Here, left to my own thoughts at last, I flung myself down on my creaky little camp bedstead and raged as I reviewed this new aspect of the situation. Put crudely, it is this: It’s not until I tie myself up with this wretched sham “engagement” to the Governor that I have the chance of cutting everything to do with him and his odious office, and becoming safely, happily and genuinely engaged!
Or, in the jargon of the Near Oriental, it’s just after I’ve sold out at a loss that I get an advantageous offer!
Why on earth couldn’t Sydney Vandeleur have said all that before? A year ago—even a month ago—and, to think what it would have saved! I shouldn’t have minded getting that money for Jack—from his own brother-in-law! Yes; if he’s cared for me all this time, why couldn’t he have proposed to and married me before I’d so much as seen that hateful Near Oriental, with that “Andromeda’s rock” of a typewriter, watched over by what Miss Holt calls “that Gordian” of a Governor! Why couldn’t Sydney have hurried up, for once in his life, to play Perseus?
“Too much tact!” Good gracious! Why must men have this absurd code of ethics about “the right thing” when there’s a woman in the case? Why does a man who’s hard-up, for instance, consider it so much more “honourable” to “ride away” without a word to the girl whose heart he knows is his, just because he “feels he oughtn’t to propose before he’s in a position to marry?”
He “feels he ought not to stand in the girl’s way of better offers.” ... But he does that, more often than not, with her first sight of him! Never mind. He’d rather leave her fretting her heart out for life over the belief that he was only flirting after all, or let her make a miserable marriage with someone else—rather than be “dishonourable” enough to own up that he cares and wants her to wait perhaps three or four years for him. He’s saved his precious “code,” just as I suppose Sydney wished to save his.
Oh, men’s “fine feelings,” men’s delicacy and tact, men’s sense of honour! What infinitely greater damage these do in the world than all women’s lack of principle!
That sounds sweeping, but isn’t this enough to make a girl storm at the scruples—or whatever they may call them—which have pretty well messed up her own life for her?
I ought to be safely and happily married, by now, to Sydney Vandeleur. He’d make a charming husband, I know; not a wish of his wife’s that he wouldn’t immediately try to gratify, from the pattern of the drawing-room carpets to where she would wish to live most of the time—Pont Street—Park Lane—or the perfectly gorgeous, old-fashioned castle with all modern conveniences that he owns in Ireland—Ballycool, they call it. Oh, for the deep sighing woods and the silver lakes over there—miles and miles from anywhere else—scented solitude, with all the drawbacks of solitude removed by motors ad lib.—by big house-parties of amusing people as often as one chose!—Yes, I suppose I do share Miss Holt’s type of mind, but then I never pretend to be romantic, or to cherish illusions about being able to fall in love.... I should be really, genuinely fond of Sydney himself—I mean I should have been. He’d be so devoted—how could one help feeling pleased to have him about, approving of everything one did and said and looked? He’s what I’d call companionable; not too lofty and masculine to take an interest in the details that mean so much more to a woman than what this country is coming to, by Gad, or what on earth McKenna or Asquith or someone is driving at when he says—(here yards, droned aloud, out of the Times)—or whether Kent is going to do any better this year; which is all the conversation that any married women I’ve ever met seem to get out of their husbands. Sydney would always know what anyone had had on at a party, including his wife. He’d be able to help her think out her frocks—and what heavenly frocks they would be! Then he’s so undeniably good-looking himself. One wouldn’t be able to help appreciating the fact that the other women would always notice it with envy, and would put it down as such a score to the credit of the one he’d married! His dark, “interesting” face with the Vandyke beard and the melancholy brown eyes seems watching me now out of the big silver frame in which he sent it to me. Yes; it certainly does hold the place of honour on the narrow painted-pine chest-of-drawers that has two handles missing, but is still spread with ivory-topped brushes, a monogrammed hand-mirror and long crystal scent flagons—relics from the wreck of the Trant fortunes!—the place of honour usually reserved in a girl’s room for the portrait of HIM—whoever “he” may be! Why did I put it there? Partly for the sake of old times, I suppose; I’ve tried to keep everything of that sort which was in my room at home.... Partly to remind myself, whenever I’ve felt extra-downhearted, that there was at least one eminently presentable young man who was accustomed to say pretty things of the face and hair that I saw reflected in the somewhat wavy looking-glass near by.... Sentiment, vanity, or a mixture of both, but not the motive with which Cicely had credited me and which she’d seen fit to impart to the original.
That idiot of a Sydney! If I could hope he’d feel it, I’d smash the glass of that frame and run red-hot hat-pins into his portrait. I have been furiously angry to-day, in turns with the three typists, with Still Waters, and with Cicely—but none of this counts, compared with my fury against the lover who has come too late!
It’s his fault. It’s all his fault—all that’s just happened—all that will happen during the mad “arrangement” of this next year. And when that year’s up, where will it find me? A little richer, perhaps, by what’s left of my desperately-won salary, but back in the over-crowded labour-market, the world of working-women who lose looks and youth and spirits in the struggle for daily bread. Oh, it’s all very well to be plucky, and to treat everything as a joke, and to live from one Saturday matinée to another, making the most of life in London as a bachelor-girl—while you’re twenty-one.