The Man and the Moment Part 3

"Samuel--he's only a thing! Oh! Uncle and Aunt would be so angry if they could see me here! And I expect they are all in a fine fuss now to know what has happened to me! They never saw me go through the door, and I hope they think that I've committed suicide out of one of the windows.

Look!" and she danced excitedly, "there is Uncle talking to the commissionaire. Oh, what fun!"

Mr. Arranstoun peeped, too--and saw a spare, elderly American of grim appearance in anxious confab with Alexander Armstrong.

The whole situation struck him as delightful, and he laughed gaily, while he suggested: "You are perhaps rather a difficult charge?"

Miss Delburg resented this at once.

"What an idea! How would you like to marry Mr. Greenbank, or stay with Aunt Jemima for four years!"

"Well, you see, I can't contemplate it, as I am not a girl!"

Again those white teeth showed, and the violet eyes were suffused with laughter.

"No! Of course not. How silly I am--but I mean, how would you care to be forced to do something you did not like?"

Michael thought of his own fate.

"By Jove! I should hate it!"

"Well--you can understand me!"

Then the door opened, and the butler and footman brought in the tea, eyeing their master's guest furtively, while they maintained that superbly aloof manner of well-bred English servants. The pause their entrance caused gave Mr. Arranstoun time to think, and an idea gradually began to unfold itself in his brain--and unconsciously he took out, and then replaced in his breast pocket, a mauve, closely-written letter, while a frown of deep cogitation crept over his face.

Miss Delburg, for her part, was only thrilled with the sight of the very agreeable tea, and after waiting a moment to see what her preoccupied host would do when the servants left the room, hunger forced her to fall to the temptation of a particularly appetizing chocolate cake, which she surrept.i.tiously seized, and began munching with the frank joy of a child.

"I do love them!" she sighed, "and we never were allowed them, only once a month after Moravia Cloudwater got that awful toothache, and had to have a big grinder pulled out."

Michael was paying no attention to her; he had walked rapidly up and down the room once or twice, much to her astonishment.

At last he spoke.

"I have an idea--but first let me give you some tea--No--do help yourself," then he paused awkwardly, and she at once proceeded to fill her cup.

Binko had condescended to emerge from his basket under the table.

Tea-time was an hour when he allowed himself to take an interest in human beings.

"Oh! you darling!" the girl cried, putting down her cup. "You fat, lovely, wrinkly darling!"

"He is a nice dog," his master admitted; his voice was actually nervous--and he pulled Binko to him by his solid, fleshy paws, while he sat down in his chair again.

Miss Delburg had got back into her seat, where she munched a cake and continued her tea. The chair was so deep and long that her little bits of feet did not nearly reach the ground, but dangled there.

"Mayn't I pour you out some, too?" she asked, getting forward again. "I do love to pour out--and do you take sugar--? I like lumps and lumps of it."

"Oh--er--yes," Michael agreed absently, and then he went on with the determined air of a person getting something off his chest. "I hardly know how to say what I am thinking of, it sounds so strange. Listen--I also must marry someone--anyone--to avert a fate I don't want--What do you say to marrying _me_?"

The teapot came down into the tray with a b.u.mp, while the round, childish eyes grew like saucers with astonishment.

"Oh!"

"I dare say it does surprise you--" Michael then hastened to add. "I mean, we should only go through the ceremony, of course, and you could get your money and I my freedom."

The girl clasped her hands round her knees.

"And I should never have to see you again?" in a glad voice of comprehension.

Michael leaned forward nearer to her.

"Well--no--never, unless you wished."

Miss Delburg actually kicked her feet with delight.

"It is a perfectly splendid suggestion," she announced. "We could just oblige one another in this way, and need never see or speak to each other again. What made it come into your head? Do you really think we could do that--Oh! how rude of me--I've forgotten to pour out your tea!"

"Never mind, talking about--our marriage--is more interesting," and Mr.

Arranstoun's blue eyes filled with mischievous appreciation of the situation, even beyond the seriousness of the discussion he meant to carry to an end. But this aspect did not so much concern Miss Delburg, as that she had let slip a particular pleasure for the moment, that of being allowed a teapot in her own hand, instead of being given a huge bowl of milk with a drop of weak coffee mixed in it, and watching a like fate fall upon her companions.

When this delightful business was accomplished to her satisfaction, her sweet little round face a model of serious responsibility the while, she handed Michael the cup and drew herself back once more into the depth of the giant chair.

"I can't behave nicely in this great creature," she said, patting the fat cus.h.i.+oned arms, "and the Mother Superior would be horribly shocked, but don't let's mind. Now, do tell me something about this plan. You see," gravely, "I really don't know the world very well yet--I have always been at the Convent near Tours until a month ago--even in the holidays, since I was seven--and the Sisters never told me anything about outside, except that it was a place of pitfalls and that men were dreadful creatures. I was very happy there, except I wanted to get out all the time, and when I did and found Uncle and Aunt more tiresome than the Sisters--there seemed no help for it--only Mr. Greenbank. So I accepted him this morning. But--" and this awful thought caused her whole countenance to change. "Now I come to think of it, the usual getting married means you would have to stay with the man--wouldn't you?

And he wants--he wants to kiss--I mean," hurriedly, "you would be lovely to marry because I would never have to see you again!"

Michael Arranstoun put his head back and laughed; she was perfectly delicious--he began to dislike Mr. Greenbank.

His tea was quite forgotten.

"Er--of course not," he agreed. "Well, I could get a special license, if you could tell me exactly how you stand, and your whole name and your parents' names, and everything, and we could get their consent--but I conclude your father, at least, is no longer alive."

Miss Delburg had a very grown-up air now.

"No, my parents are both dead," she told him. "Papa three years ago, and Mamma for ages, and I never saw them much anyhow. They were always travelling about, and Mamma was a Frenchwoman and a Catholic. Her family did not speak to her because she married a Protestant and an American.

And the worry it was for me being brought up in a convent! because Papa would have me a Protestant, so I do believe I have got a little religion of my own that is not like either!"

"Yes?"

She continued her narrative in the intervals of the joy of munching another cake.

"Papa was very rich, and it's all mine--Only it appears he did not approve of the freedom of American women--and so tied it up so that I can't get it until I am an old maid of twenty-one--or get married. Is it not disgusting?"

Michael's thoughts were now concentrating upon the vital points.

"But have you not got a guardian or something?"

"Not exactly. Only an old lawyer person who is now in London. I have seen Papa's will, and I know I can marry when and whom I like if I get his consent--and he would give it in a minute, he is sick of me!"

"How fortunate!" Then restlessness seized him again, and he got up, gulped down his tea, and began his pacing.

"I do think it would be a good plan, and we must do it if we can get this person's leave--Yes, and do it quickly before we change our minds, or something interferes. Everyone would think we were perfectly mad, but as it suits us both, that is no one's business--Only--you are rather young--and er--I don't know Greenbank. You are sure he is horrid?"