Now, I really did enjoy such a position so far as the General’s family was concerned. At five years of age I had proposed marriage to Millicent Warne and been accepted. Later on, when I was ten, the engagement was broken off by mutual understanding; but four years afterwards, when I had reached the age of fourteen, she twelve, and when we were both pretty well alive to the hollowness of the world, the engagement was renewed. I only mention this trifle to show what my relations with the Warnes amounted to. At the beginning of this narrative Millicent and I had been for many years detached. Our friendship was still sincere, but platonic, and we could discuss our romances without emotion. Indeed, on the very occasion of this house-party we had a conversation upon the subject of marriage. I was now twenty, Millicent two years younger, and we drew bright pictures of the single state, and encouraged one another to be resolute in our lofty ambition of sticking to it.
Well, you can see for yourself what I’m coming to; the Greensmith, with an amount of indecent haste impossible to a human being of any refinement or judgment, fell head over heels in love with Millicent Warne. His pretensions were merely those of the pocket; his appearance would have made the most ancient and amorous spinster think twice; his age placed him upon the confines of sere and yellow, for he was thirty-four. How he lorded it over everybody on the strength of his five thousand a year! How he explained that he was better mounted, groomed, dressed, educated, and mentally equipped than any other man at that time within the confines of Warwickshire! And all the time I knew that when I came of age, next year, I should be able to swamp him even in the matter of filthy lucre, as I did now in the matter of brain power. Not that I am anything worth mentioning mentally; but the man with one eye is king where all else are blind, and I at least had sense to know that I was not much better than a fool, whereas Greensmith was that pitiable spectacle, a fool who thinks himself a wise man.
Of course, I saw the growing intimacy and the barefaced way in which Millicent tolerated him, especially in my presence. I spoke about it more than once, and to my surprise, Miss Warne took up an attitude of indifference. We did not quarrel, because I am a man with whom it is impossible for a woman to be on bad terms; but we differed, and I watched the flirtation, for it was hardly less, with some discomfort. Here was the best girl I had ever seen or heard of deliberately encouraging a sort of man one did not like to see in the same hemisphere with her.
Greensmith’s charade brought matters to a climax in a way beyond human power to foretell. Of course, when the thing was proposed he took up the running. What he didn’t know about charades wasn’t worth knowing; so he undertook to write one, arrange the parts, paint the scenes, and stage-manage. Millicent, to my amazement, threw herself into the project very heartily, and seemed much disappointed when Greensmith said he should not act himself.
“The author never does,” he explained. “You are my puppets for the time being. It will take me all my time to rehearse you and lick you into shape.”
To hear Greensmith thus talk about licking county people into shape made my blood boil. It took Millicent two hours by the study clock to get me to promise to play a part. But I did it, chiefly that I might have an excuse for being present at rehearsals and so forth. A hard frost came at the critical moment, so hunting was suspended, and we had ample leisure for the charade.
Greensmith said, when he read his drivel to the company: “There are three syllables, and then the whole word; four scenes in all, and each depends upon the others. I’ve given a taste of Gilbert’s epigrammatic style in the first scene; the second suggests the robust manner of Jones; the third recalls Pinero.”
“And what shall you give us last,” I said, “Shakespeare?”
“No, myself,” he answered.
The word was ‘innocent,’ which Greensmith divided thus: ‘Inn,’ ‘No!’ ‘Scent.’ I really forget all the details, and they don’t signify now; but my part and Millicent’s stick in my memory, as well they may. Why, I shall never quite understand, but Greensmith arranged that Millicent and I should be lovers, that I should send her a letter proposing marriage in the first scene, that she should forward me an answer refusing my hand in the second. How little the idiot thought of what he was doing! What absurd and Satanic conceit he had, not to see the horrid jeopardy to his own private arrangements involved by this manner of planning the charade!