Camelia was living the most poetical moment of life; she made no confidences; but Lady Paton’s trust walked in a sadly sweet dream where her daughter’s courtship mingled with tearful memories of her own. Charles Paton’s smile; the first fluttering consciousness that the smile came oftenest for her; she still blushed as she remembered the moment when he had murmured to her as they danced that she had the prettiest throat in England; it had seemed so daring to little Miss Fairleigh, who had read her first novel only six months before; the very memory still had the glamour of daring. And Camelia was feeling all those tremulous delights, with their deep undercurrent of sacred solemnity.
Camelia was not demonstrative, Lady Paton had sighed over the accepted fact, but she could trace all such natural emotions on Sir Arthur’s face when he watched or spoke to her daughter. She already felt a maternal tenderness for him, and his exquisite courtesy, that already implied rights, was nothing less than filial.
Lady Henge’s dignified intellectuality she found indeed rather awesome, but she hoped by careful listening to expand her powers of comprehension, and Lady Henge delivered her expositions of social ethics with a pleasant faith in their tonic effect upon the suppressed mind of her hostess—
“Suppressed, repressed, Arthur, not shallow,” she said to her son, “and you could not ask a daintier, truer gentlewoman for your wife’s mother, dear.” Lady Henge sighed just a little—though quite resigned to the future—for the Duchess of Amshire’s mind was neither suppressed nor shallow, but as expansive and capable an organ as her own, and infinitely sympathetic. Lady Elizabeth, too!—Lady Elizabeth, who had worked at shirt-making in the slums for two weeks, and had caught typhoid fever at it—even Camelia’s sunny charm could not efface the thought of Lady Elizabeth’s almost providential fitness. But in spite of inevitable regrets Lady Henge was resigned, and the two mothers got on together very pleasantly, since moulding capability can hardly carp at a gentle, clay-like receptivity.
Mr. Rodrigg seemed the only new guest intended for any permanence of stay. He duly arrived at the given date and hour, a punctual man, very much aware of his own importance, and of the importance to him, and to others, of every moment.
And Mr. Rodrigg was really a very important personage and his moments weighty with significance. And this iron-gray, middle-aged man had not at all foolishly fallen in love with the brilliant Miss Paton. A wife so beautiful, so capable, so charming, would be the finishing touch to his influence; matter-of-fact motives may well have underlain Mr. Rodrigg’s amorous determination, which Camelia thought so effectually snuffed out. But indeed Mr. Rodrigg’s determination was far too strong to credit hers. His self-confidence smiled kindly upon a pretty coquetry. The exquisite grace of Camelia’s rebuff—she had almost thought it worthy of publicity, so felicitous had been its delicate sweep round a corner dangerous to friendship—had merely impressed Mr. Rodrigg’s unappreciative bluntness with a reassuring conviction of trifling and postponement.
The lightness of touch, the deft cleverness upon which our poor Titania so prided herself, were surveyed in this instance by an ass’s head; the effect she thought so prettily made was quite missed, and she herself its only spectator.
The portentousness of Arthur Henge’s presence at Enthorpe did not in the least weigh with Mr. Rodrigg against the final choice he considered as expressed in Lady Paton’s invitation. Miss Paton had put him off—but she had not let him go; so Mr. Rodrigg interpreted the Egeria attitude; she demanded patience—and she should have it. She was too clever a girl to tolerate whining commonplaces; she would appreciate his whimsical calm; he would not whine—he would wait and humor her.
She liked to have important people about her, and Mr. Rodrigg explained Sir Arthur very much as Camelia had explained Mr. Rodrigg. It was platonic friendliness—quite hopeless. He realized that Camelia might dally with his own hopes, that skill might be necessary to win her finally, and he intended to be very skilful, to show no jealousy or carping that might indispose her towards his future marital authority. And Mr. Rodrigg hardly felt the fitness of jealousy. He was, he thought, a cleverer man than Henge, a man of more intrinsic weight. Henge had a light and pretty talent, spoke with conviction, but was not the man to sway the world with socialism rewarmed in Tory saucepans; whereas Europe trembled at Mr. Rodrigg’s nod, at least so Mr. Rodrigg, not unreasonably, was convinced. The “good match” theory in explanation of Camelia’s motives only fortified his own quiet consciousness of supremacy. He quite gave Camelia credit for an undazzled directness of vision that would surely apprise her of the side on which her bread was most thickly buttered. So Mr. Rodrigg arrived in an atmosphere of blue-books and business unavoidable, though with a minor effect of a great mind unbending to lighter mundanities. His face was typically British; ruddy, with broad features clearly hewn; keen eyes, a tight mouth, and an expression of sagacious toleration of things in general.
Camelia met him with her prettiest air of mutual understanding that would warrant the neatest epigrams. Her penetration of Mr. Rodrigg’s character had never quite realized his tenacious conceit.