The Common Law

"Why?"

"Why should I?"

"That is unfair, Louis! She has the right to know about your own family—otherwise how can she understand the situation?"

"It's like all situations, isn't it? You and father and mother have your own arbitrary customs and traditions and standards of respectability. You rule out whom you choose. Valerie West knows perfectly well that you would rule her out. Why should she give you the opportunity?"

"Is she afraid of me?"

He smiled: "I don't think so." And his smile angered his sister.

"Very well," she said, biting her lip.

For a few moments she sat there deliberating, her pointed patent-leather toe tapping the polished floor. Then she stood up, with decision:

"There is no use in our quarrelling, Louis—until the time comes when some outsider forces us into an unhappy misunderstanding. Kiss me good-bye, dear."

She lifted her face; he kissed her; and her hand closed impulsively on his arm:

"Louis! Louis! I love you. I am so proud of you—I—you know I love you, don't you?"

"Yes—I think so."

"You know I am devoted to your happiness!—your real happiness—which those blinded eyes in that obstinate head of yours refuse to see. Believe me—believe me, dear, that your real happiness is not in this pretty, strange girl's keeping. No, no, no! You are wrong, Louis—terribly and hopelessly wrong! Because happiness for you lies in the keeping of another woman—a woman of your own world, dear—of your own kind—a gently-bred, lovable, generous girl whom you, deep in your heart and soul, love, unknowingly—have always loved!"

He shook his head, slowly, looking down into his sister's eyes.

She said, almost frightened:

"You—you won't do it—suddenly—without letting us know—will you, Louis?"

"What?"

"Marry this girl!"

"No," he said, "it is not likely."

"But you—you mean to marry her?"

"I want to…. But it is not likely to happen—for a while."

"How long?"

"I don't know."

She drew a tremulous breath of relief, looking up into his face. Then her eyes narrowed; she thought a moment, and her gaze became preoccupied and remote, and her lips grew firm with the train of thought she was pursuing.

He put his arms around her and kissed her again; and she felt the boyish appeal in it and her lip quivered. But she could not respond, could not consider for one moment, could not permit her sympathy for him to enlist her against what she was devoutly convinced were his own most vital interests—his honour, his happiness, the success of his future career.

She said with tears in her eyes: "Louis, I love you dearly. If God will grant us all a little patience and a little wisdom there will be a way made clear to all of us. Good-bye."

Whether it was that the Almighty did not grant Mrs. Collis the patience to wait until a way was made clear, or whether another letter from her father decided her to clear that way for herself, is uncertain; but one day in March Valerie received a letter from Mrs. Collis; and answered it; and the next morning she shortened a seance with Querida, exchanged her costume for her street-clothes, and hastened to her apartments, where Mrs. Collis was already awaiting her in the little sitting-room.

Valerie offered her hand and stood looking at Lily Collis, as though searching for some resemblance to her brother in the pretty, slightly flushed features. There was a very indefinite family resemblance.

"Miss West," she said, "it is amiable of you to overlook the informality—"

"I am not formal, Mrs. Collis," she said, quietly. "Will you sit here?" indicating an arm-chair near the window,—"because the light is not very good and I have some mending to do on a costume which I must pose in this afternoon."

Lily Collis seated herself, her bewitched gaze following Valerie as she moved lightly and gracefully about, collecting sewing materials and the costume in question, and bringing them to a low chair under the north window.

"I am sure you will not mind my sewing," she said, with a slight upward inflection to her voice, which made it a question.

"Please, Miss West," said Lily, hastily.

"It is really a necessity," observed Valerie threading her needle and turning over the skirt. "Illustrators are very arbitrary gentlemen; a model's failure to keep an engagement sometimes means loss of a valuable contract to them, and that isn't fair either to them or to their publishers, who would be forced to hunt up another artist at the last moment."

"Your—profession—must be an exceedingly interesting one," said Lily in a low voice.

Valerie smiled: "It is a very exacting one."

There was a silence. Valerie's head was bent over her sewing; Mrs. Collis, fascinated, almost alarmed by her beauty, could not take her eyes from her. Outwardly Lily was pleasantly reserved, perfectly at ease with this young girl; inwardly all was commotion approaching actual consternation.

She had been prepared for youth, for a certain kind of charm and beauty—but not for this kind—not for the loveliness, the grace, the composure, the exquisite simplicity of this young girl who sat sewing there before her.

She was obliged to force herself to recollect that this girl was a model hired to pose for men—paid to expose her young, unclothed limbs and body! Yet—could it be possible! Was this the girl hailed as a comrade by the irrepressible Ogilvy and Annan—the heroine of a score of unconventional and careless gaieties recounted by them? Was this the coquette who, it was rumoured, had flung over Querida, snapped her white fingers at Penrhyn Cardemon, and laughed disrespectfully at a dozen respected pillars of society, who appeared to be willing to support her in addition to the entire social structure?

Very quietly the girl raised her head. Her sensitive lips were edged with a smile, but there was no mirth in her clear eyes:

"Mrs. Collis, perhaps you are waiting for me to say something about your letter and my answer to it. I did not mean to embarrass you by not speaking of it, but I was not certain that the initiative lay with me."

Lily reddened: "It lies with me, Miss West—the initiative. I mean—" She hesitated, suddenly realising how difficult it had become to go on,—how utterly unprepared she was to encounter passive resistance from such composure as this young girl already displayed.

"You wrote to me about your anxiety concerning Mr. Neville," said Valerie, gently.

"Yes—I did, Miss West. You will surely understand—and forgive me—if I say to you that I am still a prey to deepest anxiety."

"Why?"

The question was so candid, so direct that for a moment Lily remained silent. But the dark, clear, friendly eyes were asking for an answer, and the woman of the world who knew how to meet most situations and how to dominate them, searched her experience in vain for the proper words to use in this one.

After a moment Valerie's eyes dropped, and she resumed her sewing; and Lily bit her lip and composed her mind to its delicate task:

"Miss West," she said, "what I have to say is not going to be very agreeable to either of us. It is going to be painful perhaps—and it is going to take a long while to explain—"

"It need not take long," said Valerie, without raising her eyes from her stitches; "it requires only a word to tell me that you and your father and mother do not wish your brother to marry me."

She looked up quietly, and her eyes met Lily's: