“Love me any, sister?”
“’Course,” said Margot.
Gurdy snorted and stalked away. Mark talked to the stiff governess and patted Margot. Miss Converse sewed and chatted about Conrad’s novels, then getting fashionable. She assented, “Very interesting. Romantic, of course. I dare say the colour attracts you.”
“Of course,” said Mark, “and what if they are romantic?”
She had some vague objection. If she bored him, Mark was still grateful that she hadn’t tried to marry him. She was necessary to the training of the children but her buff, bulky face wasn’t alluring and her gowns hurt him by a prevalence of mole embroidery and rumpled lace. She was a gentlewoman, wonderfully learned and obliging about his pet airs on the piano. Mark talked and wished that he could escape, like Gurdy who went to practice handsprings in the white hall and slid downstairs at the note of the doorbell.
Gurdy slid along the handrail of black wood so admired by callers and jumped for the dining room which had doors of glass coated in blue silk. These doors opened into the drawing room which Gurdy despised for its furniture all black and silver and its hangings of cloudy tapestry, impossibly noiseless when one bounced balls against them. Yet people called it a lovely room. And now, peering through a rift of the blue silk Gurdy saw the butler turn a visitor into this space and the visitor looked about with brown eyes, seeming to admire. Gurdy speculated and decided that the slight man was an actor come to talk to Mark about a part. His hair curled, his overcoat clung to his middle neatly, his white gaiters were unspotted, his pale moustache didn’t overhang his little mouth. He was visibly an actor. Gurdy had examined many through this spyhole. And like many the fellow went to glance at a circular mirror above the cabinet with tiny doors which Miss Converse called “Siennese.” As Mark’s feet descended, the man straightened himself and began a smile. Gurdy listened to the jar of his high voice against Mark’s fuller drawl.
“Mr. Rand?”
“Yes. Don’t think we’ve ever met. Daresay you know who I am and all that?”
“Yes,” said Mark.
Gurdy noted the long pause. He held that actors were a talkative lot. Mr. Rand worked with his moustache an indefinite time before he spoke again.