Robert Chambers - The Younger Set

"No; but don't—"

"Yes, I will," repeated his brother-in-law; "and I'm going to have a thorough explanation with him and learn what he's up to. He's got to be decent to his sister; he ought to report to me occasionally; that's all there is to it. He has entirely too much liberty with his bachelor quarters and his junior whipper-snapper club, and his house parties and his cruises on Neergard's boat!"

He got up, casting his cigar from him, and moved about bulkily, muttering of matters to be regulated, and firmly, too. But Selwyn, looking out of the window across the Park, knew perfectly well that young Erroll, now of age, with a small portion of his handsome income at his mercy, was past the regulating stage and beyond the authority of Austin. There was no harm in him; he was simply a joyous, pleasure-loving cub, chock full of energetic instincts, good and bad, right and wrong, out of which, formed from the acts which become habits, character matures. This was his estimate of Gerald.

The next morning, riding in the Park with Eileen, he found a chance to speak cordially of her brother.

"I've meant to look up Gerald," he said, as though the neglect were his own fault, "but every time something happens to switch me on to another track."

"I'm afraid that I do a great deal of the switching," she said; "don't I? But you've been so nice to me and to the children that—"

Miss Erroll's horse was behaving badly, and for a few moments she became too thoroughly occupied with her mount to finish her sentence.

The belted groom galloped up, prepared for emergencies, and he and Selwyn sat their saddles watching a pretty battle for mastery between a beautiful horse determined to be bad and a very determined young girl who had decided he was going to be good.

Once or twice the excitement of solicitude sent the colour flying into Selwyn's temples; the bridle-path was narrow and stiff with freezing sand, and the trees were too near for such lively manoeuvres; but Miss Erroll had made up her mind—and Selwyn already had a humorous idea that this was no light matter. The horse found it serious enough, too, and suddenly concluded to be good. And the pretty scene ended so abruptly that Selwyn laughed aloud as he rejoined her:

"There was a man—'Boots' Lansing—in Bannard's command. One night on Samar the bolo-men rushed us, and Lansing got into the six-foot major's boots by mistake—seven-leaguers, you know—and his horse bucked him clean out of them."

"Hence his Christian name, I suppose," said the girl; "but why such a story, Captain Selwyn? I believe I stuck to my saddle?"

"With both hands," he said cordially, always alert to plague her. For she was adorable when teased—especially in the beginning of their acquaintance, before she had found out that it was a habit of his—and her bright confusion always delighted him into further mischief.

"But I wasn't a bit worried," he continued; "you had him so firmly around the neck. Besides, what horse or man could resist such a pleading pair of arms around the neck?"

"What you saw," she said, flushing up, "is exactly the way I shall do any pleading with the two animals you mention."

"Spur and curb and thrash us? Oh, my!"

"Not if you're bridle-wise, Captain Selwyn," she returned sweetly. "And you know you always are. And sometimes"—she crossed her crop and looked around at him reflectively—" sometimes , do you know, I am almost afraid that you are so very, very good, that perhaps you are becoming almost goody-good."

" What !" he exclaimed indignantly; but his only answer was her head thrown back and a ripple of enchanting laughter.

Later she remarked: "It's just as Nina says, after all, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," he replied suspiciously; "what?"

"That Gerald isn't really very wicked, but he likes to have us think so. It's a sign of extreme self-consciousness, isn't it," she added innocently, "when a man is afraid that a woman thinks he is very, very good?"

"That," he said, "is the limit. I'm going to ride by myself."

Her pleasure in Selwyn's society had gradually become such genuine pleasure, her confidence in his kindness so unaffectedly sincere, that, insensibly, she had fallen into something of his manner of badinage—especially since she realised how much amusement he found in her own smiling confusion when unexpectedly assailed. Also, to her surprise, she found that he could be plagued very easily, though she did not quite dare to at first, in view of his impressive years and experience.

But once goaded to it, she was astonished to find how suddenly it seemed to readjust their personal relations—years and experience falling from his shoulders like a cloak which had concealed a man very nearly her own age; years and experience adding themselves to her, and at least an inch to her stature to redress the balance between them.

It had amused him immensely as he realised the subtle change; and it pleased him, too, because no man of thirty-five cares to be treated en grandpère by a girl of nineteen, even if she has not yet worn the polish from her first pair of high-heeled shoes.

"It's astonishing," he said, "how little respect infirmity and age command in these days."

"I do respect you," she insisted, "especially your infirmity of purpose. You said you were going to ride by yourself. But, do you know, I don't believe you are of a particularly solitary disposition; are you?"

He laughed at first, then suddenly his face fell.

"Not from choice," he said, under his breath. Her quick ear heard, and she turned, semi-serious, questioning him with raised eyebrows.

"Nothing; I was just muttering. I've a villainous habit of muttering mushy nothings—"

"You did say something!"

"No; only ghoulish gabble; the mere murky mouthings of a meagre mind."

"You did . It's rude not to repeat it when I ask you."

"I didn't mean to be rude."

"Then repeat what you said to yourself."

"Do you wish me to?" he asked, raising his eyes so gravely that the smile faded from lip and voice when she answered: "I beg your pardon, Captain Selwyn. I did not know you were serious."

"Oh, I'm not," he returned lightly, "I'm never serious. No man who soliloquises can be taken seriously. Don't you know, Miss Erroll, that the crowning absurdity of all tragedy is the soliloquy?"

Her smile became delightfully uncertain; she did not quite understand him—though her instinct warned her that, for a second, something had menaced their understanding.

Riding forward with him through the crisp sunshine of mid-December, the word "tragedy" still sounding in her ears, her thoughts reverted naturally to the only tragedy besides her own which had ever come very near to her—his own.

Could he have meant that ? Did people mention such things after they had happened? Did they not rather conceal them, hide them deeper and deeper with the aid of time and the kindly years for a burial past all recollection?

Troubled, uncomfortably intent on evading every thought or train of ideas evoked, she put her mount to a gallop. But thought kept pace with her.

She was, of course, aware of the situation regarding Selwyn's domestic affairs; she could not very well have been kept long in ignorance of the facts; so Nina had told her carefully, leaving in the young girl's mind only a bewildered sympathy for man and wife whom a dreadful and incomprehensible catastrophe had overtaken; only an impression of something new and fearsome which she had hitherto been unaware of in the world, and which was to be added to her small but, unhappily, growing list of sad and incredible things.

The finality of the affair, according to Nina, was what had seemed to her the most distressing—as though those two were already dead people. She was unable to understand it. Could no glimmer of hope remain that, in that magic "some day" of all young minds, the evil mystery might dissolve? Could there be no living "happily ever after" in the wake of such a storm? She had managed to hope for that, and believe in it.