During dinner, and afterwards, Lady Margot made herself vastly agreeable to the three Pomfrets. If effort underlay her sprightly civilities, it was not visible. Her enemies—and she had some—affirmed that her consistent good temper and wish to please were indications of selfishness. Any deviation from the broad and easy path which she trod so gaily meant personal discomfort. But if her tact in avoiding conversational brambles provoked gibes from cynics, her joie de vivre disarmed them. And coming, as she did, to Pomfret Court at a moment when Lionel was feeling exasperatingly hipped and bored with himself she served alike as tonic and narcotic. She lulled to sleep nervous introspections; she stimulated energies which found expression in sport and games. He had wanted some one to “play about with.” Lady Margot presented herself.
He soon decided that she was not flirtatious, as that word is interpreted in India. Physically, she kept men at a respectful distance, disdaining furtive pressures of the hand, languishing glances—all the cheap wiles of the provincial beauty. Mentally, so to speak, she “nestled up.” Lionel felt more and more at his ease with her. She laughed derisively when he touched hesitatingly upon his perplexties. Such worries, she assured him lightly, were the common heritage of eldest sons of magnates. She propounded her own easy philosophy, so practical in its way, so alluring. Position had its responsibilities. It existed, if you like, on sufferance. But authorty—for which by birth and training she was a stickler—would be disastrously weakened and in the end wrecked, if it indulged too freely in sentimental vagabondage. Their caste repudiated sentiment, scrapped it ruthlessly.
For the masses—“panem et Circenses.”
She touched airily upon marriage, citing the “affair” with the present head of her family, setting forth her case and his with incisive finality.
“We realised that we couldn’t pull together. I think it was a real grief to both of us. Physically, he repelled me; intellectually, I repelled him. A sad pity! Of course he will find somebody else, because Beaumanoir must be saved. Poor dear Beau knows that he is not attractive, and a title, nowadays, fetches much less in the open market.”
Lionel felt sorry for poor Beau. He said slowly: “You can pick and choose, if he can’t.”
She accepted the challenge calmly and candidly.
“My choice is limited, I can assure you. When I came into my tiny kingdom I thought otherwise. And some odd spirit of contrariety to which all women fall victims whirled me into misadventures with the wrong men. Most young girls set an inordinate value on brains, especially their own, if they have any. I tried to establish a sort of ‘salon’ in Grosvenor Square. The cheek of it! I used to admire Madame Recamier. All that is vieux jeu. My brains are not of the most solid order, but, such as they are, they will constrain me to marry a man of my own class. So you see I am fairly up against it.”
But he didn’t see.