Part 23 (1/2)

”Bertha, isn't it terrible! I've told him everything and he refuses me.

He's sent me back. He says if I'm engaged to Charlie it's my duty to marry him. He's fearfully hurt with me and shocked at my conduct to Charlie. Oh, it's too dreadful; I'm heartbroken!”

”Oh, what an irritating creature!” cried Bertha. ”It's just the sort of thing he would do. I'd better see him at once, Madeline.”

”You can't; he's going to Venice to-night,” said Madeline, and burst into tears.

CHAPTER XVII

MORE ABOUT RUPERT

Rupert had gone through a great many changes during the last few weeks.

He had begun to grow rather captivated by Miss Chivvey and in his efforts to polish, refine and educate her had become rather carried away himself. But towards the end she began to show signs of rebellion; she was bored, though impressed. He took her to a serious play and explained it all the time, during which she openly yawned. Finally, when she insisted on his seeing a statuette made of her by her artistic friend, an ignorant, pretentious little creature, known as Mimsie, they positively had a quarrel.

”Well, I don't care what you say; I think it's very pretty,” when Rupert pointed out faults that a child could easily have seen.

”So it may be, my dear child--not that I think it is. But it's absolutely without merit; it's very very bad. It could hardly be worse.

If she went all over London I doubt if she could find a more ridiculous thing calling itself a work of art. Can't you see it's like those little figures they used to have on old-fas.h.i.+oned Twelfth Cakes, made of sugar.”

”No, I can't. Shut up! I mayn't know quite so much as you, but ever since I was a child everybody's always said I was very artistic.”

They were sitting in her mother's drawing-room in Camden Hill. Rupert glanced round it: it was a deplorable example of misdirected aims and mistaken ambitions; a few yards of beaded curtains which separated it from another room gratified Moona with the satisfactory sensation that her surroundings were Oriental. As a matter of fact, the decoration was so commonplace and vulgar that to attempt to describe it would be painful to the writer whilst having no sort of effect on the reader, since it was almost indescribable. From the decorative point of view, the room was the most unmeaning of failures, the most complete of disasters.

Rupert had hoped, nevertheless, to cultivate her taste, and educate her generally. He was most anxious of all to explain to her that, so far from being artistic, she was the most pretentious of little Philistines.

Why, indeed, should she be anything else? It was the most irritating absurdity that she should think she was, or wish to be.

Rupert was growing weary of this, and beginning to think his object was hopeless.

A certain amount of excitement that she had created in him by her brusque rudeness, her high spirits, even the jarring of her loud laugh, was beginning to lose its effect; or rather the effect was changed.

Instead of attracting, it irritated him.

About another small subject they had a quarrel--she was beginning to order him about, to regard him as her young man, her property--and was getting accustomed to what had surprised her at first--that he didn't make love to her. She had ordered him to take her somewhere and he had refused on the ground that he wanted to stop at home and think!

She let herself go, and when Moona Chivvey lost her temper it was not easily forgotten. She insulted him, called him a blighter, a silly a.s.s, a ma.s.s of affectation.

He accepted it with gallant irony, bowing with a chivalrous humility that drove her nearly mad, but he never spoke to her again.

Perhaps nothing less than this violent scene would have shaken Rupert into examining his own feelings, and with a tremendous rebound he saw that he was in love with Madeline, and decided to marry her at once. How delighted the dear child would be!

He had seen very little of her lately, and he appreciated her all the more.

In her was genuine desire for culture; longing to learn; real refinement and intelligence, charm and grace, if not exactly beauty. Ah, those sweet, sincere brown eyes! Rupert would live to see her all she should be, and there was not the slightest doubt about her happiness with him.