We hope you concur, my lords and gentlemen, that it was a decidedly useful card that the old fox, Destiny, had played for the Green Chartreuse.
CHAPTER XI
LICENTIOUS BEHAVIOR OF THE GREEN
CHARTREUSE
The heir to the barony was a dull young man—it is idle to pretend that he wasn’t—yet in his slow-witted way he had a habit of turning things over in his mind. If he married Adela it would give pleasure to his excellent parents; it would advance him in the eyes of the world; people would say here is a young man with more in him than we thought—see how well he has married. But there was no shirking the fact that if he married Adela he was bound to be miserable for the rest of his days.
Weak, disgraceful thoughts, Shelmerdine, quoth the Twin Brethren, Eton and Christ Church. It was not on our playing fields you learned to be so puerile. No girl in London makes a more distinguished appearance in black velvet. You will shoot at High Cliff. With what grace and charm will the seventh married daughter preside over that dear little house in Grosvenor Street, on the left, going to the park, which your admirable parents have promised her admirable parent to take for you on a lease, in order that you may both be near them. Shelmerdine, we don’t know when we have been so ashamed of an alumnus of ours. If you haven’t enough character, sir, to tackle the very ordinary job of driving a young woman on the curb—as every young woman ought to be driven for her soul’s welfare at the beginning—you are a miserable shirker, sir, and unworthy of your liberal nurture.
Sir, in that event, we wash our hands of you; and you are free to form an alliance with this underbred Bohemian—it is not our custom to mince our language when our emotions are deeply stirred! You will bring down the gray hairs of your admirable parents in sorrow to the grave; your portrait will receive the freedom of the gutter press; you will never be asked to shoot at High Cliff; you will bring tragedy into your own life and into the life of others—in fact, sir, and in a word—one understood these infernal safety-razors were guaranteed not to cut gashes into one’s neck!
Little recked Cinderella of the reason why the heir to the barony had to appear at tea-time on Friday done up in court plaster. He was also strangely pensive and embarrassed.
She was as gay and as charming as usual; and she had just been engaged to create the title rôle in Mr. Wingrove’s brilliant new play at the Millennium, that was to be produced in the middle of Lent. But poor Philip was far from being himself. Still, he insisted on walking home with her to Bedford Gardens.
However, by the time they had reached the Strand, that romantic thoroughfare, the murder was pretty well out. It really came out at the moment they stood on the edge of the kerb opposite Charing Cross, waiting to commit their frail lives to the maëlstrom of mechanically propelled vehicles.
“Fact is, old girl,”—the heir to the barony gripped Mary firmly by the arm to see that she didn’t step off the kerb too soon—“fact is, old girl, I want a pal. Will you be a pal to me?”
“Why, of course I will, Philip,” said Mary, as they walked arm in arm into the jaws of a Barnes and Hammersmith ’bus.