Part 6 (1/2)
”Why, that's quite true,” put in the deep voice of Mrs. Cartwright, mildly. She crossed one long, gold-draped leg over the other, and threw an amused glance through the cigarette-haze at the finest judge of women in Europe. ”D'you mind if I put that into a book, Captain Ross?”
”You'd better not put anything I say into any book you write,” the Staff Captain advised her, with a short laugh (while Olwen, head still deep in the journal, drank in every syllable of the a.s.sured voice). ”Your public wouldn't stand for it, Domestica.”
”This would not be a 'Domestica' book,” returned the writer, with a little tilt of her brown head over her knitting. ”This is a little book I'm going to bring out seven years hence, for my own two boys. A sort of manual to help them when they go courting. 'The Guide to the Girl,' I shall call it.”
”The t.i.tle has one very all right sound,” laughed Captain Ross. ”But if you'll pardon my saying so, Mrs. Cartwright, I guess I could compile that book considerably better than what you could.”
”Not you!” declared Mrs. Cartwright. ”Most of those manuals are written from the point of view of the man. That's where they fall short. _I_ should make the Girl herself do the advising. I should let her give the 'pointers,' as Mr. Awdas calls them. I should divide them into little chapters: '_Of Proposing_,' '_Of Presents_,' '_Of In-Laws_,' '_Of Caresses_'----”
”'_Of Caresses_,'” took up Captain Ross, with another laugh, ”is going to get you banned by the libraries.”
”Not it. I,” said Mrs. Cartwright, knitting, ”shall not treat the subject in--in that way.”
”Then that manual of yours isn't going to help your boys a lot,”
affirmed Captain Ross in his most final tone. ”For, see here----”
”Olwen _fach_,” said the Professor, suddenly taking his pipe out of his mouth and looking over the smudged black sheet of ”La Patria,” ”isn't it time for you to go to bed?”
”Uncle!” came indignantly from behind the fas.h.i.+on-plates: ”It's only half-past nine!”
A smile went round the little group of the English about that table; the eyes of each turned upon Nineteen who was being treated as Ten years old. She would have kept up the screen of her ”Femina,” but Mrs.
Cartwright, finis.h.i.+ng off a row of her knitting, put it aside, and drew nearer to the girl.
”May I look at them with you?” she said, pleasantly, and the two shared the fas.h.i.+on-drawings, while the men watched; Captain Ross, with a curl of the lip and a remark about Women and their fairrrrm conviction that, because clothes are drawn one way in a picture that's the way they'll look when they've gotten them on.
Mrs. Cartwright lifted her head quickly, but it was not to retort to this. She had suddenly seen something (as usual, without looking at it) that surprised her. Then she dropped her head again.
”My dear!” she murmured to Olwen in an amazed little laugh. ”Did you ever know such a thing? There! Coming in through the dining-room door, now! You can see her in the mirror, behind those French children playing draughts. It's the Hotel Spinster we were looking at, at lunch today,”
chattered Mrs. Cartwright in the soft stream that scarcely moved her lips. ”The woman I said had never had a man to look at her. Can I believe my eyes? She's got a man with her now!”
”Miss Walsh?” exclaimed Olwen, gazing with all her eyes into the mirror that showed her this group.
Miss Walsh, in a fur coat, had evidently just come in from the Forest; she carried a bough of arbutus, and her cheeks were pink from walking in the clear night air. Close beside her came the man--yes! the male, masculine man who was her companion; the st.u.r.dy blue-clad French sergeant who had been at the table d'hote. Across the intervening groups of people he was seen to be all smiles and gestures, the traditional gallantry of his nation spoke in the very bend of his back as he opened the door, bowed again, clicked his spurred heels. Miss Walsh was holding out her hand; her lips parted, obviously in one of her characteristic ”Oh's”--the pink upon her cheeks deepened as she took leave of this cavalier. One could almost hear her struggling French. She looked back again; another bow, another click of the heels from her escort. Then the sergeant marched back down the room, beaming satisfaction painted upon every line of his face, bold, swarthy, and somewhat bull-necked. He was what his own family described as ”beau garcon”; a fine figure of a man.
He disappeared, through the ante-room, towards that wing of the hotel inhabited by the management; Monsieur Leroux (bald, amiable, the shape of a captive balloon), his three pigtailed daughters of exquisite manners, and his alert wife (who ran everything--including him--in the hotel).
”Heavens!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Cartwright absently, as she took up her knitting again, ”that must have been Madame Leroux's nephew. Her sister's son, the _artilleriste_. I heard all about him the other day.
Gustave Tronchet his name is. Madame told me that he was coming here _en perme_ as her guest, seeing she had no son, and that he loved to eat well and to be _bien_ generally. I suppose she is introducing him----!”
”Some romance!” laughed Captain Ross, jerking his head towards the door through which the fur-clad form of the lonely traveller had disappeared.
This was the first remark of his to which Olwen had paid scant attention. As suddenly as if some one had called her, she sprang up. She had dropped a kiss on her Uncle's thistle-down locks, had given her hand to Mrs. Cartwright, had launched a shy glance and a ”good night” in the direction of the others, and had darted away, a slim sprite in grey with touches of black, almost before the two young men could rise to their feet.
Mrs. Cartwright was still thinking of the stiletto-eyed French manageress who had introduced her nephew to the occupant of the best room in the hotel.
”What family spirit!” she admired. ”What sense of possibilities! What respect for Power--I mean money. What an admirable nation they are....
Will ours ever learn foresight and thrift from theirs?”
”Ours--that is, mine--has family loyalty very strongly too,” the Professor joined in. ”The Welsh, my dear lady, are as clannish in that way as the French; they'll do anything for 'my nephew.'”