"I really think I ought to walk back a little and see about those young people," says Aunt Constance fatuously. Thereupon Gwen finds she would like a little walk in the cool, and will accompany Aunt Constance. But just after they have left the room Achilles, whose behaviour has really been perfect all along, is seized with a paroxysm of interest in an inaudible sound, and storms past them on the stairs to meet the carriage and keep an eye on things. So they only take a short turn on the terrace in the late glow of the sunset, and go up to dress.
Adrian and the Hon. Percival spend five minutes in the growing twilight, actively ignoring all personal relations during the afternoon. They discuss flower-shows on their merits, and recent Operas on theirs. They censure the fashions in dress—the preposterous crinolines and the bonnets almost hanging down on the back like a knapsack—touch politics slightly: Louis Napoleon, Palmerston, Russian Nicholas. But they follow male precedents, dropping trivialities as soon as womankind is out of hearing, and preserve a discreet silence—two discreet silences—about their respective recencies. They depart to their rooms, Adrian risking his credit for a limited vision by committing himself to Mr. Pellew's arm and a banister.
CHAPTER XXII
THEOPHILUS GOTOBED. HOW A TENOR AND A SOPRANO VANISHED. HOW GWEN ANNOUNCED HER INTENDED MARRIAGE. PRACTICAL ENCOURAGEMENT. AUNT CONSTANCE AND MR. PELLEW, AND HOW THEY WERE OLDER THAN ROMEO, JULIET, GWEN, AND MR. TORRENS. HOW THEY STAYED OUT FIVE MINUTES LONGER, AND MISS DICKENSON CAME ACROSS THE EARL WITH A CANDLE-LAMP. HOW GWEN'S FATHER KNEW ALL ABOUT IT. NEVERTHELESS THE EARL DID NOT KNOW BROWNING. BUT HE SUSPECTED GWEN OF QUIXOTISM, FOR ALL THAT. ONE'S TONGUE, AND THE CHOICE BETWEEN BITING IT OFF OR HOLDING IT. HOW GWEN HAD BORROWED LORD CUMBERWORLD'S PENCIL. MRS. BAILEY AND PARISIAN PROFLIGACY
The galaxy of wax lights had illuminated the Jacobean drawing-room long enough to have become impatient, if only they had had human souls, before the first conscientious previous person turned up dressed for dinner, and felt ashamed and looked at a book. He affected superiority to things, saying to the subsequent conscientious person:—"Seen this?—'The Self-Renunciation of Theophilus Gotobed?'—R'viewers sayts 'musing;" and handing him Vol. I., which he was obliged to take. He just looked inside, and laid it on the table. "Looks intristin'!" he said.
It was bad enough, said Mr. Norbury to Cook sympathetically in confidence, to put back three-quarters of an hour, without her ladyship making his lordship behindhander still. This was because news travelled to the kitchen—mind you never say anything whatever in the hearing of a servant!—that their two respective ships were in collision in the Lib'ary; harguing was the exact expression. It was the heads of the household who were late. Lady Gwendolen apologized for them, saying she was afraid it was her fault. It was. But she didn't look penitent. She looked resplendent.
The two couples who had parted company, being anxious to advertise their honourable conduct, executed a quartet-without-music in extenuation of what appeared organized treachery. The soprano and tenor had lost sight of the alto and basso just on the other side of Clocketts Croft, where you came to a stile. They had from sheer good-faith retraced their steps to this stile and sat on it reluctantly, in bewilderment of spirit, praying for the spontaneous reappearance of the wanderers. These latter testified unanimously that they had seen the tenor assist the soprano over this stile, and that then the couple had disappeared to the right through the plantation of young larches, and they had followed them along a path of enormous length with impenetrable arboriculture on either hand, without seeing any more of them, and expected to find them on arriving. The tenor and soprano gave close particulars of their return along this self-same path. All the evidence went to show that a suspension of natural laws had taken place, the simultaneous presence of all four at that stile seeming a mathematical certainty from which escape was impossible.
Guilty conscience—so Gwen thought at least—was discernible in every phrase of the composition. This was all very fine for Lieutenant Tatham and Di Accrington, the two young monkeys. But why Aunt Constance and her middle-aged M.P.? If they wanted to, why couldn't they, without any nonsense? That was the truncated inquiry Gwen's mind made.
She herself was radiant, dazzling, in the highest spirits. But her mother was silent and pre-occupied, and rather impatient with her more than once during the evening. The Earl was the same, minus the impatience.