Part 39 (1/2)
”G.,--more than ever I understand your pa.s.sion for my secretary. I do not even find your fidelity ridiculous; she is one of the most fascinating creatures I have ever met. A masterpiece of balance and common sense, she will rise to the highest position one day--mark my words, boy!”
”I daresay--I cannot feel interested in that. I am still horribly in love. I thought Teheran had dulled the ache for her, but it has not.”
Lady Garribardine sighed as she arranged a cus.h.i.+on.
”I live in terror that one day she will come and tell me quite honestly that she has learned all that my situation can teach her, and that she is going on to something new.”
”She could not be so ungrateful.”
”It would not be ingrat.i.tude--she works for money, not for love. It would be part of her plan of life. Sentimental emotion does not enter into it--that is what makes her so interesting, and so invaluable.”
”But I know, Seraphim, that she has a deep affection for you--she has expressed it to me many times. You are her model for all fine conduct and point of view.”
”Yes--the girl is devoted to me, I think. Well, we must hope that she is content here, for I do not know how I could quite get on without her. I have had her down for a little at each party during the winter, G. She literally devours bores for me, and gets all the cranks into good tempers. And all the women like her; that shows triumphant astuteness on her part.”
”Triumphant! You did not after all marry her to Sir John while I was away. I almost hoped that you would do so when I left in October.”
”Sir John was willing; he wanted but a hint from me to have shown all the ardour of a young lover. One even pictured verses--it is in this way that it takes aged politicians. One imagined a discreet wedding and almost by now the inevitable preparatory layette!--But Miss Bush would have none of it! When I approached her upon the subject she looked me straight in the face and said quite respectfully, but with a hauteur befitting a D'Estaire, that she had other views, and while sensible of my kindness she must decline the honour! I was immensely diverted.”
”Danger is still ahead, then--She has told me just now that she means only to marry when she can gain her heart's desire--but what that is G.o.d--or the devil--alone knows.”
Lady Garribardine looked at him shrewdly for a second; she did not speak, so Mr. Strobridge went on:
”By the way, she wants me to take her and Arabella to hear a debate in the House of Lords--may I?”
”Of course.”
If he had not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts he would have remarked his aunt's tone, but he was absently staring out of the window and did not even see her face with its sagacious, querying expression.
”She is greatly interested in politics, I believe; she is well up in them already--she is well up in everything. I daresay she could open a bazaar, or give an address better than I could myself. I can spare her next Wednesday afternoon when the debate on the Land Bill will be in full swing. You can arrange it.”
”I will.--Seraphim, isn't it pitiful about poor Lao!--Younger or older it would not have mattered quite so much--but at forty-two--Heavens! The only thing the poor darling had--her beauty--won't be worth looking at in a year or so. The mentality of women is beyond me, so utterly unaccountable their actions are.”
”Not at all, my precious G. They are as plain as a pikestaff--only any man can be bamboozled by the silliest of them. They all answer to type and s.e.x. Lao has the brains of her type, the female guinea pig, raised under artificial conditions which have altered, but not stifled, the guinea pig's strongest instinct--prolific reproduction. It came out in Lao, not in the desire to have a numerous family, but in an intense desire to attract the male--_pas pour le bon motif, bien entendu!_--but for variety--Then she falls in love at a foolish age, and the emotion, being one of nature, the instinct rights itself for the moment, and swamps the effect of artificial conditions. Hence the pa.s.sion for the wedding ring--vows--the male in the cage, all unconscious preparation for a family--the last thing she would desire, in fact--and all sense of proportion lost sight of.”
Mr. Strobridge laughed delightedly.
”You should write a 'Guide to the Knowledge of Women,' Seraphim, for the enlightenment of your men friends.”
His aunt smiled, showing all her strong, well-preserved white teeth.
”I would like to, but not one of them would speak to me again, they would tear my new grey _toupee_ from my snowy locks, and denounce me as a liar, because I would tell the one thing they strongly dislike--the truth!”
”Yes, a thoroughly lovable feminine woman loathes the truth, doesn't she! I have always found my greatest success with her lay in a distortion of every fact to suit her personal view. Katherine Bush and yourself, sweet Aunt, are the only two of your s.e.x that I have ever met whom a man need not humour, and can speak his real mind out to.”
And with this he kissed her fat hand and took his way from her presence down the gallery to his room to dress for dinner.
But all the while Stirling was coaxing the real silver and auxiliary iron grey waves into a superbly simple triumph of hairdressing, her ladys.h.i.+p wore a slight frown of concentrated thought.
What did it mean, this desire on the part of her secretary to see the House of Lords?