“Papa will frighten Evelyn into a fit,” observed Pamela, rubbing a midge off her nose with an earthy gardening glove; “I wish James Canavan could be induced to keep him away from the house.”
“It’s all right, dear,” said Lady Dysart, panting a little as she straightened her back and surveyed her rows of chickweed; “Christopher is with her, and you know he never notices anyone else when Christopher is there.”
Lady Dysart had in her youth married, with a little judicious coercion, a man thirty years older than herself, and after a long and, on the whole, extremely unpleasant period of matrimony, she was now enjoying a species of Indian summer, dating from six years back, when Christopher’s coming of age and the tenants’ rejoicings thereat, had caused such a paroxysm of apoplectic jealousy on the part of Christopher’s father as, combining with the heat of the day, had brought on a “stroke.” Since then the bath-chair and James Canavan had mercifully intervened between him and the rest of the world, and his offspring were now able to fly before him with a frankness and success impossible in the old days.
Pamela did not answer her mother at once.
“Do you know I’m afraid Christopher isn’t with her,” she said, looking both guilty and perturbed.
Lady Dysart groaned aloud.
“Why, where is he?” she demanded. “I left Evelyn helping him to paste in photographs after breakfast; I thought that would have been nice occupation for them for at least two hours; but as for Christopher—” she continued, her voice deepening to declamation, “it is quite hopeless to expect anything from him. I should rather trust Garry to entertain anyone. The day he took her out in the boat they weren’t in till six o’clock!”
“That was because Garry ran the punt on the shallow, and they had to wade ashore and walk all the way round.”
“That has nothing to say to it; at all events they had something to talk about when they came back, which is more than Christopher has when he has been out sailing. It is most disheartening; I ask nice girls to the house, but I might just as well ask nice boys—Oh, of course, yes—” in answer to a protest from her daughter; “he talks to them; but you know quite well what I mean.”
This complaint was not the first indication of Lady Dysart’s sentiments about this curious son whom she had produced. She was a clever woman, a renowned solver of the acrostics in her society paper, and a holder of strong opinions as to the prophetic meaning of the Pyramids; but Christopher was an acrostic in a strange language, an enigma beyond her sphere. She had a vague but rooted feeling that young men were normally in love with somebody, or at least pretending to be so; it was, of course, an excellent thing that Christopher did not lose his heart to the wrong people, but she would probably have preferred the agitation of watching his progress through the most alarming flirtations to the security that deprived conversation with other mothers of much of its legitimate charm.