Part 60 (1/2)
He offered his arm with deference, and she touching it lightly, they went down together. Lynette came to them laughing, a cup in either hand, her aides-de-camp following with plates that held the siege apology for bread and b.u.t.ter and familiar-looking cubes of something....
”Thank you, Miss Mildare. What have you here, Beau? Cake, upon my word! Or is it a delusion born of long and painful abstinence from any form of pastry?”
”Cake it is, sir, and thundering good cake,” proclaimed Beauvayse. ”Made from Sister Tobias's special siege recipe, without candied peel or plums or carraways, or any of the other what-do-you-call-'ems that go into the ordinary article. Go in and win, sir. I've had three whacks. Haven't I, Miss Mildare?”
He spoke with the infectious enjoyment of a schoolboy, and Lynette's laugh, sweet and gay as a thrush's sudden trill of melody, answered:
”I think you have had four.”
She flushed as she met the Colonel's eyes, reading in them masculine appreciation of her delicate, vivid beauty, and put her freed hand into the lean palm he held out, saying, with a shy, sweet smile that lifted one corner of the sensitive mouth higher than the other:
”I didn't come to say How do you do? before, because I saw you were busy talking to Mother.” Her quick glance read something amiss in another face.
”Mother, how tired you look! Please bring that little camp-stool, Mr.
Fraithorn. Oh, thank you, Dr. Saxham; that one with arms is more comfortable. Colonel, we're all under your command. Won't you please order the Mother to sit down and rest? She will be so tired to-morrow. Dearest, you know you will.”
She took the Mother's hand, confidently, caressingly. The end of the thin black veil, that was shabby now, and had darns in many places, was wafted across her face by a vagrant puff of cooled air from the river, and she kissed it, bringing the tears very near the deep, sad eyes that looked at her, and then turned away. Saxham, in default of any excuse for lingering near her, went back to Lady Hannah, who had been diligently mining in him with the pick and shovel of Our Special Correspondent, and getting nothing out, and sat himself doggedly upon a stone beside her.
”That is a sweet girl.” She nibbled bannock, spa.r.s.ely margarined, and sipped her sugarless, milkless tea, sitting on a little bushy knoll, warranted free from puff-adders and tarantulas. Saxham answered stiffly:
”Many people here seem to be under--the same impression.”
”Don't you share it? Don't you think her sweet?”
”I have seen young ladies who were--less deserving of the adjective.”
Lady Hannah jangled a triumphant laugh. She wore the tailored garb the average Englishwoman looks best in, at home and abroad, an alpaca coat and skirt of cool grey; what the American belle terms a ”s.h.i.+rt-waist” with pearl studs, and a big grey hat with a voluminous blue silk veil. Her small face was smaller than ever, but her eyes were as round and as bright as a mouse's or a bird's, and her talk was full of glitter and vivacity.
”'Praise from Dr. Saxham.' ... If I were a man,” she declared, ”I should _perdre la boule_ over that girl. I don't wonder where she gets her lovely manners from, with such a model of grace and good breeding as Biddy Bawne before her eyes, but I do ask how she came by that type of beauty? And Biddy----”
”Biddy?” repeated Saxham, at a loss.
Her laugh shrilled out.
”I forgot. She is the Reverend Mother-Superior of the Convent to all of you. But I was at school with her, and I can't forget she used to be Biddy. She was one of the great girls, and I was a sprat of ten, but she condescended to let me adore her, and I did, like everybody else. To be adored is her _metier_. The Sisters swear by her, and that girl wors.h.i.+ps the ground under her feet. If I had a daughter I should like her to look at me in that way--heart in her eyes, don't you know, and what eyes!
Topaz-coloured, aren't they? She has no conversation, of course. _I_ hadn't at her age--nineteen or twenty, if I am any guesser. What she will be at thirty, if she don't go off! That little Greek head, and all those waves of rusty-coloured hair. Quite wonderful! And her hands and feet and skin--marvellous! And that small-boned slenderness of build that is so perfectly enchanting. Paquin would delight to dress her. And”--her jangling laugh rang out, waking echoes from hollow places--”it looks--do you know?--it looks as though he would get the chance.”
”Why does it?” demanded Saxham, turning his square face full upon Lady Hannah, and lowering his heavy brows.
”Mercy upon us, Doctor, do you want me to be definite and literal? Can't you do as I do, and use your eyes?” Her own round, sparkling black ones were full of provocation. ”They look as if they could see rather farther into a mud wall than most people's. Please get me one of those peaches.
No, I won't have a plate. I am beginning to find out that most of the things Society regards as indispensable can be done without. I'm beginning to revert to Primitive Simplicity. Isn't there a prehistoric _flair_ about most of us? If there isn't, there ought to be. For what are we from week-end to week-end but grimy male and female Troglodytes, eating minced horse and fried locusts in underground burrows by the light of paraffin lamps! Another peach.... Thanks. Can't you see those dear things, the Sisters, gathering them by lantern-light, and being sh.e.l.led by Brounckers'
German gunners. Wretches! Beasts! Horrors!”
”I hope,” said Saxham, with rather heavy irony, ”that you acquainted them with your opinion of them while you had the opportunity?”
She gaily flipped him with the loose tan gloves she had drawn off. Her bangles clashed, and her eyes snapped sparks under the brim of her hat, whose feathers nodded and swished, and her jangling laugh brought more echoes from the high banks.
”Ha, ha, ha! Do you know, Doctor, I call that thoroughly nasty--to remind me, on such a fine day too, of the Frightful Fiasco. When my own husband hasn't ventured to breathe a hint even.... Do you know, when he rode out to meet me with the Escort, all he said was, 'Hullo, old lady; is that you? The Chief wants to know if you'll peck with us at six, and I told him I thought you'd be agreeable.' And when we met, _he_---- Why do handkerchiefs invariably hide when people want to sneeze behind them?” She found the ridiculous little square of filmy embroidered cambric, and blew her thin little nose, and furtively whisked away a tear-drop. ”He never moved a muscle; Just shook hands in his kind, hearty way, and began to tell the news of the town.... Never, by look or word or sign, helped to rub in what a beetle-headed idiot I'd been.” She gulped. ”I could have put my head down on the tablecloth and cried gallons”--she blew her nose again--”knowing 'd lost him a rook at least. For, of course, that flabby Slabberts creature counted for something in the game, or Brounckers wouldn't have wanted him. And Captain--my Captain!...” She threw a sparkling eye-dart tipped with remorseful brine at the spare, soldierly figure and the lean, purposeful face. ”If you were to say to me this minute, 'Hannah Wrynche, jump off the end of that high rock-bluff there, down on those uncommonly nasty-looking stones below,' I vow I'd do it!”