Part 13 (1/2)

But I won't be any more.”

There was a long silence. Then Joan said, ”There is something else, Virginia. Why has Bobby Trench been asked to come here to-morrow?”

Virginia laughed, after a momentary pause. ”I expect he asked himself,” she said. ”Hasn't he shown himself to be a great admirer of yours, Joan?”

”Oh!” said Joan without a smile. ”I have never shown myself to be a great admirer of his. Virginia, I can't understand it. I know mother wrote to him. I asked her why, and she said Humphrey had wanted him asked, and father had said that he might be. She didn't seem to want to talk about him, and I could see that she didn't like him, and was sorry to have to ask him. It is father I don't understand. He has almost foamed at the mouth whenever Bobby Trench's name has been mentioned, and you know what a frightful fuss he made when I went to Brummels, and when Bobby Trench came here about that Amberley affair.

He said he shouldn't be let in if he came again.”

”Well, my dear, you know what your father is. He could no more act inhospitably to anybody than----”

”Oh, Virginia, that's nonsense. He was quite rude to him when he came.

Besides, it's a different thing altogether, _asking_ him to come. He needn't have done that. Why did he do it?”

”Isn't Lord Sedbergh an old friend of his?”

”Virginia, I believe you are in the conspiracy against me. I _hate_ Bobby Trench, and when he comes here I won't have a thing to say to him. If father wants him here, he can look after him himself. I couldn't believe it when it first came into my head; but father said something to me, after he had looked at me once or twice in an odd sort of way, almost as if I were a person he didn't know.”

”What did he say to you?”

”Oh, something about _him_, I forget what now. And when I said what an idiot I thought he was, he was quite annoyed, and said I ought not to talk about people in that way. How _can_ father be so changeable? He treats us as if n.o.body had any sense but himself, and lays down the law; and then, even in a question in which you agree with him, you find that all his sound and fury means nothing at all, and he has turned completely round.”

”Well, my dear, we are not all the same. Your father speaks very strongly whatever is in his mind at the moment, and if he has cause to change his mind he is just as strong on the other side. It was so with me, you know well enough. He wouldn't hear a word in my favour; and now he likes me almost as much as d.i.c.k does. You have to dig down deeper than his speech to find what is fixed in him.”

”I don't believe that anything is fixed. Anyone would have said that he had a _real_ dislike to Brummels, and all that goes with it. I am sure he made fuss enough when I went there, and has gone on making it ever since; and Bobby Trench summed it all up for him. He wouldn't have this and he wouldn't have that; and Kencote, and the way we live here, was the only sort of life that anybody ought to live. Oh, _you_ know it all by heart. And then, just as one is beginning to think there is something in it, and that we _have_ been very happy living quietly here, one finds that _he_, of all people, wants something else.”

”What does he want?”

”What does he want for _me_? Does he want Bobby Trench, Virginia?

There! You don't say anything. You _are_ in the conspiracy. I _won't_. Nothing will make me.”

”My dear child, there is no conspiracy. And if there were, I shouldn't be in it. _I_ don't want Bobby Trench for you; I want somebody much better. But I don't want anybody, yet awhile. I want to keep you.”

”Doesn't mother want to keep me? Does _she_ want Bobby Trench for me?”

”No, I am quite sure she doesn't.”

”Then what is it all about? Oh, I am very unhappy, Virginia. I want to talk it all over with Nancy; but I can't now. It is just as if everything were falling away from me. n.o.body cares. A little time ago I should have gone to mother if I had hurt my finger. I feel all alone. Why does father want to bring Bobby Trench worrying me, of all the people in the world?”

”Dearest Joan, you are making too much of it. You talk as if you were going to be forced into something you don't like.”

”That is just what I feel is happening. It isn't like Kencote; not like anything I have known. Oh, I wish I were a little girl again.”

”My dear, put it like this; somebody is bound to want you, sooner or later. I suppose somebody wants you now. He moves mountains to get at you, and find out whether you want _him_. You don't, and that is all there is to say about it.”

”It might be,” said Joan, ”if it weren't that father is one of the mountains. He is one that is very easily s.h.i.+fted. Oh, I'm not a child any longer. I do know something about the world. I do know quite well that if he were not who he is, father would not have him near the place. Money and rank--those are what he really cares about, though he pretends to despise them--in anybody else. What is the good of belonging to an old and proud family, as we do, if you can't be just a little prouder than the rest?”

”Well, my dear, as a product of a country where those things don't count for much, I am bound to say that I think it isn't much good.

People are what their characters and surroundings make them.”