That Girl in Black; and, Bronzie

“Oh, do you think so?” said the girl in a tone of half-indignant disappointment, falling blindly into the trap. “I, on the contrary, felt that the last volume made amends for all that was unsatisfactory in the others. You see by it what he was driving at all the time, and that the persiflage and apparent cynicism were only means to an end. I do hate cynicism – it is so easy, and such a little makes such a great effect.”

Something in her tone made Despard feel irritated. “Is she hitting at me again?” he thought. And the idea threw him, in his turn, off his guard.

The natural result was that both forgot themselves in the interest of the discussion. And Despard, when he, as it were, awoke to the realisation of this, took care not to throw away the advantage he had gained. He drew her out, he talked as he but seldom exerted himself to do, and when, at the end of half-an-hour or so, an elderly lady, whom he knew by name only, was seen approaching them, and Miss Fforde sprang to her feet, exclaiming, —

“Have you been looking for me? I hope not – ” he smiled quietly as he prepared to withdraw – he had succeeded!

“Good-night, Mr Norreys,” said Maisie simply.

“Two evenings ago she would not say good-night at all,” he thought. But he made no attempt to do more than bow quietly.

“You are very – cold, grim – no, I don’t know what to call it, Maisie, dear,” said the lady, her cousin and present chaperone, as they drove away, “in your manner to men; and that man in particular – Despard Norreys. It is not often he is so civil to any girl.”

“I detest all men – all young men,” replied Maisie irritably.

“But, my dear, you should be commonly civil. And he had been giving himself, for him, unusual trouble to entertain you.”

“Can he know about her? Oh, no, it is impossible,” she added to herself.

Miss Fforde closed her lips firmly. But in a moment or two she opened them again.

“Cousin Agnes,” she said, half smiling, “I am afraid you are quite mistaken. If I had not been what you call ‘commonly civil,’ would he have gone on talking to me? On the contrary, I am sadly afraid I was far too civil.”

“My dear child,” ejaculated her cousin, “what do you mean?”

“Oh,” said Maisie, “I don’t know. Never mind the silly things I say. I like being with you, Cousin Agnes, but I don’t like London. I am much happier at home in the country.”

“But, my dear child, when I saw you at home a few months ago you were looking forward with pleasure to coming. What has changed you? What has disappointed you?”

“I am not suited for anything but a quiet country life – that is all,” said Miss Fforde.

“But, then, Maisie, afterwards, you know, you will have to come to town and have a house of your own and all that sort of thing. It is necessary for you to see something of the world to prepare you for – ”

“Afterwards isn’t now, Cousin Agnes. And I am doing my best, as papa wished,” said the girl weariedly. “Do let us talk of something else. Really sometimes I do wish I were any one but myself.”

“Maisie,” said her cousin reproachfully, “you know, dear, that isn’t right. You must take the cares and responsibilities of a position like yours along with the advantages and privileges of it.”

“I know,” Miss Fforde replied meekly enough; “but, Cousin Agnes, do tell me who was that very funny-looking man with the long fluffy beard whom you were talking to for some time.”

“Oh, that, my dear, was Count Dalmiati, the celebrated so-and-so,” and once launched in her descriptions Cousin Agnes left Maisie in peace.

Two days later came the afternoon of Lady Valence’s garden-party. It was one of the garden parties to which “everybody” went – Despard Norreys for one, as a matter of course. He had got more gratification and less annoyance out of his second meeting with Miss Fforde; for he flattered himself he knew how to manage her now – “that little girl in black, who thinks herself so wonderfully wise, forsooth!” Yet the sting was there still; the very persistence with which he repeated to himself that he had mastered her showed it. His thoughts recurred to her more than they were in the habit of doing to any one or anything but his own immediate concerns. Out of curiosity, merely, no doubt; curiosity increased by the apparent improbability of satisfying it. For no one seemed to know anything about her. She might have dropped from the skies. He had indeed some difficulty in recalling her personality to the two or three people to whom he applied for information.

“A girl in black – at the Leslies’ musical party? Why, my dear fellow, there were probably a dozen girls in black there. There usually is a good sprinkling of black frocks at evening parties,” said one of the knowers of everybody whom he had selected to honour with his inquiries. “What was there remarkable about her? There must have been something to attract your notice.”

“No, on the contrary,” Despard replied, “she was remarkably unremarkable;” and he laughed lightly. “It was only rather absurd. I have seemed haunted by her once or twice lately, and yet nobody knows anything about her, except that her name is Ford.”

“Ford,” said his companion; “that does not tell much. And not pretty, you say?”

“Pretty, oh, yes. No, not exactly pretty,” and a vision of Maisie’s clear cold profile and – yes, there was no denying it – most lovely eyes, rose before him. “More than pretty,” he would have said had he not been afraid of being laughed at. “I don’t really know how to describe her, and it is of less than no consequence. I don’t suppose I shall ever see her again,” and he went on to talk of other matters.

He did see her again, however, and it was, as will have already been supposed, at Lady Valence’s garden-party that he did so. It was a cold day, of course. The weather, with its usual consideration, had changed that very morning, after having been, for May, really decently mild and agreeable. The wind had veered round to the east, and it seemed not improbable that the rain would look in, an uninvited guest, in the course of the afternoon.

Lady Valence declared herself in despair, but as nobody could remember the weather ever being anything but highly detestable the day of her garden-party, it is to be hoped that she in reality took it more philosophically than she allowed, Despard strode about feeling very cold, and wondering why he had come, and why, having come, he stayed. There was a long row of conservatories and ferneries, and glass-houses of every degree of temperature not far from the lawn, where at one end the band was playing, and at the other some deluded beings were eating ices. Despard shivered; the whole was too ghastly. A door in the centre house stood invitingly open, and he turned in. Voices near at hand, female voices, warned him off at one side, for he was not feeling amiable, and he hastened in the opposite direction. By degrees the pleasant warmth, the extreme beauty of the plants and flowers amidst which he found himself, the solitariness, too, soothed and subdued his irritation.

“If I could smoke,” he began to say to himself, when, looking round with a half-formed idea of so doing, he caught sight amidst the ferns of feminine drapery. Some one was there before him – but a very quiet, mouse-like somebody. A somebody who was standing there motionless, gazing at the tall tropical plants, enjoying, apparently, the warmth and the quiet like himself.

“That girl in black, that sphinx of a girl again – by Jove!” murmured Despard under his breath, and as he did so, she turned and saw him.

Her first glance was of annoyance; he saw her clearly from where he stood, there was no mistaking the fact. But, so quickly, that it was difficult to believe it had been there, the expression of vexation passed. The sharply contracted brows smoothed; the graceful head bent slightly forward; the lips parted.

“How do you do, Mr Norreys?” she said. “We are always running against each other unexpectedly, are we not?”

Her tone was perfectly natural, her manner expressed simple pleasure and gratification. She was again the third, the rarest of her three selves – the personality which Despard, in his heart of hearts, believed to be herself.

He smiled – a slightly amused, almost a slightly condescending smile, but a very pleasant one all the same. He could afford to be pleasant now. Poor silly little girl – she had given in with a good grace, a truce to her nonsense of regal airs and dignity; a truce, too, to the timid self-consciousness of her first introduction.

“She understands better now, I see,” he thought. “Understands that a little country girl is but – ah, well – but a little country girl. Still, I must allow – ” and he hesitated as his glance fell on her; it was the first time he had seen her by daylight, and the words he had mentally used did not quite “fit” – “I must allow that she has brains, and some character of her own.”

“I can imagine its seeming so to you,” he said aloud. “You have, I think you told me, lived always in the country. Of course, in the country one’s acquaintances stand out distinctly, and one remembers every day whom one has and has not seen. In town it is quite different. I find myself constantly forgetting people, and doing all sorts of stupid things, imagining I have seen some one last week when it was six months ago, and so on. But people are really very good-natured.”

She listened attentively.

“How difficult it must be to remember all the people you know!” she said, with the greatest apparent simplicity; indeed, with a tone of almost awe-struck reverence.

“I simply don’t attempt it,” he replied.

“How – dear me, I hardly know how to say it – how very good and kind of you it is to remember me,” she said.

Mr Norreys glanced at her sharply.

Was she playing him off? For an instant the appalling suggestion all but took his breath away, but it was quickly dismissed. Its utter absurdity was too self-evident; and the expression on her face reassured him. She seemed so innocent as she stood there, her eyes hidden for the moment by their well-fringed lids, for she was looking down. A faint, the very faintest, suspicion of a blush coloured her cheeks, there was a tiny little trembling about the corners of her mouth. But somehow these small evidences of confusion did not irritate him as they had done when he first met her. On the contrary. “Poor little girl,” he said to himself. “I see I must be careful. Still, she will live to get over it, and one cannot be positively brutal.”

For an instant or two he did not speak.

Then: “I never pay compliments, Miss Ford,” he said, “but what I am going to say may sound to you like one. However, I trust you will not dislike it.”

And again he unaccountably hesitated – what was the matter with him? He meant to be kindly encouraging to the girl, but as she stood beside him, looking up with a half-curious, half-deprecating expression in her eyes, he was conscious of his face slightly flushing; the words he wanted refused to come, he felt as if he were bewitched.

“Won’t you tell me what you were going to say?” she said at last. “I should so like to hear it.”

“It’s not worth saying,” he blurted out. “Indeed, though I know what I mean, I cannot express it. You – you are quite different from other girls, Miss Ford. It would be impossible to confuse you with the crowd. That’s about the sum of what I was thinking, though – I meant to express it differently. Certainly, in the way I have said it, no one by any possibility could take it for a compliment.”

To his surprise she looked up at him with a bright smile, a smile of pleasure, and – of something else.

“On the contrary, I do take it as a compliment, as a very distinct compliment,” she said, “considering whom it comes from. Though, after all, it is scarcely I that should accept it. The – the circumstances of my life may have made me different – my having been so little in town, for instance. I suppose there are some advantages in everything, even in apparent disadvantages.”

Her extreme gentleness and deference put him at his ease again.