Richard Marsh - A Master of Deception

Before the dinner was half way through she was looking at him with something in her eyes which spoke to a similar something which was in his. He had forgotten the episode of the afternoon as if it had never been. This was the sort of girl he loved to have in front of him on the other side of a table-one who would eat what he ate, drink what he drank, do as he did; to whom he could say whatever he pleased. They joked on the subject of the absent Mr. Patterson.

"I wonder," she said, "what would happen if he walked in here at this very moment."

Rodney also wondered, for a second, in silence.

"For one thing, he'd spoil our evening, because he'd start you straight away off home."

"Would he? I should take some starting. I never am particularly afraid of him, and I'm not in the least when I've had two glasses of Montebello-rattling good bottle, this is. Thank you; that's the third. What beats me is why you're afraid of him. You don't strike me as being a person who's afraid of much. What would it matter if he did give you the key of the street, so far as his office is concerned? You'd easily find a better one. There's a mystery somewhere. Don't imagine, my dear old man, that I don't know so much. Why has he such an objection to you? And why are you so much in awe of him? Now's your time-out with it. Make a clean breast of it-between this glass and the next."

class="normal""I can't tell you why he objects to me, but I can assure you that I don't stand in awe of him."

"Rubbish! If you don't, why have you kept away from me in the way you have done? – you exasperating boy! I console myself with the reflection that if I'm losing your society you're losing mine; because I'll bet a trifle that you're just as fond of seeing me every other day or so as I am of seeing you."

"You're right there. If I saw you all day and every day I shouldn't mind."

"I'm not so sure of that; there's a limit. It might be all right for a time; but, my hat! wouldn't you get bored after a month of nothing else but my society!"

"What price you-after a month of nothing else but me?"

She seemed to reflect before she answered.

"You see, it's like this; if you and I were alone together for a month, or longer-"

"I'd be willing to make it longer."

"Would you?"

She looked at him with shining eyes.

"Rodney, you're a dear. If we were to be alone together for so long as that, we should have to alter the pace. I fancy that where a man and a woman are concerned it's the pace that kills."

"What do you mean by that, oh, wise one?"

"If you had one pound of chocs to eat you might gobble them down as fast as you please, and no harm would be done."

"You've tried it?"

"Perhaps! But if you had a ton you would have to go, oh so carefully, or you would be so sick. But we meet so seldom that when we do we want to gobble; I know that, so far as I am concerned, I want to get as much of you as I possibly can during the short time we are together."

"Same here-only more so."

They smiled at each other across the little table. Then, glancing down, she transferred her attention to what was on her plate.

"But, of course, if we weren't to part for a month-or more-it would be different."

"True, oh, queen! And suppose we were to marry!"

"I don't think I'd mind."

"I'm pretty nearly sure I shouldn't."

"That's very sweet of you to say so. Only-there's dad!"

"There's very much dad!"

"He can forbid my seeing you, and that kind of thing, if he pleases; and if he finds out that I've been disobedient he'll make himself extremely disagreeable. Still, I fancy I could manage him. But if I were to marry you against his wishes, I don't believe I'd ever get another penny from him, living or dead; and as you have no immediate promise of becoming a millionaire, that would be awkward for both of us."

"It would. All the same, don't you think it would be comfy if we were secretly engaged-in the event of anything happening to him?"

class="normal""What's going to happen?"

"Anything-living the sort of life he does."

"Are you hinting that there's anything the matter with his health?"

"My dear girl, you've only to use your eyes to be aware that a doctor would tell him that he's the kind of man who ought to swear off everything. And does he?"

"You make me feel all shivery. You talk as if you expected him to die right off."

"We've all had sentence of capital punishment pronounced against us, and, though we don't know when it will be put into execution, in such a case as his it's possible to guess that it mayn't be very long postponed."

"Rodney! I don't like to hear you talk like that. He's fond of asking me questions about you; I hate telling lies; if we were engaged, and he were in one of his cross-examining moods, I might find myself in a fix."

He played with his knife while a waiter was bringing another course.

"Consider something else. Let me put a hypothetical case. Suppose a girl were to make a dead set at me, I might like to be able to tell her that I'm engaged already."

"Who's the girl?"

"The girl, like the case, is hypothetical; but I can conceive of circumstances in which I should like to feel that we were engaged."

class="normal""You've changed your mind. A short time ago you were all the other way."

"I've been considering matters. Say, for example, that your father puts his foot down, and that we don't see each other again for an indefinite period. Do you not think that then I should not like to feel that we were engaged?"

"You can feel that we're engaged all you want to, without our setting it down in black and white. Aren't you as sure of me as if I were your wife already? Don't you know that if circumstances permitted I would become your wife? Do you wish me to understand that I'm not as sure of you?"

"Gladys, you're a goose. So far as I'm concerned, I'm inclined to the opinion that I'd like you to be my wife to-night."

"It's you who are the goose. As if we didn't understand each other far too well to render it necessary to have things placed on a ceremonious footing. We can do without formulas."

On the Sunday Rodney Elmore kept his engagement with the third young woman, with the punctiliousness on which, in such matters, he prided himself. He went down to Brighton on the Pullman, Limited, and was met at the station by Mary Carmichael. He exclaimed, at sight of her:

"You angel! – to come and meet me!"

"I'm not quite sure that I did come to meet you, in the strict sense. I'd nothing to do; I've always a feeling that the queerest lot of people come by this train, the oddest sort of week-enders-didn't you notice how the platform reeked of perfume? – so that its arrival's generally worth seeing. Besides, between ourselves, I'd a kind of notion that Tom might come by it. If he had I should have ignored you utterly, and should have explained that something within told me he was coming, and that was why I was here. Wouldn't he have been enraptured?"

As he listened-and, in his observant way, took in the details of her appearance-Rodney was conscious, not for the first time, of how beneficent Providence had been in making girls in such variety. Stella, emblematic of the domestic virtues; Gladys, for physical pleasure; Mary, suggestive of the arch in the sky, which, though a man may walk for many days, he shall never find the end of. To his thinking she was as many-tinted as a rainbow; as beautiful, as elusive. He doubted if the average man were her husband whether he would have any but the dimmest comprehension of her at the finish; she had a knack of surprising even him. He had known her a good long time, yet he admitted to himself that in many respects she was still wholly beyond his comprehension, and he prided himself, not without reason, on his gift for understanding persons of the opposite sex.