Abington Abbey: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

"She says she has. Why! have you seen it? Surely not!"

"To tell you the truth, I haven't looked very carefully. They like each other, I suppose, just as he and I like each other. He hasn't been any different to me; I think he's been as much with me as he has with her."

"Yes, but B herself, I mean. She wouldn't want to fall in love with a foreigner, would she?"

"How British you are, darling! I never think about M. de Lassigny as a foreigner."

"I do though. I should hate one of you girls to marry anybody not English. B doesn't like him in that way, does she?"

"I don't think so, dear. I don't think she likes anybody in that way yet. She's just like I was, when I first came out, enjoying herself frightfully and making lots of friends. He was one of the people I liked first of all. He's interesting to talk to. She likes lots of other men too. In fact she has talked to me about lots of them, but I don't think she's ever mentioned him—before he came here, I mean."

Whether that fact seemed quite convincing to Caroline or no, it relieved her father. "Oh, I don't suppose there's anything in it," he said. "His manners with women are a bit more elaborate than an Englishman's. I suppose that's what Mary has got hold of. I must say, I didn't notice him paying any more attention to B than to you; or Barbara either, for that matter. Of course B is an extraordinarily pretty girl. She's bound to get a lot of notice. I hope she won't take up with anybody yet awhile though. I don't want to lose her. I don't want to lose any of you. Anyway, I should hate losing her to a Frenchman."

His fears were further reduced by Beatrix's treatment of him during that day, and when they went up to London together the next morning. She was very clinging and affectionate, and very amusing too. Surely no girl who was not completely heart-whole would have been so light-hearted and merry over all the little experiences of life that her entry into the world was bringing her! And she hardly mentioned Lassigny's name at all, though there was scarcely one of the numerous acquaintances she had made whom she had not something to say about, and generally to make fun of. Her fun was never ill-natured, but everybody and everything presented itself to her in the light of her gay humour, and was presented to her audience in that light. She was far the wittiest of the three of them, and her bright audacities enchanted her father when she was in the mood for them, when her eyes danced and sparkled with mischief and her laugh rang out like music. He had never been able to think of Beatrix as quite grown up; she was more of a child to him even than Barbara, whom nobody could have thought of as grown up, or anywhere near it. It dismayed him to think of losing her, even if it should be to a man of whom he should fully approve. But, filling his eyes as she did with a sense of the sweet perfection of girlhood, he was wondering if it were possible that she of all the girls who would be married or affianced before the season was over would escape, even if there was nothing to be feared as to the particular attachment that had been put into his mind.

But though it might be impossible to think that she would tread her first gay measure without having hearts laid at her feet, it was quite possible to think of her as dancing through it without picking any of them up. In fact, she as good as told him that that was her attitude towards all the admiration she was receiving when she went up to fish with him in the evening, and was as charmingly companionable and confidential to him as even he could wish her to be.

She had a way with him that was sweeter to him even than Caroline's way. Caroline treated him as her chosen companion among all men, as he always had been so far, but she treated him as an equal, almost as a brother, though with a devotion not often shown by sisters to brothers. But Beatrix transformed herself into his little dog or slave. She behaved, without a trace of affectation, as if she were about six years old. She ran to fetch and carry for him, she tried to do things that he did, just as Bunting did, and laughed at herself for trying. Caroline often put her face up to his to be kissed, but Beatrix would take his hand, half-furtively, and kiss it softly or lay it to her cheek, or snuggle up to him with a little sigh of content, as if it were enough for her to be with him and adore him. This evening, by the pool at the edge of the park, where the grass was full of flowers and the grey aspens and heavy elms threw their shadows across the water and were reflected in its liquid depths, she was his gillie, and got so excited on the few occasions on which she had an opportunity of using the landing-net, that she got her skirt and shoes and stockings all covered with mud, just as if she were a child with no thought of clothes, instead of a young woman at the stage when they are of paramount importance.