A man beside a dog may be a bore!
Shan’t had gone back to her aunt. Diana was with her aunt and Marcus was alone. He felt the position to be an absurd one. Why should he be separated from two nieces because an aunt, on the other side, chose to behave in a jealous and absurd manner? It was quite possible, if he could see the aunt, that she might in talking tell him, quite unconsciously, if Diana were in love or not? It was ridiculous he shouldn’t know, if he wished to know—and if she knew. With all her faults the aunt, no doubt, was fond of the children. Why shouldn’t he go down and see her? So he got a Bradshaw and looked up trains—he would have gone by car, but he had told Diana that Tooke wasn’t—what had he said?—strong enough to do the distance? He forgot what he had said, he had been vexed at the time—and he found it was possible to get to the aunt by twelve o’clock on any morning, so why not to-morrow? He should write to say he was coming—no, he would take her by surprise; see her as she really was.
When a woman deliberately sets out to weed on a summer’s day she will know, if she has any imagination, that her face will be likely to redden under the exertion, be it wonted or unwonted; further, that she will not be looking her best if her niece’s uncle should chance to call upon her. Elsie Carston’s imagination might have gone so far as to expect a red face under given circumstances, but never a visit, under any, from Diana’s disagreeable uncle. Yet this thing happened. Her small parlour-maid came to tell her so. She whispered it, hoarse from suppressed excitement. She vowed he was standing looking “amazed-like” at the “blue vawse.”
“Tell him,” said Elsie, “he must wait till my face is less red”—never dreaming that Rebecca would be so silly; but Rebecca was. She went back to the drawing-room and she said, “Miss Carston is so red in the face, sir, will you please to wait?”
And Marcus, if not pleased, waited. He had kept people waiting himself, and never for a more excellent reason. He hated women with red faces. That was one of Diana’s greatest charms—the unvarying beauty of her complexion. Ah—Diana? Where was she—and Shan’t, too? Why didn’t the tiresome aunt come? A bumptious woman is not complete unless she has a red face—a danger signal; so she might just as well come as she was, as she always was, and would always be.
The moments crept on—still he waited. He paced up and down the room until he was giddy, and he felt for the bears in the Zoo as he had never felt before. He realized the daily round of their discomfort now. This, then, was where Diana lived: with this furniture? Well, it wasn’t bad—of its kind. It was rough, of course. The grandfather’s clock, that ticked so insistently, must have stood in a deaf cottager’s kitchen. The gate-legged table had been undoubtedly cursed by many a lusty farmer and his sons for the multitude and distribution of its legs.
The furniture was well kept. There was that to the aunt’s credit, or to her servants’. He wondered if she had any more like the absurd creature who had conveyed, with the utmost solemnity, that ridiculous message. There couldn’t be such another in the world.
Back to the blue vase. It seemed familiar. Ridiculous place to keep it—on a bracket—meaningless. The Staffordshire china? Rubbish. How easily women were taken in! So long as the piece was an imbecile lamb or an impossible cottage, she was satisfied. No doubt she had bought the lamb because it was a “duck,” and the cottage because it was a “lamb.” He could hear her. She had been wise to keep to white walls. If she had attempted colour she must have gone wrong. He liked the chintz. It was in keeping. Red flowers on a highly glazed surface.
Why didn’t she come? It was the worst form of discourtesy to keep any one waiting. Where had she got the mezzotints? Or rather how? Left to her by a relative who had bought them cheap years ago, anticipating their value. She would tell him so—tiresome! He didn’t care how she had got them. They were nice enough, though. First state, eh? Open letters? He walked from one to the other. Cut edges? Here was one with the margin nibbled by a mouse—just what he should have expected to happen to the print belonging to a red-faced woman. Needlework pictures? Quite amusing! Country-house sale, he suspected: and a Downman? People do get these things somehow or other. She had withstood the lure of the hand-coloured print. Books? What did the woman read? He was on all fours trying to discover when the door opened and to his intense astonishment he heard a woman’s voice say, “Lie down, Marcus!” He rose instead—anything rather than obey—and found himself face to face with Aunt Elsie. What had been the use of waiting? Her face was still red.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, “I forgot; do forgive me—Marcus is my dog.”