“Oh Charles… oh Charles… do you remember the Early Cretaceous lady?”

That set them off again; and thoroughly mystified poor Mrs. Tranter, who had been on hot coals outside, sensing that a quarrel must be taking place. She at last plucked up courage to enter, to see if she could mend. Tina, still laughing, ran to her at the door and kissed her on both cheeks.

“Dear, dear aunt. You are not too fond. I am a horrid, spoiled child. And I do not want my green walking dress. May I give it to Mary?”

Thus it was that later that same day Ernestina figured, and sincerely, in Mary’s prayers. I doubt if they were heard, for instead of getting straight into bed after she had risen from her knees, as all good prayer-makers should, Mary could not resist trying the green dress on one last time. She had only a candle’s light to see by, but candlelight never did badly by any woman. That cloud of falling golden hair, that vivacious green, those trembling shadows, that shy, delighted, self-surprised face… if her God was watching, He must have wished Himself the Fallen One that night.

“I have decided, Sam, that I do not need you.” Charles could not see Sam’s face, for his eyes were closed. He was being shaved. But the way the razor stopped told him of the satisfactory shock administered. “You may return to Kensington.” There was a silence that would have softened the heart of any less sadistic master. “You have nothing to say?”

“Yes, sir. Be ‘appier “ere.”

“I have decided you are up to no good. I am well aware that that is your natural condition. But I prefer you to be up to no good in London. Which is more used to up-to-no-gooders.”

“I ain’t done nothink, Mr. Charles.”

“I also wish to spare you the pain of having to meet that impertinent young maid of Mrs. Tranter’s.” There was an audible outbreath. Charles cautiously opened an eye. “Is that not kind of me?”

Sam stared stonily over his master’s head. “She ‘as made halopogies. I’ave haccepted them.”

“What! From a mere milkmaid? Impossible.”

Charles had to close his eye then in a hurry, to avoid a roughly applied brushful of lather.

“It was higgerance, Mr. Charles. Sheer higgerance.”

“I see. Then matters are worse than I thought. You must certainly decamp.” But Sam had had enough. He let the lather stay where it was, until Charles was obliged to open his eyes and see what was happening. What was happening was that Sam stood in a fit of the sulks; or at least with the semblance of it.

“Now what is wrong?”

“’Er, sir.”

“Ursa? Are you speaking Latin now? Never mind, my wit is beyond you, you bear. Now I want the truth. Yesterday you were not prepared to touch the young lady with a bargee’s tool of trade? Do you deny that?”

“I was provoked.”

“Ah, but where is the primum mobile? Who provoked first?”

But Charles now saw he had gone too far. The razor was trembling in Sam’s hand; not with murderous intent, but with suppressed indignation. Charles reached out and took it away from him; pointed it at him.

“In twenty-four hours, Sam? In twenty-four hours?”

Sam began to rub the washstand with the towel that was intended for Charles’s cheeks. There was a silence; and when he spoke it was with a choked voice.

“We’re not ‘orses. We’re ‘ooman beings.”

Charles smiled then, and stood, and went behind his man, and hand to his shoulder made him turn.

“Sam, I apologize. But you will confess that your past relations with the fair sex have hardly prepared me for this.” Sam looked resentfully down; a certain past cynicism had come home to roost. “Now this girl—what is her name?—Mary?—this charming Miss Mary may be great fun to tease and be teased by—let me finish—but I am told she is a gentle trusting creature at heart. And I will not have that heart broken.”

“Cut off me harms, Mr. Charles!”

“Very well. I believe you, without the amputation. But you will not go to the house again, or address the young woman in the street, until I have spoken with Mrs. Tranter and found whether she permits your attentions.”

Sam, whose eyes had been down, looked up then at his master; and he grinned ruefully, like some dying young soldier on the ground at his officer’s feet.

“I’m a Derby duck, sir. I’m a bloomin’ Derby duck.”

A Derby duck, I had better add, is one already cooked—and therefore quite beyond hope of resurrection.

16

Five uneventful days passed after the last I have described. For Charles, no opportunities to continue his exploration of the Undercliff presented themselves. On one day there was a long excursion to Sidmouth; the mornings of the others were taken up by visits or other more agreeable diversions, such as archery, then a minor rage among the young ladies of England—the dark green de rigueur was so becoming, and so delightful the tamed gentlemen walking to fetch the arrows from the butts (where the myopic Ernestina’s seldom landed, I am afraid) and returning with pretty jokes about Cupid and hearts and Maid Marian.

As for the afternoons, Ernestina usually persuaded him to stay at Aunt Tranter’s; there were very serious domestic matters to discuss, since the Kensington house was far too small and the lease of the Belgravia house, into which they would eventually move, did not revert into Charles’s hands for another two years. The little contretemps seemed to have changed Ernestina; she was very deferential to Charles, so dutiful-wifely that he complained he was beginning to feel like a Turkish pasha—and unoriginally begged her to contradict him about something lest he forget theirs was to be a Christian marriage.

Charles suffered this sudden access of respect for his every wish with good humor. He was shrewd enough to realize that Ernestina had been taken by surprise; until the little disagreement she had perhaps been more in love with marriage than with her husband-to-be; now she had recognized the man, as well as the state. Charles, it must be confessed, found this transposition from dryness to moistness just a shade cloying at times; he was happy to be adulated, fussed over, consulted, deferred to. What man is not? But he had had years of very free bachelorhood, and in his fashion was also a horrid, spoiled child. It was still strange to him to find that his mornings were not his own; that the plans of an afternoon might have to be sacrificed to some whim of Tina’s. Of course he had duty to back him up; husbands were expected to do such things, therefore he must do them—just as he must wear heavy flannel and nailed boots to go walking in the country.

And the evenings! Those gaslit hours that had to be filled, and without benefit of cinema or television! For those who had a living to earn this was hardly a great problem: when you have worked a twelve-hour day, the problem of what to do after your supper is easily solved. But pity the unfortunate rich; for whatever license was given them to be solitary before the evening hours, convention demanded that then they must be bored in company. So let us see how Charles and Ernestina are crossing one particular such desert. Aunt Tranter, at least, they are spared, as the good lady has gone to take tea with an invalid spinster neighbor; an exact facsimile, in everything but looks and history, of herself.