A wild laugh, almost a howl, disturbed the talk of the most adjacent of the perambulating relations. Colonel Horace Mant, checked in mid-sentence, looked up resentfully at the cause of the interruption.
“I wish somebody would tell me whether it’s that American fellow, Emerson, or young Freddie who’s supposed to be engaged to Miss Peters. Hanged if you ever see her and Freddie together, but she and Emerson are never to be found apart. If my respected father-in-law had any sense I should have thought he would have had sense enough to stop that.”
“You forget, my dear Horace,” said the bishop charitably; “Miss Peters and Mr. Emerson have known each other since they were children.”
“They were never nearly such children as Emsworth is now,” snorted the colonel. “If that girl isn’t in love with Emerson I’ll be—I’ll eat my hat.”
“No, no,” said the bishop. “No, no! Surely not, Horace. What were you saying when you broke off?”
“I was saying that if a man wanted his relations never to speak to each other again for the rest of their lives the best thing he could do would be to herd them all together in a dashed barrack of a house a hundred miles from anywhere, and then go off and spend all his time prodding dashed flower beds with a spud—dash it!”
“Just so; just so. So you were. Go on, Horace; I find a curious comfort in your words.”
On the terrace above them Aline was looking at George with startled eyes.
“George!”
“I’m sorry; but you shouldn’t spring these jokes on me so suddenly. You said enjoying! Yes—reveling in it, aren’t we!”
“It’s a lovely old place,” said Aline defensively.
“And when you’ve said that you’ve said everything. You can’t live on scenery and architecture for the rest of your life. There’s the human element to be thought of. And you’re beginning—”
“There goes father,” interrupted Aline. “How fast he is walking! George, have you noticed a sort of difference in father these last few days?”
“I haven’t. My specialty is keeping an eye on the rest of the Peters family.”
“He seems better somehow. He seems to have almost stopped smoking—and I’m very glad, for those cigars were awfully bad for him. The doctor expressly told him he must stop them, but he wouldn’t pay any attention to him. And he seems to take so much more exercise. My bedroom is next to his, you know, and every morning I can hear things going on through the wall—father dancing about and puffing a good deal. And one morning I met his valet going in with a pair of Indian clubs. I believe father is really taking himself in hand at last.”
George Emerson exploded.
“And about time, too! How much longer are you to go on starving yourself to death just to give him the resolution to stick to his dieting? It maddens me to see you at dinner. And it’s killing you. You’re getting pale and thin. You can’t go on like this.”
A wistful look came over Aline’s face.
“I do get a little hungry sometimes—late at night generally.”
“You want somebody to take care of you and look after you. I’m the man. You may think you can fool me; but I can tell. You’re weakening on this Freddie proposition. You’re beginning to see that it won’t do. One of these days you’re going to come to me and say: ‘George, you were right. I take the count. Me for the quiet sneak to the station, without anybody knowing, and the break for London, and the wedding at the registrar’s.’ Oh, I know! I couldn’t have loved you all this time and not know. You’re weakening.”
The trouble with these supermen is that they lack reticence. They do not know how to omit. They expand their chests and whoop. And a girl, even the mildest and sweetest of girls—even a girl like Aline Peters—cannot help resenting the note of triumph. But supermen despise tact. As far as one can gather, that is the chief difference between them and the ordinary man.
A little frown appeared on Aline’s forehead and she set her mouth mutinously.
“I’m not weakening at all,” she said, and her voice was—for her—quite acid. “You—you take too much for granted.”
George was contemplating the landscape with a conqueror’s eye.
“You are beginning to see that it is impossible—this Freddie foolishness.”
“It is not foolishness,” said Aline pettishly, tears of annoyance in her eyes. “And I wish you wouldn’t call him Freddie.”
“He asked me to. He asked me to!”
Aline stamped her foot.
“Well, never mind. Please don’t do it.”
“Very well, little girl,” said George softly. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”
The fact that it never even occurred to George Emerson he was being offensively patronizing shows the stern stuff of which these supermen are made.
The Efficient Baxter bicycled broodingly to Market Blandings for tobacco. He brooded for several reasons. He had just seen Aline Peters and George Emerson in confidential talk on the upper terrace, and that was one thing which exercised his mind, for he suspected George Emerson. He suspected him nebulously as a snake in the grass; as an influence working against the orderly progress of events concerning the marriage that had been arranged and would shortly take place between Miss Peters and the Honorable Frederick Threepwood.
It would be too much to say that he had any idea that George was putting in such hard and consistent work in his serpentine role; indeed if he could have overheard the conversation just recorded it is probable that Rupert Baxter would have had heart failure; but he had observed the intimacy between the two as he observed most things in his immediate neighborhood, and he disapproved of it. It was all very well to say that George Emerson had known Aline Peters since she was a child. If that was so, then in the opinion of the Efficient Baxter he had known her quite long enough and ought to start making the acquaintance of somebody else.
He blamed the Honorable Freddie. If the Honorable Freddie
