When a Man's Single: A Tale of Literary Life

'Was it to tell me this you came upstairs?'

'No, honour bright, it wasn't. I only came up in case you should want to kiss me, and to – to have it over.'

Nell was standing near Will, and before he could jump back she slapped his face.

The snow was dancing outside in a light wind when Nell sailed into the drawing-room. She could probably still inform you how she was dressed, but that evening Will and the captain could not tell Mary. The captain thought it was a reddish dress or else blue; but it was all in squares like a draught-board, according to Will. Forty minutes had elapsed since Will visited her upstairs, and now he smiled at the conceit which made her think that the captain would succumb to a pretty frock. Of course Nell had no such thought. She always dressed carefully because – well, because there is never any saying.

Though Miss Meredith froze Greybrooke with a glance, he was relieved to see her. Her mother had discovered that she knew the lady who married his brother, and had asked questions about the baby. He did not like it. These, he thought, were things you should pretend not to know about. He had contrived to keep his nieces and nephews dark from the fellows at school, though most of them would have been too just to attach any blame to him. Of this baby he was specially ashamed, because they had called it after him.

Mrs. Meredith was a small, stout lady, of whose cleverness her husband spoke proudly to Nell, but never to herself. When Nell told her how he had talked, she exclaimed, 'Nonsense!' and then waited to hear what else he had said. She loved him, but probably no woman can live with a man for many years without having an indulgent contempt for him, and wondering how he is considered a good man of business. Mrs. Meredith, who was a terribly active woman, was glad to leave the entertainment of her visitors to Nell, and that young lady began severely by asking 'how you boys mean to amuse yourselves?'

'Do you keep rabbits?' she said to the captain sweetly.

'I say, Nell!' cried Will warningly.

'I have not kept rabbits,' Greybrooke replied, with simple dignity, 'since I was a boy.'

'I told you,' said Will, 'that Greybrooke was old – why, he's nearly as old as yourself. She's older than she looks, you know, Greybrooke.'

The captain was gazing at Nell with intense admiration. As she raised her head indignantly he thought she was looking to him for protection. That was a way Nell had.

'Abinger,' said the captain sternly, 'shut up.'

'Don't mind him, Miss Meredith,' he continued; 'he doesn't understand girls.'

To think he understands girls is the last affront a youth pays them. When he ceases trying to reduce them to fixed principles he has come of age. Nell, knowing this, felt sorry for Greybrooke, for she foresaw what he would have to go through. Her manner to him underwent such a change that he began to have a high opinion of himself. This is often called falling in love. Will was satisfied that his friend impressed Nell, and he admired Greybrooke's politeness to a chit of a girl, but he became restless. His eyes wandered to the piano, and he had a lurking fear that Nell would play something. He signed to the captain to get up.

'We'll have to be going now,' he said at last; 'good-bye.'

Greybrooke glared at Will, forgetting that they had arranged beforehand to stay as short a time as possible.

'Perhaps you have other calls to make?' said Nell, who had no desire to keep them there longer than they cared to stay.

'Oh yes,' said Will.

'No,' said the captain, 'we only came into Silchester with Miss Abinger's message for you.'

'Why, Will,' exclaimed Nell, 'you never gave me any message?'

'I forgot what it was,' Will explained cheerily; 'something about a ribbon, I think.'

'I did not hear the message given,' the captain said, in answer to Nell's look, 'but Miss Abinger had a headache, and I think Will said it had to do with that.'

'Oh, wait a bit,' said Will, 'I remember something about it now. Mary saw something in a Silchester paper, the Mirror, I think, that made her cry, and she thinks that if you saw it you would cry too. So she wants you to look at it.'

'The idea of Mary's crying!' said Nell indignantly. 'But did she not give you a note?'

'She was too much upset,' said Will, signing to the captain not to let on that they had refused to wait for the note.

'I wonder what it can be?' murmured Nell.

She hurried from the room to her father's den, and found him there surrounded by newspapers.

'Is there anything in the Mirror, father?' she asked.

'Nothing,' said Mr. Meredith, who had made the same answer to this question many hundreds of times; 'nothing except depression in the boot trade.'

'It can't be that,' said Nell.

'Can't be what?'

'Oh, give me the paper,' cried the ex-mayor's daughter impatiently.

She looked hastily up and down it, with an involuntary glance at the births, deaths, and marriages, turned it inside out and outside in, and then exclaimed 'Oh!' Mr. Meredith, who was too much accustomed to his daughter's impulses to think that there was much wrong, listened patiently while she ejaculated, 'Horrid!' 'What a shame!' 'Oh, I wish I was a man!' and, 'Well, I can't understand it.' When she tossed the paper to the floor, her face was red and her body trembled with excitement.

'What is it, Nelly?' asked her father.

Whether Miss Abinger cried over the Mirror that day is not to be known, but there were indignant tears in Nell's eyes as she ran upstairs to her bedroom. Mr. Meredith took up the paper and examined it carefully at the place where his daughter had torn it in her anger. What troubled her seemed to be something in the book notices, and he concluded that it must be a cruel 'slating' of a novel in one volume called The Scorn of Scorns. Mr. Meredith remembered that Nell had compelled him to read that book and to say that he liked it.

'That's all,' he said to himself, much relieved.

He fancied that Nell, being a girl, was distressed to see a book she liked called 'the sentimental out-pourings of some silly girl who ought to confine her writing to copy-books.' In a woman so much excitement over nothing seemed quite a natural thing to Mr. Meredith. The sex had ceased to surprise him. Having retired from business, Mr. Meredith now did things slowly as a good way of passing the time. He had risen to wealth from penury, and counted time by his dining-room chairs, having passed through a cane, a horsehair, and a leather period before arriving at morocco. Mrs. Meredith counted time by the death of her only son.

It may be presumed that Nell would not have locked herself into her bedroom and cried and stamped her feet on an imaginary critic had The Scorn of Scorns not interested her more than her father thought. She sat down to write a note to Mary. Then she tore it up, and wrote a letter to Mary's elder brother, beginning with the envelope. She tore this up also, as another idea came into her head. She nodded several times to herself over this idea, as a sign that the more she thought of it the more she liked it. Then, after very nearly forgetting to touch her eyes with something that made them look less red, she returned to the drawing-room.

'Will,' she said, 'have you seen the new ponies papa gave me on my birthday?'

Will leapt to his feet.

'Come on, Greybrooke,' he cried, making for the door.

The captain hesitated.

'Perhaps,' said Nell, with a glance at him, 'Mr. Greybrooke does not have much interest in horses?'

'Doesn't he just!' said Will; 'why – '

'No,' said Greybrooke; 'but I'll wait here for you, Abinger.'

Will was staggered. For a moment the horrible thought passed through his mind that these girls had got hold of the captain. Then he remembered.

'Come on,' he said, 'Nell won't mind.'

But Greybrooke had a delicious notion that the young lady wanted to see him by himself, and Will had to go to the stables alone.

'I won't be long,' he said to Greybrooke, apologising for leaving him alone with a girl. 'Don't bother him too much,' he whispered to Nell at the door.

As soon as Will had disappeared Nell turned to Greybrooke.