Enter Bridget Part 3

"Golfney Place----"

"To renew my acquaintance with Bridget," said Carrissima.

"Quite unnecessary!" retorted Lawrence.

"Far better if you had stayed away."

"Why?" demanded Carrissima.

"Phoebe suggested going," said Lawrence; "but I wouldn't allow it for a moment."

"It's certain," cried Carrissima, "that she is a standing example of the way not to treat a husband. How ridiculous to form a prejudice against any one you have never even seen."

"If she had been the sort of woman I should like my wife to call upon,"

said Lawrence, "she wouldn't have allowed Mark to see her so often. A woman who lives alone! Why on earth couldn't you leave her to stew in her own juice? I don't wish to see my brother-in-law make an idiot of himself."

"Anyhow," returned Carrissima, "it can't have been Mark's account that set you against her."

"Oh, of course," exclaimed Lawrence, "Mark would swallow anything."

"It is his business in life," said Carrissima, with a laugh, "to make other people swallow things, isn't it, Lawrence?"

He went away dissatisfied, and the following Monday afternoon Bridget Rosser paid her first visit to Number 13, Grandison Square. Although her movements were even and unhurried, her appearance in her out-of-door garments was conspicuous. The brim of her hat struck Carrissima as being a shade wider than that of any one else, her dress closer about the ankles, while yet she wore it without a trace of anything that could be called vulgarity.

"I should have come even earlier," she said, taking Carrissima's hand; "but I only got back from Sandbay this morning. I have been staying since Sat.u.r.day with my aunts; the dearest little Dresden china aunts in the world. They are my mother's sisters and they give me no peace.

You see, they are terribly Early Victorian. You were saying that your brother insisted that no woman under forty is capable of looking after herself. Well, Aunt Jane and Aunt Frances think honestly that I am going to perdition as fast as I can."

"I suppose," suggested Carrissima, "they would like you to live with them?"

"Oh dear! they are quite mad about it. You know everybody is mad about something! They write every week, but I positively couldn't endure it.

Of course my father did his best to put me off, although I believe his chief objection was that they had a hatred of tobacco."

"Still," said Carrissima, "I don't suppose you are a confirmed smoker and they might be good for you. I don't think I am Early Victorian, but still----"

"Oh, I know!" cried Bridget; "but fancy wasting any little sweetness one may possess on the desert air of Sandbay. I should simply go mad--stark, staring mad. Carrissima," she continued, "I suppose you know heaps and heaps of people. So did I when my father was alive--people who do things, whose names you read in the papers, who think for themselves and make others follow their lead. Oh, I long to be in the movement!"

Rising slowly from her chair, and with perfect coolness, she took a framed cabinet photograph from a table between the windows.

"Is this Colonel Faversham?" she asked. "I remember him now quite distinctly."

The portrait showed a man of middle height, rather taller than Lawrence, with much broader shoulders. His face had an almost dissipated expression, and he wore a large, pointed moustache. His hair was still plentiful, although it had been grey when Bridget last saw him; his eyes were somewhat prominent, and he held himself unusually erect.

"How old is your father?" asked Bridget.

"Sixty-five," was the answer.

"He doesn't look so old!"

"Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to hear you say that!"

cried Carrissima. "But the photograph was taken some years ago."

"Have you only one brother?" asked Bridget.

"Only one living. I had another brother and a sister. They came between me and Lawrence, and died a long time ago."

"I love looking at photographs," said Bridget, putting that of Colonel Faversham back in its place. "I hope you don't mind--whose is this?"

she inquired, taking up another frame.

"Oh, that is Jimmy!" cried Carrissima.

"Why do you laugh?" said Bridget.

"I really don't quite know. There's nothing very comical in his appearance, is there? Only somehow one does laugh about him."

"I think," said Bridget, "he is one of the pleasantest-looking men I have ever seen."

"Yes, Jimmy has a nice face," returned Carrissima.

"Of course," Bridget continued, with her eyes still on the photograph, "it isn't so distinctly handsome as Mark's."

"Perhaps not," was the answer; "I thought you had seen him while we were at Crowborough. Mr. Clynesworth. Although his name is Rupert everybody has called him Jimmy since his school days."

"I remember Miss Clynesworth," suggested Bridget.

"His sister--or, rather, his half-sister. She might be his mother by the way she tries to look after him."

"Does he require a lot of looking after?" asked Bridget.

"Oh, I don't know," said Carrissima. "He is one of those men who somehow give you the impression they could do wonderful things, and if they would. He is immensely rich and nice-looking, as you say, and people do their best to spoil him. I won't insist that they have succeeded. Anyhow, he is immensely good to Sybil. Her father was a physician, and she lost her mother when she was a small child. When she was about ten Doctor Clynesworth married again. His second wife was very wealthy, and, to judge by her portrait at Upper Grosvenor Street, she must have been a beautiful woman. All her money went to her only son--Jimmy, but Doctor Clynesworth had very little to leave to Sybil. Jimmy insisted that she should continue to live at the house in which her father had practised, and he is immensely fond of her although they are about as different as any two persons can possibly be. Should you," asked Carrissima, "like me to ask her to come and see you?"

"Do you think she would?" said Bridget, returning the photograph to the table.

"I am certain she would be delighted, especially if I explain that you have no one to chaperon you," replied Carrissima, whereupon Bridget smiled as if she were quite convinced of her ability to take care of herself. On saying "Good-bye" Carrissima made a point of urging her to come to Grandison Square as often as she felt inclined, and from that time forth she regarded Miss Rosser with curiously mingled sensations.

While it proved difficult to refrain from liking the girl, with her frank joyousness, her youthful zest in life, the possession of such qualities furnished an additional excuse for that jealousy which still dominated Carrissima's waking thoughts. Without forming any definite design, the idea certainly occurred to her that Mark might come to occupy a smaller s.p.a.ce in Bridget's sphere of things, if only she knew a few more of his kind.

The following afternoon Carrissima, according to her promise, went to Upper Grosvenor Street, where lived Sybil Clynesworth and, when he pleased, Jimmy. He had, however, a country house at Atlinghurst, and when he stayed in London sometimes preferred a room at one of his clubs, to that which his sister always kept in readiness.

On reaching the house Carrissima was disappointed to hear that Sybil had gone away the previous morning.

"When do you expect her back?" asked Carrissima.

"I have no idea," said the butler; "but Mr. Clynesworth might know."

"Mr. Clynesworth is in London then?" cried Carrissima, and in fact, he came out of the dining-room on the left of the hall the next moment.

The Favershams, the Drivers and the Clynesworths were old friends.

They had known each other from their earliest years, and the three boys had gone to the same preparatory school at Brighton. Sybil, considerably the oldest of the group, tried still to hope that Jimmy would marry Carrissima, although for that matter, she would have rejoiced to see him the husband of any woman whom she could love.