‘Dear Nesta, I know what you were going to say. If he’s so rich, why should he be marrying me, when he could take his pick of half London? Well, I’ll tell you. He’s marrying me for one reason, because he’s sorry for me: for another, because I had the sense to make him. He didn’t think he was going to marry anyone. A few years ago he had a disappointment. A girl jilted him. She must have been a fool. He thought he was going to live the rest of his life alone with his broken heart. I didn’t mean to allow that. It’s taken a long time–over two years, from start to finish–but I’ve done it. He’s a sentimentalist. I worked on his sympathy, and last night I made him propose to me at the Fletchers’ dance.’
Mrs Ford had not listened to these confidences unmoved. Several times she had tried to interrupt, but had been brushed aside. Now she spoke sharply.
‘You know I was not going to say anything of the kind. And I don’t think you should speak in this horrible, cynical way of–of–‘
She stopped, flushing. There were moments when she hated Cynthia. These occurred for the most part when the latter, as now, stirred her to an exhibition of honest feeling which she looked on as rather unbecoming. Mrs Ford had spent twenty years trying to forget that her husband had married her from behind the counter of a general store in an Illinois village, and these lapses into the uncultivated genuineness of her girlhood made her uncomfortable.
‘I wasn’t going to say anything of the kind,’ she repeated.
Cynthia was all smiling good-humour.
‘I know. I was only teasing you. “Stringing”, they call it in your country, don’t they?’
Mrs Ford was mollified.
‘I’m sorry, Cynthia. I didn’t mean to snap at you. All the same…’ She hesitated. What she wanted to ask smacked so dreadfully of Mechanicsville, Illinois. Yet she put the question bravely, for she was somehow feeling quite troubled about this unknown Mr Burns. ‘Aren’t you really fond of him at all, Cynthia?’
Cynthia beamed.
‘Of course I am! He’s a dear. Nothing would make me give him up. I’m devoted to old Peter. I only told you all that about him because it shows you how kind-hearted he is. He’ll do anything for me. Well, shall I sound him about Ogden?’
The magic word took Mrs Ford’s mind off the matrimonial future of Mr Burns, and brought him into prominence in his capacity of knight-errant. She laughed happily. The contemplation of Mr Burns as knight-errant healed the sting of defeat. The affair of Mr Mennick began to appear in the light of a mere skirmish.
‘You take my breath away!’ she said. ‘How do you propose that Mr Burns shall help us?’
‘It’s perfectly simple. You heard Mr Mennick read that telegram. Ogden is to be sent to a private school. Peter shall go there too.’
‘But how? I don’t understand. We don’t know which school Mr Mennick will choose.’
‘We can very soon find out.’
‘But how can Mr Burns go there?’
‘Nothing easier. He will be a young man who has been left a little money and wants to start a school of his own. He goes to Ogden’s man and suggests that he pay a small premium to come to him for a term as an extra-assistant-master, to learn the business. Mr Man will jump at him. He will be getting the bargain of his life. Peter didn’t get much of a degree at Oxford, but I believe he was wonderful at games. From a private-school point of view he’s a treasure.’
‘But–would he do it?’
‘I think I can persuade him.’
Mrs Ford kissed her with an enthusiasm which hitherto she had reserved for Ogden.
‘My darling girl,’ she cried, ‘if you knew how happy you have made me!’
‘I do,’ said Cynthia definitely. ‘And now you can do the same for me.’
‘Anything, anything! You must have some more hats.’
‘I don’t want any more hats. I want to go with you on Lord Mountry’s yacht to the Riviera.’
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Ford after a slight pause, ‘it isn’t my party, you know, dear.’