Part 23 (2/2)
”One's first duty is to the place, of course,” he said reflectively, ”and I'm not at all sure that I oughtn't to look into the management of an estate, and all that sort of thing, very thoroughly. Some day--a long, long time hence, of course--I shall have to run our own place, and I'm rather keen about the duties of a landlord, and improving the condition of the people. I used to be a Socialist, as you know, but I must say one's ideas alter a bit as one goes on through life, and I've had some talks with the pater lately.”
He broke off, and looked rather oddly at Alex for a moment.
”They want me to think of settling down, I believe,” he said, almost shyly.
Alex spent that night in feverishly placing possible and impossible interpretations on the words, and on the look he had given her.
The sense of an approaching crisis terrified her so much that she felt she would have given worlds to avoid it.
The following evening it came.
Most conventionally, she met Noel Cardew at an evening reception, and he conducted her rather solemnly to a small conservatory where two chairs were placed, conspicuously enough, beneath a solitary palm.
An orchestra was just audible above the hum and buzz of conversation.
”It's luck getting in here,” said Noel. ”I wanted to see you very particularly tonight. I must say I never thought I should find myself particularly wanting to see _any_ girl--in fact, I'd practically made up my mind never to have anything to do with women--but I see now that two people who had very much the same sort of ideas about life in general could do a tremendous lot for a place, and for the country generally; don't you agree?--and, of course--” He became hopelessly incoherent, ”... knowing one another's other's people it all makes such a difference ... I could never understand fellows running after Gaiety girls and marrying them, myself!! After all, one's duty to the estate is ... and then, later on, perhaps, if one thought of Parliament--”
Alex felt that the pounding of her heart was making her physically faint, and she raised her head desperately, in the hope of stopping him.
Noel met her eyes courageously.
”I wish you'd let me tell our people that you--that we--we're engaged,”
he said hoa.r.s.ely.
His words struck on Alex' ear almost meaninglessly.
Irrationally in love as she was, with Love, she knew only that he was asking something of her--that she had at last an outlet for that which no one had ever yet desired.
Unable to speak, and unconscious of bathos, she vehemently nodded her head.
Noel immediately took both her hands and shook them wildly up and down.
”Thank Heaven, it's over,” he cried boyishly. ”You can't imagine how I've been funking asking you--I thought you'd say yes, but one feels such an awful fool--and I've never done it before. I say, Alex--I can call you Alex now, can't I--you're like me, aren't you? You don't want sentimentality. If there's one thing I bar,” said the newly-accepted lover, ”it's sentimentality.”
XI
Engagement of Marriage
”I am engaged to be married,” Alex repeated to herself, in a vain endeavour to realize the height to which she must have now attained. But that realization, by which she meant tangible certainty, for which she craved, continually eluded her.
The preliminary formalities, indeed, duly took place, from her own avowal before a graciously-maternal Lady Isabel, to Noel's formal interview with Sir Francis in the traditional setting of the library.
After that, however, a freakish fate seemed to take control of all the circ.u.mstances connected with Alex' engagement.
Noel Cardew's father became ill, and in the uncertainty consequent upon a state of health which his doctor declared might be almost indefinitely prolonged, there could be no question of immediately announcing the engagement.
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