PAGE 12
The Blue Curtains
by
Bottles with a motion of his hand waved his brother’s courtly compliment away, as it were, and turned on him with a set white face.
“I do not believe you, Eustace,” he said. “Do you understand what you make out this lady to be when you say that she could kiss me and tell me that she loved me–for she did both yesterday–and promise to marry you to-day?”
Sir Eustace shrugged his shoulders. “I think that the lady in question has done something like that before, George.”
“That was years ago and under pressure. Now, Eustace, you have made this charge; you have upset my faith in Madeline, whom I hope to marry, and I say, prove it–prove it if you can. I will stake my life you cannot.”
“Don’t agitate yourself, my dear fellow; and as to betting, I would not risk more than a fiver. Now oblige me by stepping behind those velvet curtains–a la ‘School for Scandal’–and listening in perfect silence to my conversation with Lady Croston. She does not know that you are here, so she will not miss you. You can escape when you have had enough of it, for there is a door through on to the landing, and as we came up I noticed that it was ajar. Or if you like you can appear from between the curtains like an infuriated husband on the stage and play whatever role occasion may demand. Really the situation has a laughable side. I should enjoy it immensely if I were behind the curtain too. Come, in you go.”
Bottles hesitated. “I can’t hide,” he said.
“Nonsense; remember how much depends on it. All is fair in love or war. Quick; here she comes.”
Bottles grew flurried and yielded, scarcely knowing what he did. In another second he was in the darkened room behind the curtains, through the crack in which he could command the lighted scene before him, and Sir Eustace was back at his place before the fire, reflecting that in his ardour to extricate his brother from what he considered a suicidal engagement he had let himself in for a very pretty undertaking. Suppose she accepted him, his brother would be furious, and he would probably have to go abroad to get out of the lady’s way; and suppose she refused him, he would look a fool.
Meanwhile the sweep, sweep of Madeline’s dress as she passed down the stairs was drawing nearer, and in another instant she was in the room. She was beautifully dressed in silver-grey silk, plentifully trimmed with black lace, and cut square back and front so as to show her rounded shoulders. She wore no ornaments, being one of the few women who are able to dispense with them, unless indeed a red camellia pinned in the front of her dress can be called an ornament. Bottles, shivering with shame and doubt behind his curtain, marked that red camellia, and wondered of what it reminded him.
Then in a flash it all came back, the scene of years and years ago–the verandah in far-away Natal, with himself sitting on it, an open letter in his hand and staring with all his eyes at the camellia bush covered with bloom before him. It seemed a bad omen to him–that camellia in Madeline’s bosom. Next second she was speaking.
“Oh, Sir Eustace, I owe you a thousand apologies. You must have been here for quite ten minutes, for I heard the front door bang when you came. But my poor little girl Effie is ill with a sore throat which has made her feverish, and she absolutely refused to go to sleep unless she had my hand to hold.”
“Lucky Effie,” said Sir Eustace, with his politest bow; “I am sure I can understand her fancy.”
At the moment he was holding Madeline’s hand himself, and gave emphasis to his words by communicating the gentlest possible pressure to it as he let it fall. But knowing his habits, she did not take much notice. Comparative strangers when Sir Eustace shook hands with them were sometimes in doubt whether he was about to propose to them or to make a remark upon the weather. Alas! it had always been the weather.