BUSINESS ONLY

Next morning Hughie made Miss Joan Gaymer a proposal of marriage.

It was not an impressive effort—very few proposals are. But a performance of this kind may miss the mark as a spectacle and yet, by the indulgence of the principal spectator, achieve its end. Even thus Hughie failed, and for various reasons.

In the first place, he proposed directly after breakfast, which, as Joey pathetically observed to Mrs. Leroy long afterwards, was just the sort of brutal thing he would do. A woman, especially if she be young, likes to be won, or at any rate wooed, in a certain style. A secluded spot, subdued light, mayhap a moon; if possible, distant music—all these things tell. If Hughie had paid a little more attention to stage-effects of this kind he might have found his ward more amenable. Being a Marrable, he brushed aside these trappings and came straight to what he fondly imagined was the point, little knowing that to a young girl romance and courtship make up one great and glorious vista, filling the eye and occupying the entire landscape, while marriage is a small black cloud on the distant horizon.

His actual method of procedure was to sit heavily down beside his ward as she enjoyed the morning sun in a corner of the lawn, and say,—

"Joey, I want to talk to you—on business."

"All right, warder," replied Miss Gaymer meekly; "fire away!"

"I suppose you know," said Hughie, a little dashed, "that all your affairs have been left in my hands?"

"I do, worse luck!" said Miss Gaymer frankly. "And that reminds me, Hughie dear, I should like a trifle on account. You won't refuse poor Joey, will you?"

She squeezed her guardian's arm in a manner which a Frenchman would have described as trÈs cÂline.

"I think I had better put you on an allowance," said Hughie.

Joan's eyes danced.

"Oh, you ripper! How much?"

"Can't say," replied Hughie, "until I've been up to town and seen the bankers."

"When are you going?"

"To-morrow: that's why I wanted to talk to you to-day. You see, your money is in two parts, so to speak. One lot is tied up in such a way that it can't be touched until poor Uncle Jimmy's death is actually proved."

Joan's blue-grey eyes were troubled.

"Hughie," she said, "is there any hope? I still like to think so."

Hughie shook his head. "Not much," he said. "In fact, none. It is known that he went with that crack-brained expedition of Hymack's up the Congo,—to study the Rubber Question on the spot,—and the last letter he sent home said that he was suffering from black-water fever, and it is also known that the expedition came back without him. And—all that was two years ago, Joey."

Joan nodded her head submissively.

"Poor Uncle Jimmy!" she said softly.

"Still," continued Hughie stoutly, "you never know. I have sent a man out to make inquiries, and if he fails, perhaps I shall go myself. But until we learn something definite the will can't be proved. However, he left me very full instructions what to do in case he did not come back, so I must carry them out. There is plenty for you to go on with. I shall run up to town to-morrow, and when I come back I'll let you know how much it is, and how much a year I can allow you."

Miss Gaymer clasped her hands and sighed happily.

"We will have a time, Hughie!" she said. "I'll stand treat."

"Thank you," said Hughie gravely.

There was a long silence. Hughie, suddenly ill at ease,—he had arrived at Part Two of his morning's syllabus,—made fatuous attempts to roll a cigarette. His ward sat with a rapt expression in her widely-opened eyes, mentally visualising a series of charitable enterprises (ranging from a turquoise pendant for Mildred Leroy to a new cap for the cook) made feasible by the sudden prospect of wealth.

Presently Hughie cleared his throat in a heart-rending manner, and said, in what he afterwards admitted to himself was entirely the wrong sort of voice,—

"Joey, I think you and I had better marry one another."

Miss Gaymer, who was more used to this sort of thing than her companion, turned and eyed him calmly.

"And why?" she asked.

There was only one possible answer to this question, and Hughie should have given it with the full strength of his heart and soul and body. But—well, reserve is a curious and paralysing thing. All he said was,—

"I think it would be very suitable; don't you?"

"For you or for me?" inquired Miss Gaymer.

"For both of us," replied Hughie. "No—for me!" he added, his habitual modesty getting the better of him.

"In what way?" continued Miss Gaymer, with unnatural calm.

"Well—Uncle Jimmy was very keen about it," said Hughie desperately.

"You're a dutiful nephew, Hughie," observed Joan approvingly.

"And then," continued the suitor, "as I have been made your guardian, and all that, I think I am in a position to take care of you, and look after your money, and so on."

"You mean it would make it easier for you to manage my affairs?" said Miss Gaymer helpfully.

"Yes," said Hughie, feeling that he was getting on.

"Any more reasons?" inquired Miss Gaymer, with a docile appearance of intelligent interest.

Hughie made an immense effort, and grasped his chair until the veins stood out on his hands. Parturiunt montes—at last.

"Well, Joey," he said at last, "we have always been pals, and all that. I mean, we have known each other for a long time now, haven't we? You even offered to marry me once,"—he laughed nervously,—"when you were a kiddie. Do you remember? It seems to me we should get on first-rate together—eh? What's your opinion?"

Ridiculus mus!

Miss Gaymer sat up in her chair, and turned upon the unfortunate young man beside her.

"And you dare," she said, "to come to a girl like me with a proposal like that! You sit there and tell me that you have taken me over from Uncle Jimmy like a—like a parcel from a porter, and that you have been saddled with my money and affairs, so perhaps it would be simplest and save trouble if you married me! Me!" she repeated, "who have to keep men off with a stick!"

The last sentence was a mistake. It was an inartistic and egotistical climax to a perfectly justifiable tirade. Joan realised the fact the moment she had uttered the words, but poor Hughie was too much occupied in retiring into his shell to notice anything. He had laid bare his heart, in his own fashion, for the first time in his life, and this was the result. Never again! He burned inwardly, like a child who has been laughed at by grown-ups.

"I'm sorry," he said stiffly. "My mistake! Shan't occur again."

Joey's ear was caught by the tone of his voice, and conscience gave her a twinge. She patted Hughie's arm in a friendly way.

"Old boy," she said, suddenly contrite, "I've made you angry, and I've hurt you. I'm sowwy—sorry, I mean! (I'm a bit upset, you see)," she said, smiling disarmingly. "But I can't marry you, really. I couldn't bear to be married at all at present. It seems so—so unnecessary. I don't see what I should get out of it. That's a selfish thing to say, I suppose, but I'll try to explain a girl's point of view to you. You're a terrible child in some respects, so I'll do it quite simply."

She stroked his sleeve in a motherly fashion, and continued:—

"Years ago, my dear, the only way a girl could get her freedom or any male society was by marrying. Now, she gets as much of both as she wants, and if she marries she loses all the freedom and most of the male society. So why should she marry at all?"

Hughie kept silence before this poser. He felt incapable of plunging into the depths of an argument: one has to keep to the surface in discussing these matters with a maiden of twenty.

"So I shan't marry for years, if at all," continued Miss Gaymer, with the air of one propounding an entirely new theory. "Not until I'm getting passÉe at any rate, and only then if I could find a man whom it wouldn't give me the creeps to think of spending the rest of my life with. Besides, the moment one gets engaged all the other men drop off,—all the nice ones, at any rate,—and that would never do. Don't you think my system is a sensible one?"

"It comes hard on the men," said Hughie.

"Yes, poor dears!" said Miss Gaymer sympathetically. "Still, one man is so tiresome and a lot is so nice!"

With which concise and not unmasterly summary of the marriage question, as viewed through the eyes of the modern maiden, Miss Gaymer turned the conversation into other channels, and the idyll terminated.

Half an hour later they were called into the house, to make ready for a boating expedition.

Joan, with her usual frankness, reverted for a moment before they left the seclusion of the trees to the topic that was uppermost in their minds.

"Hughie," she said softly, "does it hurt much?"

"I don't quite know yet," said Hughie.

"I mean, are you sad or angry—which? It usually takes a man one way or the other," observed this experienced damsel.

"I don't know that I'm either," said Hughie meditatively; "the only feeling that I have just now is that I'm desperately sorry. But I'm not kicking."

"It is my belief," remarked Miss Gaymer with sudden and pardonable asperity, "that you don't care for me in the least. Do you, now?"

They were a very honest and sincere couple, these. For a full minute they looked each other in the face, without speaking. Then Hughie said,—

"Joey, I simply don't know! I thought I did half an hour ago, and I'd have sworn it last night, when—"

He checked himself.

"When what?" asked Joan swiftly.

"Nothing," said Hughie. "That's rather beside the point now, isn't it?"

Joan, curiosity struggling with honesty, nodded reluctantly.

"Anyhow," continued Hughie, "I thought I did then, but I'm blessed if I know now. In fact," he added in a sudden burst of confidence, "sometimes I can't stand you at any price, Joey dear!"

"Ah!" said Miss Gaymer, nodding a wise head, "I see you don't know your own mind yet. But you will—one way or another—as soon as you get away from me."

A week later another interview took place between the pair, on the same spot.

"Business only this time, Joey!" said Hughie, with rather laborious cheerfulness.

"All right. Did you have a good time in town?" inquired Miss Gaymer, in the inevitable manner of women and Orientals, who dislike coming to the point in matters of business without a few decent preliminaries.

"Yes, thanks. I have been picking up old friends again, and generally settling down," said Hughie. "Got a flat, and a comic man-servant—Scotchman—introduce you some day. He—"

He plunged into a rather rambling description of John Alexander Goble. He was evidently no more anxious to get to business than Joan.

At last Miss Gaymer inquired,—

"Well, Hughie, have you fixed up my affairs?"

"Yes," said Hughie slowly. "Do you want details?"

"Mercy, no! I don't know anything about business, and I don't believe you do either, Hughie. Do you?"

"Not much," confessed the trustee. "However, I must tell you at once, Joey, that your income won't be nearly as large as I expected—"

"Right O!" replied Joan cheerfully. "When do I start for the workhouse?"

"It's not quite so bad as that," said Hughie, "but—"

"What am I worth?" inquired the practical Miss Gaymer.

"I can't quite tell you," said Hughie in a hesitating fashion. "You see"—he appeared to be choosing his words rather carefully—"the nominal value of investments, and their actual cash equivalent—"

Joan put her fingers in her ears.

"Stop!" she cried, "or I shall scream! I don't know an asset from a liability, except that in the arithmetic book brokerage is one-eighth, and—Never mind! I should never understand. How much am I to have a year? Tell me that."

"Supposing it should be a mere trifle," said Hughie slowly, "what would you do?"

Miss Gaymer puckered her brow thoughtfully.

"You mean, if I hadn't enough to live on?"

Hughie nodded.

"Well, I shouldn't be a governess, I don't think. I love children, but children are always perfectly diabolical to their governess, and I shouldn't be able to stand their mothers, either. No: governesses are off! I shouldn't mind being a typewriter, though, or a secretary,—not that I can typewrite, or even spell,—provided it was to a really nice man. An author, you know, or a Cabinet Minister. He could walk about the room, rumpling up his hair and getting the stuff off his chest, and I would sit there like a little mouse, in a neat black skirt and a white silk blouse,—perhaps one or two carnations pinned on,—looking very sweet and taking it all down."

"It's a pretty picture," said Hughie drily.

"Yes, isn't it?" said Miss Gaymer, with genuine enthusiasm. "I think," she continued, soaring to still greater heights, "that I should like to go on the stage best of all. Of course, it wouldn't be the slightest good my going on the proper stage—learning parts, and all that; but a piece like 'The Merry Widow,' with different frocks for each act and just a few choruses to sing in, would be top-hole! Say I'm a pauper, Hughie!"

"You're not—thank God!" was Hughie's brutal but earnest response.

"All right, then! Don't bite my head off!" said Miss Gaymer, with unimpaired good temper. "Let us resume. How much are you going to give me?"

"How much can you live on?"

"Well, I was talking about it to Ursula Harbord—you know her, don't you?"

"I do," said Hughie, making a wry face.

"Very well, don't abuse her. She's the cleverest girl I know," said Joan warmly. "She is on the staff of 'The New Woman,' and can put a man in his place in about two minutes."

"So I discovered," said Hughie resignedly. "Popular type of girl. However, you were saying—?"

"I was asking Ursula," continued Joan, "about the cost of living in town, and so on, and we agreed to share a flat. She said I could get along on three hundred a-year."

Joan paused expectantly, and waited for an answer to her unspoken question.

"That," said Hughie, after hesitating a moment as if to work out a sum in mental arithmetic, "is just what I can give you."

A pair of Archdiaconal shoe-buckles, the glimmer of a lady's white evening wrap, and a glowing cigar-end were discernible in the half-light of the verandah outside the drawing-room window after dinner. Two Olympians, to whom human hearts were as an open book, were discussing mortal affairs.

"Is there no way of bringing it off?" inquired one voice.

"Lots," replied the other. "But they have so bungled things between them that we shall have to go slow for a bit. Why, oh, why do men whom you could trust to do almost anything in the ordinary way always make such a mess of their love-affairs? Why aren't you married, for instance, Mr. D'Arcy?"

"To return to the point," said the reverend gentleman evasively, "what ought Hughie to do? Take her by the shoulders and shake her? I have known such a method prove most efficacious," he added, rather incautiously.

"N-no," said Mrs. Leroy, "I don't think so—not in Joey's case. It would bring some women to reason—most women, in fact—in no time. But the child is too high-spirited. Her pride would never forgive such treatment. A better way would be for him to make love to some one else."

"Being Hughie, that is out of the question. He could only make love to some one else if he meant it; and that would rather defeat your object, Mrs. Leroy."

"My object?"

"Well, ours, then. But is there no other way?"

"Yes. He must get into trouble of some kind. At present he is too popular: everybody likes him. If they turned against him she would come round fast enough. Yes, he must get into trouble."

"Well, perhaps he will," said the Venerable the Archdeacon hopefully.