I'll tell you all, if you'll promise not to laugh. When I first came, I was "thrown," as people say, a good deal with the Taymer's nephew—Oriel Crampton who has just left Oxford. I was told he was very serious, rather shy, philanthropic, and has "views"; also that he had done a great deal of good in the West End. This interested me, and I tried to draw him out. They had omitted to mention that he was dreadfully susceptible. We talked for hours in the garden, nearly all the time—at first—about the housing of the rich and horrible cases of over-crowding—at London parties. He was very earnest and ascetic (he never drinks anything but hot water, and doesn't smoke); he lent me books—he is rather handsome—and—gradually—somehow I found I had drifted into an absurd sort of private half-engagement! Yes—I have actually a bangle rivetted on—with a date inside—the date I was insane enough to agree——Isn't it dreadful?
Oriel will be well off, but he intends to spend all his money on founding model slums, where the people are to be teetotallers and do bootmaking or something, and be a happy little colony. Oriel's views may necessitate his doing a little cobbling himself—just to set an example. I was enormously impressed by this at first; but I am afraid I have become frivolous again. Some other people have come here, including a nice boy they call Baby Beaumont. He is really almost nineteen, but wonderfully well preserved, very clever, and so cynical that he is quite an optimist. Almost directly, he asked me how long I had known Oriel Crampton. I said about a fortnight. "Ah! then you must be engaged to him. Poor old Oriel! He's really quite extraordinarily old-fashioned."
"How old is he?" I asked, in faltering tones.
"He has rather a way of pretending to be young, I fancy. But he must be four-and-twenty if he is a day. You need not say I told you."
It's evidently the fashion to be very young—for men, at least. Sometimes I wish it were the fashion to be old enough to know better. If Oriel really has been engaged before, and may be again, and if getting engaged to people is only a sort of habit of his, perhaps he would not mind so very much if I were to break it off.
Baby Beaumont is (he says himself) "frankly Pagan." He thinks Oriel too serious for me, and advises me to marry at leisure, as I am quite sure, anyhow, to repent in haste. He wanted to send a paragraph to the Post to say "A marriage has been arranged, and will shortly be broken off, between Mr. Oriel Crampton and Miss Gladys Mayfield, younger daughter," and so on.
Last night, when we were playing games, Oriel went out while we thought of a word, and he got quite angry with me because I had said the moon was "vegetable" and he said it was "mineral." He may be right, or he may not—I daresay he is—but still he need not be touchy, and refuse to play any more, and sulk all the evening.
I am afraid I should not be happy with him. He collects postage stamps, too, which depresses me dreadfully.
Please write and tell me what to do—or rather, how to do it. Can one get a bangle rivetted off?... I have just heard that the Lorne Hoppers and Captain Mashington are coming to play tennis on Sunday! Of course, I shall show absolute indifference. I wired at once to town for my new dress. Mrs. Hopper may as well see it.
Baby Beaumont is always changing his clothes, and has two button-holes sent down from London daily. He says he "intends to revive the gardenia."... Oriel has just gone out for a "brisk walk before dinner." Aren't we utterly unsuited to each other?
Your loving friend,Gladys.
P.S.—Is the moon mineral?