Part 68 (1/2)

”Well, _I_ think she looks tired,” said Hallin, with a little attempt at a smile, but turning away. Everybody felt a certain tension, a certain danger, even in the simplest words, and Miss Hallin's call to supper was very welcome.

The frugal meal went gaily. The chattering Christchurch boy brought to it a breath of happy, careless life, to which the three others--over-driven and over-pressed, all of them--responded with a kind of eagerness. Hallin especially delighted in him, and would have out all his budget--his peac.o.c.k's pride at having been just put into the 'Varsity eleven, his cricket engagements for the summer, his rows with his dons, above all his lasting amazement that he should have just sc.r.a.ped through his Mods.

”I thought those Roman emperors would have done for me!” he declared, with a child's complacency. ”_Brutes!_ I couldn't remember them. I learnt them up and down, backwards and forwards--but it was no good; they nearly dished me!”

”Yet it comes back to me,” said Hallin, slily, ”that when a certain person was once asked to name the winner of the Derby in some obscure year, he began at the beginning, and gave us all of them, from first to last, without a hitch.”

”The winner of the _Derby_!” said the lad, eagerly, bending forward with his hands on his knees; ”why, I should rather think so! That isn't memory; that's _knowledge_!--Goodness! who's this?”

The last remark was addressed _sotto voce_ to Marcella. Supper was just over, and the two guests, with Hallin, had returned to the window, while Miss Hallin, stoutly refusing their help, herself cleared the table and set all straight.

Hallin, hearing a knock, had gone to the door while Leven was speaking.

Four men came crowding in, all of them apparently well known both to Hallin and his sister. The last two seemed to be workmen; the others were Bennett, Hallin's old and tried friend among the Labour-leaders, and Nehemiah Wilkins, M.P. Hallin introduced them all to Marcella and Leven; but the new-comers took little notice of any one but their host, and were soon seated about him discussing a matter already apparently familiar to them, and into which Hallin had thrown himself at once with that pa.s.sionate directness which, in the social and speculative field, replaced his ordinary gentleness of manner. He seemed to be in strong disagreement with the rest--a disagreement which troubled himself and irritated them.

Marcella watched them with quick curiosity from the window where she was sitting, and would have liked to go forward to listen. But Frank Leven turned suddenly round upon her with sparkling eyes.

”Oh, I say! don't go. Do come and sit here with me a bit. Oh, isn't it rum! isn't it _rum_! Look at Hallin,--those are the people whom he _cares_ to talk to. That's a shoemaker, that man to the left--really an awfully cute fellow--and this man in front, I think he told me he was a mason, a Socialist of course--would like to string _me_ up to-morrow.

Did you ever see such a countenance? Whenever that man begins, I think we must be precious near to shooting. And he's pious too, would pray over us first and shoot us afterwards--which isn't the case, I understand, with many of 'em. Then the others--you know them? That's Bennett--regular good fellow--always telling his pals not to make fools of themselves--for which of course they love him no more than they are obliged--And Wilkins--oh! _Wilkins_”--he chuckled--”they say it'll come to a beautiful row in the House before they've done, between him and my charming cousin, Harry Wharton. My father says he backs Wilkins.”

Then suddenly the lad recollected himself and his clear cheek coloured a little after a hasty glance at his companion. He fell to silence and looking at his boots. Marcella wondered what was the matter with him.

Since her flight from Mellor she had lived, so to speak, with her head in the sand. She herself had never talked directly of her own affairs to anybody. Her sensitive pride did not let her realise that, notwithstanding, all the world was aware of them.

”I don't suppose you know much about your cousin!” she said to him with a little scorn.

”Well, I don't want to!” said the lad, ”that's one comfort! But I don't know anything about anything!--Miss Boyce!”

He plunged his head in his hands, and Marcella, looking at him, saw at once that she was meant to understand she had woe and lamentation beside her.

Her black eyes danced with laughter. At Mellor she had been several times his confidante. The handsome lad was not apparently very fond of his sisters and had taken to her from the beginning. To-night she recognised the old symptoms.

”What, you have been getting into sc.r.a.pes again?” she said--”how many since we met last?”

”There! you make fun of it!” he said indignantly from behind his fingers--”you're like all the rest.”

Marcella teased him a little more till at last she was astonished by a flash of genuine wrath from the hastily uncovered eyes.

”If you're only going to chaff a fellow let's go over there and talk!

And yet I did want to tell you about it--you were awfully kind to me down at home. I want to tell you--and I don't want to tell you--perhaps I _oughtn't_ to tell you--you'll think me a brute, I dare say, an ungentlemanly brute for speaking of it at all--and yet somehow--”

The boy, crimson, bit his lips. Marcella, arrested and puzzled, laid a hand on his arm. She had been used to these motherly ways with him at Mellor, on the strength of her seniority, so inadequately measured by its two years or so of time!

”I won't laugh,” she said, ”tell me.”

”No--really?--shall I?”

Whereupon there burst forth a history precisely similar it seemed to some half dozen others she had already heard from the same lips. A pretty girl--or rather ”an exquisite creature!” met at the house of some relation in Scotland, met again at the ”Boats” at Oxford, and yet again at Commemoration b.a.l.l.s, Nuneham picnics, and the rest; adored and adorable; yet, of course, a sphinx born for the torment of men, taking her haughty way over a prostrate s.e.x, kind to-day, cruel to-morrow; not to be won by money, yet, naturally, not to be won without it; possessed like Rose Aylmer of ”every virtue, every grace,” whether of form or family; yet making nothing but a devastating and death-dealing use of them--how familiar it all was!--and how many more of them there seemed to be in the world, on a man's reckoning, than on a woman's!

”And you know,” said the lad, eagerly, ”though she's so _frightfully_ pretty--well, frightfully fetching, rather--and well dressed and all the rest of it, she isn't a bit silly, not one of your empty-headed girls--not she. She's read a _lot_ of things--a lot! I'm sure, Miss Boyce”--he looked at her confidently,--”if _you_ were to see her you'd think her awfully clever. And yet she's so little--and so dainty--and she dances--my goodness! you should see her dance, skirt-dance I mean--Letty Lind isn't in it! She's good too, awfully good. I think her mother's a most dreadful old bore--well, no, I didn't mean that--of course I didn't mean that!--but she's fussy, you know, and invalidy, and has to be wrapped up in shawls, and dragged about in bath chairs, and Betty's an angel to her--she is really--though her mother's always snapping her head off. And as to the _poor_--”

Something in his tone, in the way he had of fis.h.i.+ng for her approval, sent Marcella into a sudden fit of laughter. Then she put out a hand to restrain this plunging lover.