II
The Goddess Girl
ROM the terrace, through the French window, came Georgie, sunburnt and in flannels, to fling himself into an easy chair facing me; facing also the window. "Being engaged to Anne," he said abruptly, "is the very deuce."
I put down my book at heart full of sympathy; outwardly full of reproof. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," I said sternly.
"That's all very well," he moodily replied. "Perhaps I am; but it's driving me to my grave all the same, and if something doesn't happen pretty soon it'll be a precious early one."
I smiled. Georgie, in the bloom of healthy youth, gave no promise of premature decline.
"Be a man," said I encouragingly. "Look the thing in the face. After all, you know, Georgie, you asked the girl to marry you. You can't, in common decency, back out now."
"You're a hard-hearted brute." Georgie kicked viciously at the leg of the writing-table. "And it's all very well for you, engaged to a little peach of a girl that you've deliberately stolen from me; it 's all very well for you to talk about being a man and sticking to it. It is because I am a man that I can't. Think of Anne, and just imagine yourself in my place."
"Heaven forbid!" I cried hastily.
"Anne was never my idea of love's young dream. But you—"
"Oh, yes." Georgie flung his cap at a bronze bust in the corner of the library. "Rub it in! Do! Tell me it was all my own fault! You might have the sense to know that things are a jolly sight harder to bear when you've brought them on yourself."
"I do know," said I gently. And, indeed, I had never for a moment imagined that this engagement had been the unassisted doing of our light-hearted, ingenuous Georgie. I knew Anne too well. I knew the value she set on Georgie's pretty property, and a certain speculative light, dominating her steady brown eyes, had illumined the dark pages of her mind for me to some purpose. I was, however, to marry her sister. And I was too fond of Georgie to wish him to do anything dishonorable. So far as I could see at present, there was no decent way of putting an end to the absurd engagement.
"Everyone tells me," Georgie said sadly, "that Anne is a born manager. By the expression in her eye, I sometimes think she is going to manage me."
I laughed. I rather thought she was.
"Before we were engaged," he went on, "she was as sweet as sugar. She listened to me for hours at a time, and never seemed bored—as you do."
"Thanks," said I shortly. "I don't expect gratitude from you, but a little common—"
"Now it's Anne who does the talking—teaching me how to behave. She never found fault with my behavior in the old days. Now, it seems, I am full of faults. She doesn't like my manners.""Your what, Georgie?"
He flushed.
"Don't try to be funny. What's the matter with my manners, anyhow? She doesn't like slang. Imagine me without slang!"
"I can't," said I.
"When I think," he finished gloomily, "that for the rest of my life I shall have to sit at breakfast opposite a woman who is trying to reform me, I—oh, put yourself in my place ! It's unspeakable. I'd rather hang myself, and cut the whole sickening show."
I laughed kindly.
"Poor old chap," said I, "why do you drift into these things so painfully early, Georgie? You ought not to have thought of marriage for another five years. Cricket and football and hunting and all the rest of it ought to have been enough for any boy of your age. The thing's absurd. Oh, Georgie, Georgie, when the girls came out to play, why weren't you wise like your namesake? Why didn't you run away?"
"I wish to Heaven I had," he cried, with heartfelt fervor. And I wished he had too.
I rose and walked up and down the library trying vainly, for the hundredth time, to think of any possible way out of the muddle for the foolish boy. Many were the scrapes I had helped him out of; but this last one, entered into so lightly, bade fair to grow into a tragedy in the future, if it was allowed to continue.
Georgie's handsome face was clouded; Georgie's blue eyes held a shadow which had no business there; Georgie's pretty mouth drooped pathetically at the corners; and Georgie was only twenty-one.
"Martin," he said earnestly, "you know—it's not the sort of thing a fellow cares to talk about, but she—she tries to improve my mind. It's awful! Gives me books and things to read! When we were in town she made me take her to the National Gallery to see pictures. Pictures! Me! Just think of it. I don't mind looking at a picture with a story in it if there aren't too many of them, but when it comes to a lot of frowsy old Italian and Dutch saints, with wooden babies and cardboard halos! Oh, my hat!"
I laughed.
"Georgie," said I, "your education has been neglected. A course of Anne—"
He interrupted me with an unexpected laugh.
"I put her off pictures. I told her I didn't think a parson's daughter ought to spend her time worshipping saints. I said it wasn't consistent—graven images, and all that kind of thing, don't you know? I said if she went on I shouldn't with a clear conscience be able to take her to church any more. So either way I shall get out of one duty."
"What did Anne say to that?" I asked, much amused.
"She did n't say much, but she sighed over me and said, 'Barbarous Georgie,' or something insulting of that sort. And I can tell you, old chap, it makes a fellow feel pretty small beer when his girl sighs over him as if he were a kind of black sheep, and an awful example to the parish."
"I should think it did," said I slowly. "What's the matter now?"
For Georgie's eyes, fixed on the terrace outside the window, had radiantly lit up. All the shadows had vanished quite suddenly.
"There," said he softly. "That's the kind of thing to make a fellow tired of being engaged to Anne." Up the terrace steps, with a flaming sunset behind her, straight and tall, white-gowned and chestnut-haired, a smile of divine self-satisfaction on her lovely mouth, a light of victory in her sapphire eyes, came a Goddess Girl, mallet in hand. Georgie gasped. Under the library window she stopped—some flaunting rose in the perennial border caught her eye, perhaps. She stooped to smell it, and a clear, high, drawling voice carried well through the window and buffeted my sensitive ear.
" My!" said the Goddess Girl. "It's a real elegant rose!Come out, Georgie, and pick it for me."
I glanced in dismay at Georgie, who was for the moment crimson with conflicting emotions. "Colonial?" I murmured.
"Yes—no—Virginian. It's the most ripping little accent in the world." He rose quickly and went over to the window, already half open.
"Wait," I whispered imperatively. "Is this—Georgie, do you mean to tell me that this is the disgraceful meaning of your gloom?"
"I'm going out," said Georgie hastily.
"Georgie—for Heaven's sake, be careful.—Man, don't lose your head.—Remember Anne.—You—"
"Oh, chuck it!" Georgie cried ungratefully, and before I could speak again he was on the terrace gathering roses for the Goddess Girl.
The next day I went to town to see Drusilla, who was staying with an aunt. In a month we were to be married, and this aunt, luckily affluent, and bewitched by the little bride-elect, was playing fairy godmother to some purpose, for never a Cinderella was poorer than Drusilla, the parson's youngest daughter. Anne, the eldest, had money, it seemed, to spend upon her trousseau, but Anne was careful. She was, as Georgie had said, a good manager, and by foresight and thrift, somehow, she had saved.
That afternoon I dragged Drusilla away from her dressmakers and took her up the river from Twickenham. She sat on the scarlet cushions and beamed at me. Round and dimpled and merry—no Goddess Girl could compare with her in my eyes. But this is not Drusilla's story. And Georgie was on my mind still.
"Sometimes," she said presently, "when you forget me, and where you are, you look worried. What is it, Martin?"
"I was thinking of Georgie," said I slowly.
She blushed.
"Oh, Martin—not—"
"No," I replied firmly. "I am not jealous of him, or of any one else. Don't you think it. But Georgie's engagement is on my mind."
Her happy face clouded.
"Why? Is it—is it because you aren't fond of Anne?"
It seemed to me that this was a mild way of putting it, but nevertheless I gazed at her with deep reproach.
"Anne is your sister," said I, "and it is impossible for me to speak as freely as I could wish;but the fact remains that Georgie is unhappy."
She looked distressed.
"Oh—I am so sorry, Martin! Is it because of—?"
"Of you?" said I, again with firmness. "No, he is not fretting for you—why, I do not know, but he isn't. Quite the contrary. Yet he is not in love with Anne He never was in love with Anne. He never will be in—"
"Oh!" she interrupted me indignantly. "Then he should n't have asked her, he—oh, what a perfectly disgraceful boy he is!"
"He is a little rash," I said with a sigh, "but, dearest, even if she is your sister, we both know Anne. Of course, I won't say a word against her," I hastily added, "but honestly, Drusilla, do you think that Georgie had a chance of escaping when her mind was made up? Do you, in your inmost heart, consider that that absurd boy had a fair run for his money?"
Drusilla crimsoned and dropped her eyes. She was torn, I saw well enough, by conflicting emotions; a conscientious desire to defend her sister, and a heart-whole agreement with me.
"Anne is very clever," she said doubtfully.
"And Georgie is n't," cried I. "His worst enemy could not accuse him of diplomacy. He is, as you have often said, a dear boy; but an infant could lead him by the nose. We must put our heads together and do something for him."
She was silent.
"For him to break off the engagement," I went on, "is impossible. Only one thing remains. If Anne could be brought to see—"
"Anne," said Drusilla, firmly, "never could."
"If Anne," I pursued, "were to find—"
"Anne," Drusilla shook her head, "never will."
But an idea drifted into my head, and my hopes for Georgie were rising high. "Wait," said I, "let me speak." And then I unfolded my plan.
The next time I went to see Georgie I found Anne, dressed with her usual dark economy, waiting in the drawing-room for Georgie's mother.
"You have been up to see Drusilla?" she asked politely.
"Yes," I said slowly, watching her intently. "But my errand was a double one. I went to town principally to hunt for my best man. I found him."
"Who?" with obvious interest. "And why not Georgie?"
"Georgie won't. This is an old friend of mine," I said slowly. "A friend of childhood's hour. A man called Muggeridge with a monocle. Stout and sandy, but a good chap at heart. Lucky beggar!"
I sighed.
"Why lucky?" Her interest was growing.
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Oh, fortune's favorite, and that sort of thing, don't you know? Just had a legacy from an uncle running well into five figures. When you come to think of it, Anne, ninety thousand pounds will give an air of affluence even to our humble wedding."
"It will, indeed." Her voice was weighty with respect for him, and I felt that a little of it was even reflected on me, the prospective owner of such a groomsman, but at this moment we were interrupted by a sudden uproar coming from the hall. A banging and clattering and shrieking and bumping, followed instantly by shouts of happy laughter, broke upon our ears. I gazed at her in amazed inquiry.
"That," said she quietly, "is only Georgie. He is tobogganing down the stairs with a tea-tray—and Miss Gale."
"Miss Gale?"
"The American girl who is staying here. They seem to be enjoying themselves. They have piled all the fur rugs into a heap at the bottom of the stairs. You must have noticed them when you came through."
I hadn't, and I gazed at Anne for some seconds in silent reflection. Her brown eyes were calm and unperturbed. Didn't she mind Georgie's curious behavior, I wondered? Or was she so sure of him as to feel that this kind of thing did not matter? Before I could decide, Georgie's mother came in to us, large and handsome, and beaming with welcome for me; a demonstrative affection for Anne, her future daughter-in-law. But Anne did not stay long, and when she went away she slipped through the window into the garden. "It is a short cut," she said. Obviously, she wished to avoid the contents of the tea-tray in the hall. She had a genius for avoiding upsets, had Anne.
"Georgie is behaving in the most shocking manner," said his mother with affectionate pride. "I can't help feeling that I ought not to have invited that charming girl here at present; but what was I to do? She is only in England for the summer, and her mother was at school with me. She had to come."
Another shriek of happy laughter rang from the hall—another bump.
Georgie's mother smiled in spite of her fears. "They are like two children home from the holidays," she murmured. "But I can't help feeling a little anxious. There is Anne, you see," she sighed.
"Yes," I agreed. "There is Anne."
"Of course, Georgie is the dearest boy, and would n't think of hurting a fly—but he is very thoughtless. Anne, of course, can look after herself, but I don't like to think that he is trifling with this nice girl's young affections, when he is in honor bound—to Anne."
"No," said I gravely, "it is, as you say, hardly fair."
"But, Martin—between ourselves—I can't help feeling that this would have been a good deal more suitable in every way."
"Than Anne?" said I.
"Yes. These two have a thousand things in common. They play cricket together for hours. Georgie says she bowls straighter than nine men out of a dozen, and you know how Anne detests games. Then, of course, there is the river and the motor. The motor makes Anne nervous, when Georgie drives, and perhaps he is rather reckless. Dear boy, he ran over a pig the last time he took her out, and she has steadily refused to go with him since. He must have a companion, and I wouldn't trust myself in the dreadful thing for worlds. So what is the boy to do? They go off for long motor picnics all over the country, and come back with happiness shining all over them. They are a most delightful pair—even if he is my son. But what about Anne?"
In my mind I went over my last conversation with Drusilla, and smiled mysteriously.
"If I were you," said I slowly, "I wouldn't worry about Anne yet."
Georgie walked back to the village with me, and unburdened his soul in the hearty manner habitual to him on these occasions.
"There never was a more unlucky brute than me," he said with easy grammar. "How can I behave honorably, with a girl like that in the house driving me to distraction? She's divine! I try to keep away from her and then my mother sends us out together in the Scarlet Runner. She is the finest company in the world, and the times we have together are simply ripping. To think I might have had her with me always, if I hadn't been in such a confounded hurry! Martin, why the blue blazes did you let me go and get engaged?"
"Upon my word!" I said, aghast. "Considering that it has been a kind of hobby with you ever since you left school—"
"Well, Heaven knows what the end of it will be," he interrupted dismally. "We were spinning down the Linnyshaw Hill yesterday at the sort of pace to put me in jail for six months if I'd been caught, and we were both gloriously happy. All at once something tempted me to let the thing go to smash at the bottom, and finish the whole business with a fine stage effect. There'd have been some satisfaction in chucking this beastly planet with my arm around her."
"Yes," said I calmly, "in little bits. And so nice for your mothers afterwards. Don't be a confounded fool, Georgie! Face the thing like a man. You can't avoid the girl, but you can at least refrain from making love to her."
Georgie grunted. "It's not so jolly easy as you seem to think," said he. I laughed.
"You wait," said I cheerfully. "There's many a slip—you know."
"But not," said Georgie, shaking his head sadly, "when Anne holds the cup!" And, indeed, from my own private opinion of Drusilla's sister, I felt that he had good grounds for his despair.
Our own wedding day came very soon, and I was married in her father's church to a wonderful white Drusilla, radiant with a new and delicate loveliness. The old rectory, transformed for the occasion by the fairy godmother aunt and Georgie's delightful mother, held a reception on its weedy lawn in the afternoon, and by my side a pink-cheeked little wife received many congratulations. Then I remembered something I had to do before I took her away, and I wondered how I was to manage that parting interview with Anne, which was so necessary to my plans for Georgie's deliverance. Luck, however, favored me, for when Drusilla had gone upstairs I caught Anne, the bridesmaid, quickly following her, and drew her into the vicar's study for one minute.
"Anne," I said gravely, "I must have a few words with you before we go."
She stared at me in amazement, and I drew her to the window. The Goddess Girl was blooming on the lawn in her flounced dress, pink as a horse-chestnut blossom, her head agleam, like the horse-chestnut itself, peeping from the green, prickly shell of a chiffon picture hat. Georgie was at her side, talking earnestly. A pretty pair.
"Look," said I softly, and Anne looked. Then she turned to me with wondering, speculative eyes.
"Now look over there," I said, "at Muggeridge."
My groomsman was eating ices under the old pear tree—a picture of stout and smiling complacency.
"Muggeridge," said I gaily, "has ninety thousand pounds. He is good-tempered and easy-going, and he wants a wife."
"Ah!" Anne caught my meaning, as I saw, but she did not blush. She never did.
"Yes," said I impressively, "he has an ideal. He is waiting to find a girl who will love him for himself alone; a lady who will never interrupt him when he speaks, a woman who will devote her life to his comforts. He requires more comforts than any man I ever met. Also, he objects to a woman having opinions of her own."
"I don't see," said Anne quietly, "how you expect all this to interest me!"
"Dont you? He is staying on in the village for ten days or so—I thought perhaps the vicar might sometimes take pity on his solitude and ask him to dine. He has twice as much money as Georgie, and would be infinitely easier to manage. Georgie is young and restive. In time perhaps—who knows?—but he might kick over the traces—or—even—bolt!"
Anne was still gravely scrutinizing the pair on the lawn, but at my words, plain to brutality, she turned.
"Thank you," she said placidly, "and now, if you have quite finished, I will go up to my sister."
When Drusilla came downstairs in a delightful gown of soft blue, chosen, I suppose, to match her eyes, I forgot Georgie and took her away. For three weeks we thought little enough of Anne or the Goddess Girl. But we came home at last, and the first person I met in St. Margaret's was my groomsman. He greeted me with a studied coolness new in him, and made an obvious effort to pass me with dignified disdain, but he didn't quite manage it. He merely conveyed the impression that he was stouter than before and much more out of breath. He quite forgot his dignity to descend into conversation, and as I was leaving him he called me back.
"I want a word with you, Martin," he said. "Come round to my rooms at the Candlestick, will you? I want a word with you."
We were outside the post-office and I followed him down our tidy village street where the cottages stood in neat pairs and the slim poplars and ash trees grew to a set pattern, to the end of it where the Candlestick Inn waited with open doors for us, like a model church from a child's box of German bricks.
The inn was as new and comfortable as the church was old and dilapidated, and Muggeridge had a pleasant sitting-room sufficiently remote from the well-conducted tap-room. He followed me in to shut the door with a slam.
"Why did you ask me down to your accursed wedding?" cried he, sitting down heavily in a remonstrating wicker chair.
"Upon my word!" I stared at him blankly. What could have happened to inflame him like this? He breathed fire and hatred at me; a stout and threatening volcano.
"Hang you and your wedding!" cried he.
"Muggeridge!"
I moved with stately displeasure toward the door.
"Oh, don't go away!" His tone changed to entreaty. "You might show a little decent feeling, considering the share you've had in the thing!" he groaned.
"If you'll try to ex—"
"You remember what the insurance doctor said about my heart?"
"No," said I firmly. What was his heart to me? "I never heard that you'd even seen a doctor. I don't know anything whatever about your heart, and I can't say that I ever thought about it." I was justly offended by his most extraordinary conduct.
At this Muggeridge gazed sentimentally at his beautiful brown boots.
"I'm not sure that I have one now," he said. And I wondered if he were mad.
I sat down and stared at him in despair.
"The doctor," said he impressively, "told me that no office in the world would insure me for five minutes. He said my heart was out of place, enlarged, fattily degenerated, and that it had only one valve. He said that a shock might kill me at any moment."
Startled and grieved, I expressed at once my deep sympathy and said I hoped it wasn't true. Told him I didn't believe much in specialists, anyhow.
"Neither did I," said poor Muggeridge dejectedly. "Guinea-pigs, I call 'em. Give you ten minutes with a finger on the bell and tell you to come again in three months. But there's no doubt about my heart. It's not a common sort of organ, I can tell you. I went to two or three other chaps and they only confirmed the verdict of the first one."
"How long ago was this?" I asked.
"Oh, three months ago or so! Just after I had got my money. I didn't tell you before because I thought it might shed a gloom over the brilliancy of your honeymoon, don't you know? But it struck me directly I did know, that I should want a good deal of looking after. Not the sort of loving care that's paid for at the rate of three guineas a week, but genuine, disinterested affection."
I was silent.
"A wife seemed the most likely thing," he went on, calmly disregarding my amazed and horrified stare. "A quiet, loving, dutiful, obedient, tactful little woman with a cool hand and a light step. A woman who doesn't slam doors and who always shuts 'em. A woman who listens without interrupting and finishing your sentences for you, and doesn't want to be taken to theatres and those cursed German band restaurants three times a week."
Still I was speechless. His selfishness appalled me.
"With my head full of this, the only comfort I can ever hope for now, you brought me down to this confounded hole, and left me alone and defenceless, almost on the rectory doorstep."
"Yes," I said faintly.
"Well." Muggeridge rose heavily to shut the window. "You know what Anne is."
"I do, indeed," said I miserably.
"Gentle, and womanly, and thoughtful." He hurled the adjectives at my dejected head.
"She's all that and more," I murmured, for in my penitence I was just to her.
"Tactful, and quiet, and soft-footed."
"As a mouse," said I.
"A born manager."
"She is, indeed." With fervor I could confirm him in this impression.
"I never knew a cooler hand."
"Nor I," cried I with real feeling.
As heavily as he had risen, he sat down and groaned, in complete unison with the wicker chair.
"A girl in a thousand," finished he.
"In a million," agreed I with desperate honesty. "But, Sandy"—I returned to his old nickname in affectionate absence of mind—"are you mad or only criminal?"
He gazed blankly at me.
"With a heart like you say yours is!" said I. "Have you spoken to Anne?"
"Yes."
"Did you tell her the truth?" I had little hope that he had had sufficient good feeling for this.
"I did," said he with quiet dignity.
"Thank goodness!" I gasped with relief. "And what did Anne say?"
"She said it made no difference to her feelings."
"May I ask what her feelings were?"
Muggeridge went on. "It was an awful shock to me, and I have to avoid shocks. You did the worst day's work of your life when you threw me across her pathway. It 's a queer thing, Martin, but ever since she refused me she has seemed every hour to grow more desirable and indispensable to my comfort—"
"I can quite believe that," said I earnestly. "But I wonder why she refused you, if your heart made no difference." For I still felt that Anne's only eye was for the main chance.
Muggeridge, once more volcanic, glared and sputtered at me.
"Curse it!" said he. "You know, and everybody knew, but me. She refused me because she's an honorable young woman, and she's engaged to that infernal, conceited, long-legged, young puppy they call Georgie!"
I could offer no real comfort to his lacerated feelings, and, with my mind in a whirl, I left him to go and tell Drusilla all about it. I found her re-arranging the papers on my study table—a thing I had not yet dared to tell her not to do.
"Darling," said I carefully, "don't black your pretty hands with those dusty, inky things. I always arrange my own papers."
"Do you?" said she. "But not now you've got a nice little secretary. And Georgie's been in while you were out. He is so sad, poor boy. He's just gone down the village for some new blotting-paper for me, and he'll be back in ten minutes. He hoped you'd be home then, because he wants to talk to you privately. I asked him to tell his troubles to me, but he said it was impossible. I suppose your idea about Anne and—I suppose it has come to nothing, after all. Ah, here is Georgie."
"Hallo!" he said. "I can only get a sixpenny blotter with the King and Queen on the back. Good enough to write novels with, I dare say. Martin, can I—"
"I'm going to see if there's anything for supper." Drusilla vanished.
Georgie sat down and planted his elbows on some loose pages of "The Hidden Princess."
"It's Anne," said he. "I couldn't tell Drusilla. The thought of it is wearing me to fiddlestrings. It's Anne."
"Poor old boy," said I with real sympathy.
"It's that chap Muggeridge," pursued he. "Follows her about like a shadow. Hasn't the decency to see that it isn't the thing to run after an engaged girl. Anne's very loyal, but I can't help seeing that she might be happier with a humdrum chap like that, even if he is a bit of an old woman."
"What! "cried I.
"Yes," George murmured. "It's not a pleasant thing for a man to see his girl drifting away from him, little by little; and to see all his plans for the future melting away like the morning dew. Is it?"
I regarded him sternly, but as he went on I saw that, as usual, he spoke in perfect simplicity and good faith. Georgie never dissembled.
"Before I went away," said I slowly, "you told me that being engaged to Anne was the very deuce. You said the worry of your engagement was driving you to an early grave. You said—"
"You needn't rake up the past." He flushed a little. "I've learnt to see things in a different light since then. A man does, you know."
"Oh, very often!" said I meekly. "And then, it's since Muggeridge has been trying to steal her affections—"
"It's the sort of thing a decent chap shouldn't do, don't you see?" he cried indignantly.
"I quite see," cried I, for indeed I was beginning to. "Where is the Goddess Girl?"
He rose with dignity. "She's in the Midlands—staying a few weeks with some beastly relations."
"Oh!"—I saw more plainly still.
"She's coming back in a fortnight, though—"
"Ah!"
"Why doesn't that ass Muggeridge go back to town?" cried he with his hat in his hand.
"He will," I murmured reassuringly. And Georgie went home again.
"If Muggeridge has drawn those two together I have brought him here to excellent purpose," I said to Drusilla, with less hope in my heart than in my words.
But to my surprise she only sighed.
"I don't think any ordinary girl will ever make poor Georgie happy, "murmured she.
"I don't think Anne is exactly ordinary," I answered thoughtfully. And there the discussion ended.
It didn't seem to me that things were any better, really, and I felt that this flickering afterglow of affection which had been roused by Muggeridge's devotion was not a promising fire with which to kindle a life's happiness.
Still, to me, there was deep incongruity in the idea of a marriage between Georgie and Anne. But my firm decision, now, was to wash my hands of the two of them, and it was some weeks later that I took Drusilla up to the Manor House to return the call of Georgie's mother.
There we found the Goddess Girl. It seemed to me that Georgie's heart and principles were still utterly lost in the incomparable blue of her sapphire eyes, but I may have been mistaken. She wore something fresh and soft and silky, of an apricot color and a distractingly becoming make, and she swept across the hall to meet us with a delightful smile, a disguised duchess from the departed day of graces.
With Georgie, and without any extinguishing hat over the brightness of her beautiful hair, she walked part way home with us—not quite to the gate of the Little Mansion but as far as she could, avoiding the village street.
And it was in the larch plantation that we came across Muggeridge and Anne. We heard their voices before we saw them, and Anne's was low and clear.
"I must keep my word to poor Georgie," we heard her say with a sigh, and I glanced at the object of her pity with some apprehension.
Muggeridge groaned audibly. "Why should two valuable lives be ruined and blasted because of that long-legged, conceited, empty-headed boy?" he asked moodily.
Georgie grew scarlet and plunged in upon them before I could restrain him. Drusilla gasped—the Goddess Girl giggled.
"My!" she whispered. "What a picnic!"
"Look here!" Georgie cried hotly. "If you think I'm the sort of chap to go about blasting people's lives, you're jolly well mistaken. See!"
They saw. We all saw, and Anne rose with a little cry, white to the lips. I tried to draw Drusilla away, but she was spellbound by the interest of the moment, and waited.
"I've heard too much and read too much," Georgie went on with injured bitterness, "to expect constancy from any woman. And I'm sorry that I didn't see that I was in the way long ago."
"Georgie!" Anne began, but he stopped her with an indignant gesture.
"You needn't explain, "he said with a large magnanimity. "I have eyes, Anne, eyes and ears. I give you your freedom."
"Oh!" cried poor Anne. "Can't you see, Georgie, that I don't want my freedom?"
There was no doubting her sincerity, and I realized it with wonder, but Georgie clung to this point and shook his stubborn head.
"This sort of thing," said he sorrowfully, "would have driven some chaps to the dogs. A woman doesn't quite know what she's doing when she plays fast and loose with a man. But I'm not narrow. I'm not such a selfish brute as to stand between you and happiness. You're free."
"Mr. Muggeridge!" Anne turned on him fiercely. "Won't you speak for me? I told you, didn't I, that I couldn't listen to you because I was engaged to Georgie—because I—I—"
Muggeridge grunted stoutly and cleared his throat. To look at he was not a poet's dream of love, but in spite of that Georgie turned, and glared at him with the hot eyes of a rival.
I don't know what Sandy would have tardily said in Anne's defence, but in the nick of time the Goddess Girl, standing at Georgie's side, suddenly drew nearer, and I alone saw a pretty, delicate hand steal out from hanging laces to comfort him. He turned quickly with a little gasp, and looked at her.
"'I hate a woman to be false'"
"Say, Georgie," murmured she. "I guess we'd better make tracks, hadn't we? This sort of thing's making us all feel meaner'n two cents."
At the sound of those drawling accents, Anne turned furiously and stopped Muggeridge's explanation.
"It's a put up thing!" she cried. "Oh, I'm not blind, I'm not blind! It's Georgie who's tired of me! He's been getting tired of me ever since you came. And you—did you know he was engaged to me?"
"Well," the Goddess Girl smiled, "I just put two and two together. I never was much at sums, but from Georgie's generally depressed state I guessed there was something serious troubling him. Then I made inquiries—"
Anne caught her breath. "Did you find out anything else from your inquiries?" she cried. "Did you find out about Drusilla, and Violet Sunderland? Georgie's engagements have a short life and a merry one. It is not—dull, to be Georgie's fiancée."
The Goddess Girl gave Georgie's hand a soft little squeeze; at least, I fancied so.
"Perhaps he is a bit too rapid in his experiments;" she smiled slyly at that disgraceful boy. "And I guess it's about time he found some one to make up his mind for him, permanently."
Her look and tone as she said this were delightful. But Georgie, wrapped up in his injury, dropped her hand to gaze with deep reproach at poor Anne, and Drusilla moved to her sister's side with a sudden impulse of tenderness. Anne, however, pushed her away and turned with a quick gesture of appeal to Georgie. But she might have spared herself that last humiliation. He only rammed his straw hat further over his moody eyes, plunged his hands into his pockets and strode off. And at the distance of a few yards he stopped and turned to look reproachfully at poor Anne.
"I hate a woman to be false," said he.
And I expect he did.