Once he gently insinuated to Miss Cutting that he should like to read with her during the long afternoons, or at least discuss with her the books that occupied her morning hours. But to these hints she was impervious, and, by way of compensating him, Mrs. Cutting proposed a game of tennis every morning before his duties commenced. To this bait Ordham rose like a famished trout, and it somewhat surprised him that Mabel accepted the suggestion no less eagerly than himself. The three drove out to a court in Chelsea every morning at half-past eight, and he played for an hour or two with a radiant vision in a short skirt, a red jersey, and tumbling yellow hair. Mabel did not play a particularly good game, but her interest was youthful and eager, and her admiration of his so outspoken, when her manners, like her toilette, were in déshabillé, that he wondered if there were no end to the charms of this remarkable girl.
XXXV
YOUTH
One Saturday morning, while dressing, Ordham received a note from Miss Cutting, which, in phrases as light and graceful as her handwriting, conveyed the information that her mother was in bed with a headache, and that unless dear Lady Bridgminster—who, she feared, no longer liked them—would consent to act as chaperon, their game of tennis must be postponed until Monday. He answered that he knew of nothing that would give his mother more pleasure, but as she always slept until ten he hesitated to awaken her. He was disconsolate, and so forth, and so forth. At eleven, he casually presented himself at the familiar door in Grosvenor Square, and upon being told that Mrs. Cutting was indisposed, entered, as a matter of course, waved the footman aside, and wended his way up to the music room, whence issued the strains of Chopin’s Impromptu in D. He stood in the doorway until the unconscious Mabel had finished, listening critically, for Mabel had always refused to play for him. Ordham had no technical knowledge of music, but he had heard a great deal of it because it appealed powerfully to those tracts in his brain which were not mental; he therefore realized that if Mabel’s performance lacked the subtle appeals that go with the velvet touch and depth of expression, there was no doubt of the correctness and brilliancy of her execution. He was rather gratified than otherwise at this lack of a quality that belonged to the maturer mind, not to innocent girlhood. When she had finished, he went forward, and she rose with a blush, the first with which she had favoured him. She looked startled, almost frightened.
“Mom—mother—” she began.
“You will forgive me? Please do. I really could not put in the whole day alone. If you turn me out, I shall be driven to accept an invitation to the country, and I should hate it. Come and talk to me for a bit.”
His eyes coaxed even more than his voice. She led the way to the front drawing-room and seated herself in a chair beside the open window, her poise quite recovered, and talked to him with her inimitable girlish graciousness about nothing in particular. Her old loquacity was outgrown, it was evident; but with her mother ill and a guest on her hands, courtesy demanded that she should make an effort.
But Ordham was determined to seize this opportunity to explore her mind; he had come for no other purpose. Only for the moment was he content to sit and admire her, although she had never looked more like a lovely French princess; that puzzled one, perhaps, who asked why, since the mob had no bread, they did not eat cake. She wore a white gown with a blue sash and a blue ribbon in her hair. Her repose was extraordinary in so young a girl, but once or twice Ordham fancied he detected a nervous compression of her lips. Her large golden brown eyes, however, from which the dreams had been politely banished, smiled at him with a concentration singularly flattering after his many failures to capture even their wandering attention.
“I wish you would tell me what you read,” he said abruptly; “I have wondered and wondered if you care for any of my favourites.”
“I should never dare to tell you what mine are, for I am sure you would despise them. I happen to know what your favourites are—and I have been permitted to read only a few of the foreign classics—mother does not think I should. But books were made to be read and studied, not to be discussed; don’t you think so? I am reading hard in the hope of one day becoming something more than a butterfly, but I have had so little time! Don’t examine me!”
Ordham thought this enchantingly modest. “Why should not we read together? There is so much I should like to get through, but one needs an incentive in this weather. That would be the strongest!”