XI
LADY ANN SPENWORTH FINDS HER HEART WARMING
Lady Ann (to a friend of proved discretion): Indeed I think I may claim that you have come to the right person. I returned from the Hall only this morning, so I am well primed with news.
And very, very happy. It is only since I have been established once more in the beleaguered city that I have had to remember this menace. No! Not a word or sign! The old clergyman descended on us from Morecambe, protesting that my boy Will had promised to marry his daughter; the daughter came and told a cock-and-bull story which proved her own abandonment without establishing anything against my boy; and, since then, nothing! But one does not choose to be a standing target for that sort of thing. When next Miss Molly Phenton (or Wanton) comes to Mount Street, she may find that Will is safely married to some one else or that I have sent him abroad. I have lost the thread... Ah, yes, the great romance! In that atmosphere of radiance one forgot one's troubles...
My brother Brackenbury did indeed lend me the house for a few weeks in the summer—when every one was away in Scotland—, but otherwise I have not passed a night there on their invitation since that deplorable week-end when all the trouble with Phyllida began. You have forgotten it! I hope now that every one will forget it. Hilary—Colonel Butler, you know—had fallen in love with my niece while he was in her hospital. As Phyllida was living with me at the time, I had a duty to my brother, so I suggested that this boy should be invited to the Hall "on approval", as Will would say. I yield to no one in my real affection for dear Hilary, but—why disguise it?—he had been brought up simply—on modest means—, and it was only right that he should see Phyllida in her natural frame and decide for himself whether he could support her and live up to it. Most people so notoriously cannot: my sister-in-law Ruth, who remains and will ever remain the purse-proud shipping magnate's daughter... I was more than justified. Hilary consulted me; and, though I will never take the responsibility of advising young people in love, he was grateful for the detachment of an outsider. I, he could see, had no axe to grind... Brackenbury and Ruth received him effusively; my nephew Culroyd took him to his heart; if he had proposed, he would have been accepted then and there. He had done too wonderfully in the war and, in my humble judgement, gave a promise of success in any career he might undertake.
Me he consulted to know whether the world would say that he had married Phyllida for her money. He was daunted, I could see, by the lavishness of the Hall: the size of the house, the number of servants, Phyllida's four hunters—and so forth and so on. I told him that, in this respect of money and—in—this—respect—alone, he was not in fact contributing very much. He nodded, packed his bag and went off to make money—with an enterprise and a resolution that was too splendid. Did I ever tell you that I once detected him driving a motor-cab? He has now formed a company and is doing very well indeed. It was quite romantic! I always knew that there were such men in England and I was proud to meet one.
He begged me not to enlighten Phyllida, as he wished to leave her entirely free. Which I thought a most proper attitude, not extravagantly common in the youth of the present day. In my efforts to help him I exposed myself to an unhappy misconception, for Phyllida persuaded first herself and then the family that I had scotched her romance with some crazy idea of securing her for my boy Will. It was always on the tip of my tongue to say that she seemed very certain of him. Goodness me, if Will had wanted her... I have never wholly approved of cousin-marriages; and I looked with something like dismay on their growing intimacy. That was later, of course; at first she was like a demented creature, saying the wildest and wickedest things. Do you know that she charged me with trying to keep my brother-in-law from getting a divorce—so that there should be no possibility of an heir, so that in time Arthur or Will should inherit Cheniston and the title? These are not the fancies of a balanced mind, and it was then that I urged Brackenbury to send her right away. Failing that, I asked him to entrust her to me for a while in the hopes that I might turn her thoughts. Her loyalty to Colonel Butler I admired, but there is a danger that love may develop into an obsession...
That was the time when I became so nervous about Will. She was listless and unhappy, he was sympathetic; a dangerous combination! They had actually, I believe, reached what is called an understanding, when Phyllida learned by chance that Colonel Butler was alive and working in London; and this, I am thankful to say, turned her attention from Will. You were not present, I think, at the great meeting? No, I remember you were away; it was one night when the princess honoured me by dining to meet a few old friends. I gave a little impromptu dance afterwards to some of the officers in Spenworth's old regiment, not remembering that Hilary Butler was of the number; Phyllida was dining, and they met...
After that, it was a foregone conclusion. Every day when I opened my letters or looked at the paper, I expected to read the announcement. You may judge of my misgivings when my sister-in-law Ruth invited me most urgently to come for the week-end to the Hall and to bring Will with me. I have told you that there was some sort of understanding: if Hilary disappeared from human ken, Phyllida would marry Will—something of that kind; she was such a little picture of misery that, if some one had not shewn her a little kindness, I truly honestly believe that she would have wilted away. I was in dread that she would come up and say: "Aunt Ann, Will and I are going to be married"... That is why I searched the "Times" so diligently... It would be a suitable marriage in some ways: she has money... But I could never regard it as satisfactory.
The moment I could get a word alone with my sister-in-law, I asked her whether they had seen anything of Colonel Butler.
"Not since you arranged that meeting at your house," Ruth told me, "but he is due here to-night." She persists in speaking of people as though they were ships! The Hull strain coming out! "That is why I invited you all—Culroyd and Hilda are coming; and Spenworth and his wife—; I wanted you all to meet him. Or rather Phyllida did. She has been very mysterious, but there seems to be no doubt now..."