Scarlet and Hyssop: A Novel

by E. F. Benson

His interview with Lady Ardingly had been briefer, but, he felt, more to the point.

"She will probably refuse you," said that lady. "In that case you had better wait a month and ask her again. You have everything on your side and everybody—except, perhaps, the girl. But eventually she will do what is good for her. Here is a fourth. Let us play Bridge immediately."

This particular game of Bridge had rather taken it out of Anthony, for he had been Lady Ardingly's partner, and had had the misfortune to revoke in playing a sans-à-tout hand. Her remarks to him were direct.

"You might just as well pick my pocket of twenty pounds," she said to him, "as do that. Do you not see it so? By your gross carelessness you have lost us the rubber, a mistake which one intelligent glance at your hand would have avoided. Come, there are other pursuits, are there not, in which you wish to be engaged? You will, perhaps, follow them with better attention."

Then, seeing the young man's discomfiture, her admirable good-nature returned. "Croquet, for instance," she added. "I hear you are a great player. Ah! there is Lord Alston. No doubt he will make our fourth."

Maud, it is true, had spent the hours since lunch in flying before her admirer, but her reasons, it must be confessed, were not those which one would be disposed to think natural on the part of a young girl. There was not, in fact, one atom of shyness or shirking about her; she had not the least objection to hear impassioned speeches or blunt declarations, whichever mode Anthony should choose to adopt, nor did the thought of him in any way fill her with horror. She had listened very attentively to her mother's advice when they drove down to Windsor earlier in the week; she had also listened with the same consideration to Lady Ardingly's far more convincing and sensible remarks when she had lunched with her on Friday, and her only reason for refusing Anthony an opportunity all the afternoon was that she really had not the slightest idea whether she should say yes or no. She did not, as she had told her mother, love him; she did not, either, dislike him. He was merely quite indifferent to her, as, indeed, all men were. Men, in fact, as far as she thought about them at all, seemed to her to be unattractive people; she could not conceive what a girl should want with one permanently in the house. They were for ever either putting tobacco or brandy into their mouths or letting inane remarks out, and they stared at her in an uncomfortable and incomprehensible manner. On the other hand, she knew perfectly well that it was the natural thing for girls to marry; every one always did it, and they were probably right. She supposed that she also would ultimately marry, but was this—this utter absence of any emotion—the correct thing? She was aware that tremblings and raptures were in the world of printed things supposed to be the orthodox signals flown by the parties engaged; she should be a creature of averted eyes and deep blushes. But she did not feel the least inclined to either; there was nothing in Anthony that would make her wish to avert her eyes, nor, as far as she knew, did he ever say things which would make her blush. He was simply indifferent to her, but so, for that matter, were all men. Was she, then, to be a spinster? That was equally unthinkable.

There were other things as well. A great friend of hers, with whom she had been accustomed to spend long days in the saddle, or in the company of dogs in endless walks over moors, had been married only a month ago, for no other reason, as far as Maud or Kitty Danefield herself knew, but the one that every girl married if possible, that it was the natural thing to do. Maud had seen her again only two days ago for the first time since her marriage, and had found quite a different person. Kitty had become a woman, radiantly happy, with an absorbing interest in life which seemed quite to have eclipsed the loves of earlier days. She still liked horses, dogs, great open country, Maud herself; but all these things which had been the first ingredients of existence had gone into a secondary place, and the one thing that made life now was her husband. To Maud this was all perfectly incomprehensible—would Anthony, if she accepted him, ever fill existence like that? She could not help feeling that existence would be a much narrower thing if he did. Kitty, in fact, had just arrived, and had rushed at Maud.

"Darling, I am so pleased to see you!" she said, "and we'll have a nice long talk. Where's Arthur! Arthur is really too tiresome; he asked Tom Liscombe to come down with us when I had counted on a nice quiet empty carriage all to ourselves. He didn't want him, nor did I; but that is so like Arthur, to do good-natured things from a sort of vague weakness. He saw Tom, and asked him without thinking what he was doing. You look rather careworn, Maud. What is it now?"

"Oh, come for a stroll, Kitty," said the other; "I want to talk."

"Very well; I must say good-bye to Arthur."