第32章

"Poor thing!" said Miss Lister softly."I like her.She's a real good sort.I should have thought she would have been more sensible than the rest of us.""A real plain sort," said her aunt, ignoring the last sentence.

"Well, she didn't make her own face," said Miss Lister generously.

"No, and she don't pay other people to make it for her.She's what Sir Walter Scott calls: 'Nature in all its ruggedness.'""Dear aunt," remarked Miss Lister wearily, "I wish you wouldn't trouble to quote the English classics to me when we are alone.It is pure waste of breath, because you see I KNOW you have read them all.

Here is my door.Now come right in and make yourself comfy on that couch.I am going to sit in this palatial arm-chair opposite, and do a little very needful explaining.My! How they fix one to the floor!

These ancestral castles are all right so far as they go, but they don't know a thing about rockers.Now I have a word or two to say about Miss Champion.She's a real good sort, and I like her.She's not a beauty; but she has a fine figure, and she dresses right.She has heaps of money, and could have rarer pearls than mine; but she knows better than to put pearls on that brown skin.I like a woman who knows her limitations and is sensible over them.All the men adore her, not for what she looks but for what she is, and, my word, aunt, that's what pays in the long run.That is what lasts.Ten years hence the Honourable Jane will still be what she is, and Ishall be trying to look what I'm not.As for Garth Dalmain, he has eyes for all of us and a heart for none.His pretty speeches and admiring looks don't mean marriage, because he is a man with an ideal of womanhood and he can't see himself marrying below it.If the Sistine Madonna could step down off those clouds and hand the infant to the young woman on her left, he might marry HER; but even then he would be afraid he might see some one next day who did her hair more becomingly, or that her foot would not look so well on his Persian rugs as it does on that cloud.He won't marry money, because he has plenty of it.And even if he hadn't, money made in candles would not appeal to him.He won't marry beauty, because he thinks too much about it.He adores so many lovely faces, that he is never sure for twenty-four hours which of them he admires most, bar the fact that, as in the case of fruit trees, the unattainable are usually the most desired.He won't marry goodness--virtue--worth--whatever you choose to call the sterling qualities of character--because in all these the Honourable Jane Champion is his ideal, and she is too sensible a woman to tie such an epicure to her plain face.Besides, she considers herself his grandmother, and doesn't require him to teach her to suck eggs.But Garth Dalmain, poor boy, is so sublimely lacking in self-consciousness that he never questions whether he can win his ideal.He possesses her already in his soul, and it will be a fearful smack in the face when she says 'No,' as she assuredly will do, for reasons aforesaid.These three days, while he has been playing around with me, and you and other dear match-making old donkeys have gambolled about us, and made sure we were falling in love, he has been worshipping the ground she walks on, and counting the hours until he should see her walk on it again.He enjoyed being with me more than with the other girls, because I understood, and helped him to work all conversations round to her, and he knew, when she arrived here, I could be trusted to develop sudden anxiety about you, or have important letters to write, if she came in sight.But that is all there will ever be between me and Garth Dalmain; and if you had a really careful regard for my young affections you would drop your false set on the marble wash-stand, or devise some other equally false excuse for our immediate departure for town to-morrow.--And now, dear, don't stay to argue; because I have said exactly all there is to say on the subject, and a little more.And try to toddle to bed without telling me of which cute character in Dickens I remind you, because I am cuter than any of them, and if I stay in this tight frock another second I can't answer for the consequences.--Oui, Josephine, entrez!--Good-night, dear aunt.Happy dreams!"But after her maid had left her, Pauline switched off the electric light and, drawing back the curtain, stood for a long while at her window, looking out at the peaceful English scene bathed in moonlight.At last she murmured softly, leaning her beautiful head against the window frame:

"I stated your case well, but you didn't quite deserve it, Dal.You ought to have let me know about Jane, weeks ago.Anyway, it will stop the talk about you and me.And as for you, dear, you will go on sighing for the moon; and when you find the moon is unattainable, you will not dream of seeking solace in more earthly lights--not even poppa's best sperm, "she added, with a wistful little smile, for Pauline's fun sparkled in solitude as freely as in company, and as often at her own expense as at that of other people, and her brave American spirit would not admit, even to herself, a serious hurt.

Meanwhile Jane had turned to the left and passed slowly to her room.

Garth had not taken her half-proffered hand, and she knew perfectly well why.He would never again be content to clasp her hand in friendship.If she cut him off from the touch which meant absolute possession, she cut herself off from the contact of simple comradeship.Garth, to-night, was like a royal tiger who had tasted blood.It seemed a queer simile, as she thought of him in his conventional evening clothes, correct in every line, well-groomed, smart almost to a fault.But out on the terrace with him she had realised, for the first time, the primal elements which go to the making of a man--a forceful determined, ruling man--creation's king.