‘Miss Wynter is your only friend among the women, you say,’ pursued Eleanor in flute-like tones. ‘How is that? Don’t you like the ladies about here?’
Otho’s expression of countenance, on hearing this question, was worthy of study. Eleanor saw it, and averted her face. She had already accurately gauged one phase of Otho’s character. He was inwardly perturbed just now. His troubles were beginning already. Here was this girl evidently under the impression that he was hand-in-glove with all the ordinary society of the place. How was he to explain to her exactly how things stood between him and Magdalen Wynter? He knew he could not, in any way that should seem plausible to one brought up like her. He was bored at having to explain at all, and in his vexation took refuge in some sweeping general statements.
‘Like the ladies about here? No, I don’t. And that is one reason why I knew you would be awfully dull if you came here. You see, it has suited my tastes not to go much into the society here—in fact, hardly at all; and they have just begun to understand it at last, and to let me alone—give over inviting me, and all that. So you won’t find it very lively. But Magdalen is different. I’ve known her ever since I came here. We were thick at the very first, and have stuck together ever since, because she’s so reasonable and sensible. As for the others’—he spoke with solemnity—‘they are one half sharks and the other half fools. There’s no such thing as meeting a girl, and trying to have a friendship with her, before you go any farther. Your sex, my dear, are incapable of friendship with a man. Either they try to make him in love with them, and make his existence miserable, or they fall in love with him themselves—or think they do; it’s much of a muchness—and if he don’t respond they say he has deceived them, or trifled with them, or something equally absurd. Suppose you see a nice girl, or a girl that you think looks nice. Well, you have a head on your shoulders, and you know she may be a shrew, for all her pleasantness, just as a horse may be a screw, though he looks all right. You think it worth while to try and know her a bit better, before you risk anything. You can’t do it. You may not do it. It is their one object to get you to marry them without giving you any opportunity to know anything about them. You never get to know their real thoughts about any one thing on earth. You must run the gauntlet of their mothers and sisters to get even a word with them. It isn’t fair; it’s deuced hard. Why are you to show up everything, and be slanged if you don’t do it all on the square, while they are not to have any questions asked at all? The sisters are bad enough, especially if you are sweet on a younger one, but the mothers—oh, Lord! Those mothers! If you do but look at one of their precious girls, they are down upon you to know your “intentions.” I say, a man has a right to ask questions in his turn—if their tempers are all right, if they’re sound in wind and limb, and so on. I bolt if I see one of those mothers within——’
He was interrupted by a peal of laughter. Eleanor had contained herself as long as she could, but at each higher flight of Otho’s sombre eloquence it had been more and more difficult to keep her gravity. Now it was impossible. She gave free vent to her mirth, and bent to her saddle-bow in her merriment.
‘Oh, Otho!’ she ejaculated at last, turning a face quivering with laughter to him, and eyes dancing behind tears of amusement. He looked at her in speechless astonishment, and then by degrees managed to take in the fact that she was laughing at him—at his solemn and withering denunciation of the man-traps set for the unwary in social life. He did not remember such a thing to have happened to him before, and he was stunned by the shock.
‘Poor dear Otho!’ she said, between new bursts of merriment. ‘What a life you must have led, with all these women trying to entrap you! No wonder you are reserved and sad! No wonder you have retired into private life to avoid the dangers that beset you on all sides! I wonder almost that you dare ride out alone. And yet, Otho, what a great thing to be so sought after!’
Otho’s face was almost purple, partly with breathless amazement, partly with anger. Eleanor, it seemed, did not realise, or did not care, to what inconvenience he was put by her presence here at all. She chaffed and laughed at him. She now put the crowning point to this offensive conduct by leaning over towards him, and asking, with a pretence of looking round to see that no one was near to look or listen—
‘Otho, did Miss Wynter warn you of the danger of these harpies by whom you are surrounded? Women are always quick to see through the designs of other women. How good of her to take care of you and keep you out of danger!’
Otho’s deep colour grew deeper still. Shrewdly had Eleanor hit the mark. The language, the turns of expression, were his own, native to his genius and redolent of his mind; but the substance of his speech was the substance of scores of conversations with Magdalen, in which she had amused him by tearing to pieces the supposed designs of their neighbours of the whole country-side.
‘What bosh!’ he said at last, with sovereign contempt. ‘You’ll be saying next that she had designs herself.’ A peculiar smile hovered about his sister’s lips, but she said nothing. ‘No, no. It is quite different with her, as you will see when you meet her. You can go and have an hour’s chat with her—or two hours, if you like. She’s always pleasant, always amusing; no father or mother to be down on you. And she does not imagine, even if you were to go and see her regularly twice a week, that you’ve got “intentions;” and, what is more, she has none herself. She can be pleasant, and free, and agreeable, without all the time being bent upon hooking you. Yes’—the taciturn Otho waxed enthusiastic—‘she is my friend. I don’t care who knows it. She’s the only woman in the neighbourhood that I call upon.’