Part 7 (1/2)
”There are so many reasons. First of all, he hasn't really ever asked me.”
”You're simply indolent,” Lady Margaret persisted. ”He'd ask you in five minutes if you'd let him. Do you suppose Bob would ever have thought of marrying me, if I hadn't put the idea into his head?”
”You're so much cleverer than I,” Let.i.tia sighed.
”Not in the least,” was the prompt disclaimer. ”I really doubt whether I have your brains, and I certainly haven't your taste. The only thing that I have, and always had, is common sense, common sense enough to see that girls in our position in life must marry, and the sooner the better.”
”Why only our cla.s.s of life?”
”Don't be silly! It's perfectly obvious, isn't it, that the daughters of the middle cla.s.ses are having the time of their lives. They are all earning money. Amongst them it has become quite the vogue to take situations as secretaries or milliners or that sort of thing, and it simply doesn't matter whether they marry or not. They get all the fun they want out of life.”
”It sounds quite attractive,” Let.i.tia admitted. ”I think I shall take a course in typewriting and shorthand.”
”You won't,” Margaret rejoined. ”You know perfectly well that that is one of the things we can never do. You've got to marry first. Then you can branch out in life in any direction you choose--art, travel, amours, or millinery. You can help yourself with both hands.”
”Which have you chosen, Meg?”
”Oh, I am an exception!” Margaret confessed. ”You see, Bob is such fun, and I've never got over the joke of marrying him. Besides, I haven't any craving for things at all. I am not temperamental like you. Where's father?”
”Just back from the country. He'll be here in time, though.”
”And who's dining?”
”Charlie, for one,” Let.i.tia replied, ”Aunt Caroline, of course, and Uncle, Mrs. Honeywell, and the American person. The party was got up on his account, so I expect father wants to borrow money from him.”
”He doesn't look an easy lender,” Lady Margaret remarked.
”There's no one proof against father,” Let.i.tia declared. ”He is too exquisitely and transparently dishonest. You know, there's a man's story about the clubs that he once borrowed money from Lewis at five per cent. interest.”
Margaret remained in a serious frame of mind.
”Something will have to be done,” she sighed. ”Robert went down and looked at the mortgages, the other day. He says they are simply appalling, there isn't an acre missed out. It's quite on the cards, you know, Letty, that Mandeleys may have to go.”
Let.i.tia made a little grimace.
”I am getting perfectly callous,” she confided. ”If it did, this house would probably follow, father would realise everything he could lay his hands upon and become the autocrat of some French watering place, and I should cease to be the honest but impecunious daughter of a wicked n.o.bleman, and enjoy the liberty of the middle-cla.s.s young women you were telling me about. It wouldn't be so bad!”
”Or marry--” Margaret began.
”Mr. David Thain,” the butler announced.
The juxtaposition of words perhaps incited in Let.i.tia a greater interest as she turned away from her sister to welcome the first of her guests. He had to cross a considerable s.p.a.ce of the drawing-room, with its old-fas.h.i.+oned conglomeration of furniture untouched and unrenovated for the last two generations, but he showed not the slightest sign of awkwardness or self-consciousness in any form. He was slight and none too powerfully built, but his body was singularly erect, and he moved with the alert dignity of a man in perfect health and used to gymnastic training. His clean-shaven face disclosed nervous lines which his manner contradicted. His mouth was unexpectedly hard, his deep-set grey eyes steel-like, almost brilliant. These things made for a strength which had in it, however, nothing of the uncouth. The only singularity about his face and manner, as he took his hostess' fingers, was the absence of any smile of greeting upon his lips.
”I am afraid that I am a little early,” he apologised.
”We are all the more grateful to you,” Lady Margaret a.s.sured him.
”Let.i.tia and I always bore one another terribly. A married sister, you know, feels rather like the cuckoo returning to the discarded nest.”
”One hates other people's liberty so much,” Let.i.tia sighed.
”I should have thought liberty was a state very easy to acquire,” David Thain observed didactically.