Then once again the mastery of man overcame her. She wanted him so much, more than any answer to her questions. The subtleties into which she had tried to draw him he brushed aside; her woman’s brain, her woman’s desire to hear him say that she was all, had spun them deftly enough, but he blundered through them somehow, like a bumblebee through a spider’s web, and came booming out on the other side. Theoretically, anyhow, if he had been a woman, they must have caught him, he must have struggled with them, felt their entanglement. As it was, she had failed. Probably he labelled her fine spinnings “silly” in his own mind. But he proceeded through them—still frowning a little.
“You ask me impossible riddles,” he said. “You might as well ask me whether you would sooner tie your mother to the stake and burn her or me. My darling, there is no sense in such things. Surely one can be simple about love, just because it is so big. I know I love you, that is enough for me. I told you that I know nothing else. That is sober truth. But I cannot weigh things in balances. And, what is more, I won’t. Now kiss me; no, properly.”
It must therefore be inferred that he got his way in this matter, for when, two minutes later, Lady Sunningdale made her untimely appearance, the two were again seated, Stella this time in the chair and Martin on the arm.
“But famishing,” she said. “Yes, tea, please, dear Stella. Martin, you monster, I haven’t seen you for days. Why I haven’t taken to drink I don’t know, over all the dreadful things that have been happening. Would you believe it,—Sahara had two puppies; but she couldn’t bear them, so she ate one and starved the other. Well, it’s all over, but nobody in the house has had a wink of sleep for the last week. And so you are going to give a concert at last, Martin. I shan’t come. I hate my private property being made public.”
“But charity,” said Martin.
“My dear, I know perfectly well what charity and St. James’s Hall means. It means guinea tickets. Charity should begin at home, not at St. James’s Hall. However, I daresay you will appropriate all the proceeds. So near the Circus, too. Really, Piccadilly Circus is too fascinating. I should like to have a house in the very centre of it, with a glass gallery all round, and really see life. Yes, one more piece of muffin,—not for myself, but for Suez Canal. Suez Canal is so lonely, poor darling, without Sahara; but there is muffin quand même. Naughty! I’m sure the servants feed him. And so everybody is to be married in May. Fancy the Bear coming round like that—even Bears will turn—about Helen and Frank. Apparently, they are quite inseparable,—the Bear and Frank I mean, and tie each other’s bootlaces, and are converting each other to Christianity and Atheism respectively. Bears and buns! Frank is a bun, and the Bear has decided it is worth climbing up a pole to get him. I think it is a mistake to have said that. Besides, it is absolutely untrue. The Bear wouldn’t climb a yard to marry Helen to the Czar. How terrible Russia must be, with everything ending in ‘owsky’! I tried to flirt with the Bear myself, and had no success of any kind whatever. Dear Suez! No Sahara. The world is a desert without Sahara. But mayn’t I tempt you with a small piece of bun with sugar on the top? How depressing marriages are!”
Lady Sunningdale sighed heavily.
“What is the matter?” asked Stella, sympathetically.
“I don’t know. Dearest, that Louis XVI. clock is too beautiful. I wish I were a millionaire. Yes. I think I am depressed because everything is going exactly as I planned it. There is nothing so tiresome as success. You two children sitting there, Frank and Helen, all my own ideas, and all going precisely as I wished. You are my idea, too, Martin, a figment of my brain. I invented you. And you are going precisely as I wished. Every one says nobody ever played the least like you. But the Bear is still in a rage with you, is he not? That is so English. English people are always in a rage about something, the state of the weather, or France, or their children. I never get in a rage. I have no time for that sort of thing. Stella dearest, I think it will have to be you to go down to Chartries next, and induce the Bear to be propitiated. Heavens, how dreadful it must be to have a very strong sense of duty! It must be like toast-crumbs in your bed, after you have breakfasted there, when one can’t lie comfortable for five minutes together.”
“No, I am the next,” said Martin. “I shall be staying with my uncle at Easter, and shall try to see my father then. I daresay it will do no good.”