CHAPTER X. ~ IN SLIPPERY PLACES.
THE wise one sat at the window and looked out. The view commanded byBloomsbury Place was not a specially imposing or attractive one. Fouror five tall, dingy houses with solitary scrubby shrubs in their smallfront slips of low-spirited looking gardens, four or five dingy andtall houses without the scrubby shrubs in their small front slips oflow-spirited looking gardens, rows of Venetian blinds of various shades,and one or two lamp-posts,--not much to enliven the prospect.
The inhabitants of the houses in Bloomsbury Place were not prone tositting at their front windows, accordingly; but this special afternoon,the weather being foggy, Aimée finding herself alone in the parlor, hadleft the fire just to look at this same fog, though it was by no means anovelty. The house was very quiet. ‘Toinette was out, and so wasMollie, and Tod was asleep, lying upon a collection of cushions on thehearth-rug, with two fingers in his mouth, his round baby face turned upluxuriously to catch the warmth.
The wise one was waiting for Mollie, who had gone out a few hours beforeto execute divers commissions of a domestic nature.
“She might have been back in half the time,” murmured the family sage,who sat on the carpet, flattening her small features against the glass.“She might have done what she has to do in _less_ than half the time,but I knew how it would be when she went out. She is looking in at theshop windows and wishing for things. I wish she would n’t. People stareat her so, and I don’t wonder. I am sure I cannot help watching hermyself, sometimes. She grows prettier every day of her life, and she isbeginning to know that she does, too.”
Five minutes after this the small face was drawn away from thewindow-pane with a sigh of relief.
“There she is now. What a time she has been! Who is with her, I wonder?I cannot see whether it is Phil or Mr. Gowan, it is getting so dark. Itmust be Mr. Gowan. ‘Toinette would be with them if it was Phil.”
“Why, Mollie,” she exclaimed, when the door opened, “I saw somebody withyou, and I thought it was Mr. Gowan. Why did n’t he come in? Don’t wakenTod.”
Mollie came in rather hurriedly, and going to the fire knelt down beforeit, holding out her hands to warm them. Her cheeks were brilliant withcolor and her eyes were bright; altogether, she looked a trifle excited.
“It was n’t Mr. Gowan,” she answered. “Ugh! how cold it is,--not frosty,you know, but that raw sort of cold, Aimée. I would rather have thefrost myself, would n’t you?”
But Aimée was not thinking of the weather.
“Not Mr. Gowan!” she ejaculated. “Who was it, then?”
Mollie crept nearer to the fire and gave another little shudder.
“It was--somebody else,” she returned, with a triumphant littlehalf-laugh. “Guess who!”
“Who!” repeated Aimée. “Somebody else! It was not any one I know.”
“It was somebody Phil knows.”
The wise one arose and came to the fire herself.
“It was some one taller than Brown!”
“Brown!” echoed Mollie, with an air of supreme contempt. “He is _twice_as tall. Brown is only about five feet high, and he wears an overcoatten times too big for him, and it flaps--yes, it _flaps_ abouthis odious little heels. I should think it wasn’t Brown. It was agentleman.”
The wise one regarded her pretty, scornful face dubiously.
“Brown is n’t so bad as all that implies, Mollie,” she said. “His coatis the worst part of him. But if it was n’t Brown and it was n’t Mr.Gowan, who was it?”
Mollie laughed and shrugged her shoulders again, and then looked up ather small inquisitor charmingly defiant.
“It was--Mr. Chandos!” she confessed.
Aimée gazed at her for a moment in blank amazement.
“But,” she objected, “you don’t know him any more than I do. Youhave only seen him once through the window, and you have never beenintroduced to him.”
“I have seen him twice,” said Mollie. “Don’t you recollect my tellingyou that he picked up my glove for me the night I carried Dolly’s dressto Bra-bazon Lodge, and,” faltering a little and dropping her eyes, “heintroduced himself to me. He met me in town. I was passing through theArcade, and he stopped to ask about Phil. He apologized, of course, youknow, for doing it, but he said he was very anxious to know when Philwould be at home, and--and perhaps I would be so kind as to tell him. Hewants to see him about a picture. And--then, you know, somehow or other,he said something else, and--and I answered him--and he walked to thegate with me.”
“He took a great liberty,” said Aimée. “And it was very imprudent in youto let him come. I don’t know what you could be thinking of. The idea ofpicking up people in the street like that, Mollie; you must be crazy.”
“I could n’t help it,” returned Mollie, not appearing at all disturbed.“He knows Phil and he knows Dolly--a little. And he is very nice. Hewants to know us all. And he says Mr. Gowan is one of his best friends.I liked him myself.”
“I dare say you did,” despairingly. “You are such a child. You wouldlike the man in the moon or a Kaffre chief--”
“That is not true,” interposed the delinquent. “I don’t know aboutthe man in the moon. He might be well enough--at any rate, he wouldbe travelled and a novelty, but Kaffre chiefs are odious. Don’t youremember those we saw last winter?”
“Mollie,” said Aimée, “you are only jesting because you are ashamed ofyourself. You _know_ you were wrong to let that man come home with you.”
Then Mollie hung her head and made a lovely rebellious move.
“I don’t care,” she said; “if it was n’t exactly correct, it was nice.But that is always the way,” indignantly, “nice things are alwaysimproper.”
Here was a defection for you. The oracle quite shuddered in her discreetdisapproval.
“If you go on in that way,” she said, “you will be ending by saying thatimproper things are always nice.”
“Never mind how I end,” observed the prisoner at the bar. “You haveended by wakening Tod;” which remark terminated the conversationsomewhat abruptly.
A day or so later came Chandos--upon business, so he said, but heremained much longer than his errand rendered necessary, and by somechance or other it came to pass that Phil brought him into the parlor,and introduced him to their small circle, in his usual amiable, informalmanner. Then he was to be seen fairly, and prepossessing enough he was.Mollie, sitting in her corner in the blue dress, and looking exquisiteand guileless, was very demurely silent at first; but in due time Aiméebegan to see that she was being gradually drawn out, and at last thedrawing out was such a success, subtle as it was, that she became quitea prominent feature in the party, and made so many brilliant speecheswithout blushing, that the family eyes began to be opened to the factthat she was really a trifle older than she had been a few years ago,after all. The idea had suggested itself to them faintly on one or twooccasions of late, and they were just beginning to grasp it, thoughthey were fully as much startled as they would have been if Tod hadunexpectedly roused himself from his infantile slumbers, and mildly butfirmly announced his intention of studying for the ministry or enteringa political contest.
Aimée was dumbfounded. She had not expected this. She was going to haveher hands full, it was plain. She scarcely wondered now at her discoveryof two evenings before. And then she glanced slyly across the roomagain, and took it all in once more,--Mollie, bewitching in all thenovelty of her small effort at coquetry; Chandos, leading her on, andevidently enjoying the task he had set himself intensely.
It was quite a new Mollie who was left to them after their visitor wasgone. There was a touch of triumph and excitement in the pretty flushedface, and a ghost of defiance in the brown eyes. She was not quite surethat young Dame Prudence would not improve the occasion with a shorthomily.
So she was a trifle restless. First she stood at the window humming anair, then she came to the table and turned over a few sketches, then sheknelt down on pretence of teasing Tod.
But impulse was too much for her. She forgot Tod in a few minutesand fell into a sitting position, folding her hands idly on the bluegarment.
“I knew he would come,” she said, abstractedly. Then Dame Prudenceaddressed her.
“Did you?” she remarked. “How did you?”
She started and blushed up to her ears.
“How?” she repeated. “Oh, I knew!”
“Perhaps he told you he would,” put in Dame P. “Did he?”
“Aimée,” was the rather irrelevant reply, rather suddenly made, “do youlike him?”
“I never judge people,” primly enunciated, “upon first acquaintance.First impressions are rarely to be relied upon.”
“That ‘s a nice speech,” in her elder sister’s most shockingly flippantmanner, “and it sounds well, but I have heard it before--thousands oftimes. People always say it when they want to be specially disagreeable,and would like to cool you down. There is the least grain of LadyAugusta in you, Aimée.”
“And considering that Lady Augusta is the most unpleasant person weknow, _that_ is a nice speech,” returned the oracle.
“Oh, well, I only said ‘a grain,’ and a grain is not much.”
“It is quite enough.”
“Well,” amiably, “suppose we say half a grain.”
“Suppose we say you are talking nonsense.”
Mollie’s air was Dolly’s own as she answered her,--people always saidshe was like Dolly, despite the fact that Dolly was not a beauty at all.
“There may be something in that,” she said.
“Suppose we admit it and return to the subject. Do you think he is nice,Aimée?”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do,” but without getting rose-colored this time.
Aimée looked at her calmly, but with some quiet scrutiny in her glance.
“As nice,” she put it to her,--“as nice as Ralph Gowan?”
She grew rose-colored then in an instant up to her ears again and overthem, and she turned her face aside and plucked at the hearth-rug withnervous fingers.
“Well?” suggested Aimée.
“He is as handsome and--as tall, and he dresses as well.”
“Do you like him as well?” said Aimée.
“Ye-es--no. I have not known him long enough to tell you.”
“Well,” returned Aimée, “let me tell you. As I said before, I do notthink it wise to judge people from first impressions, but this I doknow, _I_ don’t like him as I like Mr. Gowan, and I never shall. He isnot to be relied upon, that Gerald Chandos; I saw it in his eyes.”
And she set her chin upon her hand, and her small, round, fair facecovered itself all at once with an anxious cloud.
She kept a quiet watch upon Mollie after this, and in the weeks thatfollowed she was puzzled, and not only puzzled, but baffled outrightmany a time. This first visit of Mr. Gerald Chandos was not his last.His business brought him again and again, and when the time came that hehad no pretence of business, he was on sufficiently familiar terms withthem all to make calls of pleasure. So he did just as Ralph Gowan haddone, slipped into his groove of friend and acquaintance unobtrusively,and was made welcome as other people were,--just as any sufficientlyharmless individual would have been under the same circumstances.There was no dragon of high renown to create social disturbances inVagabondia.
“As long as a man behaves himself, where’s the odds?” said Phil; and noone ever disagreed with him.
But Mr. Gerald Chandos had not been to the house more than three timesbefore Aimée found cause to wonder. She discovered that Ralph Gowan wasnot so enthusiastically attached to him, after all; and furthermoreshe had her reasons for thinking that Gowan was rather disturbed athis advent, and would have preferred that he had not been adopted socomplacently.
“If Dolly was at home,” she said to herself, “I should be inclined tofancy he was a trifle jealous; and if he cared just a little more forMollie, I might think he was jealous; but Dolly is away, and though heis fond of Mollie, and thinks her pretty, he does n’t care for her inthat way exactly, so there must be some other reason. He is not the sortof person to have likes or dislikes without reason.”
In her own sage style she approved of Ralph Gowan just as she approvedof Griffith. And then, as I have said, Mollie puzzled her. It wasastonishing how the child altered, and how she began to bloom out, andadopt independent, womanly airs and graces. She took a new and importantposition in the household. From her post of observation the wise onefound herself looking on with a smile sometimes, there was such afreshness in her style of enacting the _rôle_ of beauty. She struckPhil’s friends dumb now and then with her conscious power, and theunhappy Brown suffered himself to be led captive without a struggle.
“Her ‘prentice han’ she tried on Brown,” Dolly had said, months before,in a wretched attempt at parody; and certainly the tortures of Brownwere prolonged and varied. But it was her manner toward Chandos thatpuzzled Aimée. Perhaps she was a trifle proud of his evidentadmiration; at all events, she seemed far from averse to it, and theincomprehensible part of the affair was that sometimes she allowed himto rival even Ralph Gowan.
“And yet,” commented Aimée, “she likes Ralph Gowan better. She never canhelp blushing and looking conscious when he comes or when he talks toher, and she is as cool as Dolly when she finds herself with Chandos. Itis very odd.”
It was not so easy to manage her as it used to be, Ralph Gowandiscovered. She was growing capricious and fanciful, and ready to takeoffence. If they were left alone together, she would change her moodevery two minutes. Sometimes she would submit to his old jesting,gallant speeches quite humbly and shyly for a while, and then she wouldflame out all at once in anger, half a woman’s and half a child’s. Hewas inclined to fancy now and then that she had never forgiven him forhis first interference on the subject of Gerald Chandos, for at theearly part of the acquaintance he did interfere, as he had promisedDolly he would.
“I am not glad to see that fellow here, Mollie,” he had said, the firstnight he met him at the house.
She stood erect before him, with her white throat straight, and a sparkin her eyes.
“What fellow?” she asked.
“Chandos,” he answered, coolly and briefly.
“Oh!” she returned. “How is it that when one man dislikes another healways speaks of him as ‘that fellow’? I know some one who always refersto you as ‘that fellow.’”
“Do you?” dryly, as before. He knew very well whom she meant.
“_I_ am glad to see ‘that fellow’ here,” she went on. “He is agentleman, and he is n’t stupid. No one else comes here who is soamusing. I am tired of Brown & Company.”
“Ah!” he answered, biting his lip. He felt the rebuff, if it wasonly Mollie who gave it. “Very well then, if you are tired of Brown &Company, and would prefer to enter into partnership with Chandos, it isnone of my business, I suppose. I will give you one warning, however,because I promised your sister to take care of you.” Her skin flamedscarlet at that. “That fellow is not a gentleman exactly, and he is avery dangerous acquaintance for any woman to make.”
“He is a friend of yours,” she interrupted.
“That is a natural mistake on your part,” he replied,--“natural, butstill a mistake. He is _not_ a friend of mine. As I before observed, heis not exactly a gentleman--not to put too fine a point upon it--from amoral point of view. We won’t discuss the matter further.”
They had parted bad friends that night. Mollie was restive under hiscool decisiveness for various reasons; he was irritated because he felthe had failed, and had lost ground instead of gaining it. So sometimessince, he had fancied that she had not wholly forgiven him, and yetthere were times when she was so softly submissive that he felt himselfin some slight danger of being as much touched and as fairly bewitchedas he was when Dolly turned her attention to him. Still she wasfrequently far from amiable, and upon more than one occasion he foundher not precisely as polite as she might have been. br />
“You are not as amiable, Mollie,” he said to her once, “as you usedto be. We were very good friends in the old days. I suppose you areoutgrowing me. I should be afraid to offer you a bunch of camellias nowas a token of my affection.”
He smiled down at her indolently as he said it, and before he hadfinished he began to feel uncomfortable. Her eyelids drooped and herhead drooped, and she looked sweetly troubled.
“I know I am not as good as I used to be,” she admitted. “I know itwithout being told. Sometimes,” very suddenly, “I think I must begrowing awfully wicked.”
“Well,” he commented, “at least one must admit that is a promising stateof mind, and augurs well for future repentance.”
She shook her head.
“No, it doesn’t,” she answered him, “and that is the bad side of it. Iam getting worse every day of my life.”
“Is it safe,” he suggested, cynically,--“is it safe for an innocentindividual to cultivate your acquaintance? Would it not be a good planto isolate yourself from society until you feel that the guileless onesmay approach you without fear of contamination? You alarm me.”
She lifted up her head, her eyes flashing.
“_You_ are safe,” she said; “so it is rather premature to cry ‘wolf’ sosoon.”
“It is very plain that you are outgrowing me,” he returned. “Dollyherself could not have made a more scathing remark.”
But, fond as he was of tormenting her, he did not want to try hertoo far, and so he endeavored to make friends. But his efforts atreconciliation were not a success. She was not to be coaxed into hersweet mood again; indeed she almost led him to fear that he had woundedher irreparably by his jests. And yet, when he at last consulted hiswatch, and went to the side-table for his hat and gloves, he turnedround to find her large eyes following him in a wistful sort of way.
“Are you going?” she asked him at length, a half-reluctant appeal in hervoice.
“I am due at Brabazon Lodge now,” he answered.
She said no more after that, but relapsed into silence, and let him gowithout making an effort to detain him, receiving his adieus in her mostindifferent style.
But she was cross and low-spirited when he was gone, and Aimée, cominginto the room with her work, found her somewhat hard to deal with, andindeed was moved to tell her so.
“You are a most inexplicable girl, Mollie,” she said. “What crotchet istroubling you now?”
“No crotchet at all,” she answered, and then all at once she got up andstood before the mantel-glass, looking at herself fixedly. “Aimée,” shesaid, “if you were a man, would you admire me?”
Aimée gave her a glance, and then answered her with sharp frankness.“Yes, I should,” she said.
She remained standing for a few minutes, taking a survey of herself,front view, side view, and even craning her pretty throat to get aglimpse of her back; and then a pettish sigh burst from her, and she satdown again at her sister’s feet, clasping her hands about her knees in amost unorthodox position.
“I should like to have a great deal of money,” she said after a while,and she frowned as she said it.
“That is a startling observation,” commented Aimée, “and shows greatsingularity of taste.”
Mollie frowned again, and shrugged one shoulder, but otherwise gave theremark small notice.
“I should like,” she proceeded, “to have a carriage, and to live in agrand house, and go to places. I should like to marry somebody rich.” And having blurted out this last confession, she looked half ashamed ofherself.
“Mollie,” said Aimée, solemnly dropping her hands and her work upon herlap, “I am beginning to feel as Dolly does; I am beginning to be afraidyou are going to get yourself into serious trouble.”
Then this overgrown baby of theirs, who had so suddenly astonishedthem all by dropping her babyhood and asserting herself a woman, saidsomething so startling that the wise one fairly lost her breath.
“If I cannot get what I want,” she said, deliberately, “I will take whatI can get.”
“You are going out of your mind,” ejaculated Aimée.
“It does n’t matter if I am,” cried the romantic little goose,positively crushing the oracle by breaking down all at once, andflinging herself upon the hearthrug in a burst of tears,--“it does n’tmatter if I am. Who cares for _me_?”