CHAPTER XIII
“May I announce myself?” Sir Charles Snow asked at the door, ajar in the afternoon heat.
Mrs. Sên made no reply to a question that needed none, and Ruben sprang up in welcome.
Out of harness now, Snow still was a busy man, and this was an unusual hour for him to pay even an informal cousinly call. Mrs. Sên wondered what had brought him and Ruben said at once, “Shall I go, Sir? You want to see Mother alone, don’t you?”
“That was my idea,” Snow told him, “but much of what I wish to say to her, I rather thought of saying to you afterwards. I think you’d better stay, Ruben; three heads may prove even better than two; and the little diplomatic matter I have come about is one which I believe you might be able to handle better than any one else.”
“What is it, Charlie? Who wants a new roof now, or a garage built and their rent reduced at the same time? Or have taxes gone up again?”
There was a pause; Sir Charles seemed a little unready to go on.
“Well?” Mrs. Sên prompted him gently.
“Emma has got it into her head that Ivy may be going to drift into an engagement with Roland Curtis. We don’t want that, do we? I thought we might put our heads together, and ease it off—if there is anything in it. Emma has a way of hitting the nail on the head, you know.”
“Roland Curtis! That nincompoop!” Ruben blurted hotly. “Good Lord! She mustn’t do that!”
“I never have known Ivy drift into anything in her life,” Mrs. Sên said more quietly.
“Well—that was just my way of putting it, perhaps,” Snow said uncomfortably.
“Ease it off!” Ruben exploded again. “We’ve jolly well got to knock it on the head; and knock it hard. Not that I believe a word of it! Ivy couldn’t! I tell you what we’ll do—just in case, don’t you know. You tell Lord Whitmore what Cousin Emma thinks, Cousin Charles. Then he can sound Ivy—she will take it from him, and I don’t know any one else she would. If he finds that the wind blows that way at all, why then he can tackle Ivy good and hard. If any one on earth can influence Ivy, Whitmore can. I’ll deal with the young and lovely Roland. I’ll break his silly neck if he doesn’t listen to reason straight off when I say, ‘Go!’”
“Two very admirable suggestions, my boy,” Sir Charles told him admiringly. “Break Roland’s neck by all means, if you can. I have no objection, if he hasn’t. But I rather fancy any little affair of that sort would result in his breaking your neck. There is a good deal of beef in Roland Curtis. Ever see him in regimental sports? I have. As for my appealing to Whitmore, Ruben, that would strike me as sound advice, if I had not already tried it out and drawn a blank.”
“What!” Ruben cried.
And Mrs. Sên looked at Sir Charles in surprise.
“Had it out with Whitmore two days ago. He didn’t see it as I do—and as I gather Ruben cordially does too. He seemed to think that it might be a very good thing for Ivy. He said so, in fact. Whitmore will not meddle in it, and looking at it as he does, he ought not to.”
“Listen to me,” Mrs. Sên began. “It would be worse than useless for any one to speak to Ivy. If she has made up her mind—and I have been a little afraid of this for some weeks now—if she has made up her mind, nothing will change it. And a word might push her into it.”
“That’s what Emma says,” Snow murmured.
“If the mischief is done,” Mrs. Sên went on, “it is done; and nothing will undo it unless Ivy tires of it of her own accord before it is too late. I don’t think she would. The reasons that had made her do it would keep her to it.”
Neither asked what the mother thought those reasons were.
“I do not want Ivy to marry Roland,” Ruby Sên continued. “But like Lord Whitmore, I think better of Roland than you do, Charlie—and,” with a wan little smile, “very, very much better than you do, Rue. Can we be sure that Ivy does not know better than we do what would work out best for her? I am not sure. I am desperately troubled about it all, Cousin Charles. You don’t know anything against Roland, do you?”
“No,” Snow answered promptly. “There is nothing against the fellow—except that there is nothing to him. That’s worse!”
“What do you suggest, Sir?” Ruben said.
“Counter attraction,” Sir Charles told him. “Emma did,” he added honestly.
“Precisely,” Mrs. Sên agreed, “that would be the only possible way—if I were convinced that we have the right. But how? I can’t order a counter attraction from the Stores, or engage one from Keith Prowse. Counter attractions have to happen. And Ivy’s had them, if ever a girl had.”
“I don’t mean a man,” Sir Charles retorted. “I was thinking of a yacht—for one thing. What about a long cruise—pretty well around the world; stopping at all sorts of interesting places, meeting interesting people?”
“Mother—where are you, Mother dear?” Ivy’s voice called in the hall, a gay girlish voice. Ruby Sên had not heard that tone in Ivy’s voice for a long time.
There was a light patter of running, and Ivy burst into the room, a radiant, smiling girl, a transformed Ivy; not a girl who was pretending to be happy, as Mrs. Sên had seen so much of late, but a girl who was happy, unaffectedly, girlishly happy.
Ruby Sên’s heart stood still. The man’s white eyebrows went up a line. Ruben’s hand tightened on his mother’s sleeve.
They all jumped to the same conclusion.
Ivy stood a moment in the open door, looking from one to the other, smiling at them saucily—but it was a sweet, friendly sauciness.
“How nice! All four of us. I’ve had a ripping time, Mother. I have had such a day. Such cream-ices! Better than ours, Mother! Blanche lost her hat overboard. And I’ve had such an escape, Mother!” Ivy giggled half shyly.
“An escape, dear?” her mother asked her.
“You bet I have! I was going to marry the wrong man. Wouldn’t that have been awful?”
“It would,” Snow asserted grimly.
“Perfectly awful! And I had quite made up my mind to. But I never shall.”
The mother was watching her girl anxiously. Mrs. Sên had paled a little as Ivy rattled on.
Ruben spoke. “Do you mean that you have refused Roland Curtis?” he demanded.
“I have not!”
Ruben turned upon her almost roughly. “You have accepted that fool!”
“I have not!” Ivy retorted contemptuously. “You ought to be a good judge of fools, Rue; but in this instance you are a peculiarly poor one. Roland is not a fool—and he is a perfect dear. He’s my friend, I’d have you remember. You are not to speak of Roland like that ever again in my hearing. I won’t have it.”
“All right,” Ruben promised good-naturedly, “I never will again—if you aren’t going to have him. I am quite willing never to speak of him again as long as I live. I should get over it if I never saw him again either.”
Ivy laughed at her brother as good-naturedly as he had answered her. It was not in Ivy Sên to hold rancor to-day.
“Keep calm, little boy,” she bade him. “I promise you that I never shall marry Roland!” Two faces cleared at that; but the mother’s face almost showed an added anxiety. She read more than the girl had told.
“By the way, Rue, Roland hasn’t asked me—and he never will!”
“How do you know?”
Ivy only laughed. She might have said, “Because I shall not let him.” But Ivy Sên would not say that. She was not that type of girl.
“My, how late it is!” she exclaimed. “I must dress; so ought you, Mother. We’ve people dining, you remember.”
They heard her laughing still as she ran down the hall—and the mother caught a note of tears.
“Well!” Ruben turned to his mother. “What do you suppose has happened?”
“Counter attraction,” Mrs. Sên answered gravely.
“Another man!”
Mrs. Sên nodded—almost sadly.
“Was she serious?” Sir Charles asked.
“Perfectly!” Mrs. Sên told him; her voice was low and strained, and her eyes were troubled.