XVIII.

THE COTTAGE

Not unnaturally, cottagers are apt to dream of palaces, while it is well known that princes eat their hearts out for being denied the joy of dwelling in a cottage. “The Cottage,” situated in a shrubby garden high up in the Finchley-road, was Lord Ottercove’s unofficial home, and whither he retired whenever he felt like swinging a loose leg. Owning a great house in the West End of London, and several castles and country houses, he preferred to dwell in the seclusion of “The Cottage” in the Finchley-road. The ground floor had but two rooms: a dining and a sitting room, and here at the after-theatre hour he was that night dispensing supper to a bevy of chorus girls escorted by a number of young lords.

Lord Ottercove was a success. Whatever he touched, flowered: whatever he left, withered--and died of its own rottenness. He stood in the doorway now, in his exquisite tailcoat, one hand thrust in his trouser-pocket, indolently tapping his heel and looking on with that intelligent bright look which seemed to say: “I have long since reached my goal in life without much effort: what could I possibly do next?”

“Come in, Freddie, come in, now don’t be shy!” he cried to a young actor hesitating on the threshold. “My love, my sweetheart, my honeysuckle, how are you?”--to a bevy of beauties, as they sidled in, twitching their nude shoulders.

“Freezing, darling Rex,” they twittered.

“Rita,” to a leading lady, “do you love me?”

“You are Christ to me!”

And then, panting slightly (by the end of the night Frank loved her panting, and by the end of the month he hated it), in sauntered a, Frank perceived, very strikingly good-looking girl in red, and by his host’s eager look and introduction: “This is Mr. Dickin. Miss Cynthia Wellington,” Frank understood that she indeed must be his proffered prize.

If so, she didn’t seem to appreciate her mission. She was certainly beautiful and, as Ottercove had said, her face could be beheld for hours at a stretch, with cumulative pleasure. She had been seated at Frank’s side and she was mildly interested in what he could contrive to tell her. But supper over, and the host having taken her aside for a few moments, she came back another woman, and Frank found he had no difficulty now in keeping her at his side. The other guests, numbering a princess of the blood, a starving Russian diplomat, exquisitely arrayed, and the cream of the West End Theatreland, sustained a strenuously “Bohemian” conversation of unmeaning levity till it was late enough for all to go without pronouncing the party a failure. Lord Ottercove’s attitude--Frank read the question in his look--was:

“Amusing dogs--or are they not amusing? Have you been used to something more amusing?”

The dogs were not amusing.

He kept Frank and Cynthia back till all the other guests had gone, and then told the butler to wake up his chauffeur, and despatched them home in the winged chariot.

Frank had not been long in the car with her when he discovered that Cynthia was physically desirable. As the chariot, taking a good, long run down the Finchley-road, suddenly took wing and Cynthia panted, he grasped her hand as if to reassure her, and having grasped her hand (good old Ottercove to provide him with this opportunity) he did not let go again. When Cynthia panted again, it was a different kind of panting.

The view that all women are alike seemed to Frank, as a piece of thinking, to err on the inadequate side. They were indeed all different. But in one particular all women were alike, and that was in their uniform desire to be different; and in their cheap fear of seeming cheap. Seized by the idea of making her his wife and eager to anticipate the marriage ceremony, he was prepared to hear her say that no doubt he thought her just like any other woman and replied that, on the contrary, she seemed to him peculiarly, uniquely different from them all; after which assurance she behaved like all the other women, and then said:

“Now, I wonder what you’ll think of me after that.”

He had not thought anything of her to begin with and did not think any the worse of her now.

“Now, darling,” he said, “we simply must get married.”

The winged chariot and his thoughts, descending from the air at a slope, touched ground at the same time. The car ran forward. His thoughts ran on. “The day after to-morrow.”

“I suppose we might,” Cynthia said quietly. “Are you rich enough?”

The darling! She was really sweet! Didn’t want to hurt his feelings, evidently, and let him think he was the breadwinner. Evidently a girl of sensibility. Welcome. Very welcome. Thinks, no doubt, he may resent her money, and keeps quiet about it. Sensible girl. Good girl. Beautiful girl. Nice to look at. Voluptuous. In every way adequate. Are you rich enough, indeed! He had ten pounds in his breast-pocket; and beyond that he may yet have something in his trouser-pocket. He didn’t know how much. But probably a shilling piece. And perhaps more.

“You needn’t chaff about it. I’ve more than you think, darling. Ottercove has promised me, in case of marriage with you, _The Evening Ensign_ as a wedding present.”

At that she sat up. “Very nice.”

Before the car pulled up at her door, she said:

“Come and have tea with me to-morrow.”

“I will have tea with you to-morrow--Sunday,--and marry you on Monday.”

He gave Lord Ottercove’s flying chauffeur ten pounds and undressing for bed emptied his trouser-pocket of the shilling.