Chapter XIX: Subjects for Matrimony

Miss Kildare gave a shrug to her shoulders. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose it is a different me. I’ve got my hair done up, and longer skirts, and all the rest of it. In fact, like the young person in the book, I’ve growed. But I don’t see that you have altered much, except that you’re just a tiny-iny bit crows-footy about the eyes. You haven’t even grown a mustache, as I always wanted you to do.”

“Didn’t know I was going to meet you, or I might have spared my razor.”

“I wish you’d known, then. But fancy your turning up here of all places. It is an extremely small world—there’s no doubt about that. Well, Pat, as we’ve each said at least twenty times apiece how surprised we are to see one another, suppose you come out on to the piazza and tell me things. We shall have a crowd round us if we stay here in the hall much longer.”

“My dear child, what things?” asked Onslow, laughing. “I’ve been chattering history to you ever since I turned up at the hotel.”

The girl seated herself in a cool, cane rocker, and picked up a palm-leaf fan. “Hundreds of things. To begin with, what are people wearing in Town just now?”

“In London? Oh, frock coats, rather longer than ever, and narrow-stripe trousers, and toppers with just twopennyworth of curl in them—not more.”

“But I mean the women?”

“Fifteen yards to the skirt, and they’re beginning to drape them. The fashionable deformity at present is elephantiasis of the biceps—I mean gigot sleeves. They start at the ears, and go down to the elbows—some of them further.”

“Ah,” said Miss Kildare, thoughtfully, “I used to have good arms. Not quite as nice as Mabel’s, though. But latterly I haven’t been in places where evening dress was used. By the way, do you dance still?”

“Keen on it as ever.”

“What’s the waltz like now?”

“Capering on hot bricks. Heaps more exercise to the furlong. People kill themselves at it much sooner.”

“Reverse?”

“In the north of England, where they all dance well, they’re like the Americans, and go each way alternately. In London and the south, where most of them waltz vilely, reversing is Aceldama.”

“I suppose,” said Miss Kildare, with her eyes meditatively following a bronze-green humming-bird which was darting about a trumpet-vine on the piazza rail, “I suppose we shall have a hop here to-night. I shan’t reverse; and when my partners ask why, I shall tell them it’s the latest thing. One always likes to be as English as possible. Tell me something else that it’s toney to do.”

“Read nasty novels, written by women you wouldn’t sit in the same room with, and then gush about them afterwards. That’s a very fashionable amusement with the up-to-date young women.”

“Ugh, Pat, don’t be a pig. Besides, that wouldn’t suit my style a bit.”

“But why want to change, Elsie? Don’t you appreciate yourself as you are at present? I’m sure other people would.”

“That’s blarney.”

“No,” said Onslow, judicially, “I think it’s ordinary fact.”

“Is it really, though? I am glad. You know, I’ve thought lately my present stock-in-trade wouldn’t pass muster outside Florida. I can handle a boat in any weather, and ride anything that’s called a horse, and can dance decently in American fashion; but I can’t do anything else, except perhaps talk, if that counts.”

Onslow laughed. “You are refreshing,” he said. “But why this inventory of stock?”

“Because, Pat, I’m wondering how I shall get on in England. I’m going out there this fall. I’m two and twenty, you know, and I can do as I like, and living in the back blocks is beginning to pall.”

“Going there by yourself?”

“No, I’m not quite so independent as that. The Van Liews, the people I’m staying with here, spend the winter in London, and they’re going to take me with them.”

“And afterwards, you come back again to the States?”

Miss Kildare again watched the bronze-green humming-bird. “_Quien sabe?_” she said. “I may be induced to stay.”

“What! You’re going to get married?”

“Why not, if I have an invitation? Twenty-two’s getting on.”

“Ah,” said Onslow, and set to rocking his chair.

“Yes?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said ‘Ah,’ Patrick, and that meant you thought a lot besides.”

“Quite right, I did. It had never quite struck me till then that you were a completely grown-up young woman now, and might any day see a man to go into permanent partnership with. It’s a bit of a jar—I mean, it comes oddly to one at first to think of you as married, Elsie.”

“_Shoo-ssh!_ Pat, get up and drive that humming-bird away. He won’t go for me, greedy little beast; and if he stays any longer I know he’ll over-eat himself. Well, you’d better brace yourself up for a blow, because married I mean to be some day. Who knows but what you’ll beat me in the race?”

“I?”

“Why not? When Duvernay died, Mabel became a widow.”

“That,” said Onslow, “is the usual sequence of events.”

“You know she never wanted to marry him.”

“So I was led to understand some five years back. Yet marry him she did nevertheless, and that after due publication of banns. I might remark, Elsie, that that humming-bird you were interested in is still gorging himself out of those red flowers just on the other side of you.”

“Some creatures never know when to stop. Now I do,” said Miss Kildare. “That’s the bell for dinner. I must go and tidy myself.”

Meanwhile in that same Floridan hotel a certain Mr. Kent-Williams, a young gentleman of England, who was throwing poker dice at the bar with two friends for ante-prandial cocktails, was looking at the same subject from a different coign of view. He was a young gentleman who had not made a conspicuous success of himself at home, and had been deported to Florida with a view to extracting a fortune from orange growing. As on reaching the spot he found this was difficult of achievement, he wisely did not worry his brain with any vain attempts, but was content with living in inexpensive retirement under a palmetto-shuck for nineteen-twentieths of each quarter, and blossoming out during the remaining days in riotous living at the Point Sebastian hotel on the allowance which reached him from home. And with him were two others who had been softly nurtured, and who were also taking their quarterly nip of semi-civilization.

“I tell you,” said Mr. Kent-Williams, “she’s a clinking fine specimen, that Kildare girl, and, by Jove, I ought to be a judge if any one is round here. Look! three sevens, first shot: good, I’ll keep these, and see if I can rattle out another. She’ll go to England and marry a duke as sure as fits, don’t you know. I wonder if Onslow will hitch on to the other sister. Looks like it, his coming here after the Duvernay beast turned up his toes. I never could stand Duvernay; not a ’Varsity man, don’t you know, and hadn’t been anywhere to school. Simply a bit of money, and thought he could swagger on that. By Jove! two bullets. That makes me a Full House, and I’ll stand on it. Collar the box, Willie, dear boy, and beat me if you can.”

“No,” said Willie, scooping the dice into the leather box, and thoughtfully stirring them before he emptied on to the pewter counter. “I don’t think—ar—Duvernay was anybody. I did know him here, of course, because one couldn’t help it, but I—ar—don’t recollect meeting him at the club or anywhere before we—ar—came out. By ged! look there! Fours first shot. Of course, the Kildares are all right as far as family goes, but they’re poor as regards the—ar—almighty dollar. If it wasn’t for that, by ged! I wouldn’t mind going in for the fair Elsie myself. Wobinson, old chappie, take the box and agitate. You won’t beat my four ladies.”

“I wish,” said Kent-Williams, meditatively, “I knew what Onslow was going to do. Mabel Duvernay’s a charming woman, and she’s got at least £500 a year. I don’t want to make a fool of myself if Onslow’s still in the running. And, by Jove! I know she’s as fond of him as ever. That beast Duvernay used to twit her with it when he was in an extra vile temper.”

“Go slow,” advised Robinson, “and hang back for bets. Here, I can’t improve on two pairs, so you and I throw again. Here’s the box. By the way, why not ask Onslow yourself? You knew him well enough at Cambridge, and you aren’t shy.”

“I’m not shy, dear boy, and I used to know Patrick Onslow well before I came out. He’s a devilish genial fellow, so long as you rub him the right way, but I shouldn’t like to cross-question him too much about Mrs. Duvernay. You see, don’t you know, he was most infernally struck on the lady before she was married, and he’s one of those fellows with a long memory, who don’t forget. Now I, dear boy, have been in love with heaps of women in my time, and they with me; but when they gave me the chuck, or I got tired of them, I didn’t break my blessed heart, or play the goat, or do anything of that kind. I simply went on to the next caravan, which is a devilish comfortable amusement. But old Pat isn’t built that way. He’s one of those fools who would get gone on a woman and keep her in mind for years and years afterwards. Mighty dreary sort of game to my way of thinking. By Jove! four kings. If you beat those, dear boy, may I live on sweet potatoes and mullet for all the rest of my natural life.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Robinson, “£500 a year—twenty-five hundred dollars! One could pig along with that very comfortably in lots of places. What unlucky brutes some of us are. Oh, curse it, just my form; two pairs again. We won’t prolong the agony. My shout—what’ll you fellows have?”

They drank their cocktails, and went into the vast, bare dining-hall, where a shining negro waiter supplied each with a tumbler of iced tea and two dozen oval dishes of comestibles.

“Onslow seems thick enough with the Kildare girl,” Kent-Williams observed. “But, of course, he knew her when she was a kid, and they’d have heaps to talk about. What do you think, Willie?”

“How should I know, dear chappie? I’m not one of those thought-reading fellows. But perhaps she’s—ar—telling him about her sister. Girls always try and run a fellow for their sisters if they can’t get the fellow—ar—for themselves.”

“Here, waiter!” shouted Robinson, “what did you bring sweet potatoes for? Nobody ordered them. Take the damned things away and bury them.” The waiter grinned and vanished with the dishes, and Robinson set to savagely tearing at a tough beefsteak with a silver-bladed knife. “Money’s run out,” he grumbled, “and back we go to-morrow to live like wild beasts in a palmetto-shuck, on that accursed food and nothing else. I believe that foul, grinning nigger knew, and brought those sweet spuds here just to insult us. I’ve a great mind to break his beastly neck.”

“What’s the use of getting hot over it this weather?” said Kent-Williams. “If you did break the nigger’s neck it wouldn’t add to your income, and that’s the only occupation I know worth living for.”

“And, therefore, you want to marry Mrs. Duvernay?”

“Or any one else with a modicum of dollars. I’m not prejudiced. Believe me, dear boy, I could pour out a whole wealth of affection on sweet Mabel or sweet Kitty, or sweet anybody else who was able to support me in moderate comfort. At present my talents are thrown away during nineteen-twentieths of the year, because Nature never intended me to shine as a noble savage. Consequently, dear boy, I’m ready to throw myself away on any one.”

“Oh, I like that,” said Robinson. “You might have married a girl here last winter.”

“The traveling English person without the aitches? Yes, dear boy, I did think about it. But I came to the conclusion that she was too old to reform, and, don’t you know, one really couldn’t stand living with an aitchless person eternally for any amount of income. Of course, it was a sacrifice, and the poor girl was very let down; but I think she’ll get over it in time. They all do.”

“Probably she has done,” said Robinson, grimly. “From what he said, her father was quite resigned to your loss before he left here.”

“My prospective father-in-law was sordid. He couldn’t appreciate a gentleman. Now, Mabel’s papa is in a better land, and, by Jove! that’s a great point in her favor. I never could stand paternal advice.”

“You seem to be making pretty sure of getting the lady.”

“I’m not at all sure, but I want to find out how the land lies. And, by Jove! clever thought! I know how to do it. I’ll go to Onslow after dinner, tell him I’m going to call on Mrs. Duvernay to-morrow, and offer to take him down there in my dug-out. I shall soon see what his game is. If he’s after her still, he’ll look jealous, and trust me for seeing it; and if he isn’t, why it’s a walk-over.”

“All the same,” remarked his other friend, “I don’t think I’d—ar—put very long odds on you, old chappie. There’s nothing certain in this life, and widows are apt—ar—to keep a fellow dangling till a fellow gets tired. Finished? Then let’s go to the bar and throw for liqueurs. Mine’s _crême de menthe_.”