Of the boys—it was odd to hear of the boys again—Roland had long been married and already had four children. At this rate he was likely to surpass his father, whom on a larger scale he was beginning to resemble. Roland was continually in a state of being expected to come and look the family up. He was so long in doing so that he became almost a myth to his eldest sister, and when at last, one afternoon, he did materialize with the largest mustache she had ever seen, his appearance gave her the same kind of thrill that she used to get at the Zoo, when at short intervals the sea-lion would emerge from the water and flap about among the rocks of his cage. It was obvious that Roland regarded her with a mixture of suspicion, jealousy, and disapproval, for he had not brought his wife with him, and when the countess asked him if he had also left his pipe at home, he growled out that he supposed she was far too grand for pipes. Dorothy remembered that sometimes when they were children he and she had seemed upon the path of mutual understanding, and, feeling penitent for her share in the way they had for twelve years been walking away from each other, she tried to be specially affectionate with Roland; but he was already out of earshot. He evidently was thinking that her abrupt re-entry into the family circle would probably mean a reduction in his share of any money left by their parents, because he was continually alluding to her financial state and his own. She tried to ascribe this to his position as the manager of a branch bank; but she knew in her heart that he was dividing £500 a year first by eight and then by nine and thinking what a difference to his holiday that extra £7 would make. Of Dorothy's other brothers, Cecil was in camp somewhere, and hoping to get to France soon with the R.A.M.C.; he had been married only a few months, and his wife was living in the nearest town to his quarters. Vincent, who had won a scholarship at Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge, had already enlisted and wrote home as confidently of promotion in the near future as twelve years ago he had boasted that he would soon be in the eleven of St. James's Preparatory School.
Perhaps the most striking result of the countess's return was the impetus it gave to Mrs. Caffyn's Wednesday afternoons. The punctilious ladies came as they had been coming steadily for twelve years; but a quantity of less punctilious ladies also came and were so much over-awed by meeting a countess in a West Kensington drawing-room that they had no appetite for cakes, which was just as well because otherwise the strain put upon the normal provision by so many extra visitors might have been too much for it. In addition to the Wednesday ladies, several friends of Dorothy's youth visited No. 17 in the evenings, and though by now the billiard-table was more like a neglected tennis-lawn, she played one or two games to remind her of old times, thinking how scornful she would have been twelve years ago if any one had prophesied to her such indulgence in sentiment. Among these friends of youth came Wilfred Curlew, who in outward appearance was the least changed of all. His career had been successful, if the editorship of a society paper can be considered success. Being a journalist, he rightly considered himself indispensable at home, and it is unlikely that his inaccurate and cheery paragraphs in The Way of the World did any more to make the war ridiculous than some of the inaccurate and cheery despatches sent home from the front by generals. A slight tendency which he had formerly had toward a cockney accent had been checked by an elocutionist who had imprisoned his voice in his throat, whence it was never allowed to stray. If Lady Clarehaven had once been a Vanity girl, Mr. Wilfred Curlew, the editor of The Way of the World, had once written fierce revolutionary articles about Society in The Red Lamp; and whereas Lady Clarehaven had long been indifferent to her past, Mr. Curlew was still sensitive about his, as sensitive as a man who oils the wheels of railway-coaches in termini would be if it were known that he had once been a train-wrecker.
After the first awkwardness of such a rencounter had worn off Dorothy found Wilfred entertaining. It was astonishing to learn how accurately the failings and follies of so many of her friends and acquaintances were known to the editor, who had never met one of them. At first he pretended that he had met them; but as gradually he saw more of the countess he gave up this pretense, and finally he revealed the existence in his mind of a perpetual and abominable dread that soon or late in one of his cheery paragraphs he should make a mistake, not, of course, a mistake of fact or even an unjust imputation—that would be nothing—but a mistake of form. He was really haunted day and night by such bogies as referring to a maid of honor after marriage without her prefix, though to have suggested that her behavior with somebody else's husband was less honorable than that would no more have troubled him than to state positively that her main hobby was breeding Sealyham terriers, when it was really communicating every Sunday at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge. If in Lonsdale Road Dorothy beheld her present self, in Wilfred Curlew she saw the reflection of what she was twelve years ago, enough of which old self still existed to make her feel proud that never in her most anxious moments had she revealed to another person her own dread of making a mistake.
One day after a long talk about well-known people in society, Curlew exclaimed from the depths of his inmost being, "If only I had you always!"
"Is this a proposal?" she laughed.
He rose and walked about the room in his agitated fashion; then supporting with one arm the small of his back as he used, and wrenching his voice back into his throat whence in his emotion it had nearly escaped, he paused to mutter:
"Presumptuous, I know, but sincere."
This phrase remained in Dorothy's mind for long afterward, and in her gloomiest hours she could always smile when she repeated gently to herself, "Presumptuous, I know, but sincere."
Naturally, she told Curlew as kindly as she could that his proposal was far outside the remotest bounds of possibility.
"Besides," she added, "you'd really be much better off without my help. Readers of your paper will always greatly prefer your view of society to my view. My view would pull your circulation down to nothing in less than no time."