CHAPTER XLIV.
‘Where jealousie is the jailour, many break the prison, it opening more wayes to wickedness than it stoppeth.’
It is indeed perilously near the dinner-hour! Mrs. Prior, after a few words with Josephine—who had evidently had her dainty ear applied to the keyhole, and who is distinctly sulky—has gone downstairs and into the smaller drawing-room, where she finds a group on the hearthrug gathered round a little, but friendly, autumn fire, discussing all in heaven and earth. They have evidently come down to earth as she enters, because the name of Susan Barry is being wafted to and fro.
‘Oh, she’s lovely—lovely!’ Lady Forster is saying with enthusiasm. ‘Such eyes, and with such a funny expression in them sometimes—sometimes, when she isn’t so dreadfully in earnest, as she generally is. After all, perhaps the earnestness is her charm. She is certainly the very sweetest thing! George’—she turns, looks round her, and, finding Crosby not present, laughs, and makes a little gesture with her hands—‘George will never be able to go back to his niggers.’ In her heart, being devoted to her only brother, she hopes this will be the case.
‘If you don’t take care, she will marry your brother,’ says Miss Prior from her low seat. She is protecting her complexion from the light of the big lamp near her by a fan far bigger than the lamp.
‘Well, why not?’ says Lady Forster, who detests Josephine.
‘A girl like that—a mere nobody—the daughter of an obscure country parson?’
‘Oh, not so very obscure!’ says LadyMuriel, in her gentle way. ‘Mr. Barry is very well connected; I have met some of his people.’
‘Still, hardly a match for Mr. Crosby.’ Josephine waves her fan lightly, yet with a suggestion of temper. Her mother, who has subsided into a seat, listens with an interest that borders on agitation to the answer to this speech. On it hangs her decision about the girl at the Cottage. If Crosby’s people support Crosby in his infatuation for that silly child at the Rectory, then—nothing is left to Josephine.
‘Do you know,’ says Lady Forster, ‘I don’t feel a bit like that. Let us all be happy, is my motto. I think’—thoughtfully—‘I am not sure, mind you—but I think if George wanted to marry a barmaid, or something like that, I should enter a gentle protest. But if he has set his heart on this delightful Susan——Isn’t she a heart, Muriel? Such a ducky child!’
‘I thought her delightful, and her brother, too,’ says Lady Muriel, laughing at Katherine’sexaggerations. ‘She is decidedly pretty, at all events. Even more than that.’
‘Oh, a great deal more,’ says Captain Lennox, who has come into the room with some of the other men.
‘And of very good family, too,’ says Lady Millbank, who is dining with them. The Barrys, as has been said, are a connection of hers, but always up to this—on account of their poverty—scarcely acknowledged, and kept carefully in the shade. But now, with this brilliant chance of a marriage for Susan, she is willing to bring them suddenly into the fuller light.
‘But penniless,’ puts in Josephine carefully.
‘Ah! what do pennies matter?’ says Lady Forster sweetly, but with a faint grin at her husband, who is near her. He, too, feels small affection for the stately Josephine.
‘And if George fancies her—why, it will keep him from marrying a squaw. They don’t call them squaws in Africa, do they? Something worse, perhaps.’
‘Not much difference,’ says Captain Lennox. ‘But the squaws, as a rule, wear more clothing than the Zulu ladies, and that might perhaps——’
‘Oh, good heavens!’ says Lady Forster; ‘it might indeed! If they wear less petticoat than the dear old squaws——And if he should bring one here! Fancy her advent into one’s drawing-room! People would go away.’
‘I don’t think so—I really don’t,’ says Captain Lennox reassuringly. ‘I believe honestly you might depend on “people” to support you under the trying circumstances. What are friends for, if——’
‘Oh, well, I couldn’t stand it if you could,’ says Lady Forster, with a glance at him. ‘And I don’t want George to marry a nasty Zulu, any way. What do you think, Billee Barlow?’—to her husband. ‘Isn’t Susan nicer than a Zulu woman?’
‘I’ve not had much experience,’ says Sir William lazily. ‘But I dare say you’re right.’
‘But listen. Isn’t it better for George to marry Susan than to go out there again, and perhaps give you a sister-in-law “mit nodings” on her?’
‘It’s very startling,’ says Lennox. ‘Take time, Billee, before answering; you might commit yourself.’
‘Really, the question is,’ says Josephine, in her cold, settled way, ‘whether it would be wise to encourage a marriage so distinctly one-sided in the way of advantage as that between——’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ interrupts Lady Forster impatiently. ‘But if George goes away again, I have a horrid feeling that he won’t come back at all. You see, he is too much one of us to bring into our midst a dusky bride—and men have married out there—and if he likes this charming child and she likes him——People should always marry for love, I think, eh, Billee?’—turning to her husband.
‘I always think as you do,’ says the wise man.
‘Billee Barlow, what an answer!’ She looks aggrieved, and throws up her little dainty, fairy-like head. ‘Do you think I’d have married you if I hadn’t—liked you?’
‘Was that why you married me?’ asks he, laughing, and bent on teasing her.
‘No.’ She turns her back on him. ‘I don’t know why I married you, except—that you were the biggest duffer in Europe.’
Forster roars.
‘I’m glad I’m the biggest,’ says he. ‘It’s well to be great in one’s own line.’
‘Well, that’s where it is,’ says Lady Forster, returning with perfect equanimity to the original subject. ‘And if it comes off, Susan will be a perfect sister-in-law. One has to think of one’s self, you know; and what I dwell on is, that I’ll have the greatest fun bringing her out in town. I’ve thought it all over. She will have a regular boom. There won’t be a girl next year in it with her. I know all the coming debutantes, and she could give them miles and beat them.’
Miss Prior laughs curiously, and Lady Forster looks at her.
‘You think?’
‘That you are the most disinterested sister on earth, or——’
‘Well?’
‘The most selfish.’
Lady Forster, who is impetuous to a fault, makes a movement as if to say something crushing—then restrains herself. After all, it is her brother’s house; this girl is her guest.
‘Oh, not selfish,’ says she sweetly. ‘I have a strange fancy that George adores her.’
‘Strange fancies are not always true,’ says Miss Prior. ‘Sir William, do you agree with Katherine about this adoration?’
Sir William shrugs his shoulders. How should he know?
‘Oh, Billee’s a fool,’ says Lady Forster, in her plaintive voice. ‘Aren’t you, Billee?’
‘My darling, you forget I married you,’ says Forster, in his tragic tone. Whereatshe rolls her handkerchief into a little ball and throws it at him.
Mrs. Prior, who has sat on a lounge near the door listening silently to this conversation, now makes up her mind. There is nothing to be hoped for from Crosby. To-morrow, then, she will see this ‘tenant’ of Paul’s, though all the guardians and chaperons in Europe rise up to prevent her.
‘But are you really so sure that your brother is in love with Miss Susan?’ asks Lennox of Lady Forster, in a low tone, unheard by the others.
‘No, I’m not,’ declares she, with astounding frankness. ‘I only wanted to be a tiny bit nasty to Josephine, who, I’m sure, has her eye on him in case another complication fails. No, indeed’—sighing—‘no such luck! Wanderers like George are like confirmed gamblers, or drunkards, or that sort of extraordinary person—they are beyond cure. I’m sure that, in spite of all that pretty Susan’s charms, he will go back to his nasty blacks and his lions and his general tomfoolery.’