The Oyster Part 26

He wrote drearily, for his heart was in his work, to Canon Bright.

"All such a splendid success," Dollie's friends had said to her, and kindly Royalty, with its love of true charity, asked her to a select garden-party.

CHAPTER IX

"I am going to Cliff End on Friday, Estelle. Will you come? We'll start at eight, and get back about ten."

"I'd love to. London is baking me."

June heat glowed through the huge city; the pavements were hot under the fierce sun; the air felt used up, heavy; the packed streets vibrated under their load of wheeled monsters, of swooping, gliding taxis. Everyone was going somewhere; busy, smiling, full of the business of pleasure. Old faces were lined under powder and face cream; young ones had lost their colour a little.

Perfectly gowned, with hair in the order of the moment, faintly scented, smiling, woman, hawk-like, swooped on her natural prey, man.

Soft debutantes, white-robed, hopeful, fluttered as they dreamt of the matches which they might make. Anxious, youthful mothers spent their all, and more, to give their girls a chance. Older girls smiled more confidently, yet were less hopeful of drawing some great prize.

There, walking along quietly in morning coat, a slouching, keen-eyed young fellow; a flutter as he pa.s.ses.

"See, Audrey! Lord Golderly. Evie, bow; did you not see Lord Golderly?"

Or from more intimate friends: "Sukey! There's Joss. Call him over!

He's thinner than ever! Mum! there's Jossy! Ask him to our little dinner--he might come."

The Marquis of Golderly, with eighty thousand a year, with a panelled house in Yorks.h.i.+re, a castle in Scotland, with Golderly House in Piccadilly--let now to rich Americans--had strolled by. A pleasant-looking, well-made boy, with his mind full of his new polo pony, and not in the least interested in the Ladies Evie and Audrey, or in his cousin Sukey. Some day he must marry, but not yet.

Another flutter: a girl runs laughing to catch her toy pom, showing her lithe, active limbs as she slips along.

"There comes Sir Edward Castleknock," a little elderly man, his income lately depleted by a white marble tombstone to his second wife, but he has no heir; he must marry again, and he is a rich man. The youthful mothers signal to him, stopping him carelessly, calling to their girls as he stops.

"Here's my little Evie, grown up, Sir Edward; you used to give her sugared almonds. Makes one so ancient, doesn't it?"

Evie musters a smile for the memory of sugared almonds. She says something conventional with a show of excellent teeth. Sir Edward is musical. Milady invites him to hear the dear child sing; to lunch on Sunday--one-thirty--the old address.

One mamma has got a start of her compet.i.tors; captured the widower as he emerges from the sombre draped doors of his mourning.

"To sing?" Lady Evie wrinkles a pretty nose. "Well, Mumsie, don't let it get past 'Violets' and that French song; they are the only two dear old Monsieur could ever get me to sing in tune."

They work hard, these mothers, for their daughters, for what is life without riches and places, and a niche in Society's walls? What waste of bringing up, of French and German governesses, of dancing lessons and swimming lessons, and dull cla.s.ses, if Evie or Audrey merely married some ordinary youngster, to disappear with him upon a couple of thousand a year!

So many compet.i.tors, so few prizes. The race is to the swift, and the strong, and the astute; to the matron who knows not only how to seize opportunity, but not to release it again until it puts a ring upon her daughter's ma.s.saged hand.

So Evie and Sue and Audrey must stifle the natural folly which nature has placed in their fresh young hearts, and help "Mum" to the proud hour when her daughter will count her wedding presents by the hundred, and smile sweetly on the bevy of maidens who are still running in the race.

Some, without kindly, clever mothers, must fight for themselves, and in the fight use strange methods to attain their prize. Crooked ways, cut-off corners, wrong side of posts; yet they too smile quite as contentedly if they win at the last.

Young Golderly has been stopped a dozen times; he has seen sweet smiles, caught flas.h.i.+ng glances. Evie has called attention to her lovely feet by knocking one against a chair. Audrey has whispered to him that she _adores_ polo; will be at Hurlingham to-day.

"To see you hit a goal," she coos; "oh! how I shall clap!"

"She may be a little wild--my new pony," he says, his mind still full of that piece of bay symmetry, a race-horse in miniature, and slips away. Golderly had come to meet a friend who would have talked of nothing but polo ponies; he has missed him, and the pretty runners of the race strive and jostle until they bore him sadly.

He turns to slip away, to get back to his club by a round across the Park, and then gasps, smitten roughly, his hat b.u.mping on to the path.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Blow these hobble skirts. Blow the things!" says a girl's voice.

Kitty Harrington, a big, clumsy maiden, freckles powdering her clear skin. "A badly-dressed touzled young woman," is the verdict pa.s.sed on her.

Kitty is having her season without any clever, youthful mother; she is under the charge of her aunt, Lady Harrington, who does not take much notice of her, and thinks the girl a foolish tomboy.

"Snap was running out to where the motors are," says Kitty, guilelessly, "and he might get hurt. We were doing a scamper on the gra.s.s."

Snap is a rough terrier of uncertain pedigree, unwillingly confined in London.

"He ties his lead round people's legs if I drag him through the crowd,"

Kitty goes on. "So we keep away and make believe it's country. Oh! if it was! And then this skirt tripped me."

Young Golderly looks at her. A big, rather clumsy girl, but open-eyed, fresh from eighteen years of country life; a girl who has learnt to swim in the open sea; whose gymnastics have been practised up trees.

"They are rotten things to try to run in," he says, smiling boyishly, "those skirts. Haven't I met you somewhere? I'm Lord Golderly." Here he pursues his hat, which Snap is treating as if it were a rat.

"Oh! goodness! Oh! I have been clumsy." Kitty is all pink cheeks and tearful eyes; she dabs them surrept.i.tiously. "Oh! your poor best hat--all torn! Oh! I am a clumsy girl--never meant for London. No, I haven't met you. I'm Miss Harrington--Lady Harrington's niece."

"I know her!" Jossy, master of eighty thousand a year, grins as he examines his hat brim. "Are you going to the match to-day--to Hurlingham?"

"N--no," Kitty's lips droop. "Auntie's made up her party! And oh! I do love polo. We play at home, the boys and I. I've such a pony! Have you got a nice one?"

"A nice one!" Young Golderly grins again; this girl is like a breath of fresh country air blowing across the moorlands. Evidently his name conveys nothing to her.

"I've twenty," he says, laughing.

"Oh, then you're rich! How jolly! If I were rich--"

"Well?" he asks.

Kitty puts her head on one side.

"I'd have hunters; three of them, all my own. Not the boys', which I borrow. And I'd have a motor and drive it; and give Mumsie a new fur coat--hers is old. And I'd have otter hounds."

"Oh, you like that too? Otter hunting," he says eagerly.

"Oh, yes!" Kitty shows a set of strong even teeth. "It's so jolly up in the early mornings when all the gra.s.s is was.h.i.+ng in dew; and hunting up the rivers; and the dogs working. And then isn't breakfast good?" says Kitty, prosaically. "I'd cook mine on the river bank. I make fine scrambled eggs, and I can toast bacon till it's just sumptuous."

Of course Kitty can have no idea that Golderly has hunted a pack of otter hounds for some years.

The boy looks at her again. She is so fresh and natural and friendly.

The skin under her freckles is singularly fine; her eyes are bright, her active figure at its worst in a ridiculous hobble skirt.