“Yes, a French wine; very old and quite unequalled!”
Even Bertram laughs. Marlow is irritated. He does not see what he has said which is so absurd, or why his friends are laughing.
“Why do you always take that prig’s part?” he mutters, sullenly, aside to Cicely Seymour.
“I do not take any one’s part,” replies the young lady; “but I detest injustice and illiberality.”
At this moment the old duke rises with Bertram’s help, is assisted by him to find his hat and stick, and takes his departure, assuring his godson that he had been much entertained.
Following the duke’s example every one takes their leave, assuring their instructor that they have derived much entertainment and information from his disquisition. Cicely Seymour says simply and very gently: “Thanks, Mr. Bertram. You have made me your debtor for many noble thoughts.”
When they have left him Bertram walks up and down his rooms dissatisfied with himself.
“What a coward!” he thinks, with the moral self-flagellation of an over-sensitive and over-sincere person. “Why could I not tell them the truth? Why did I limit myself to saying that she was a perfectly respectable young woman? If I cannot face the simple enunciation of the intention, how shall I ever bring myself to the endurance of publishing the fact when it is accomplished? Am I, after all, the slave of opinion, like anybody else? Am I afraid of a set of fools who are capering on their primrose path, seeing nothing of the abyss to which it leads? If I have not the courage of my views and faiths, wherein am I superior to their philistinism? I do what I choose; what I see to be wise and right and just; I desire to give an example which shall show how utterly I despise the fictitious barriers of caste and custom, and yet I have not courage enough to say to a few people who are drinking tea in my rooms, ‘My good folks, I am going to marry a young woman called Annie Brown.’ Why could I not say it? Why was I such a miserable poltroon?”
He throws himself into a deep chair and lights a cigarette.
“What would my aunt have done? What would that grinning cad Marlow have said? What would Cicely Seymour have thought? Perhaps she would have approved. She has more sympathy, more insight than the others—and what a charming profile! And those deep blue eyes under those long thick lashes; they are eyes which have mind in them as well as youth and smiles and innocence; they are eyes which will be still beautiful when she is seventy and her hair is white under a lace mob-cap or a black satin hood. What colour are Annie’s eyes? They are round and small, of no particular colour, I think; a reddish grey. Dear good little girl, it was not for her beauty that I selected her.”