THE SIDE-STEP
The simplest way to study the development of Margaret Dale is to follow her successive changes of style.
When she was a fat little girl in a bassinet, she was called Baby. However, a large number of quite ordinary people are called that at the outset of their careers, so we need not labour the point. About the time that she learned to walk, her mother, who was subject to outbreaks of imagination, called her Toddles; but this was sternly discouraged by Mr. Dale, who was a bluff, plain, straightforward Englishman, with no frills or nonsense about him.
“Shut up!” he said; “and call the child Maggie. If the name my father called my mother for forty years is n't good enough for you—well, I'm a reasonable man; tell me why!”
Mrs. Dale, however, preferred to call the child Maggie.
When Margaret was sent to a school for fat little girls in Wimbledon Park, it was decided by the authorities to call her Daisy, there being a superfluity of Maggies on the strength of the establishment. So during the next three years she was known and addressed by the infant population of Wimbledon Park as Daisy Dale–which her papa said reminded him of a burlesque actress, but found himself powerless to prevent.
About the time that Daisy reached the age of fourteen, and had begun to develop a fondness for her own point of view which her father unhesitatingly attributed to lack of maternal discipline, and her mother (in a mental memorandum) to heredity, she was sent to a large school for girls at Brighton. Here she contrived to imbue her preceptors with the belief that her name was Marguerite; and as such, despite vociferous remonstrance from the usual quarter, she continued to exist until the age of seventeen, when she was sent to be “finished”—which usually means “begun”—at an expensive establishment situated in a suburb of Paris almost entirely given over to such establishments. She returned home at the end of a year with her hair bobbed, and expressed a desire to be addressed in future as Margot.
After this she settled down to her foreordained profession of scalp-collector.
She began upon second lieutenants, undergraduates, and eighteen-year-old schoolboys on vacation. She smoked cigarettes with them, danced continuously, drank cocktails when offered, and was particularly gracious to such as were proprietors of two-seaters. She received sundry proposals of marriage, all of which she accepted in the spirit in which they were offered. At length, having rendered Wimbledon Park a devastated area incapable of further exploitation, she contracted the habit of slipping into the West End of London by the Underground Railway. You can get from Wimbledon Park Station to Charing Cross direct in less than half an hour; which means that you can lunch domestically and virtuously in Wimbledon Park at one o'clock, yet keep an appointment at a matinée in the Strand by half-past two. Margot kept quite a number of these. But they were seldom with the same person. She was quite heart-whole.
One afternoon, after one of these pleasant excursions, she was handed into the Wimbledon train at Charing Cross Underground Station by an adoring youth named Reggie Bingham, and sank down, pleasantly fatigued, in the only vacant seat in the car, beside a City gentleman in a tall hat, whom she recognized at once without any difficulty as her father. In the scene which immediately ensued, Margot seized the opportunity—which she had awaited for some time—to press the entire question of parental interference to a definite and victorious issue.
The battle raged all the way home. The advantage inclined at first to the side of Mr. Dale, whose voice could easily be heard above the roar of trains, while Margot's could not. But after Putney Bridge Station, where the train emerged into upper air and cavernous noises ceased, Miss Dale was enabled to bring her lighter artillery to bear with telling effect. Finally, on the walk home from Wimbledon Park Station to Lime Lodge, Acacia Avenue, S.W. 17, she launched a counter-attack of such a voluble and penetrating character that her slow-moving opponent was reduced first to inarticulate boomings and finally to vindictive sulks.
“Had to take a pretty stiff line with her ladyship this afternoon,” he reported to his wife when he emerged from his dressing-room arrayed for dinner. “Caught her gallivanting round town with some half-baked young pup or other. I don’t think she’ll forget the telling-off I gave her. Not my job, of course; but if her mother can’t handle her, I suppose I must! Come along down!”
At the foot of the staircase, cool, fresh, slim, and provokingly pretty, stood Margot, wearing an exiguous frock and smoking a Russian cigarette.
“Hallo, Pongo!” she remarked cheerfully. “Out of your sulks, old man?”
Mr. Dale, who disliked being addressed as Pongo, began to boom again.
“Now for goodness' sake pull yourself together!” urged his daughter; “and listen to me. I did n’t hear all you said coming out in the train, though most of the passengers did; but I heard enough to make it quite clear to me that it was time I put my foot down. I don't intend to go into the matter again, because I gave it to you pretty straight walking home; and naturally you are like a bear with a sore head over it. I expect you have been taking it out of mother upstairs. She rather likes it, because she thinks it is one of her privileges as your wife. Well, I don’t happen to regard it as one of mine as your daughter. So keep a hold on yourself, my dear old Early Victorian progenitor, and leave me to live my own life. I’m no fool, despite my parentage. Now, what about a bite of dinner?”
That will do about Margot for the present. Let us turn to William Peck.
William Peck was roughly what his name implies. He did not know this, because he regarded himself exactly as Margot's papa regarded himself—namely, as a bluff, plain, straightforward Englishman, with no frills or nonsense about him. As a matter of fact, he was a serious-minded young man with a perfect passion for performing uncongenial duties. To him work was not worthy of the name if it was of a kind that could be enjoyed. So at the Bank which employed him they always allotted to him tasks of monotonous drudgery, because he was miserable doing anything which involved variety or initiative.
William Peck cherished two ambitions—one immediate, the other remote. The first was to maintain himself in the extreme of physical fitness. By characteristic methods, of course. At school he had been accustomed to sleep, nightly, wrapped in a sheet which had previously been soaked in cold water. This was to “harden” him. For exercise he preferred some pastime which would render him utterly exhausted, exceedingly muddy, and, if possible, “a casualty” from time to time. A broken collar-bone, or something of that kind. His passion for personal discomfort reached its apotheosis during the War. He was one of the few combatants on either side who honestly enjoyed trench-life. When home on leave, he insisted upon sleeping on the floor of the smoking-room in his mother's house in his “flea-bag,” rather than avail himself of the provision made for his comfort in the spare room. It was a pity, he considered, to sacrifice laboriously acquired physical fitness for the sake of a few nights in a bed.
As for his other and more remote ambition—it was this. At the right moment he intended to meet, woo, and marry the right girl. He did not propose to do this, though, until he was thirty-six. At present he was only twenty-eight—at which distance of time the enterprise appeared to him simpler of execution than it really was.
His idea of the girl, and her functions as his wife, were quite clear in his mind. She would be beautiful, affectionate, and endowed with perfect taste. She would be fond of home and an economical manager. Every morning she would give William Peck his breakfast at eight, while William read aloud to her all about the Australian Cricket Eleven. She would then hand him his hat, kiss him, and dispatch him in good time for the nine-seven. She would be waiting to kiss him again on his return by the six-fourteen. On fine evenings she would occasionally meet him at the station and walk back with him, thus enabling William to tell her about the Bank Rate ten minutes earlier than would otherwise have been possible. William would then change into shorts and a sweater and go off for a brisk trot by the river Thames—they were going to live at Twickenham—for naturally he would not permit domestic felicity to interfere with the gospel of physical fitness. On his return he would find that his wife had prepared a cold bath for him and put out his Indian clubs.
They would dine together in intimate cosiness, with a red-silk-shaded lamp over the table, and he would tell her some more about the Bank Rate and how his chest measurement was keeping up. Anon, they would proceed upstairs to William Peck's “den”—of course his wife would have her own dainty drawing-room, but that would be used for the reception of her own friends in the afternoon—and he would take down one of his trusty old pipes from the trusty old rack over the trusty old fireplace and puff away, while his wife sat on the other side of the hearth with her embroidery; and they would gossip about the Bank Rate again, or the English Fifteen against Wales, or the time when William Peck was kicked on the head when stopping a rush of the opposing forwards in the match against the West Ham Harriers. They would retire to bed early, because a man with a hard day's work behind and ahead of him must maintain a perfect standard of physical fitness. (Forgive me if I have referred to this already.) On Saturday nights, however, they would really kick up their heels a bit—dine somewhere, go to the Hippodrome, and as likely as not get home at midnight. It was good to unbend the bow occasionally.
By the way, on Saturday afternoons William Peck, once married, would relinquish manly sports and play some form of pat-ball game with his wife, or take her for a long country ramble; for of course William Peck's helpmeet must in her small way maintain a perfect standard of physical fitness too.
That is the sort of man William Peck was. Hence it was only in consonance with the general irony of things that he should fall helplessly in love with Margot Dale.
They met at a dinner-party given by one of the directors of William Peck's Bank. The director, whose name was Jobling, lived in a large house near the top of Putney Hill, while William occupied mod est lodgings somewhere near the bottom, near the river Thames. (Have I mentioned that upon Saturday afternoons in summer he excoriated himself on a fixed seat for the honour of the Putney Bridge Rowing Club?) William was invited to the party because a male guest disappointed Mrs. Jobling at the last moment, and there was no time to get any one else. Mr. Dale was also there, and he brought Margot, who had volunteered, in a spirit of sheer irresponsibility, to deputize for her mother, who had influenza. (She had it twice a year.)
Margot looked distractingly pretty; and although William Peck could not fail to note that her evening frock was not of a material or cut calculated to promote that comfortable circulation of the blood which is so essential to physical fitness, he felt gratified when bidden to take her in to dinner. He found her a quiet, well-mannered, almost diffident partner. During the soup and fish she said practically nothing at all, which enabled William Peck to start upon the Bank Rate at once. After that he proceeded to consider the depreciation of the rouble and mark. Margot, with respectfully rounded eyes and parted lips, appeared to hang upon his words. When William desisted in order to eat a sweetbread, she said it was wonderful that any one should be able to understand such things. Confirmed in his favourable opinion of her, William proceeded to the material and mechanical side of banking. He told her how he reduced dollars to pounds by means of a graph. Then he explained to her what a graph was.
Suddenly he noted that Margot's attention was wandering. In fact, she was flipping a portion of a salted almond across the table at her friend, Miss Rita Jobling.
“In this manner,” said William Peck, raising his voice reproachfully, “the daily fluctuations of inter national exchange—”
Margot swung round upon him. Her expression of adoring wonder—what she herself was wont to term “the village idiot stunt”—was no more.
“Do you ever do anything at all with yourself,” she demanded, “except hop about behind a counter?”
“The only members of the personnel of a bank,” William explained with an indulgent smile, “who actually do their work behind the counter are the cashiers. Now, I—”
“Never mind that,” said Margot hastily. “What I mean is, what do you do when they open the door of the hutch at five o'clock, and put you out?”
“You mean, what do I do for exercise? Ah!” When William Peck paused for his next mouthful he had told her all about the difference between fixed and sliding seats, and also about the time he had once lain insensible for three quarters of an hour after a personal encounter with the boot of the centre forward of the Peckham Peripatetics.
Once more Margot appeared impressed.
“It’s unbelievable!” she said—“absolutely!”
“Oh, not at all!” said William Peck, who really was a very modest fellow.
“It is unbelievable,” reiterated Margot emphatically, “that any human being should go about doing such uncouth things and actually boast of it.”
William Peck, who for nearly twenty-eight years had cherished a belief that the one thing which a woman requires of a man is rugged strength (such as his own), merely gaped.
“Have you no recreations, my good Peck,” continued Margot compassionately, “except those of a hobbledehoy?”
Hobbledehoy? William Peck gasped—then pulled himself together for a great and stern effort. He must cope with this heresy. He must controvert this pernicious doctrine. It might be difficult, he knew. He was only a strong, silent Englishman, master of his job and in perfect physical condition. He was no dialectician. His strength lay in deeds, not words. How he wished Margot could see him casting up three columns of figures simultaneously, or taking a firm line with the office boy, or lying on the ball on a wet Saturday afternoon. Still, he would do his best. It was his duty.
He turned to Margot, and opened his mouth to begin. It stayed open quite a long time—hanging open, in fact. For Margot lifted her long lashes deliberately and of set purpose, and gave him a look—a look which she only employed on certain occasions. It was a fleeting look—a mere provocative glance—but it torpedoed William Peck. Instead of delivering the homily he had contemplated, he floundered, reddened, and said feebly:
“Other recreations? Oh, yes, I have lots.”
Which was a lie.
Margot drove home not altogether unimpressed with William Peck. He was a clean-run and broad shouldered youth. True, his hair required unguents and his evening tie required tying more tightly. His moustache, which was red and entirely lacking in symmetry, would have to be dispensed with altogether. His conversation was bucolic, and his ideals were those of the stone age. Still, it would be rather fun to civilize him—without prejudice, of course. When his locks had been sheared and he had been trained to toe the line with the rest of the youth of Philistia, Margot could decide what she was going to do with him.
So William Peck was invited to a Thé Dansant at Lime Lodge, Wimbledon Park. He accepted, feeling quietly amused. With his rugged strength and sturdy indifference to boudoir ways, he would feel, he knew, rather like a Dreadnought at an up-river Regatta. But William Peck rather liked feeling like that; and of course he often did, associating, as a strong man must sometimes, with puny folk. So he accepted. He was not conscious of being in love yet.
But he was wrong about feeling like a Dreadnought at a Regatta. What he really felt like at the Thé Dansant was a worm at a convention of boa constrictors. He “did not” dance—which means that he could not. Instead of sitting with his young hostess, as he had expected, smiling indulgently upon the antics of the pigmies around him, he found himself hunted from the tea-room to the dancing room and back again, with intervals of complete self-effacement in the cloak-room. Once or twice he endeavoured to put a bold face on things. He would dash out of his hiding-place, walk briskly into the dancing-room, look masterfully round as if for an appointed partner, glance at his wrist-watch, nod his head, and stride masterfully out, as if remembering that she was in the tea-room after all. In the tea room he repeated the performance, and strode out again, ostensibly to the dancing-room. But where he really went was to his old refuge among the coats and hats. Here a maid found him. William Peck suddenly lost his head, became panic-stricken, and ultimately interned himself on the stairs above the first-floor landing for the duration of the party.
He was dislodged about seven o’clock by damsels coming up for their outer garments; and descended in the hope of finding Margot at last disengaged. He had had but brief speech with her upon arrival. She had offered to provide him with a partner, but his spirit being as yet unbroken he had refused, saying sarcastically that he had no “monkey-tricks”; and had very properly been abandoned to his fate. Now, relenting a little, she allowed him to pour out some orangeade for her. By this time he was utterly broken. Margot was minded to make the lesson permanent.
“My good creature,” she said, “I had no idea that you were as impossible as all this. I thought every human being with two feet could dance the one step!”
“I don't dance,” muttered William Peck faintly but doggedly.
“One-stepping is n’t dancing. It's putting one foot before the other. Surely you can do that! Or is it that you’re afraid to hold on to a girl?”
Dumb, driven, inarticulate, William Peck merely hung his head. He realized now that he could never make this adorable–yes, she was adorable now—but unreasonable being understand that he did not dance because he considered dancing effeminate; and that he objected to holding on to a girl, not because he was afraid, but because he had decided not to do that sort of thing until he was thirty-six. So—he deliberately jettisoned the accumulated ballast of more than twenty years, and said:
“Won't you please teach me?”
“Good gracious, no!” replied Miss Dale frankly. “Why should I?”
In his complete abasement William Peck could think of nothing but to apologize; which he did.
“I only wanted to please you,” he said humbly.
Margot lit a cigarette. . “Then go and learn, my Peck!” she said.
“After all,” William Peck argued to himself as he trotted home in the dark,-he made a point of running a mile every day, and the Thé Dansant, with its vitiated atmosphere, had rendered this exercise even more indispensable than usual,-“she would not have told me to go and learn unless she had taken some interest in my progress. Besides, one must make allowances for women. They are”—pant, pant, pant—“wayward, and”–pant—“capricious. One must indulge them to a certain extent: come down to their level, and so on. If Miss—if Margot and I get into the habit of dancing together—the Side-Step, or whatever she calls it—I shall get more opportunities of conversing with her intimately, and forming her mind.” He slowed down to a walk, for fear of rousing unworthy suspicions in the breast of the policeman at the cross-roads; then resumed. “I’m sorry she refused to come to the match on Saturday, though. It does help so to be seen in one's proper environment. … I don’t think I shall play now. … I wonder if she will be at home at tea-time. No, I forgot: she said she was going to a matinée. What a way to spend a crisp autumn afternoon! … I wonder if she would come to one with me. I must find out about these things.”
Our poor apostle of physical fitness accordingly wrote to his divinity, suggesting an expedition to the theatre. If he had had the sense to leave the selection of the play to the lady herself, it is possible that he might have met with more success than he did. Through an entirely unwarrantable overestimate of Miss Dale's intellectuality, he suggested a visit to a Shakespearean revival at a local suburban theatre. The result was a horrified refusal. Recoiling abjectly to the opposite pole of error, William called at Lime Lodge and suggested a certain musical comedy—the rage of the West End. Margot replied that she had seen it fourteen times, and inquired how William Peck's dancing was progressing. She also commanded him, as she showed him to the door, to remove his moustache, or forever remain invisible.
Incredible as it may appear, William Peck succeeded in extracting certain crumbs of comfort—even encouragement—from this barren interview. It implied, he considered, a certain interest in his appearance and personality. The result was that on the following Saturday the Putney Hill Gladiators took the field without their usual centre forward. About the time that the match commenced, on a crisp autumn afternoon, a clean-shaven young man might have been observed knocking timidly upon the door of a modest villa in Fulham, bearing the legend:
BALLROOM DANCING
FOX-TROT GUARANTEED IN SIX LESSONS“Well,” remarked Mademoiselle Estelle, at the end of a laborious and hard-breathing hour, “you may have brains, but they’re not in your feet.”
“Do you think if I work hard that I shall have a chance?” inquired William Peck earnestly.
“A chance to do what?” Mademoiselle turned off the gramophone and regarded her pupil quizzically. She was an alert little person with bright blue eyes and honey-coloured hair. Her cheeks and arms were too thin. The profession of Teacher of Ballroom Dancing, especially when proficiency is guaranteed in six lessons, is more arduous than lucrative.
“A chance,” replied William Peck hesitatingly, “to—to dance well enough to—to—”
“To what?”
“To satisfy myself.”
“Yourself? H'm! They all say that!” Mademoiselle smiled indulgently. “I think I know your trouble,” she added. “When are you coming again?”
William Peck suggested Monday afternoon at five-fifteen, and departed in the gloaming in search of open-air exercise. He was still feeling a little dizzy, and far more tired than if he had taken part in the football match.
His constitutional took him across Putney Bridge, up the Hill, and towards Wimbledon Park, where he ultimately found himself striding down Acacia Avenue, in which it will be remembered Lime Lodge was situated. He did not run. Instead, he occasionally changed feet and broke into a curious double shuffle. He was practising the one-step. At least, he thought it was that.
The gates of Lime Lodge stood hospitably open. William Peck hesitated in a painfully indecisive fashion—his moral assurance had crumbled during the past few days—then finally turned into the short drive and approached the house itself. But his feet lagged. He had reached that phase of love sickness at which the lover's deadly fear is lest he should appear to be intruding.
Sounds of music greeted his ears: active shadows on the blinds of a large room on the ground floor apprised him of the fact that a Thé Dansant was in progress—to which he had not been invited. Well, a time would come!
The Dales possessed a powerful gramophone. At present it was in full blast close to the open window outside which William stood. Had Miss Margot pulled aside the blind at any moment during the next half-hour and looked out upon the moonlit lawn, she might have observed a substantial phantom methodically dancing the fox-trot with itself, counting audibly the while.
“Will you stay and take a cup of tea?” inquired Mademoiselle after the next lesson. “I’ve no one else coming this evening, worse luck; and you don't look as if you had too many people to talk to in your spare time, either.”
Now that William Peck came to think of it, this was true, though no one had ever said it before. His colleagues at the Bank were much too occupied with recurrent and continuous affairs of the heart to have any particular leaning towards an apostle of strenuous celibacy; while the Putney Hill Gladiators, though stout fellows on the battle-field, were not socially entertaining. This discerning little creature was right. William was a lonely man; and at the present moment he was more lonely than he had ever been before. In fact he had reached the stage when a man simply has to tell some one about it—It.
So they took tea together; and over the cigarette which followed he told Mademoiselle all about Margot Dale.
“I’m afraid I’m rather too masculine and rough for her,” he said sorrowfully, when he had finished his recital. “Too big and blundering for a fragile little bit of Dresden china like that,” he added, growing lyric.
“Fragile?” commented his confidante. “To me she seemed the other way. Tough—I should call her.”
“You don’t know her!” said loyal William warmly.
“Don't I?” Mademoiselle nodded her shapely little head wisely. “I knew one once just like her. I had good cause to remember her, too.”
“How?”
“She took my husband from me—or tried to.”
“Husband? You are married, then?”
“Widow,” replied Mademoiselle briefly.
“Then your name—?” William Peck began to feel that this was rather irregular. He had a natural sense of propriety.
“Oh, my real name is Esther Green. You can cut out the Estelle stuff—that's only for the brass plate—and call me Esther if you like. It would do you a lot of good to be able to call a girl by her Christian name. Have you finished that cigarette? Well, I bet you’ve got a pipe in your pocket. Light it, and put your feet on the fender, and I’ll tell you,” commanded this discerning young person.
William Peck, feeling strangely soothed and comfortable, obeyed.
“I was married all right,” continued Esther presently. “All wrong, rather. It was one of those War weddings—me eighteen and Ted twenty-one. London was full of schoolboys dressed up as officers, all mad to have a good time dining and dancing before they went out and went west. Mother and I started a dancing-school over a tea-shop in Regent Street. It was a little gold-mine to us for a year or so. Up to that time Mother had kept rooms, She had always had to work hard, ever since Father left her. She's dead now—two years ago. She was never strong; and the raids, and the rationing, and things like that were too much for her. I met Ted at the dancing-school. I taught him: he paid for private lessons. He was that sort. He was a second lieutenant in a split-new uniform and I was about as green as grass; and when we came out of the chloroform we found ourselves married. Just like that!
“It was more than a year before he went out—and I had my hands full most of that time, I can tell you! He was n’t a bad boy; not vicious; but weak—! My word! Putty was strong to him! Anything with eye lashes could handle him. He was fond of me, though, and none of his little affairs ever looked like coming to anything until he ran into Babs Newberry. She was the same sort of girl as your Margot, I should say: bobbed hair—liqueurs—despised her parents—and all that. Ted was in camp at Bramshott, and used to come up to me for week-ends. When he missed two week-ends running, I began to think a bit. Finally another girl told me something, and I went to the Savoy the next Saturday night. There was my lord, dancing with his Babs.” Esther Green's voice shook a little.
“Unutterable cad!” said William Peck firmly.
“No, it was n’t that. It was just weakness. I spoke to them, and in ten minutes I had Miss Babs packing back to her people at Lewisham. As I suspected, they had n’t known anything about the affair; and the moment I said a few words about seeing them about it, I had her eating out of my hand. There was no real harm in her—just want of looking after and the freedom the War gave to silly girls. I took Ted home with me. He was very much ashamed of himself—and we had no open trouble after that. I dare say he saw his Babs again some times, but I kept my mouth shut. I did n’t want to have a row so near the time of his going out. I was glad, afterward—because–because, when he did go, he never–never—”
“Came back?” said William gently.
“Yes.” A tear ran down the girl's cheek. She wiped it away composedly, and continued:
“It was at the Second Battle of the Somme. He was Mentioned in Dispatches, though. I’m glad he was Mentioned in Dispatches.”
There was a long pause. William was trying, without success, to picture himself married to Margot and being caught by her dancing with some one else at the Savoy. Presently his eyes turned again to the slim figure on the other side of the hearth.
“I expect you miss him,” he said awkwardly.
“Yes, I do. Of course, I dare say I should have had trouble with him; but he’d have been something to look after. Perhaps he would have gotten more sense as he got older, too. I don't know, though. People don’t change much. Perhaps he was n’t the sort of man I ought to have married.”
“What sort of man ought you to have married?” inquired William curiously. He was interested in the question of affinities just now.
“A man who would like being taken care of. I used to wish the War was over, so that I could really take care of Ted. You know—look after his clothes, and see he got his meals properly, and get him off in comfortable time for the morning train, and be there when he came back in the evening—”
“And give him a kiss,” said William Peck automatically.
“Yes; that's right. Then we would dine together and talk over all the gossip of the day. There's nothing so dull in life as having a lot of interesting things happen to you all day and know that there’ll be no one to tell them to in the evening.”
“That's very true,” said William Peck with a sigh. Of late he had contracted the habit of jotting down memoranda of interesting things which happened to him, with the intention of retailing the same to Margot when an opportunity should arise. He had rather overdue list in his pocket now.
“Then,” continued Esther, “we would have gone out together sometimes, to the theatre, or the movies. I don’t know, though. Perhaps things are best as they are. Ted did n’t like staying at home much any evening, and if he had gone out I dare say he'd have gone out without me. I may be one of the lucky ones, really!” She smiled philosophically. “Finished your pipe? I don't want to turn you out; but you know what neighbours are. When'll suit you again?”
William Peck suggested the following Saturday afternoon.
But he did not keep the appointment. Margot made a reply to a long-hoarded invitation which exceeded his wildest hopes, and they attended a matinée together. The excursion was not altogether as successful as it might have been, because William's ideas on the subject of chic restaurants and the best seats in theatres were on a considerably lower plane than his guest's; but Margot, softened possibly by her cavalier's rapturous oblivion to all save her presence and the obvious if misguided pains which he had lavished upon the details of the entertainment, down to the box of uneatable chocolates which he produced from his hat as soon as they sat down in the seventh row of the Dress Circle, suffered for once in silence.
On the way home she reaped her reward, in the form of her seventeenth proposal.
William Peck accompanied his petition by a set speech of considerable length, which he had composed and carefully committed to memory against the moment when opportunity should arise to deliver it. Knowing William Peck, we can surmise its general trend. It included an outline of William's views about domestic routine which gave Margot chills down her spine; and she said so. There was also something else, which she had not expected and which roused emotions of an entirely contrary nature. This was a financial statement. Hitherto Margot had regarded William Peck as a bank clerk—a small-time cavalier and an escort of the reserve class. The fact that William Peck was the nephew, sole relative, and heir of the Chairman of the Board of the Bank, and had elected characteristically to ground himself in the rudiments of his business by five years of monotonous routine before taking a seat on the Board itself, was a revelation to her. Though it made little impression upon Margot's resilient little heart, it made an appeal to her business instincts which could not be ignored. She immediately promoted William Peck, mentally, to the rank of Business Proposition. However, she realized that she need not be in a hurry to take up her option. Firmly hooked fish can wait.
“Don’t be a sentimental idiot,” she said. “Of course I won’t marry you. But don't go and blow out your brains, or anything, because it is n’t done. We're having a Thé Dansant on Saturday. Come, and let me see if you can dance a one-step without treading on my feet. We must always be friends, must n’t we, old man?” she concluded, switching suddenly to diplomacy.
“By all means,” said William Peck—a little disappointingly, Margot thought.
Two days later he completed his course of six lessons, within the period of which, it will be remembered, proficiency had been guaranteed.
“Will I do?” he asked, as Esther turned off the gramophone for the last time.
“Do for what?”
“I mean, will I pass in a crowd?”
“That is n’t what you came here to learn to do—is it? You wanted to make a real hit with a certain person, did n’t you?”
“I do still,” said William Peck earnestly. “In fact,”—he regarded her thoughtfully,—“I should like some more lessons.”
“All right. You need n’t pay in advance this time. I can trust you.
“I’m glad of that,” said William deliberately, “because I shall want a lot.”
“Certainly. How much of my valuable time do you propose to engage?” inquired Esther briskly.
William Peck told her. He ultimately stayed to supper.
Margot, whose conscience told her that she had been perhaps a little too careless with her latest suitor, felt distinctly relieved when he duly appeared at the Thé Dansant. This time he boldly interrupted her in a dance and asked when he might have the pleasure.
“Come back in about five minutes,” she said, “when I have got rid of this infant.” The gentleman referred to was a Mr. Toby Deverill, a fair average specimen of the flower of modern chivalry.
William Peck withdrew, and Margot said:
“I think he's rather a lamb, Toby.”
“Tripe!” growled the flower.
“Little boys must n’t be jealous,” replied Margot, entering with zest into the game which she loved best in all the world.
“Muck!” rejoined the gentleman referred to.
Margot, to whom this brand of repartee was quite in order, gave him an affectionate pat.
“You’re rather a lamb too, Toby dear,” she said; and, rising, signalled to William Peck to approach.
They took the floor together—with remarkable smoothness. All the same, it was only by an effort that William Peck refrained from counting aloud.
“You’ve made marvellous progress, Peck,” announced Margot graciously. “Who has been teaching you?”
“My wife,” panted William Peck.