Viviette | Page 9

a hot first course, and when she put the plate before him laid a caressing touch on his shoulder. She neglected Austin in a bare-faced manner, and drew Dick into reluctant and then animated talk on his prize roses and a setter pup just recovering from distemper. After the meal she went with him round the garden, inspected both roses and puppy, and manifested great interest in a trellis he was constructing for the accommodation later in the summer of some climbing cucumbers, at present only visible as modest leaves in flower-pots. Neither made any reference to the little scene of the night before. Morning had brought to Dick the conviction that in refusing her hand and slamming the door he had behaved in an unpardonably bearish manner; and he could not apologise for his behaviour unless he confessed his jealousy of Austin, which, in all probability, would have subjected him to the mocking ridicule of Viviette--a thing which, above all others, he dreaded, and against which he knew himself to be defenceless. Viviette, too, found silence golden. She knew perfectly well why Dick had slammed the door. An explanation would have been absurd. It would have interfered with her relations with Austin, which were beginning to be exciting. But she loved Dick in her heart for being a bear, and evinced both her compunction and her appreciation in peculiar graciousness.
"You've never asked me to try the new mare," she said. "I don't think it a bit kind of you."
"Would you care to?" he asked eagerly.
"Of course I should. I love to see you with horses. You and the trap and the horse seem to be as much one mechanism as a motor-car."
"I can make a horse do what I want," he said, delighted at the compliment. "We'll take the dog-cart. When will you come? This morning?"
"Yes--let us say eleven. It will be lovely."
"I'll have it round at eleven o'clock. You'll see. She's a flyer."
"So am I," she said with a laugh, and pointed to the front gate, which a garden lad had just run to open to admit a young man on horseback.
"Oh, lord! it's Banstead," said Dick with a groan.
"Au revoir--eleven o'clock," said Viviette, and she fled.
Lord Banstead dismounted, gave his horse to the lad, and came up to Dick. He was an unhealthy, dissipated-looking young man, with lustreless eyes, a characterless chin, and an underfed moustache. He wore a light blue hunting stock, fastened by a ruby fox in full gallop, and a round felt hat with a very narrow flat brim, beneath which protruded strands of Andrew aguecheek hair.
"Hallo, Banstead," said Dick, not very cordially.
"Hallo," said the other, halting before the rose-bed, where Dick was tying up some blooms with bast. He watched him for a moment or two. Conversation was not spontaneous.
"Where's Viviette?" he asked eventually.
"Who?" growled Dick.
"Rot. What's the good of frills? Miss Hastings."
"Busy. She'll be busy all the morning."
"I rather wanted to see her."
"I don't think you will. You might ring at the front door and send in your card."
"I might," said Banstead, lighting a cigar. He had tried this method of seeing Viviette before, but without success. There was another pause. Dick snipped off an end of bast.
"You're up very early," said he.
"Went to bed so bally sober I couldn't sleep," replied the misguided youth. "Not a soul in the house, I give you my word. So bored last night I took a gun and tried to shoot cats. Shot a damn cock pheasant by mistake, and had to bury the thing in my own covers. If I'm left to myself to-night I'll get drunk and go out shooting tenants. Come over and dine."
"Can't," said Dick.
"Do. I'll open a bottle of the governor's old port. Then we can play billiards, or piquet, or cat's-cradle, or any rotten thing you like."
Dick excused himself curtly. Austin had come down for Whitsuntide, and a lady was staying in the house. Lord Banstead pushed his hat to the back of his head.
"Then what the devil am I to do in this hole of a place?"
"Don't know," said Dick.
"You fellows in the country are so unfriendly. In town I never need dine alone. Anyone's glad to see me. Feeding all by myself in that dining-room fairly gives me the pip."
"Then come and dine here," said Dick, unable to refuse a neighbour hospitality.
"Right," said Banstead. "That is really like the Samaritan Johnnie. I'll come with pleasure."
"Quarter to eight."
Banstead hesitated. "Couldn't you make it a quarter past?"
Dick stared. "Alter our dinner hour? You've rather a nerve, haven't you, Banstead?"
"I wouldn't suggest it, if we weren't pals," replied the other, grinning somewhat shamefacedly. "But the fact is I've got an appointment late this afternoon." The fatuity of vicious and coroneted youth outstripped his discretion. "There's a devilish pretty girl, you