Part 8 (1/2)
”Oh, yes!” exclaimed Mollie, opening her eyes. ”I thought everybody knew that. They have been engaged ever since they were ever so much younger.
Dolly was only fifteen, and Griffith was only eighteen, when they first fell in love.”
”And they have been engaged ever since?” said Gowan, his curiosity getting decidedly the better of him.
”Yes, and would have been married long ago, if Griffith could have got into something; or if Old Flynn would have raised his salary. He has only a hundred a year,” with unabashed frankness, ”and, of course, they couldn't be married on that, so they are obliged to wait. A hundred and fifty would do, Dolly says,--but then, they have n't got a hundred and fifty.”
Ralph Gowan was meanly conscious of not being overpowered with regret on hearing this latter statement of facts. And yet he was by no means devoid of generous impulse. He was quite honest, however deeply he might be mistaken, in deciding that it would be an unfortunate thing for Dolly if she married Griffith Donne. He thought he was right, and certainly if there had been no more good in his rival than he himself had seen on the surface, he would not have been far wrong; but as it was he was unconsciously very far wrong indeed. He ran into the almost excusable extreme of condemning Griffith upon circ.u.mstantial evidence. Unfair advantage had been taken of Dolly, he told himself. She had engaged herself before she knew her own heart, and was true to her lover because it was not in her nature to be false. Besides, what right has a man with a hundred a year to bind any woman to the prospect of the life of narrow economies and privations such an income would necessarily entail?
And forthwith his admiration of Dolly became touched with pity, and increased fourfold. _She_ was unselfish, at least, whatever her affianced might be. Poor little soul! (It is a circ.u.mstance worthy of note, because ill.u.s.trative of the blindness of human nature, that at this very moment Miss Dorothea Crewe was enjoying her quiet _tete-a-tete_ with her lover wondrously, and would not have changed places with any young lady in the kingdom upon any consideration whatever.)
It is not at all to be wondered at that, in the absence of other entertainment, Gowan drifted into a confidential chat with Mollie. She was the sort of girl few people could have remained entirely indifferent to. Her _navete_ was as novel as her beauty, and her weakness, so to speak, was her strength. Gowan found it so at least, but still it must be confessed that Dolly was the chief subject of their conversation.
”You are very fond of your sister?” he said to the child.
Mollie nodded.
”Yes,” she said, ”I am very fond of her. We are all very fond of her.
Dolly 's the clever one of the family, next to Phil. She is n't afraid of anybody, and things don't upset her. I wish I was like her. You ought to see her talk to Lady Augusta, I believe she is the only person in the world Lady Augusta can't patronize, and she is always trying to snub her just because she is so cool. But it never troubles Dolly. I have seen her sit and smile and talk in her quiet way until Lady Augusta could do nothing but sit still and stare at her as if she was choked, with her bonnet strings actually trembling.”
Gowan laughed. He could imagine the effect produced so well, and it was so easy to picture Dolly smiling up in the face of her gaunt patroness, and all the time favoring her with a shower of beautiful little stabs, rendered pointed by the very essence of artfulness. He decided that upon the whole Lady Augusta was somewhat to be pitied.
”Dolly says,” proceeded Mollie, ”that she would like to be a beauty; but if I was like her I should n't care about being a beauty.”
”Ah!” said Gowan, unable to resist the temptation to try with a fine speech,--”ah! it is all very well for _you_ to talk about not caring to be a beauty.”
It did not occur to him for an instant that it was indiscreet to say such a thing to her. He only meant it for a jest, and nine girls out of ten even at sixteen would have understood his languid air of grandiloquence in an instant. But Mollie at sixteen was extremely liberal-minded, and almost Arcadian in her simplicity of thought and demeanor.
Her brown eyes flew wide open, and for a minute she stared at him with mingled amazement and questioning.
”Me!” she said, ignoring all given rules of propriety of speech.
”Yes, you,” answered Gowan, smiling, and looking down at her amusedly.
”I have been paying you a compliment, Mollie.”
”Oh!” said Mollie, bewilderment settling on her face. But the next instant the blood rushed to her cheeks, and her eyes fell, and she moved a little farther away from him.
It was the first compliment she had received in all her life, and it was the beginning of an era.
CHAPTER V. ~ IN WHICH THE PHILISTINES BE UPON US.
”We are going,” Dolly to Ralph Gowan, ”to have a family rejoicing, and we should like you to join us. We are going to celebrate Mollie's birthday.”
”Thanks,” he answered, ”I shall be delighted.” He had heard of these family rejoicings before, and was really pleased with the idea of attending one of them. They were strictly Vagabondian, which was one recommendation, and they were entirely free from the Bilberry element, which was another. They were not grand affairs, it is true, and set etiquette and the rules of society at open defiance, but they were cheerful, at least, and n.o.body attended them who had not previously resolved upon enjoying himself and taking kindly to even the most unexpected state of affairs. At Bloomsbury Place, Lady Augusta's ”coffee and conversation” became ”conversation and coffee,” and the conversation came as naturally as the coffee. People who had jokes to make made them, and people who had not were exhilarated by the _bon-mots_ of the rest.
”Mollie will be seventeen,” said Dolly, ”and it is rather a trial to me.”
Gowan laughed.
”Why?” he asked.