Nelly interrupted her with a laughing sigh.
‘Poor old Robert!’ she murmured. ‘He’ll be really hurt, I’m afraid.’ The accumulated stirrings of revolt that betrayed her into this very definite bulletin of the state of her heart frightened her as she uttered it. She had really begun to put her weight, then, against the teeth of the trap? And it seemed as if they yielded a little. Or was it just a passing response to the perilous irresponsibility of her hostess?
‘Don’t you worry yourself ill over any Robert. They’re none of them worth it. Nor any Richard either, for the matter of that! But you may bring number two to see me if you like. I’ve read something of his in the Mercure de France. It pleased me; if I’m not confusing him with that clever Belgian — you know who I mean?’
Nelly hadn’t the least idea who she meant, but she begged earnestly to be allowed to see the article in question.
‘Not I!’ laughed the old woman mischievously. ‘I’m not going to corrupt your mind. Does your Richard write in his native tongue as well?’
‘Oh yes! He wrote that Life of — of — who was it now?’ And Nelly felt a vivid pang of humiliation because at that moment, when she especially wanted to do so, she could not recall the Life of Someone, to which reference had been made during their silly quarrel in the tea shop. ‘It was those two dogs,’ she muttered, blushing.
The old woman looked at her whimsically. ‘Dogs?’ she cried, getting up from the table. ‘You don’t mean to say that number two writes Lives of Dogs? Well, that is interesting.’ She stooped, as they both moved towards the sofa, and addressed a great complacent tabby-cat that lay curled up in the corner of it.
‘Do you hear that, Tabbyskins? He writes Lives of Dogs. Perhaps if you’re very nice to him and don’t show your claws, but only purr, when he strokes your fur the wrong way, he will write your life — the Life of Mrs Tabbyskins Shotover, the great Sussex Thinker. You’ll like to have your life written by a real poet, wouldn’t you my treasure? Well, my dear— ‘and turning to her young guest she pulled her affectionately down by her side and patted her on the knee’—now tell me a little more about this Mr Storm of yours. He’s a gentleman, I suppose?’
Nelly smiled. “Yes, I should certainly say he is that,’ she answered. ‘When you don’t notice that they’re not, they generally are, aren’t they, Granny?’
In earlier days Mrs Shotover had encouraged her to use this endearment; and it was a sign of reconciliation that she used it now.
‘His grandfather was a D.D. and is buried in our churchyard,’ the girl added with solemnity.
Mrs Shotover smiled. ‘My dear!’ she cried, ‘I hope you don’t think that D.D. is a mark of gentility. They used to make ‘em D.D.s when they dedicated their sermons to Queen Anne. Parson Adams was a D.D. and they used to give him his meals in kitchens and places. What was your beau’s grandfather’s name?’
‘Storm,’ murmured Nelly, frowning a little. Then her face brightened. ‘But it says on the tombstone that Susanna was the daughter of John Molyneux Talbot.’
Mrs Shotover chuckled. ‘You’ve certainly got hostages for his good behaviour in your churchyard! Susanna’s a good name. Though if I remember right, one of them found it difficult once to keep herself to herself! But Susanna Talbot is a good sound name for anybody’s grandmamma. Well, my sweet child, you must bring your Stormy Petrel over here for me to scrutinize. I’ll ferret him out, depend on it! I’ll show him up if he’s a blackguardly villain. I’ll storm his defences. What did he do in the war? Did he fight? Was he in the Legion? Of course he’s in love with you, my dear! Who wouldn’t be? But we must be careful. We must take our time. Who knows? He may have the most obstinate little ménage hidden away somewhere! We mustn’t have our sweet Nell made unhappy. We must go very slow. Very slow and very carefully.’ And the old lady proceeded to put her caution into practice by kissing her companion as mischievously and slyly as if it were the girl’s wedding morning.
Nelly replied as freely as she could to all her friend’s questions. One thing, however, instinct told her to keep unrevealed; and that was the fact of Mr Richard Storm being so much older than herself. Let her, she thought, find that out after she sees how nice and young and unspoilt he is in his mind!
It was a little later in the afternoon, while they were looking at Mrs Shotover’s fine roses, that Nelly ventured upon the topic of the writer’s desire to secure some quiet lodging in that neighbourhood so as to work undisturbed at some new enterprise.
The old lady laughed uproariously. ‘My dear girl you have indeed got on! Lodgings in the neighbourhood? What next? Why in my time they used to be satisfied if they came down from town for very short weekends. You’re surely not such a dear stupid as to think he’d land himself out here for the summer if there wasn’t someone he was after. Of course it may not be you. He may have an inamorata in Selshurst — though that’s not likely. Much more possible he’s got some little French friend down at Fogmore. But don’t you fool your innocent little heart into believing that bosh about his having to write some great work. They all have to write great works when they want to enjoy themselves!’
Nelly made no reply for some minutes to this tirade. Then, with her hand on the stem of a great cluster of red roses into which she was prepared to plunge her face if what she said became too embarrassing, she uttered a faint protest.
‘But Granny, I can’t quite understand you. You don’t mean that if a man were really immoral, and really had — people — like you speak of — dependent upon him — whether in Fogmore or anywhere else — that it would be right for him to marry?’
The old lady promptly defeated the girl’s intention of burying her face in the rosebush after this outbreak, by pulling her back into the path. ‘Little goose!’ she cried with severe emphasis. ‘Get this into your pretty head. There are no such things as moral men in these days — except such dear stick-in-the-muds as neither you nor I could stand for a fortnight! Well! perhaps that’s going a little far, considering that my dear old George was faithful to me for forty years. But you would probably have been bored with George. What you girls have to do is to draw the line between honest naughtiness and sheer ill-bred blackguardism. If you’re looking for a Sir Galahad, my dear baby, you’d better give up the thought of marrying anybody. What you have to do is to choose some well-bred gentleman who knows the world and make him fall in love with you. He’ll deal with his past life for himself. That’ll be his affair — your affair will be to keep him interested and to bear him children. Men with any sensitiveness are faithful to their children, even if they’re not faithful to their wives. The sooner you get over this Sir Galahad business the sooner you’ll be a sensible little girl.
‘It’s a choice between boredom, my sweet, and uncertainty. If the fellow’s a gentleman and not a fool, you’ll never have anything worse than uncertainty. And the woman who can’t live with uncertainty had better go into a nunnery or die an old maid. The wives who go about looking, as they say, “unhappy” are either selfish creatures who’re as bad as the men they condemn, in their fussiness over their, precious little selves, or they are unlucky innocents who’ve never had any Granny to tell them what this world is like. Don’t look so wild and scared, child. Things aren’t as bad as all that. If your Stormy Petrel has had his little pleasures, as no doubt he has, it’s quite likely that he’ll make a most quiet companion. The worst ones often do. For my part I’d sooner see you married to a man of the world — that’s to say if he were a gentleman — than to some hot-headed boy who’d clear off bag and baggage directly he got tired of you and found some other scatter-brain.’