Man and Maid Part 24

"Yes; married by the 30th of June, introduce my wife to the tenants on Christmas Eve, or no fortune. That was my uncle's last and worst joke; he was reputed a funny man in his time. The alternatives are pretty ghastly either way."

"Doesn't that rather depend?" Sylvia queried, with a swift blue glance from under veiling lashes.

Michael answered her with a look, the male counterpart of her own, from dark Devon eyes, the upper lid arched in a perfect semicircle over pure grey. "Yes; but my wife must have a hundred a year of her own in Consols, to protect me from fortune-hunters--lone, lorn lamb that I am!"

Sylvia emphasised the sigh with which she admitted her indigence. Her pretty eyebrows owned plaintively that she, a struggling artist, had no claim against the nation.

"Mary has just a hundred a year," she said, her voice low-toned as she looked across the room to where, demure in braided locks and grey camlet, her companion sat knitting.

"I daresay," Michael answered indifferently, following her eyes' flight and her tone's low pitch; "but she's young. I shall advertise for an elderly housekeeper. And _qui vivra verra_."

The words, lightly cast on the thin soil of a foolish word-play with a pretty woman, bore fruit.

A week later Michael Wood stood aghast before a tray heaped with letters, answers to his advertis.e.m.e.nt:

"Housekeeper wanted. Must be middle-aged. The older the better.

Salary, 500 a year."

Not much, he had thought, 500 a year--if, by paying it, he might win a wife who would ent.i.tle him to an annual 15,000, whose declining years he might kindly cheer, and whose death would set him free to marry a wife whom he could love. His fancy drifted pleasantly towards Sylvia.

Michael was a lazy man, who bristled with business instincts. He telephoned to the nearest "typewriters' a.s.sociation" for a secretary, and to this young woman he committed the charge of answering the letters which his advertis.e.m.e.nt had drawn forth. The answer was to be the same to all:

"Call at 17 Hare Court, Temple, between 11 and 1."

And the dates fixed for such calling were arranged to allow about fifty interviews daily for the next week or two, for Michael was a bold man as well as a lazy one. The next morning, faultlessly dressed, with carnations in his b.u.t.tonhole, he composed himself in his pleasant oak-furnished room to await his first batch of callers.

They came. And Michael, strong in his unswerving determination not to forfeit his chance of inheriting the 15,000 a year left him under his mad uncle's mad will, saw them all, one after the other.

But he did not like any of them. They were old; that he did not mind--it was, indeed, of the essence of the contract. But they were frowsy, too, with reticules of scarred brownish leather, and mangy fur tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, worn fringes, and beaded mantles, whence time and poverty had clawed handfuls of the bright beads. Each of them was, as a wife, even as a wife in name, impossible. The task of rejection was softened to his hand by the fact that not one of them could boast the necessary hundred a year in Consols.

The interviews over, Michael, his spirit crushed by the spectacle of so many women anxious to find a refuge at an age when their children and grandchildren should, in their own homes, have been rising up to call them blessed, went to lounge a restorative hour in Sylvia's bright little studio, and laugh with her over his dilemma. He would have liked to sigh with her, too, but the pathos of the homeless old women escaped her. She saw only the humour of the situation.

"There's no harm done, if it amuses you," she said, "but you'll never marry an old woman."

"Fifteen thousand pounds a year," said Michael softly.

Next day more poor old ladies, all eager, anxious, ineligible.

It was on the third day that the old lady in dove-colour came in, sweet as a pressed flower in an old love-letter, dainty as a pigeon in spring.

Her white hair, the white lace of her collar, the black lace of her mantle, her beautiful little hands in their perfect, dove-coloured gloves, all appealed irresistibly to Michael's aesthetic sense.

"What an ideal housekeeper!" he said to himself, as he placed a chair for her. And then an odd thrill of discomfort and shame shot through him. This delicate, dainty old lady--he was to insult her by a form of marriage, and then to live near her, waiting for her death? No; it was impossible--the whole thing was impossible. He found himself in the middle of a sentence.

"And so I fear I am already suited."

The old lady raised eyebrows as delicate as Sylvia's own.

"Hardly, I think," she said, "since your servant admitted me to an interview with you. May I ask you one or two questions before you finally decide against me?"

The voice was low and soft--the voice men loved in the early sixties, before the shrill shriek became the voice of fashionable ladies.

"Certainly," Michael said. He could hardly say less, and in the tumult of embarra.s.sment that had swept over him, he could not for his life have said more.

The old lady went on. "I am competent to manage a house. I can read aloud fairly well. I am a good nurse in case of sickness; and I am accustomed to entertain. But I gather from the amount of the salary offered that some other duties would be required of me?"

"That's clever of her, too," Michael thought; "none of the others saw that."

He bowed.

"Would you enlighten me," she went on, "as to the nature of the services you would require?"

"Ah--yes--of course," he said glibly, and then stopped short.

"From your hesitation," said the old lady, with unimpaired self-possession, "I gather that the matter involves an explanation of some delicacy, or else--pardon the egotism--that my appearance is personally unpleasing to you."

"No--oh, _no_," Michael said very eagerly; "on the contrary, if I may say so, it is just because you are so--so--exactly my ideal of an old lady, that I feel I can't go on with the business; and that's put stupidly, so that it sounds like an insult. Please forgive me."

She looked him straight in the eyes through her gold-rimmed spectacles.

"You see, I am old enough to be your grandmother," she said. "Why not tell me the truth?"

And, to his horror and astonishment, he told it.

"And that's what I meant to do," he ended. "It was a mad idea, and I see now that if I do it at all I must marry some one who is not--who is not like you. You have made me ashamed of myself."

A spot of pink colour glowed in her faded cheek. The old lady put up her gloved hand and touched her cheek, as if it burned. She got up and walked to the window, and stood there, looking out.

"If you _are_ going to do it," she said in a voice that was hardly audible, "I have been used to live among beautiful surroundings--I should like to end my days among them. I do not come of a long-lived family. You would not have long to wait for your freedom and your second wife."

Never in all his days had Michael known so sharp an agony of embarra.s.sment.

"When must you be married," the old lady went on calmly, "to ensure your fortunes and estates?"

"In about a month."

"Well, Mr Wood, I make you a formal offer of marriage, and for reference I can give you my banker and my solicitor----"

Her voice was calm; it was his voice that trembled as he answered: "You are too good. I can't see that it would be fair to you. May I think about it till to-morrow?"

The contrast between the old lady's dainty correctness of attire and speech, and the extraordinary unconventionality of her proposal, made Michael's brain reel. She turned from the window, again looked him fairly in the eyes, and said: "You will not find me unconventional in other matters. This is purely an affair of business, and I approach it in a business spirit. You would be giving a home to one who wants it, and I should be helping you to what you need still more. I have never been married. I never wished to marry; and when I am dead---- Don't look so horror-stricken. I should not die any sooner because you--you had married me. My name is Thrale--Frances Thrale. That is my card that you have been pulling to pieces while you have been talking to me. Shall I come and see you again at this time to-morrow? It is not a subject on which I should wish either to write or to receive letters."

He could only acquiesce. At the door the old lady turned.

"If you think I look so old as to make your marriage too absurd," she said--and now, for the first time, her voice trembled--"I could dye my hair."

"Oh no," Michael said, "your hair is beautiful. Good-bye, and thank you."

As the old lady went down the dusty Temple stairs she stamped a small foot angrily on the worn oak.