CHAPTER IX
The letter began queerly, Curtis thought, and he believed he had never seen the handwriting before; but you couldn’t be too sure of that—so many girls wrote to a fellow; and not all of them waited for you to write first:
“Dear 11th—or is it 10½th?—Cousin Roland”—who the devil? Curtis turned the page hastily. It was signed in full. Ivy Sên had written her name very clearly.
Roland Curtis sank down into the big lounge chair, moistened his lips impatiently, and read.
The signature had surprised him—not pleasantly. The contents of the note perturbed him uncomfortably—What a little cat!
“What’s the use of hiding? Mabel Wade was furious that you backed out at the eleventh hour. She had to ask her father-in-law, whom she hates almost as much as he does her. And, what was worse, I had to go in to dinner with him. I fancy he did not like that any more than I did; he could not have liked it worse. You missed an uncommonly good dinner too. I knew when you said that you were catching a train to Frimley to stay with the Burton-Hamiltons that you were doing no such thing. The Burton-Hamiltons are in Lucerne. Rosemead is shut up. And you do not go to Frimley from Victoria! You know that I heard what you and Mr. Gaylor said inside Burlington House. You thought I cared and that I’d be glad to see nothing more of you. That’s nonsense. I can’t help my Chinese face, can I—any more than the all-Chinese girl in the picture could help hers? You both had a right to say what you did—and what you thought.
“Mother will feel badly if you don’t come to see her. Do. Perhaps you’ll like me better than you think. I am English—awfully English. And I want to be friends. Drop in to lunch to-morrow, or the first day you can—won’t you? I want you to. Mother doesn’t know I am writing—and she wasn’t in the gallery, you know, until afterwards. She is expecting you to call. I want you to. You aren’t afraid of me, are you. Cousin?”
“The little yellow cat!” Curtis muttered, with an angry frown.
He read the letter again—to him the most upsetting letter he ever had received.
Then as he put it slowly back into the envelope, “Poor little girl. It’s devilish hard on her! ’Spose I’ll have to go—once. Hope they’re both out. The next time I go to the Academy, I’ll know it. Damn Gaylor. Wonder if she’s keener on roses or chocolates. My Chinese cousin! Great Scott!”
Roland called, but he put it off for more than a week. He dreaded it more each day and nearly bolted out of the gate after he had knocked.
Mrs. Sên was out; Miss Sên was at home. Worse—she was alone.
Curtis could have slain the man who announced him, and who had not said that Mrs. Sên was not at home. “Damned careless stupid loon,” Curtis called it; but the footman was a quick and excellent servant; he merely had obeyed Miss Sên’s explicit order.
“Cousin Roland” was horribly embarrassed. He did not like Ivy’s face, and he was uncommonly soft-hearted. He was sorry for Ivy Sên; and he was very much sorrier for himself. With his type charity usually does begin at home.
Miss Sên met him gaily. She was not embarrassed and she bent herself to amuse and reassure him.
She succeeded measurably.
The drawing-room was dim. The girl, sitting in a shadowed corner, was lighter than he had thought; and she knew how to dress. He liked a woman who did that.
“She talks all right,” he confided to Gaylor in the Club billiard-room that night.
And Ivy did, for she fitted her cousinly chatter very neatly to its silent hearer. Her eager questions were flattering and the regrettable Burlington House episode was not mentioned. But in some subtle feminine way the girl contrived to convey to Mr. Curtis that she regarded it as a good joke. She had heard how beautifully he played tennis; Lord Dunn said he was almost as good at billiards. She was a terrible duffer at both—but she rode fairly well. She rode a lot, even here in London—nearly every morning early. You had to ride early, if you got it in at all, with all there was to do every single day. Must he go? Mother would be so sorry to have missed him. “You will come again, won’t you?—to see Mother—and me. I know everybody now. Cousin Roland; but I have not many friends.”
“She is a nice little thing,” Curtis told himself as he turned into Kensington High Street, “’pon my word she is. My hat! I am sorry for her—poor little thing!”
Roland Curtis was destined to be uncomfortably sorry for himself before the London season had junketed itself to its exhausted close, and had sped to the rest-cure of guns in strenuous Scotland, and Casinos in the effervescent Riviera.
Good-natured, easy-going Curtis felt in cousinly chivalry bound to see something more of his lonely, dark-skinned cousin. He soon discovered that she was very much the fashion. She went everywhere, did everything—because it “pleased Mother”; but it was only her cousin Roland who interested her—it was Roland on whom and on whose judgment she relied. No one had such perfect taste. She never had known any one who danced half so well. It was selfish of her to let him dance with her so often, but she did so love to dance with such a perfect partner, and he was so kind about it. Did he think that her steps were improving? Hang it all, she was a dear little thing—when you got used to her. He couldn’t let her down—not when she depended on him so—and was his cousin too—not a first cousin, or a second either—but a cousin.