The compliant friend assented.
“You understand, then, how dissonant was the chord Céline Twissing struck in Rustleton. With his Plantagenet dash in the blood, his hereditary intolerance of anything smacking of vulgarity, his medieval attitude of chivalry towards Woman, his Early Victorian dislike of the outré and the bizarre, he frankly found her intolerable. ‘In a drawing-room,’ he said to me in confidence, ‘that girl reminds me of a Polar bear in a hothouse.’ Where the boy could have seen one I cannot imagine—probably it was only a young man’s daring figure of speech. Shall we walk about a little? I think I felt a twinge.”
The friend agreed, and, gently ambling up and down the Kreuzbrunnen Promenade, Lady Pomphrey continued her narrative.
“Rustleton said she was a New Girl of the worst type. Then came the diabolo affair, which, considering Céline’s remarkable knack, I cannot think accidental. The bridge of Rustleton’s nose was seriously contused, and his monocle was shattered—fortunately without danger to the eye. He took no revenge beyond an epigram, quite worthy of La Rochefou—what’s his name?... She is keen on dancing, unlike other muscular girls; and said so in my boy’s near vicinity. ‘Why not? She has hops in her blood,’ he uttered. Of course, a little bird carried it to her ear.... How d’ye do, Lady Frederica? How d’ye do, Count Pyffer? I quite agree with you.... Piercing winds, varied by muggy airlessness and a distressingly relaxing warmth, have made the last eight days intolerable.... My dear, where was I when I left off?” The suffering friend indicated the point. Lady Pomphrey continued:
“And after all they have come together. Quite a romance. If a mother’s prayers have any influence, ... and I am old-fashioned enough to believe they have.... But I knew Rustleton too well to breathe a hint of my hopes. I did not stoop to intrigue, as some mothers would, to bring the young people together. But dearest Jane, who is always my right hand, conceived a devoted friendship for Céline just at the psychological moment, and owing to that she and Rustleton were constantly thrown in each other’s way. Céline quite exerted herself to be overwhelmingly unpleasant. Jane says that during a bicycling excursion in the neighborhood of our place at Cluckham-Pomphrey, she offered to help him to lift his machine over a stile, and would have done it unaided and alone if Rustleton had not peremptorily seized the frame-bar, gripping both her hands in his. On Jane’s authority, she crimsoned to the hat, throwing him off like a feather, and, mounting her machine, was out of sight in an instant. He was icily sarcastic on the subject of muscular young women all the way home, and limited his dinner to clear soup and a single cutlet with dry toast, while Céline went through all the courses in her usual thoroughgoing way. They are not in the least ashamed to eat, do you notice?—these golfing, hockey-playing, open-air young people.... Now you and I can recall placing a solid barrier of five o’clock cake and muffins between undue appetite and the eight o’clock dinner, at which we merely toyed with our knives and forks, trusting to our maids to have a tray of cold eatables ready in the bedroom for consumption while our hair was being brushed. Of course! ‘but these girls devour at tea, wolf at dinner’—I quote Rustleton—‘and probably stodge sandwiches and cold chicken and chocolate-wafers before they plunge into their beds. When there, how they must snore!’
“His eye gleamed with such feverish malignancy as he said this, that I involuntarily dropped a quantity of stitches in the silk necktie I was knitting for him—a soothing neutral shade not calculated to call attention to the tinge of bile in his complexion—and exclaimed, ‘Good Heavens!’ He immediately begged my pardon and bade me ‘good-night,’ whispering that he had arranged to shoot over the lower sixty acres with Stubbins, the head keeper—purely as a filial duty, Pomphrey not feeling robust enough to undertake it this year....
“Whether it was my having breathed a hint of this to Jane—who is, as a rule, a grave for chance confidence—or whether Miss Twissing had overheard, how can I say? But she and Stubbins were waiting for my boy on the following morning, Stubbins—who loathes sporting women—in a state of complacency that only a five-pound note could have brought about. Her beautiful Bond-street self-ejecting breechloader, her cap, tweeds, and gaiters were the dernier cri, and with the coolest self-possession she wiped my poor boy’s eye over and over again. Out of thirty brace of birds before luncheon only three and a half fell to his gun, and those were of the red-legged French description, ‘bred for duffers to blaze at,’ according to Lord Pomphrey. Rustleton went up to town that night, charging Jane with all sorts of civil messages for Miss Twissing, and slept at his Club, which was being painted and disagreed with him excessively.”
The friend sighed sympathy.
“Even with every door and window open and a flat dish full of milk upon the washstand,” said Lady Pomphrey, taking the friend’s arm and emphasizing her utterances with the green sunshade, “white paint permeates my whole being in a way that is perfectly indescribable. My son inherits my receptiveness—perhaps my weakness-indeed, he came into the world at Cluckham-Pomphrey during an early visit of ours, subsequent to spring-cleaning, where, owing to an unhappy facility possessed by Lord Pomphrey of being easily persuaded by self-interested persons, the hall screen, grand staircase, and all the Jacobean paneling had been covered by the local decorator with a creamy-hued, turpentiny and glutinous mixture known as ‘Eggster’s Exquisite Enamel.’ It cost a fortune to get off again, and some of it still lingers in the crevices of the carving. My basket.... It is a little cumbrous, but I really couldn’t think of letting you.... Well then, dear friend, if you insist.... Now for the really remarkable ending of my boy’s story.
“He flew to his cousin for consolation. Now, Wendoleth Caer-Brydglingbury is extremely sympathetic. Only for the color of her hair-a violent Boadicean red, almost purple in some lights—Rustleton and she—but I am devoutly thankful things have turned out as they have.