XLVII
THEY had arranged to meet in the park, the next morning at eleven. Bill was at the tryst, looking a picture of health with the genial sun of St. Martin’s summer upon him. He really was good to gaze at; most girls would have thought so, anyway. There he was in his smart morning suit; bright as a new pin; and as gaily amusing as ever. He might not have had a care in the world. Indeed, as he greeted Mame with a flourish of hat and cane, it was hard to believe that he could have.
A week’s absence had, if anything, endeared them to each other. Mame felt immensely proud of Bill as she came upon him by the railings of the Row, where he stood watching its numerous and decidedly miscellaneous collection of riders. Yes, he was a picture. As Mame beheld him, her mind went rather inconveniently back to the portrait of the third marquis, under which she had sat in that wonderful room at the Towers.
“Good to see you, Puss.”
Low the voice and so beguiling. There was a tremendous fascination in this young man. They moved up towards Alexandra Gate and found two lonely chairs among the trees.
“And now for a good old pow wow.” He began to write her name on the grass with the tip of his cane. “You’re looking just a wee bit chippy, aren’t you? Air of Shropshire take some digesting, eh? My mother is a clinker, isn’t she? And Cousin Mildred. But their young lives are not exactly a beanfeast, what? And then the friends and neighbours. Did you meet the friends and neighbours?”
“Bushels.”
At the look on Mame’s shrewd and piquant countenance Bill cried “What ho!” in a fashion which startled a number of sparrows into sitting up and taking notice. “Then that funny old Dower House. I expect it rather gave you the pip.”
As a matter of fact the Dower House had rather given Mame the pip but it hardly seemed good manners to do so.
“Own up. Honest Injun.” Bill coolly surveyed the expressive countenance of Mame. “It always does me. But tell me, now, what do you think of the Towers? That’s a bit of a landmark, isn’t it?”
“Bully!” was Mame’s formula for the Towers. It didn’t quite express her feelings, but it seemed wise to keep to that inclusive simplicity.
“That’s the word,” Bill agreed.
Suddenly Mame took him up. “Bully isn’t at all the word for a place like the Towers.” To her own ear her voice grew harsh and strident. “It wants a better word than that. Doesn’t carry the meaning,that word. There’s an atmosphere about that place and it gets you.”
“Hadn’t occurred to me.”
“No.” Mame looked at him sideways. She was a shade incredulous. “If I owned all that, just by right of birth, I’d see that nobody ever took it from me.”
“Rather depend on your bank-book, wouldn’t it?” Somehow Bill’s casualness was almost like a blow. “You see the trouble with us as a family is that we haven’t a bob.”
Mame was fully informed of that. But why not get around and collect a few? She put the question frankly. To Bill, however, it had the merit of being new. It had simply never occurred to him.
“Why not?” In Mame’s voice was a certain sternness.
“Haven’t the savvee for one thing.” Bill spoke lightly and easily. “Enormous brains you must have these days to hustle around. Vi is the only one of us with any mind at all. If she had been a man I believe she might have kept the Towers going. But it would have needed doing, you know. That place swallows money. Not a penny less than ten thousand a year would have been a bit of use.”
“I’ll say not. But isn’t it worth while, don’t you think, to take off your coat and go around and see if you can raise it?”
Bill began to whistle merrily. His sense of humour was sharply touched. “See me raising ten thousand a year with this old think-box. I’m the utterest ass thatever happened. Why, I can’t even tot up a row of figures.”
“I guess I’d learn. If my folks had had the Towers for five hundred years, do you suppose I’d let people like the Childwicks come along and take it off me?”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t.” Bill gazed in admiration at the determined face.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
To that forcible question Bill seemed quite unable to find an answer. Mame did not disguise that an answer was called for. “Your Mommer says that if you marry me you’ll have to quit the Pinks.”
“I know she does.”
“And that you’ll lose the Towers.”
Bill owned ruefully that he knew that too.
“Doesn’t it worry you any?”
Bill was silent a moment, then shook his head and said cheerfully, no.
“Well, it worries me, I’ll tell the world.”
He frowned a little. Something in the nature of a cloud passed over his sunny mind. Mame this morning hardly seemed to be quite so entertaining as usual. “Why worry,” he said, “over things one can’t help?”
It was Mame’s turn to be silent. The frown that gathered about her honest face was more portentous than the one upon Bill’s. “Things have got to be helped, it seems to me.” She spoke slowly. It was as if the words tore her lips.
“I don’t quite see how at the moment.”
“There’s just one way. I’ve been thinking it out.We mustn’t marry.” The serious depth of Mame’s tone added detonating power to this thunderbolt.
“But that’s ridiculous.” Bill was no longer casual.
“As I figure it out, it’ll be more ridiculous if we do.”
“My dear girl, we shall be able to rub along. There’ll be a certain amount of money, even if the Towers does go and even if I have to leave the Army.”
Mame shook a stern little head. She certainly was not as amusing this morning as usual. “Not if you keep your engagement with Gwendolen Childwick.”
“I’ve never been engaged to Gwendolen Childwick,” he indignantly broke in.
“Vi says you were as good as engaged to her. And so does your mother.”
“These meddlesome women!” Bill spoke vexedly. “I see what it is. You’ve been letting ’em put the wind up.”
A flush of crimson showed this to be a palpable hit.
“I give you my word there’s been no engagement between Gwendolen and me,” Bill earnestly added.
She knew there had not been. But it did not alter her view that if he was as sensible as he ought to be, there would be an engagement between them soon.
“Somebody’s been getting at you.” He was rather startled by the turn affairs were taking. “You’re not yourself this morning. Tell me, Puss, don’t you care for me any more?”
He looked into her troubled face with an anxiety which made her feel that she wanted to cry. In fact she had to bite her lip pretty hard to save herself fromexposing a most regrettable weakness. “It’s because I care for you so much that I can’t let you make a fool of yourself.” The quaint voice trembled oddly. “If you marry me it’s ruin and—and that’s all there is to it.”
He took a little white-gloved paw—she was looking most charmingly spick and span this morning—into his great brown fist. “Rot! A promise is a promise. I won’t give you up.”
“Don’t be a fool.” Pain, sheer and exquisite, drove her to speak bluntly and harshly. “I’d be a cuckoo in the nest. I don’t belong. I won’t amuse you always. And then you’d be sorry about the Towers. And you’d curse yourself for quitting the Army.”
“I’ll risk all that.”
Mame had a struggle to keep her lip stiff. But she had enough will to say, “There’s other folks to think of, you see.”
“Rot! Why let ’em come spoiling the sport?”
“I’dbe spoiling the sport. You and Gwendolen were getting on like a house on fire till I came by.”
“What’s come over you!” This was pure Quixotism. Slow in the uptake as he was, he knew how she hated Gwendolen.
“You don’t know what a friend Vi has been to me. I owe just everything to her. If I butted in and spoiled it all, I’d never be able to look her in the face again. Then there’s your Mommer. She’s been so sweet to me, I’d just hate to go back on her.”
Bill had to own that such feelings did Mame realcredit. But her attitude seemed to puzzle him a goodish bit; it was rather beyond the order of nature.
“You’re the nicest and best little girl I’ve met.” He was dogged, defiant. “And I mean to hold on to you for all I’m worth.”
Mame was horribly near tears, yet she still contrived to keep them in check. It was the bitterest moment life so far had given her. But this thing had to be.