Man and Maid - Page 10/185

"Well, you are honest, Nina."

She had her coffee and liqueur, she was graceful and composed and

refined, either Jim or Rochester will have a very nice wife.

Burton coughed when she had left.

"Out with it, Burton!"

"Mrs. Ardilawn is a kind lady, Sir Nicholas."

"Charming."

"I believe you'd be better with some lady to look after you, Sir--."

"To hell with you. Telephone for Mr. Maurice--I don't want any woman--we

can play piquet."

This is how my day ended--.

Maurice and piquet--then the widow and the divorcée for dinner--and now

alone again! The sickening rot of it all.

* * * * *

Sunday--Nina came for tea--she feels that I am a great comfort to her

in this moment of her life, so full of indecision--It seems that Jim has

turned up too, at the Ritz, where Rochester still is, and that his

physical charm has upset all her calculations again.

"I am really very worried Nicholas," she said, "and you, who are a dear

family friend"--I am a family friend now!--"ought to be able to help

me."

"What the devil do you want me to do, Nina?--outset them both, and ask

you to marry me?"

"My dearest Nicholas!" it seemed to her that I had suggested that she

should marry father Xmas! "How funny you are!"

Once it was the height of her desire--Nina is eight years older than I

am--I can see now her burning eyes one night on the river in the June of

1914, when she insinuated, not all playfully, that it would be good to

wed.

"I think you had better take Jim my dear, after all. You are evidently

becoming in love with him and you have proved to me that the physical

charm matters most,--or if you are afraid of that, you had better do as

another little friend of mine does when she is attracted--she takes a

fortnight at the sea!"

"The sea would be awful in this weather! I should send for both in

desperation!" and she laughed and began to take an interest in the

furnishings of my flat. She looked over it, and Burton pointed out all

its merits to her (My crutch hurts my shoulder so much to-day I did not

want to move out of my chair). I could hear Burton's remarks, but they

fell upon unheeding ears--Nina is not cut out for a nurse, my poor

Burton, if you only knew--!

When she returned to my sitting room tea was in, and she poured it out

for me, and then she remarked.