Young Mr. Harte blenched, but he kept his head. Bracing treatment seemed to be called for, and he applied it. "Well don't make such a song and dance about it!" he said. "Pull yourself together, Cynthia!"
"It's all been so awful!" sobbed Cynthia, unresentful of this cavalier response.
"I'm sure it has," said Timothy, detaching her clasp about his neck. "You'd better not cry about it, though: it'll make your nose red. Sit down, and tell me what's been happening since last night!"
"Nothing." she said. "That's what makes it utterly frightful! Everything's ghastly, and Mummy wouldn't let me go to Meg's party, and she says I've got to wear this filthy black frock, which makes me look a hag, and Aunt Violet's here, and I can't find my powder-compact anywhere, and there's nothing to do, and that beastly radio's got nothing but Choral Services and Forces' Educational, and I wish I was dead! And on top of that I'm so utterly upset about Dan, but nobody understands, or cares! He wouldn't have wanted me not to go to any parties! It isn't as though he was a relation! Mummy ought to want me to go out, to take my mind off it all!"
She then dragged her reluctant visitor to the sofa by one hand, pulled him down on to it, and sobbed gustily into his shoulder. It was quite impossible to discover which item of the catalogue of disasters, so movingly recited, affected her most. Timothy did not even try, but applied his energies to the task of soothing her distress. To his intense discomfort, she acquired a limpet-like grip on the lapel of his coat; he guessed that the shoulder of his coat would shortly become impregnated with her expensive powder, and mentally registered a resolve to send the coat to the Express Cleaners without loss of time. She said that if she had to wear black until after the funeral Mummy might at least buy her some new frocks, instead of sending for that dim Miss Spennymoor to convert two frocks of her own to her daughter's use; she said that even Aunt Violet, whom she detested, thought it was ridiculous to wear mourning for anyone outside one's family; she said that in all probability Mummy's disgusting maid had stolen her favourite powdercompact; and she demanded corroboration from Timothy that she was quite too terribly sensitive, and liable to be upset by the least little thing. Whether she included the ugly murder of an old friend in this category, Timothy did not trouble himself to enquire. He assured her that no one could doubt her sensibility, and tried to induce her to sit up. She said: "Oh, Timothy, you're so sweet! I do love you so! I thought I was going mad, till you walked in, and now I feel quite different!"
Mr. Harte was convinced that he felt the hair rising on his scalp. His saner self told him that it would be foolish to refine too much upon this artless speech; but his male instinct bade him fly from such a dangerous locality. He was never more glad to be interrupted in the middle of a tender passage. Interrupted he was: the door opened to admit Mrs. Haddington, and her sister; and, since Cynthia relaxed her grip on his coat sufficiently to enable her to turn to see who had come into the room, he was able to free himself from her hold, and to rise from the sofa.
It was evident that both the elderly ladies had had ample opportunity to observe the touching scene, and equally evident that both regarded Timothy with approval. Mrs. Haddington, trailing clouds of black chiffon, smiled, and put out her hand, saying: "How sweet of you to have come, dear Timothy! No one could do more good to my poor little daughter, I know! The child is dreadfully upset: Dan was like an uncle to her!"
"Mummy, he was not!" hotly declared Cynthia.
"Nonsense! Of course he was, and ifhe wasn't he ought to have been!" said Miss Pickhill sharply. "So you are Mr. Harte, are you? I've heard a lot about you, and I'm very glad to meet you, very! Goodness, child, dry your face! That disgusting stuff you put on your eyelashes has made a black mark on your cheek! I'm sure I don't know what young girls are coming to! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lily, encouraging her to ruin the face the Almighty gave her!"
"You simply don't understand!" Cynthia said.
"Very likely I don't, or want to!" said her aunt, the asperity of her voice tempered by the indulgent gleam in her eyes as they rested on the lovely but woe-begone countenance before her. "All I understand is that you've plunged yourself into the most disgraceful scandal, just as I always knew you would! Whatever my private feelings may be, blood is thicker than water, and I sent a message to dear Mr. Broseley, excusing myself from attending the Meeting today, and came straight up to London. I sometimes think my poor father must turn in his grave!"
"Lord Guisborough!" announced Thrimby from the doorway, enacting providence.
"Lance!" shrieked Cynthia, hurling herself upon him, to the profound relief of Mr. Harte. "You angel!"
"Cynthia dear!" said Mrs. Haddington, her smile more than ordinarily mechanical.
Miss Pickhill grasped the pince-nez which hung from a sort of button pinned to her spare bosom, pulled out a length of gold chain, and fixed the glasses on the bridge of her nose. "Oh!" she said discouragingly. "So this is the young man I've heard so much of, is it? Well!"
Her tone led no one to suppose that his lordship met with her approval, but, happily for his self-esteem, he was so dazed and transported by the flattering behaviour of the most beautiful girl in London that he scarcely noticed Miss Pickhill. Nor did the rapid recapitulation of Cynthia's grievances in any way shake his besotted admiration of her. He asserted, on what grounds no one could imagine, that in Russia mourning was a thing of the past, such senseless conventions belonging to an outworn bourgeoisie; and uttered a slightly involved but vehement speech, the gist of which seemed to be that the only right and proper course for Cynthia to pursue, in recognition of the hideous fate which had overtaken her old friend, was to plunge instantly into as much gaiety as London could offer, preferably in his company.
"Young man," said Miss Pickhill, "you are talking nonsense, and, what is more, objectionable nonsense! It is one thing to rush into exaggerated mourning, and quite another to racket about London before that unfortunate man is even buried!"
None of his advanced ideas had ever quite succeeded in quelling in Lord Guisborough an instinctive respect for the conventions of the bourgeoisie in which he had been reared. He hesitated, and then said: "I thought you could come and dine quietly with Trixie and me, at the studio, Cynthia. Just ourselves!"
"Oh, no, Lance darling, don't let's!" begged Cynthia. "Of course I adore Trixie, but she's so dim and drab, and it's no use her telling me I should love living in Russia, being called CoMr.ade by ghastly people I don't even want to know, and being ordered about all over the place, and not having any more money than anyone else, because I should loathe it! And I particularly couldn't stand it tonight!"
"But it's not like that at all!" Guisborough assured her. "You've got a wholly false idea of the Communist State, derived from prejudice, and preconceived -"
"I don't see why my idea shouldd be any falser than yours," argued Cynthia. "You can't possibly know, because you haven't been there, and, anyway, I do think it's too boring and lethal to go on and on and on about some rotten foreign country that probably isn't half as nice as England, if you only knew!"
"Not half as nice as England!" echoed Guisborough, in a stunned voice.
"Of course it isn't! I daresay the Russians like it, but I never can see, and I never shall see why people like you and Trixie have to put on that Holy, Holy, Holy expression whenever anyone so much as mentions Russia, exactly as if you'd got religion! You'll have somebody thinking you are a Russian if you're not careful! Too degrading, Lance darling!"