The Datchet Diamonds Part 6

The suggestion was not by any means to Mr. Paxton's taste. He considered for a few seconds, seeming to hesitate. She perceived that her proposition had not been received with over-much enthusiasm.

"Surely you don't mind our telling Charlie?"

"No"--his voice was a little surly--"I don't mind."

Miss Charlotte Wentworth, better known to her intimates as Charlie, was in some respects a young woman of the day. She was thirty, and she wrote for her daily bread--wrote anything, from "Fashions" to "Poetry," from "Fiction" to "Our Family Column." She had won for herself a position of tolerable comfort, earning something over five-hundred a year with satisfactory regularity. To state that is equivalent to saying that, on her own lines, she was a woman of the world, a citizen of the New Bohemia, capable of holding something more than her own in most circ.u.mstances in which she might find herself placed, with most, if not all, of the sentiment which is supposed to be a feminine attribute knocked out of her. She was not bad-looking; dressed well, with a suggestion of masculinity; wore pince-nez, and did whatsoever it pleased her to do. Differing though they did from each other in so many respects, she and Daisy Strong had been the friends of years. When Mrs. Strong had died, and Daisy was left alone, Miss Wentworth had insisted on their setting up together, at least temporarily, a joint establishment, an arrangement from which there could be no sort of doubt that Miss Strong received pecuniary advantage. Mr. Paxton was not Miss Wentworth's lover--nor, to be frank, was she his; the consequence of which was that her brusque, outspoken method of speech conveyed to his senses--whether she intended it or not--a suggestion of scorn, being wont to touch him on just those places where he found himself least capable of resistance.

When the lovers entered, Miss Wentworth, with her person on one chair and her feet on another, was engaged in reading a magazine which had just come in. Miss Strong, desiring to avoid the preliminary skirmishing which experience had taught her was apt to take place whenever her friend and her lover met, plunged at once into the heart of the subject which was uppermost in her mind.

"I've brought you some good news--at least I think it is good news."

Miss Wentworth looked at her--a cross-examining sort of look--then at Mr. Paxton, then back at the lady.

"Good news? One always does a.s.sociate good news with Mr. Paxton. The premonition becomes a kind of habit."

The gentleman thus alluded to winced. Miss Strong did not appear to altogether relish the lady's words. She burst out with the news of which she spoke, as if with the intention of preventing a retort coming from Mr. Paxton.

"We are going to be married."

Miss Wentworth displayed a possibly intentional mental opacity.

"Who is going to be married?"

"Charlie! How aggravating you are! Cyril and I, of course."

Miss Wentworth resumed her reading.

"Indeed! Well, it's no affair of mine. Of course, therefore, I should not presume to make any remark. If, however, any one should invite me to comment on the subject, I trust that I shall be at the same time informed as to what is the nature of the comment which I am invited to make."

Miss Strong went and knelt at Miss Wentworth's side, resting her elbows on that lady's knees.

"Charlie, won't you give us your congratulations?"

Miss Wentworth replied, without removing her glance from off the open page of her magazine--

"With pleasure--if you want them. Also, if you want it, I will give you eighteenpence--or even half a crown."

"Charlie! How unkind you are!"

Miss Wentworth lowered her magazine. She looked Miss Strong straight in the face. Tears were in the young lady's eyes, but Miss Wentworth showed not the slightest sign of being moved by them.

"Unfortunately, as it would seem, though I am a woman, I do occasionally allow my conduct to be regulated by the dictates of common sense. When I see another woman making a dash towards suicide I don't, as a rule, give her a helping push, merely because she happens to be my friend; preferentially, if I can, I hold her back, even though it be against her will. I have yet to learn in what respect Mr. Paxton--who, I gladly admit, is personally a most charming gentleman--is qualified to marry even a kitchen-maid. Permit me to finish. You told me last night that Mr. Paxton was going a bull on Eries; that if they fell one he would be ruined. In the course of the day they have fallen more than one; therefore, if what you told me was correct, he must be ruined pretty badly. Then, without any sort of warning, you come and inform me that you intend to marry the man who is doubly and trebly ruined, and you expect me to offer my congratulations on the event offhand! On the evidence which is at present before the court it can't be done."

"Why shouldn't I marry him, even if he is ruined?"

"Why, indeed? I am a supporter of the liberty of the female subject, if ever there was one. Why, if you wished to, shouldn't you marry a crossing-sweep? I don't know. But, on the other hand, I don't see on what grounds you could expect me to offer you my congratulations if you did."

"Cyril is not a crossing-sweep."

"No; he has not even that trade at his finger-ends."

"Charlie!" Mr. Paxton made as if to speak. Miss Strong motioned him to silence with a movement of her hand. "As it happens, you are quite wrong. It is true that Cyril lost by Eries, but he has more than made up for that loss by what he has gained in another direction. Instead of being ruined, he has made a fortune."

"Indeed! Pray, how did he manage to do that? I always did think that Mr. Paxton was a remarkable man. My confidence in him is beginning to be more than justified. And may I, at the same time, ask what is Mr.

Paxton's notion of a fortune?"

"Tell her, Cyril, all about it."

Thus suffered at last to deliver his soul in words, Mr. Paxton evinced a degree of resentment which, perhaps, on the whole, was not unjustified.

"I fail to see that there is any necessity for me to justify myself in Miss Wentworth's eyes, who, on more than one occasion, has shown an amount of interest in my affairs which was only not impertinent because it happened to be feminine. But since, Daisy, you appear to be anxious that Miss Wentworth should be as satisfied on the subject of my prospects and position as you yourself are, I will do the best I can. And therefore Miss Wentworth, I would explain that my notion of a fortune is a sum equivalent to some ten or twenty times the amount you yourself are likely to be able to earn in the whole of your life."

"That ought to figure up nicely. And do you really mean to say, Mr.

Paxton, that you have lost one fortune and gained another in the course of a single day?"

"I do."

"How was it done? I wish you would put me in the way of doing it for myself."

"Surely, Miss Wentworth, a woman of your capacity is qualified to do anything she pleases without prompting, and solely on her own initiative!"

"Thanks, Mr. Paxton, it's very kind of you to say such pretty things, but I am afraid you estimate my capacity a thought too highly." Miss Wentworth turned in her seat, so as to have the gentleman within her range of vision. "You understand, Mr. Paxton, very well how it is.

Daisy is a lonely child. She belongs to the order of women who were in fashion before the commercial instinct became ingrained in the feminine const.i.tution. She wants looking after. There are only Mr.

Franklyn and myself to look after her. Satisfy me that, after all liabilities are settled, there is a substantial balance on the right side of your account, and I will congratulate you both."

"That, at the moment, I cannot do. But I will do this. I will undertake, in less than a fortnight, to prove myself the possessor of possibly something like a quarter of a million, and certainly of a hundred thousand pounds."

"A quarter of a million! A hundred thousand pounds! Such figures warm one's blood. One will almost begin to wonder, Mr. Paxton, if you can have come by them honestly."

The words were uttered lightly. Mr. Paxton chose to take them as if they had been meant in earnest. His cheeks flushed. His eyes flamed fire. He stood up, so beside himself with rage that it was a second or two before he could regain sufficient self-control to enable him to speak.

"Miss Wentworth, how dare you say such a thing! I have endured more from you than any man ought to endure from any woman. But when you charge me with dishonesty it is too much, even from you to me. You take advantage of your s.e.x to address to me language for which, were the speaker a man, I would thrash him within an inch of his life."

Miss Strong, with white face, looked from one to the other.

"Cyril, she didn't mean what you think. Tell him, Charlie, that you didn't mean what he thinks."

Through her gla.s.ses Miss Wentworth surveyed the angry man with shrewd, unfaltering eyes.

"Really, Mr. Paxton puts me in a difficult position. He is so quick to take offence where none was intended, that one hardly knows what to think. Surely, when a man shows such heat and such violence in resenting what only a distorted imagination could twist into an actual imputation of dishonesty, it suggests that his own conscience can scarcely be quite clear."

Mr. Paxton seemed struggling as if to speak, and then to put a bridle on his tongue. The truth is, that he was only too conscious that he was in no mood to be a match in argument--or, for the matter of that, in retort either--for this clear-sighted lady. He felt that, if he was not careful, he would go too far; that he had better take himself away before he had made a greater exhibition of himself than he had already. So he contented himself with what was meant as an a.s.sumption of dignity.

"That is enough. Between you and me nothing more need, or can, be said. I have the honour, Miss Wentworth, of wishing you goodnight."

She showed no symptoms of being crushed. On the contrary, she retained her coolness, and also her powers of exasperation.

"Good-night, Mr. Paxton. Shall I ring the bell, Daisy, or will you show Mr. Paxton to the door?"