“I am not difficult to get on with,” he says, in a naïf unconsciousness of his own corners which makes his niece throttle a smile. “No one can deny that I am easy to live with; but I could not answer for myself if he sprang upon me some demi-rep from a music-hall or some screeching platform woman. I declare to goodness”—lashing himself up into unreasonable anger—“it seems an odd thing for a father to say, but I know so little of the fellow—of what goes on inside him—that I could not say, if I were to be shot for it, which alternative is the more likely one.”
It would be perfectly useless to tell him that it is he himself who has crushed the power of confidence out of his son; and the desire to impart the information to him is at once stamped upon by Lavinia. All that is left of it escapes in a patient sigh, and the little dry sentence—
“I should say that they were about equally probable.”
“I have a still better reason for wishing to see you coupled together,” continues Sir George, a little appeased, though not in the least, suspecting the exercise of self-control that has tightened Lavinia’s lips, and strengthened her grip upon Geist’s lead. “If you do not marry my boy, of course you will never rest till you marry some one else’s.”
“Never rest till I marry some one else’s!” repeats she, indignantly, all her virgin pride up in arms; but in a second her wrath falls, vanquished by native sweetness, and by a long and sore acquaintance with the properties of Uncle George’s jokes. To-day it is not quite a joke. It is the vehicle for a real apprehension. She is paid for her self-government in a ready money which does not often distinguish the discharge of debts to virtue.
“And then I should lose my little mosquito,” he says, employing a phrase of no visible aptness to the tall and gracious creature beside him, which she yet welcomes as a proof of peculiar favour. “No doubt my loss would be your gain, as people say when other people’s relatives die”—laughing uncontagiously. “But I do not think I could carry creditably anything more just yet. You see I have lost a good deal one way and another.”
There is pathos in his growling voice, and appeal in his shagged eyes, and Lavinia at once feels that she would gladly die for him.
“It is settled, then!” she cries with a cheerfulness concerning which she is not quite sure whether she feels it or not. “Rupert marries Lavinia to prevent her marrying any one else, and Lavinia marries Rupert to prevent his marrying any one else, and the bells ring, and we are all happy for ever after!”
Her one motive in drawing up this gay programme is to give him pleasure, to chase the hopelessness out of his gaunt face; and perhaps she overdoes the content of her tone, for he stops in his walk to send the gimlet of his suspicious eyes through her.
“It is not to please me that you are doing it,” he says with sharp contrariety: “mind that! I would be shot before I would influence you a hair-breadth one way or the other in such a matter. And between you and me”—it is the phrase which usually precedes some unflattering observation upon his son—“if I were a young woman, and Rupert were the last man in the world——”