Part 6 (2/2)
Dolly looked up from her book.
”Some one is going now, I think,” she said. ”I hope it is n't a visitor,” listening attentively.
But it was a visitor, unfortunately. In a few minutes Mollie came in, studiously perusing a card she held in her hand.
”Ralph,” she proclaimed, coming forward slowly. ”Ralph Gowan. It's Lady Augusta's gentleman, Dolly, and he wants to see you.”
Dolly took the card and looked at it, giving her shoulders a tiny shrug of surprise.
”He has not waited long,” she said; ”and it is rather inconvenient, but it can't be helped. I suppose I shall have to run up-stairs and present him to Phil.”
She untied her ap.r.o.n, drew down her sleeves, settled the bit of ribbon at her throat, and in three minutes opened the parlor door and greeted her visitor, looking quite as much in the right place as she had done the night before in the white merino.
”I am very glad to see you,” she said, shaking hands with him, ”and I am sure Phil will be, too. He is always glad to see people, and just now you will be doubly welcome, because he has a new picture to talk about.
Will you come into the studio, or shall I bring him here? I think it had better be the studio at once, because you will be sure to drift there in the end,--visitors always do.”
”The studio let it be, if you please,” answered Gowan, wondering, just as he had done the night before, at the indescribable something in her manner which was so novel because it was so utterly free from any suggestion of affectation. It would have been a difficult matter to tell her that he had not come for any other reason than to see herself again, and yet this really was the case.
But his rather fanciful taste found Phil a novelty also when she led him into the studio, and presented him to that young man, who was lying upon a couch with a cigar in his mouth.
Phil had something of the same cool friendliness of deportment, and, being used to the unexpected advent of guests at all hours, was quite ready to welcome him. He had the same faculty for making noticeable speeches, too, and was amiable, though languid and _debonnaire_, and by no means p.r.o.ne to ceremony. In ten minutes after he had entered the room Ralph Gowan understood, as by magic, that, little as the world was to these people, they had, in their Bohemian fas.h.i.+on, learned through sheer tact to comprehend and tolerate its weaknesses. He examined the pictures on the walls and in the folios, and now and then found himself roused into something more than ordinary admiration. But he was disappointed in one thing. He failed in accomplis.h.i.+ng the object of his visit.
After she had seen that Phil and the paintings occupied his attention to some extent, Dolly left them.
”I was beginning to think about pies and puddings when you came,” she said, ”and I must go back to them. Sat.u.r.day is the only day Lady Augusta leaves me, in which to improve in branches of domestic usefulness,” with an iniquitous imitation of her ladys.h.i.+p's manner.
After which she went down to the kitchen again and plunged into culinary detail with renewed vigor, thinking of the six-roomed house in the suburbs, and the green sofa which was to fit into the alcove in the front parlor, growing quite happy over the mental picture, in blissful unconsciousness of the fact that a train had been that day laid, and that a spark would be applied that very night through the medium of a simple observation made by Phil to her lover.
”Gowan was here this morning, Grif, and Dolly brought him into the studio. He's not a bad sort of fellow for a Philistine, and he seems to know something about pictures. I should n't be surprised if he came again.”
CHAPTER IV. ~ A LILY OF THE FIELD.
THIS was the significant and poetic appellation which at once attached itself to Ralph Gowan after his first visit to the studio in Bloomsbury Place, and, as might have been expected, it was a fancy of Dolly's, the affixing of significant t.i.tles being one of her _fortes_.
”The lilies of the field,” she observed, astutely, ”are a distinct cla.s.s. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Yes, my young friends, Mr.
Ralph Gowan is a lily of the field.”
And she was not far wrong. Twenty-seven years before Mr. Ralph Gowan had been presented to an extended circle of admiring friends as the sole heir to a fortune large enough to have satisfied the ambitions of half a dozen heirs of moderate aspirations, and from that time forward his lines had continually fallen in pleasant places. As a boy he had been handsome, attractive, and thoroughbred, and consequently popular; his good looks made him a favorite with women, his good fortune with men; his friends were rather proud of him, and his enemies were powerless against him; he found it easy to be amiable because no obstacles to amiability lay in his path; and altogether he regarded existence as a comfortable enough affair.
At school his fellows had liked him just as boys as well as men are apt to like fortunate people; and as he had grown older he had always found himself a favorite, it may be for something of the same reason. But being, happily, a gentleman by nature, he had not been much spoiled by the general adulation. Having been born to it, he carried himself easily through it, scarcely recognizing the presence of what would have been patent to men less used to popularity. He was fond of travelling, and so had amused himself by comfortably arranging uncomfortable journeys and exploring pleasantly those parts of the earth which to ordinary tourists would appear unattainable.
He was not an ordinary young man, upon the whole, which was evinced by his making no attempt to write a book of travels, though he might safely have done so; and really, upon the whole, ”lily of the field” though chance had made him, he was neither useless nor purposeless, and rather deserved his good luck than otherwise.
Perhaps it was because he was not an ordinary individual that his fancy was taken by the glimpse he had caught of life in Vagabondia. It was his first glimpse of the inner workings of such a life, and its novelty interested him. A girl of twenty-two who received attention and admiration in an enjoyable, matter-of-fact manner, as if she was used to and neither over- nor under-valued it, who could make coffee and conversation bearable and even exciting, who could hold her own against patronage and slights, and be as piquant and self-possessed at home as in society, who could be dazzling at night and charming in the morning, was novelty enough in herself to make Bloomsbury Place attractive, even at its dingiest, and there were other attractions aside from this one.
Phil in the studio, taking life philosophically, and regarding the world and society in general with sublime and amiable tolerance, was as unique in his way as Dolly was in hers; his handsome girl-wife, who had come in to them with her handsome child in her arms, was unique also; Mollie herself, who had opened the door and quite startled him with the mere sight of her face,--well, Mollie had impressed him as she impressed everybody. And he was quite observant enough to see the element of matter-of-fact, half-jocular affection that bound them one to another; he could not help seeing it, and it almost touched him. They were not a sentimental a.s.sembly, upon the whole, but they were fond of each other in a style peculiar to themselves, and ready to unite in any cause which was the cause of the common weal. The family habit of taking existence easily and regarding misfortunes from a serenely philosophical standpoint, amused Ralph Gowan intensely. It had spiced Dolly's conversation, and it spiced Phil's; indeed, it showed itself in more than words. They had banded themselves against unavoidable tribulation, and it could not fail to be beautifully patent to the far-seeing mind that, taking all things together, tribulation had the worst of it.
They were an artistic study, Ralph Gowan found, and so, in his character of a ”lily of the field,” he fell into the habit of studying them, as an amus.e.m.e.nt at first, afterwards because his liking for them became friendly and sincere.