Snowdrift and Other Stories Read online

‘Good heavens, Rupert! Could it be – Sir Roland?’

  Mr Morley stared at her. ‘Sale? It can’t be! How should he know of our elopement?’

  ‘Papa must have brought him back with him last night. Oh, this is dreadful! I declare I am ready to sink!’

  Mr Morley squared his shoulders.

  ‘Well, if he is Sale, he shan’t take you back, Bab. He has to reckon with me now.’

  ‘But he is not in the least like Sir Joseph!’ said Miss Paradise numbly. ‘He is quite handsome!’

  ‘What in the world has that got to do with it?’ demanded Mr Morley.

  Miss Paradise turned scarlet.

  ‘Nothing at all!’ she replied. ‘Whoever he is like he is odious. Willing to fulfil – But I never dreamed that he would follow us!’

  At this moment the door was opened again, and a pleasant, slightly drawling voice said: ‘So, have I caught you, my children? I thought I might,’ and the gentleman in the modish surtout walked into the room.

  He paused on the threshold and raised his quizzing-glass. Miss Paradise, who had retreated to Mr Morley’s side, blushed, and gave him back stare for stare.

  ‘But I must humbly beg my apologies,’ said the newcomer, a faintly quizzical smile in his grey eyes. ‘I seem to have intruded. Madam –’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Paradise. ‘You have intruded, Sir Roland!’

  The quizzical smile lingered; one eyebrow went up.

  ‘Now, I wonder how you knew me?’ murmured the gentleman.

  ‘I am well aware that you must be Sir Roland Sale,’ said Miss Paradise, ‘but I do not know you, and I do not desire to know you!’

  Sir Roland laughed suddenly and shut the door.

  ‘But are you not being a trifle hasty?’ he enquired. ‘Why don’t you desire to know me?’

  ‘I imagine you must know very well!’ said Miss Paradise.

  ‘Indeed I don’t!’ said Sir Roland. He came further into the room, and laid his hat and his elegant fringed gloves down on the table. He looked thoughtfully from one flushed countenance to the other, and said in a tone of amusement: ‘Is it possible that you are running away from me?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ said Miss Paradise. ‘But I think it only proper to tell you, sir, that this is the gentleman I am going to marry.’

  Mr Morley tried to think of something dignified to add to this pronouncement, but under that ironic, not unkindly gaze, only succeeded in clearing his throat and turning redder than ever.

  Sir Roland slid one hand into his pocket and drew out a snuff-box.

  ‘But how romantic!’ he remarked. ‘Do, pray, present me!’

  Mr Morley took a step forward.

  ‘You must have guessed, sir, that my name is Morley. Miss Paradise has been promised to me these dozen years.’

  Sir Roland bowed and offered his snuff-box.

  ‘I felicitate you,’ he said. ‘But what part do I play in this charming – er – idyll?’

  ‘None!’ replied Miss Paradise.

  Sir Roland, his snuff having been waved aside by Mr Morley, took a pinch and held it to one nostril. Then he fobbed his box with an expert flick of the finger and put it away again.

  ‘I hesitate to contradict you, Miss Paradise,’ he said, ‘but I cannot allow myself to be thrust into the role of a mere onlooker.’

  Miss Paradise replied, not quite so belligerently:

  ‘I dare say you think you have a right to interfere, but you need not think that I will go back with you, for I won’t!’

  Mr Morley, feeling himself elbowed out of the discussion, said with some asperity:

  ‘I wish you would leave this to me, Bab! Pray, do be quiet a moment!’

  ‘Why should I be quiet?’ demanded Miss Paradise. ‘It is quite my own affair!’

  ‘You always think you can manage everything,’ said Mr Morley. ‘But this is between men!’

  ‘What nonsense!’ said Miss Paradise scornfully. ‘Pray whom does he want to marry, you or me?’

  ‘Lord, Bab, if you’re going to talk like a fool I shall be sorry I ever said I’d elope with you!’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry now!’ said Miss Paradise instantly.

  Mr Morley cast her a withering glance and turned once more to Sir Roland.

  ‘Sir, no doubt you are armed with Sir John Paradise’s authority, but –’

  ‘Let me set your mind at rest at once,’ interposed Sir Roland. ‘I am here quite on my own authority.’

  ‘Well, sir! Well, in that case –’

  Miss Paradise entered into the conversation again.

  ‘You can’t pretend that you cared as much as that!’ she said impetuously. ‘You could not have wanted to marry me so very much when you had never so much as set eyes on me!’

  ‘Of course not,’ agreed Sir Roland. ‘Until I set eyes on you I had not the least desire to marry you.’

  ‘Then why did you write that odious letter to Papa?’ asked Miss Paradise reasonably.

  ‘I never write odious letters,’ replied Sir Roland calmly.

  ‘I dare say you may think it was very civil and obliging of you,’ said Miss Paradise; ‘but for my part I have a very poor notion of a man allowing his marriage to be arranged for him, and when it comes to writing that you are willing to fulfil your – your obligations –’

  A muscle quivered at the corner of Sir Roland’s mouth.

  ‘Did I write that?’ he asked.

  ‘You must know you did!’

  ‘I am quite sure I wrote no such thing,’ he said.

  ‘Well, what did you write?’ she demanded.

  He walked forward till he stood quite close to her and held out his hand. He said, looking down at her:

  ‘Does it signify what I wrote? After all, I had not seen you then. Now that we are acquainted I promise I will not write or say anything to give you a disgust of me.’

  She looked at him uncertainly. Even though his fine mouth was perfectly grave his eyes held a smile which one could hardly withstand. A little colour stole into her cheeks; the dimple peeped again; she put her hand shyly into his, and said:

  ‘Well, perhaps it does not signify so very much. But I am going to marry Mr Morley, you know. That was all arranged between us years ago.’

  Sir Roland still kept her hand clasped in his. ‘Do you never change your mind, Miss Paradise?’ he asked.

  Mr Morley, who had begun in the presence of this polished gentleman to feel himself a mere schoolboy, interrupted at this moment and said hotly: ‘Sir, I deny any right in you to interfere in Miss Paradise’s affairs! She is under my protection, and will shortly be my wife. Bab, come with me! We should press on at once!’

  ‘I suppose we should,’ agreed Miss Paradise rather forlornly.

  Mr Morley strode up to her and caught her wrist. Until the arrival of Sir Roland he had been regarding his approaching nuptials with mixed feelings, but to submit to a stranger’s intervention, and to see his prospective bride in danger of being swayed by the undeniable charm of a man older, and far more at his ease than he was himself, was a little too much for him to stomach. There was a somewhat fiery light in his eyes as he said: ‘Bab, you are promised to me! You know you are!’

  Miss Paradise raised her eyes to Sir Roland’s face. ‘It is quite true,’ she said with a faint sigh. ‘I am promised to him, and one must keep one’s word, you know.’

  ‘Bab!’ said Mr Morley sternly, ‘you wanted to elope with me! It was your notion! Good heavens, you could not turn back now and go meekly home!’

  ‘No, of course I couldn’t,’ said Miss Paradise, roused by this speech. ‘I never heard of anything so flat!’

  ‘I knew you would never fail!’ said Mr Morley, casting a triumphant look at Sir Roland. ‘Let us be on our way immediately.’

  Sir Roland flicked a grain of snuff from his wide cuff. ‘Not so fast, Mr Morley,’ he said. ‘I warned you, did I not, that I could not allow myself to be thrust into the role of mere onlooker?’

  Mr Morley’s eyes flashe