Part 68 (2/2)

”Look here--do come to the point--have you proposed to her?”

”I should rather think I have!” said the boy, fervently. ”About once a week since Christmas. Of course she's played with me--that sort always does--but I think I might really have a chance with her, if it weren't for her mother--horrible old--no, of _course_ I don't mean that! But now it comes in--what I oughtn't to tell you--I _know_ I oughtn't to tell you! I'm always making a beastly mess of it. It's because I can't help talking of it!”

And shaking his curly head in despair, he once more plunged his red cheeks into his hands and fell abruptly silent.

Marcella coloured for sympathy. ”I really wish you wouldn't talk in riddles,” she said. ”What is the matter with you?--of course you must tell me.”

”Well, I know you won't mind!” cried the lad, emerging. ”As if you could mind! But it sounds like my impudence to be talking to you about--about--You see,” he blurted out, ”she's going to Italy with the Raeburns. She's a connection of theirs, somehow, and Miss Raeburn's taken a fancy to her lately--and her mother's treated me like dirt ever since they asked her to go to Italy--and naturally a fellow sees what _that_ means--and what her mother's after. I don't believe Betty _would_; he's too old for her, isn't he? Oh, my goodness!”--this time he smote his knee in real desperation--”now I _have_ done it. I'm simply _bursting_ always with the thing I'd rather cut my head off than say.

Why they make 'em like me I don't know!”

”You mean,” said Marcella, with impatience--”that her mother wants her to marry Mr. Raeburn?”

He looked round at his companion. She was lying back in a deep chair, her hands lightly clasped on her knee. Something in her att.i.tude, in the pose of the tragic head, in the expression of the face stamped to-night with a fatigue which was also a dignity, struck a real compunction into his mood of vanity and excitement. He had simply not been able to resist the temptation to talk to her. She reminded him of the Raeburns, and the Raeburns were in his mind at the present moment by day and by night. He knew that he was probably doing an indelicate and indiscreet thing, but all the same his boyish egotism would not be restrained from the headlong pursuit of his own emotions. There was in him too such a burning curiosity as to how she would take it--what she would say.

Now however he felt a genuine shrinking. His look changed. Drawing his chair close up to her he began a series of penitent and self-contradictory excuses which Marcella soon broke in upon.

”I don't know why you talk like that,” she said, looking at him steadily. ”Do you suppose I can go on all my life without hearing Mr.

Raeburn's name mentioned? And don't apologise so much! It really doesn't matter what I suppose--that _you_ think--about my present state of mind.

It is very simple. I ought never to have accepted Mr. Raeburn. I behaved badly. I know it--and everybody knows it. Still one has to go on living one's life somehow. The point is that I am rather the wrong person for you to come to just now, for if there is one thing I ardently wish about Mr. Raeburn, it is that he should get himself married.”

Frank Leven looked at her in bewildered dismay.

”I never thought of that,” he said.

”Well, you might, mightn't you?”

For another short s.p.a.ce there was silence between them, while the rush of talk in the centre of the room was still loud and unspent.

Then she rated herself for want of sympathy. Frank sat beside her shy and uncomfortable, his confidence chilled away.

”So you think Miss Raeburn has views?” she asked him, smiling, and in her most ordinary voice.

The boy's eye brightened again with the implied permission to go on chattering.

”I know she has! Betty's brother as good as told me that she and Mrs.

Macdonald--that's Betty's mother--she hasn't got a father--had talked it over. And now Betty's going with them to Italy, and Aldous is going too for ten days--and when I go to the Macdonalds Mrs. Macdonald treats me as if I were a little chap in jackets, and Betty worries me to death.

It's sickening!”

”And how about Mr. Raeburn?”

”Oh, Aldous seems to like her very much,” he said despondently. ”She's always teasing and amusing him. When she's there she never lets him alone. She harries him out. She makes him read to her and ride with her.

She makes him discuss all sorts of things with her you'd _never_ think Aldous would discuss--her lovers and her love affairs, and being in love!--it's extraordinary the way she drives him round. At Easter she and her mother were staying at the Court, and one night Betty told me she was bored to death. It was a very smart party, but everything was so flat and everybody was so dull. So she suddenly got up and ran across to Aldous. 'Now look here, Mr. Aldous,' she said; 'this'll never do! you've got to come and dance with me, and _push_ those chairs and tables aside'--I can fancy the little stamp she'd give--'and make those other people dance too.' And she made him--she positively made him. Aldous declared he didn't dance, and she wouldn't have a word of it. And presently she got to all her tricks, skirt-dancing and the rest of it--and of course the evening went like smoke.”

Marcella's eyes, unusually wide open, were somewhat intently fixed on the speaker.

”And Mr. Raeburn liked it?” she asked in a tone that sounded incredulous.

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