Upon the Sunday following, the last Sunday in June, Miss Tiddle mounted her bicycle and rode over to the Manor. Rain had fallen after a month’s heat and drought, and a delicious fragrance was exhaled by fields full of new-mown hay. As Tiddy sped along, she told herself that she had been a fool. Being really clever, this reflection failed to annoy her. Everybody made ghastly blunders when they interfered with the lives and characters of others.
“A marriage has been arranged, and will take place in the autumn, between Cicely Selina, only surviving child of the late Henry Chandos, M.F.H., of Upworthy Manor, Melshire, and Arthur George, second Lord Wilverley, of Wilverley Court in the same county.”
Arranged . . .!
The word rankled in Tiddy’s mind. But that mind she regarded as fully open, like her round eyes which “took in,” with genuine hospitality, everybody within her ken. Possibly this marriage had not been arranged. During Cicely’s absence from Wilverley Court, Tiddy had talked much with the noble owner. And noble he was! The two had become friends. Tiddy, as we know, liked men; she had flirted with Midland “nuts.” And these had not impressed her favourably, being, so she decided, concerned with themselves and the colour of their ties and socks. Even young officers, gallant fellows, “swanked” too much for Miss Tiddle’s democratic taste. And she had come to Wilverley Court slightly prejudiced against a man whom she had imagined to be quite other than he was. Arthur’s simplicity and honesty delighted her. She believed that he, at any rate, loved Cicely devotedly, although he might be incapable of tearing a passion to tatters. Believing this, it was intolerable to contemplate his marriage with a girl who did not love him as he deserved to be loved. On the other hand, it was quite possible that Cicely’s friendship for him had warmed into a sort of hard-and-fast, “stand-the-wash” attachment. As yet she had not heard of Grimshaw’s return to Upworthy. A man with dark, disconcerting eyes had flitted across a susceptible maid’s horizon, and then disappeared. From what Cicely, being a Chandos, had left unsaid, Tiddy was positive upon one point: Grimshaw had kindled in her friend the divine spark. He had become, momentarily, the divine spark. It was likely, men being so amazingly unobservant, that Grimshaw, engrossed with his profession, had left Upworthy unconscious of this. With all her powers of intuition, Miss Tiddle lacked as yet the experience which might guide her to the right conclusion. A profounder knowledge of the conventional class to which she did not belong would have revealed that obstinate pride which she herself was incapable of entertaining, which, if she considered it, she dismissed impatiently as mid-Victorian and idiotic. If, she reflected, Grimshaw had cared, he would have written to Cicely. She could not conceive, because for her they did not exist, the differences, hydra-headed, between a G.P. and a daughter of the House of Chandos. When a man touched her fancy, however lightly, she “nestled up,” as she put it, not flirtatiously, but with the deliberate intention of analysing the effects of intimacy.
Yes; she had been a fool. Mrs. Roden exercised clearer vision. Intuition, nothing else, had constrained Miss Tiddle to make a mountain of romance out of a molehill.
The odds were that this marriage had not been “arranged” in the odious sense.
Accordingly, Tiddy braced herself for the coming encounter, derisively prepared to do and say the expected thing. Cicely’s artless prattle about frocks and bridesmaids might be hard to endure, but she would listen patiently and reply with enthusiasm—play the game, in fine. Then she would try to get a billet in France.
Just before reaching Upworthy, her back tyre punctured. Tiddy jumped off, got her repairing kit, and turned the bicycle upside down. She prided herself upon taking with equanimity what an American lady has called “the collateral slaps of Providence.” To her dismay, however, she was unable to remove the tyre. It stuck obstinately. Tiddy became uncomfortably hot. And she wished to remain cool, conscious that Lady Selina’s blue eyes would turn protestingly from any evidences of . . . perspiration. Why did open pores offend old-fashioned gentlewomen? Tiddy was turning this over in her active mind, when she saw, with relief, an approaching cyclist, identified first as a man and immediately after as a gentleman. Tiddy sent out the S.O.S. signal; the cyclist jammed on his brakes and leapt to the ground.
“You are in trouble,” he said courteously.
It was Grimshaw.