The Pest 9

The Pest 9

She took the position he directed, while he sat down on a stool at a

little distance and began to sketch rapidly upon a block on his knee.

 

“I want to rough it out,” he said, as he tore off a sheet of the paper

and flung it on the floor, “until I’ve caught the pose, and then I’ll

start to get it on a canvas.”

 

At first he worked quickly, the while she watched him with keen

interest. She knew that if she had aroused deep emotion in him, he could

not continue this make-believe of absorption in his work, could not long

keep up this semblance of looking upon her simply as a model.

 

It was partly hatred of the surroundings in which he had found her this

morning, partly fear of precipitancy that induced him to act as he was

doing. If he spoke too soon he might not only lose her, but lose

also—he loved her too sincerely not to dread it—the opportunity of

helping her in her distress. But strive strongly as he could he was

unable to concentrate his mind upon the work. Every time he looked at

her and found her gaze fixed upon him it called for all his powers of

control to keep him from throwing discretion aside at once and for all.

 

“You’re watching me,” he said with a touch of impatience that troubled

her; “look at the fire, please.”

 

“I’m afraid you bully your sitters,” she replied, doing as he bade her.

“I’m _so_ tired of being told to do things. There are such lots of

things I should like to do—but nobody ever told me to do any of them.”

 

“What things? May I know?”

 

“You’ll only laugh at me. They’re the kind of things that a woman with

nothing a year and not much hope of earning anything much has to do

without and had better not even think about.” She spoke slowly,

wondering which of her ambitions it would be discreet to name to him. “I

should like a lot of friends, clever people who can talk and be jolly

and make me jolly too, if I haven’t forgotten how to be; and pretty

rooms. I should like to read and to see pictures, and to go to the

opera—and I want sympathy—and—and——”

 

As she broke off there was a catch in her voice that routed the remains

of his discretion. He threw away his pencil and went quickly over to

her, standing beside her chair.

 

“Look up at me,” he said eagerly. “What else do you want?

Sympathy—and—what else?”

 

Instead of looking up at him, she turned away, clasping her hands in her

lap.

 

“Look up at me,” he repeated. “Why don’t you?”

 

“I can’t.”

 

“Can’t again! Is it—is it for the same reason that you didn’t come

here; didn’t write me? Tell me!”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I’d like to guess—but I daren’t, for if my guess was wrong, you’d

never forgive me. But—I’ll risk it. I can’t wait any longer. It’s

because you care more for me than you care for a mere friend. If that’s

it, it’ll be all right and you shall have all your wishes.”

 

He noticed the quick heaving of her bosom and believed that it was love

for him that stirred her.

 

“It’s just this: I love you, Marian, and if you’ll trust me I’ll do all

I can to make you happy. Let me try.”

 

The revulsion from doubt to certainty was too great for her strength,

and she burst into hysterical sobs as she hid her face in her hands.

 

“Marian, Marian,” he said, kneeling beside her, “just tell me—do you

love me? Tell me, do you? Do you?”

 

At the moment she almost felt that she did love him.

 

“Tell me—do you?”

 

“You really love me?” she asked, turning her tear-stained face to him.

 

“Really love you?” he exclaimed, seizing her hands and covering them

with eager kisses. “What’s the use of telling you? Let me prove it.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII

 

 

EVEN in winter time the Manor House at Chelmhurst is a cheerful abode;

the garden is no mere waste of promises kept and made; the two great

yew-trees on the lawn behind the house by their spacious graciousness

prevent any sense of void, nobly supported as they are by the splendid

laurel hedges and the evergreen shrubberies. The long, low house, with

warm red-brick walls, tiled roofs, haphazard gables and chimney-stacks,

strikes rich and cozy to the eye. Behind the garden, barely divided from

it by light iron railings, lies a broad meadow, with a pond and a

confining belt of elms. Before the house, clearly seen over the low

wall, stretches the gorse-clad common with its graceful clumps of

ash-trees.

 

Thin wraiths of country mist strayed about the common, hanging in the

tall trees that surround it on almost all sides, and there was a bitter

winter sting in the air, as Philip West and Fred Mortimer drove up from

the station one afternoon late in November.

 

With his long, lanky limbs, thick shock of black hair, which he had a

habit of tossing from his forehead, dark blue eyes, which at times

appeared to be the abode of dreams, but on occasion flashed with

abundant energy, his thin, almost cadaverous face, West contrasted

markedly with his companion. As ever, he was smoking a cigar, which he

fidgeted between his thin fingers when it was not cocked up at the

corner of his mouth.

 

“I’m sorry Maddison could not come down; I find him a refreshing

contrast to my restless self,” West said. “Besides I should like him to

meet Alice Lane. She’s the sort of woman you don’t meet half a dozen

times in a life. I wonder how they’d get on together.”

 

“Are you matchmaking for others, now you’ve made your own match?”

 

“Not a bit, Fred. That’s the one line of business I shouldn’t care to

tackle. It’d do him a deuced lot of good to get married to the right

woman.”

 

“I fancy he fancies other men have generally married the right

woman—for him. Which is convenient, and does not land him in lifelong

responsibilities. There are so many right men and so few right women.”

 

“Don’t agree with you a bit. The average man rubs along all right with

the average woman. It’s when you get a man above or below the average

that the trouble begins.”

 

Mortimer wondered if his companion were thinking of his own recent

marriage. Strikingly beautiful he knew Mrs. West to be, and in a quaint,

childish way, fascinating. But that would not suffice West for long. He

had tired of similar charms often enough already.

 

The victoria swung briskly in through the gate on to the short drive,

and before it had pulled up West leaped out and sprang up on to the

veranda to greet his wife.

 

“You see, Fred,” he said, laughing—“you see we haven’t forgotten our

honeymoon ways yet. We haven’t arrived at the silly stage when we’re

ashamed of people knowing we’re fond of one another. You’ve met Fred

before, Agatha; make the best you can of him, and let him do exactly

what he likes, or he’ll never come again.”

 

A pretty blush lingered on her cheeks as she held out her hand to

Mortimer in welcome.

 

“I try to keep him in order, Mr. Mortimer, but he’s just a great big

baby—at home, at any rate.”

 

It was she who looked a child; her figure was girlish, supple and

delicate, shown to perfection by the clinging soft silk gown; her face,

too, was girlish, tender in every contour, set in a frame of unruly

golden hair, the hazel eyes alone giving it distinction. Neither husband

nor wife made any attempt to conceal their admiration of and affection

for each other, and Mortimer could but question how long West, man of

the world, would rest satisfied with the constant companionship of such

a woman. Perhaps, however, she was exactly the helpmeet he needed, one

who would catch him away from the serious work of life.

 

The chief characteristic of the interior of the Manor House is the long,

low hall into which the front door opens directly; cozy, comfortable,

half drawing room, half billiard room, the Wests used it constantly,

Mrs. West working there in the morning and receiving visitors there in

the afternoon; in the evenings the house-party assembling there before

dinner and after.

 

“Here we are!” exclaimed West to a tall, graceful woman, who sat reading

by the roaring fire. “Here’s Mortimer, and here’s me, so now you have

some one to entertain or be entertained by, instead of reading all the

time while Agatha insists on spooning with me.”

 

Mortimer considered himself quick at seeing whether a new acquaintance

would prove to his liking, and immediately decided that there was not

much chance of there being any real goodwill between Alice Lane and

himself. She was not of a type that appealed to him; too sedate, too

cool; stately, well-proportioned, almost robust, with a breezy, blunt,

direct manner of speech, gesture and look.

 

“Why are you so late?” Mrs. West asked. “We waited lunch ever so long

for you, and now it is almost tea time.”

 

“It’s partly my fault because I was so busy; partly the fog’s.”

 

“Chiefly his fault,” said Mortimer; “he kept me waiting in his room for

two solid hours. Gave me _The Times_ and a lot of cigars to keep me

quiet.”

 

“You must be famished. Poor things! I’ll ring for tea at once. How can you be so naughty, Phil?”