“Humph!” said the occupant of the four-poster, ungraciously.
“‘Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do,’” Cheriton reflected as he took his leave.
CHAPTER XXII
A CONVERSATION AT WARD’S
CHERITON was a good deal perturbed. He felt that the conduct of Caroline Crewkerne bore a perilous resemblance to the pointing at one of a loaded pistol. He had a constitutional objection to doing things under compulsion or in a hurry. He would greatly have preferred that his sentiments in regard to Miss Perry should have been permitted to ripen at their leisure. Let nature take her course. Why force the fine flower of altruism, or encumber it with the coarser growths which sprang from a sordid and grasping materialism?
His admiration for Miss Perry was immense. That, however, he shared with many people. Her success had been a feature of the season. Cheriton was in no sense a modest man, and he could not help feeling that much of it was due to his brilliantly effective stage management. Certainly his zeal for Miss Perry’s advancement had been largely inspired by vanity. From the first he had taken her under his wing; and a great deal of the world’s applause had been addressed to him personally on the strength of his “discovery.”
He was somewhat advanced in years, certainly, to think of marriage. But he had always felt that sooner or later he would inevitably take that course. He was urged thereto by a number of considerations. And now that the time had come when it was necessary that he should know his own mind, he really felt that he had a very genuine regard for Miss Perry.
The mere act of walking down Bond Street with her attracted an amount of notice that he was not accustomed to claim in his own person. Nevertheless, he liked it immensely. And even if commanding beauty and an unique personality did not suffice in themselves, the fact that a powerful rival was in the field was enough to stimulate his altruism in the highest degree.
He was fully determined not to be cut out by a man like George Betterton. That was the decision which braced his faculties as he sauntered down to his club to read the newspapers. From the first he had had a lurking suspicion that George meant business; but unless Caroline played him false, and his cause was already forsworn, he felt that he would prove more than a match for that by no means agile man of affairs.
Could he count upon Caroline Crewkerne? It was a thorny question for the altruist to present to himself. So intimately was he acquainted with the instinctive mental processes of that difficult old woman that he was quite sure he could not count upon her unless he could advance some very definite reason for her good-will. If he wanted Miss Perry, one thing was clear. He must prove himself the superior parti.
On the surface, Cheriton was as vain a man as any to be found in London. But his coxcombry was a superficial growth, assiduously cultivated, to hide the uncommonly shrewd and cool calculator who lurked beneath. Not everybody knew that, but Caroline Crewkerne did. Her dictum of “Cheriton is no fool” was her way of expressing that he was really very much the contrary. And in her heart she respected him accordingly. No one despised a fool more heartily than she did. As far as she could, she dealt exclusively with people who knew how many beans made five. There was a certain amount of honor to be gained in overreaching them.