CHAPTER IV
Scott Homer wore exactly, to his sister's eyes, the aspect he had
worn the day before, and it also formed to her sense the great
feature of his impartial greeting.
"How d'ye do, Mamie? How d'ye do, Lady Wantridge?"
"How d'ye do again?" Lady Wantridge replied with an equanimity
striking to her hostess. It was as if Scott's own had been
contagious; it was almost indeed as if she had seen him before.
Had she ever so seen him--before the previous day? While Miss
Cutter put to herself this question her visitor at all events met
the one she had previously uttered. "Ever 'forgive'?" this
personage echoed in a tone that made as little account as possible
of the interruption. "Dear yes! The people I HAVE forgiven!" She
laughed--perhaps a little nervously; and she was now looking at
Scott. The way she looked at him was precisely what had already
had its effect for his sister. "The people I can!"
"Can you forgive me?" asked Scott Homer.
She took it so easily. "But--what?"
Mamie interposed; she turned directly to her brother. "Don't try
her. Leave it so." She had had an inspiration, it was the most
extraordinary thing in the world. "Don't try HIM"--she had turned
to their companion. She looked grave, sad, strange. "Leave it
so." Yes, it was a distinct inspiration, which she couldn't have
explained, but which had come, prompted by something she had
caught--the extent of the recognition expressed--in Lady
Wantridge's face. It had come absolutely of a sudden, straight out
of the opposition of the two figures before her--quite as if a
concussion had struck a light. The light was helped by her
quickened sense that her friend's silence on the incident of the
day before showed some sort of consciousness. She looked
surprised. "Do you know my brother?"
"DO I know you?" Lady Wantridge asked of him.
"No, Lady Wantridge," Scott pleasantly confessed, "not one little
mite!"
"Well then if you MUST go--" and Mamie offered her a hand. "But
I'll go down with you. NOT YOU!" she launched at her brother, who
immediately effaced himself. His way of doing so--and he had
already done so, as for Lady Wantridge, in respect to their
previous encounter--struck her even at the moment as an instinctive
if slightly blind tribute to her possession of an idea; and as
such, in its celerity, made her so admire him, and their common
wit, that she on the spot more than forgave him his queerness. He
was right. He could be as queer as he liked! The queerer the
better! It was at the foot of the stairs, when she had got her
guest down, that what she had assured Mrs. Medwin would come did
indeed come. "DID you meet him here yesterday?"
"Dear yes. Isn't he too funny?"
"Yes," said Mamie gloomily. "He IS funny. But had you ever met
him before?"
"Dear no!"
"Oh!"--and Mamie's tone might have meant many things.
Lady Wantridge however, after all, easily overlooked it. "I only
knew he was one of your odd Americans. That's why, when I heard
yesterday here that he was up there awaiting your return, I didn't
let that prevent me. I thought he might be. He certainly," her
ladyship laughed, "IS."
"Yes, he's very American," Mamie went on in the same way.
"As you say, we ARE fond of you! Good-bye," said Lady Wantridge.
But Mamie had not half done with her. She felt more and more--or
she hoped at least--that she looked strange. She WAS, no doubt, if
it came to that, strange. "Lady Wantridge," she almost
convulsively broke out, "I don't know whether you'll understand me,
but I seem to feel that I must act with you--I don't know what to
call it!--responsibly. He IS my brother."
"Surely--and why not?" Lady Wantridge stared. "He's the image of
you!"
"Thank you!"--and Mamie was stranger than ever.
"Oh he's good-looking. He's handsome, my dear. Oddly--but
distinctly!" Her ladyship was for treating it much as a joke.
But Mamie, all sombre, would have none of this. She boldly gave
him up. "I think he's awful."
"He is indeed--delightfully. And where DO you get your ways of
saying things? It isn't anything--and the things aren't anything.
But it's so droll."
"Don't let yourself, all the same," Mamie consistently pursued, "be
carried away by it. The thing can't be done--simply."
Lady Wantridge wondered. "'Done simply'?"
"Done at all."
"But what can't be?"
"Why, what you might think--from his pleasantness. What he spoke
of your doing for him."
Lady Wantridge recalled. "Forgiving him?"
"He asked you if you couldn't. But you can't. It's too dreadful
for me, as so near a relation, to have, loyally--loyally to YOU--to
say it. But he's impossible."
It was so portentously produced that her ladyship had somehow to
meet it. "What's the matter with him?"
"I don't know."
"Then what's the matter with YOU?" Lady Wantridge inquired.
"It's because I WON'T know," Mamie--not without dignity--explained.
"Then _I_ won't either."
"Precisely. Don't. It's something," Mamie pursued, with some
inconsequence, "that--somewhere or other, at some time or other--he
appears to have done. Something that has made a difference in his
life."
"'Something'?" Lady Wantridge echoed again. "What kind of thing?"
Mamie looked up at the light above the door, through which the
London sky was doubly dim. "I haven't the least idea."
"Then what kind of difference?"
Mamie's gaze was still at the light. "The difference you see."
Lady Wantridge, rather obligingly, seemed to ask herself what she
saw. "But I don't see any! It seems, at least," she added, "such
an amusing one! And he has such nice eyes."
"Oh DEAR eyes!" Mamie conceded; but with too much sadness, for the
moment, about the connexions of the subject, to say more.
It almost forced her companion after an instant to proceed. "Do
you mean he can't go home?"
She weighed her responsibility. "I only make out--more's the
pity!--that he doesn't."
"Is it then something too terrible--?"
She thought again. "I don't know what--for men--IS too terrible."
"Well then as you don't know what 'is' for women either--good-bye!"
her visitor laughed.
It practically wound up the interview; which, however, terminating
thus on a considerable stir of the air, was to give Miss Cutter for
several days the sense of being much blown about. The degree to
which, to begin with, she had been drawn--or perhaps rather pushed-
-closer to Scott was marked in the brief colloquy that she on her
friend's departure had with him. He had immediately said it.
"You'll see if she doesn't ask me down!"
"So soon?"
"Oh I've known them at places--at Cannes, at Pau, at Shanghai--do
it sooner still. I always know when they will. You CAN'T make out
they don't love me!" He spoke almost plaintively, as if he wished
she could.
"Then I don't see why it hasn't done you more good."
"Why Mamie," he patiently reasoned, "what more good COULD it? As I
tell you," he explained, "it has just been my life."
"Then why do you come to me for money?"
"Oh they don't give me THAT!" Scott returned.
"So that it only means then, after all, that I, at the best, must
keep you up?"
He fixed on her the nice eyes Lady Wantridge admired. "Do you mean
to tell me that already--at this very moment--I'm not distinctly
keeping you?"
She gave him back his look. "Wait till she HAS asked you, and
then," Mamie added, "decline."
Scott, not too grossly, wondered. "As acting for YOU?"
Mamie's next injunction was answer enough. "But BEFORE--yes--
call."
He took it in. "Call--but decline. Good!"
"The rest," she said, "I leave to you." And she left it in fact
with such confidence that for a couple of days she was not only
conscious of no need to give Mrs. Medwin another turn of the screw,
but positively evaded, in her fortitude, the reappearance of that
lady. It was not till the fourth day that she waited upon her,
finding her, as she had expected, tense.
"Lady Wantridge WILL--?"
"Yes, though she says she won't."
"She says she won't? O-oh!" Mrs. Medwin moaned.
"Sit tight all the same. I HAVE her!"
"But how?"
"Through Scott--whom she wants."
"Your bad brother!" Mrs. Medwin stared. "What does she want of
him?"
"To amuse them at Catchmore. Anything for that. And he WOULD.
But he shan't!" Mamie declared. "He shan't go unless she comes.
She must meet you first--you're my condition."
"O-o-oh!" Mrs. Medwin's tone was a wonder of hope and fear. "But
doesn't he want to go?"
"He wants what I want. She draws the line at YOU. I draw the line
at HIM."
"But SHE--doesn't she mind that he's bad?"
It was so artless that Mamie laughed. "No--it doesn't touch her.
Besides, perhaps he isn't. It isn't as for you--people seem not to
know. He has settled everything, at all events, by going to see
her. It's before her that he's the thing she'll have to have."
"Have to?"
"For Sundays in the country. A feature--THE feature."
"So she has asked him?"
"Yes--and he has declined."
"For ME?" Mrs. Medwin panted.
"For me," said Mamie on the door-step. "But I don't leave him for
long." Her hansom had waited. "She'll come."
Lady Wantridge did come. She met in South Audley Street, on the
fourteenth, at tea, the ladies whom Mamie had named to her,
together with three or four others, and it was rather a master-
stroke for Miss Cutter that if Mrs. Medwin was modestly present
Scott Homer was as markedly not. This occasion, however, is a
medal that would take rare casting, as would also, for that matter,
even the minor light and shade, the lower relief, of the pecuniary
transaction that Mrs. Medwin's flushed gratitude scarce awaited the
dispersal of the company munificently to complete. A new
understanding indeed on the spot rebounded from it, the conception
of which, in Mamie's mind, had promptly bloomed. "He shan't go now
unless he takes you." Then, as her fancy always moved quicker for
her client than her client's own--"Down with him to Catchmore!
When he goes to amuse them YOU," she serenely developed, "shall
amuse them too." Mrs. Medwin's response was again rather oddly
divided, but she was sufficiently intelligible when it came to
meeting the hint that this latter provision would represent success
to the tune of a separate fee. "Say," Mamie had suggested, "the
same."
"Very well; the same."
The knowledge that it was to be the same had perhaps something to
do also with the obliging spirit in which Scott eventually went.
It was all at the last rather hurried--a party rapidly got together
for the Grand Duke, who was in England but for the hour, who had
good-naturedly proposed himself, and who liked his parties small,
intimate and funny. This one was of the smallest and was finally
judged to conform neither too little nor too much to the other
conditions--after a brief whirlwind of wires and counterwires, and
an iterated waiting of hansoms at various doors--to include Mrs.
Medwin. It was from Catchmore itself that, snatching, a moment--on
the wondrous Sunday afternoon, this lady had the harmonious thought
of sending the new cheque. She was in bliss enough, but her
scribble none the less intimated that it was Scott who amused them
most. He WAS the feature.
