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Out of Season:
Marjorie Bowen:
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Most recent update: May 2023
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Out of Season
by
Marjorie Bowen
Cover based on a vintage travel poster
First published in The Windsor Magazine, May 1925
This e-book edition: Project Gutenberg Australia, 2023
The illustrations published with "Out of Season" are not in the
public domain and have been omitted from this ebook edition.
"HOW very fortunate," said Miss Brett, much
gratified,﹃that the hotel remains open all the winter! I think I
shall stay on indefinitely. The air suits me exactly, and Dr.
Gray is really very attentive.﹄And she smiled pleasantly at
Rosamund Fairfax, who felt her already low spirits give another
decided jerk downwards. In fact, though she was only a paid
companion, Rosamund was so depressed by this news that she
ventured on a humble protest. "Won't you find it rather dull,
Miss Brett? Everyone has gone away."
"I didn't come here for fun," replied the old lady severely,
"nor, I hope, did you. I am only too pleased that all those noisy
common people have gone; how they find the money to travel, I
don't know."
There was really nothing to be said to this. The little
Belgian watering-place had been "select" at the height of the
season, with very little, from a young woman's point of view, of
gaiety and excitement, and now, towards the end of September, a
complete dreariness had settled over the place. Only the Hotel
Sporting was being kept open, for the sole benefit, it seemed, of
Miss Brett and the sole torment of Rosamund Fairfax.
Not, you might have said, that it made much difference to
Rosamund whether her ambient was lively or dull, seeing that she
was never away from her invalid employer, and never spoke to
anyone but the few cronies of hex own age and disability that
lady tolerated.
Rosamund had been at "Le Sporting" for four months, and never
danced nor played tennis, nor bathed, nor dressed well, nor﹃been
about,﹄so you might have supposed that she would not have cared
if the place was empty or full; but then there had been people to
watch, a certain stream of life, a certain movement and
animation, and flowers and pretty frocks to look at, and the sun.
And throughout the winter there would be nothing of any of this,
only rows of shut shops, closed hotels, and a few capricious
invalids wandering about to enjoy the famous air that Miss Brett
had, unfortunately, found so peculiarly to her taste.
How charming, by contrast, seemed the original plan of a
return to the cosy flat in Kensington, where Miss Brett usually
made herself so comfortable during the winter!
"Have you quite made up your mind?" ventured Rosamund timidly.
"I am afraid that it will be very windy and cold here,
and—and difficult to get things."
"Nonsense!" said Miss Brett firmly. "The place is very
convenient. You've been here a whole season, and that ought to be
enough for any girl. I believe in young people enjoying
themselves, but it can't be pleasure all the time."
Rosamund had heard this so often that it had no effect on her.
She knew that Miss Brett meant well, and was really not such a
bad old lady at all, and that it would be useless to try and
shake her delusion that to watch others having "a good time" was
to have "a good time" yourself; she was really persuaded that she
had provided Rosamund with a round of enjoyment by taking
her—as a spectator—to a series of fashionable and
"select" health resorts.
"I'm afraid," she added now kindly, but still more firmly,
"you will have to make the best of it." And she concluded, as
Rosamund dutifully assisted her across the corridor to her
luxurious ground floor rooms: "Why you modern young women don't
get married is too much for me. There are plenty of men about,
and you've got so much liberty."
Rosamund smiled as she returned to the public sitting-room.
"Plenty of men," yes, but not one of them had ever looked at
her.
Why should they? She wasn't pretty, nor clever, nor rich, nor
impudent. No, Rosamund was one of those people called
"old-fashioned," which really means a rare type that never goes
in nor out of fashion, but always is there, not often seen,
however, and still less often noticed. She was timid, quiet,
sensitive, with absolutely no belief in herself whatever. She was
twenty-five, and all her life had stood in the background
"fagging" for others—first for her father, an impecunious
country doctor, then, on his death, for her married sister, then,
when she went to Canada, as companion to old Miss Brett. Being a
"companion" was all she could think of to earn a living. Her
sister called her helpless, and her father had always said there
wasn't much backbone to her, while Miss Brett, luxuriating also
in her virtues, found her agreeably foolish.
She looked out now at the long line of grey esplanade, the
outer line of grey sea, the sky heavy and dark as metal, and
wondered quite how she was going to bear this all the winter.
Miss Brett slept after lunch for two hours. Two hours every
day to sit in the hotel waiting for a possible call, two more
hours after tea for her "time off," and then the evenings!
The library was closed, the hotel had ceased to take any
papers, and Rosamund never received any letters save an
occasional dutiful epistle from the sister in Canada that brought
no thrill.
A pathetic little figure in her dowdy serge frock, with her
wistful face that was so young and soft to look so quiet and
melancholy, she stared out at the blank prospect. The rain had
begun to fall, and Rosamund desperately watched one big drop
chase another big drop down the pane and disappear in a cascade
into the window frame.
"If it's going to be wet!" she murmured in anguish.
And then the hotel motor 'bus swept into sight along the
esplanade, a cheerful gleam of scarlet, and stopped outside the
hotel verandah. There was actually luggage, proper,
important-looking traveller's luggage, on top, and two people
inside.
Rosamund actually tingled with excitement, though common-sense
told her that these must be stray wanderers stopping for a mere
night on their way home, Still, for the moment it was something
to watch, and Rosamund, from behind the heavy damask curtain,
stared with avidity.
Two travellers. A man and a woman. English. Extremely "smart."
This was Rosamund's first quick summing up. As there was nothing
else to look at, she proceeded to examine the two new arrivals
very closely as they entered the hotel and came down the
lounge.
The woman was notably attractive, but not notably young. Her
clothes and her manners were the last word in modernity; her
garments were so elegant and uncommon that she would have been
conspicuous anywhere as a woman of taste, money, and some
daring.
Rosamund, who liked most people, did not like her—no,
not at all.
The man was younger, about Rosamund's age, and brown and blond
and big.
Rosamund liked him.
Now, though it seems unlikely, Rosamund was very difficult in
the matter of young men. She was by no means disposed to admire
all the specimens she had observed, nor to envy other girls many
of their admirers, and it had not troubled her very much that she
had escaped masculine attention, because, being such a strange
little person, she had her ideals. She, who had never known
realities, could afford to revel in choice dreams. And now, as
she watched this young man who followed the charming lady rather
as if he was something in her train, she approved of
him—oh, very much!
They disappeared upstairs, and Rosamund moved from the window
and picked up a stale French newspaper.
The rain increased, a steady soak now blotting out sea and
sky. The only bit of colour in the landscape, the bright red
'bus, moved away.
"I suppose they'll go to-morrow," thought the girl
disconsolately, "and then there will be nothing to watch at
all."
But the afternoon was not to be without another excitement.
This time a telegraph boy. Something for her? For Miss Brett?
Of course not. Absurd how these palpitations of hope continued
in spite of all experience, all reason! "I must," said Rosamund
to herself, as the telegram was carried upstairs, "give up
expecting things. Naturally nothing is ever going to happen to
me. I mustn't be so childish."
Miss Brett now required tea and attention, and while Rosamund
was ministering to her, the rain stopped suddenly, and a pale
wash of light filled the comfortable room.
"A rainbow," said the old lady.﹃That will be something for
you to see when you take your walk—it is quite fine enough
now for you to go out.﹄And she settled herself down with a novel
and a pleasant nod of dismissal.
Rosamund wished there was something more to do for her—
anything was better than "hanging about"—but she was really
an independent old lady, and gave the girl far too much of this
dreadful "time of."
Rosamund did not go out. She knew the parade, the streets, so
well she felt that she could not bear to look at them again.
There was a rainbow, certainly, but she could see that from
the window. And she stood in the lounge looking at it and
thinking how lovely it was and how unsubstantial.
The couple who had arrived that afternoon came down and drank
coffee in an alcove. The lady still wore her decorative
travelling dress, and they were discussing something together in
low, animated whispers. There was a time-table between them, and
first one and then the other consulted it. Then the young man
went out and spoke to the solitary, glooming porter.
When he returned to his companion, the two of them sat silent,
as if something had been decided past argument, and not very
satisfactorily.
Neither of them noticed Rosamund, with her stale paper in the
window, staring first at the rainbow, then at "news" already
thrice contradicted. She was used to that; no one ever did notice
her. She couldn't remember ever having a second glance from
anyone, unless she had chanced to get in the way of people who
were mildly surprised to find themselves impeded by anything so
insignificant.
Then the rainbow faded, the scarlet 'bus flashed up, the
handsome luggage was piled on top, and the handsome couple got
inside.
"That is the end of that," thought Rosamund.﹃They simply
couldn't bear it.﹄And it occurred to her that it must be very
nice to be able to get away from things when you couldn't bear
them.
Rosamund almost wished that she had not seen that young man;
there was something so cheerful and radiant about him that now he
was gone the emptiness seemed more empty, the dreariness more
dreary. If you didn't see people like that, you didn't get any
idea of how nice things could be, and it was better, if you were
Rosamund Fairfax, to remain in ignorance.
Miss Brett, who was pursuing a very pleasant and comfortable
"cure," dined early in her room. Rosamund always put in a later
and lonely appearance at the table d'hôte.
This had been amusing enough, but now was a painful
experience. For two nights she had been the solitary person in
the pretty pink-and-white restaurant, and the orchestra, reduced
to a violin and a piano, had played lugubriously to her across a
waste of bare tables.
To-day was the last day of the month, and therefore of the
orchestra. Rosamund carefully donned her one black evening dress
as for a ceremonious farewell. She envied the musicians, who were
going, of course, somewhere bright and cheerful, and she dreaded
to think of all the dinners she would have to eat, or pretend to
eat, in silence.
When she entered the restaurant she saw at once that there was
one place laid at a table the farthest possible from hers.
Rosamund sternly refused to be optimistic. It could, of course,
be no one but some elderly person with a dull
disease—strange that she had missed the arrival.
The orchestra played a rather dismal intermezzo, or it seemed
dismal to Rosamund, decorously sipping soup that she didn't
really want, and feeling that the lonely waiter looked
contemptuous and the two men playing disdainful.
She studied the pattern of the tablecloth with much
circumspection. When she did lift her eyes, it was to see the
young man seated solitary at that far-distant table, also intent
on the flowers in the damask.
Rosamund was so surprised that she flushed. She couldn't
remember when she had felt her cheeks hot before; it was a queer
sensation.
He was actually staying here, this splendid person. He had
only gone to see the lady off—his wife, of course, and, of
course, nothing to do with her, Rosamund Fairfax. There was
nothing to do but to examine the tablecloth again, which she did
with great thoroughness.
The bored waiter carried them each in turn fish, cutlets,
soufflé, walking with slow steps down the long empty room
from one table to another.
As long as possible Rosamund resisted looking at her distant
companion, but over her lonely pear she could not resist a quick
glance.
He was grinning—that was the only word for it—not
smiling, but grinning. Such a delightful grin.﹃Isn't this
awful?﹄he said cheerfully. "I mean for you."
"Us, rather—funny," she answered, and thought her own
voice sounded stranger than his. She had meant this remark to be
quite non-committal, but evidently the young man took it as an
encouragement, for he brightened considerably.
"I say, don't you think I might save that chap so many
journeys, and come and take my coffee at your table?" he
suggested hopefully.
"I don't take coffee," said Rosamund in a tone of which Miss
Brett would have thoroughly approved.
"But I do. Heaps. Aren't you going to take pity on me?"
The orchestra was staring, the waiter was staring. Rosamund
rose to the moment and said, in quite a woman-of-the-world
fashion: "Of course. I shall be delighted." You see, she was
quite out of date in these things, and though she had seen modern
manners, she was incapable of copying them.
The young man crossed the room with cheerful alacrity. As he
took his place opposite Rosamund, the orchestra, as if by sudden
inspiration, dashed into a gay foxtrot.
"That's better," remarked the young man with satisfaction.
Rosamund did not know quite what he referred to—the
music, she supposed.
The waiter seemed suddenly to become more lively. He brought
coffee and liqueurs, fruit and cigarettes, with a flourish.
Rosamund's table, as if by magic, was suddenly gay—like
the tables of other people. Never before had she been given
grapes and peaches.
"Are you quite sure that you don't take coffee?" insinuated
the young man.
"No, thank you."
"Nor liqueurs?"
"No, thank you."
"Nor cigarettes?"
"No, thank you."
"How wonderful!" he murmured.
Rosamund looked up, looked at him; he was so pleasant to see
that she dropped her formality in a burst of honesty. "You see,
I've never tried—"
"Tried?" he asked eagerly.
"Those—things."
"No, haven't you really?"
"Not really." Rosamund, feeling more at home, lowered her
voice confidentially. "You see, I'm a companion."
"I know," he agreed stoutly. "Awfully jolly companion."
"I mean," blushed Rosamund, "a paid companion—to Miss
Brett."
"O-oh! A lady's companion? How wonderful! Didn't know there
were any left."
"There aren't," answered Rosamund candidly. "Only one—
me."
"How topping!" The young man was enthusiastic.
"Why?" asked Rosamund austerely.
"It's something so absolutely new—a lady's
companion!"
"I don't think it is amusing, and only told you to explain why
I didn't do those things—cigarettes and so on."
"Old girl forbid it?" he asked with keen interest.
Rosamund reflected a second, then: "Miss Brett," she corrected
severely, "never mentions such things. I believe she is quite
liberal-minded, but, well"—the girl could not resist
relaxing into a smile—"I can't afford expensive
habits."
"No one can," he assured her with ardour; "that's why they are
such fun."
"Fun?" repeated Rosamund dubiously.
"You don't know much about fun, do you? I say, isn't this a
jolly old tune? Do you dance?"
"No."
He considered her with such interest that Rosamund felt
constrained to remark: "It is rather a stormy night. I hope your
wife isn't crossing?"
"My wife?"
"The lady who was with you." Rosamund blushed for the third
time.
"Oh, that was Miss Forttis," he explained cheerfully. "Of
course you don't know Miss Forttis?"
Rosamund was surprised to hear herself say: "I know her
sort."
"Do you?"
"Well, I've been in hotels, I've watched a lot—I know
more than I can do." She became confused, but the young man was
helpful.
"I understand. Well, if you know about Miss Forttis, you know
about me."
"Does it follow?" asked Rosamund innocently.
"I do. Miss Forttis—we buzzed off here to talk things
over. 'Absolutely dead hole,' she said."
"An elopement!" thrilled Rosamund.
"No," he replied. "We just buzzed off. Her crowd," he added
confidentially, "are frightfully keen on her marrying another
chap, and she's frightfully keen on marrying me."
"And you?" asked Rosamund faintly.
"Oh, of course I'm frightfully keen, too," he asserted
serenely, "but I don't count much either way."
"What about your people?" Rosamund was absorbed in these
artless confidences to the extent of forgetting herself.
"I'm of age—Tony Langton—ought to have told you
before—do what I like."
"I thought," said Rosamund gently, "Miss Forttis looked as if
she was of age."
"What age?" he asked blandly.
But Rosamund suspected him; she wasn't going to be trapped
into being "cattish."
"Just twenty-one," she replied demurely.
"Oh, she's more than that!" he stated ingenuously. "Isn't she
wonderful?"
"Very," agreed Rosamund sincerely. "But I wonder if she would
like you telling me all this?"
"She would. When I asked her what on earth I was to do here,
she said, 'Go and talk things over with that nice friendly
girl.'"
This was a kind translation of what Miss Forttis had really
said, which was: "You might take pity on that prehistoric little
frump, Tony. I should think she would be interesting."
Rosamund, with her pleasant view of people, was far from
guessing this, but she did note, without rancour, how utterly
negligible both these handsome people considered her—a
piece of furniture, something you could say anything to and it
wouldn't matter.
"You see," continued the young man with selfish, if charming,
frankness, "if I didn't have someone to talk to, I should go
crazy, waiting here."
Rosamund was sympathetic; she felt that perhaps he would
prevent her from going crazy, too.
"It is awful for you," she agreed. "There is no one here but
myself and Miss Brett. How long are you staying?"
"I don't know." He looked dismayed. "I have to wait till
Nora—that is Miss Forttis—settles things up."
"Wait here?"
"Yes, she told me to, and I promised—it was all settled
rather in a hurry. I hope," he added desperately, "that she will
let me know to-morrow when she is coming back."
"Why did she go?" asked Rosamund, intensely interested in
this, to her, very strange drama.
"Got a wire. You see, Nora is always very cautious. She left
her address with a friend who was in the secret, just in case
anything happened to her, and it did. Her Aunt Maire had a stroke
and asked for her."
"Oh!"
Evidently Tony Langton thought that Rosamund looked dubious,
for he hastened to add: "Nora isn't queer, really. It is only
that her aunts and things are frightfully well off, and she likes
to keep on the right side of them—that's why there is all
this muddle with me. I haven't a bean."
"It's all queer," remarked Rosamund thoughtfully. "But I'm
sure I'm very sorry for you having to stay in 'Le Sporting' out
of the season."
The music, that had been such a vivacious accompaniment to
their talk, abruptly ceased. The violin was returned to the case,
the piano closed, the waiter hovered near to clear the table and
put out the lights. Rosamund glanced at the clock.
"You're not going?" asked the young man in dismay.
Rosamund could not remember ever before when anyone had looked
so much as if they really wanted her company; it was a delicious
sensation.
"Miss Brett," she murmured faintly as she rose, "likes me to
be in bed by nine."
"Good Heavens! But what am I going to do?"
He looked so genuinely scared that Rosamund could not help
laughing. "You might take a walk or look at the papers," she
suggested, "or write a letter to someone or other."
"To Nora? Good idea! Thanks awfully for putting up with
me."
Rosamund lay awake half the night thinking of this great
excitement. She had been chosen as the confidant of a real
dramatic, romantic love affair—nothing less than an
elopement.
Rosamund, in all sincerity, felt grateful to the
lady—whom she didn't like—for permitting this
gorgeous young man to speak to her—to make a friend of her.
She hoped that she had been sympathetic enough; she hoped that he
wouldn't think it over and decide that she wasn't worth talking
to—as everyone else seemed to have decided.
"Of course," thought Rosamund in her humility, "he would never
have spoken to me now if there had been anyone else."
At breakfast there was the young man. Miss Brett had, somehow,
heard of his arrival, and was present at this early meal.
Rosamund nodded, he said "Good morning!" and the rest was just
like every other breakfast.
"He has thought better of it," lamented Rosamund inwardly. "Of
course I might have known—when he saw me by daylight."
The young man strolled out on to the front and stood staring
at the sea, while Miss Brett began a rapid fire of questions
about this strange phenomenon—a highly desirable,
agreeable, well-set-up young man alone here just when the season
was definitely over. Rosamund remained loyal, but, of course,
uselessly.
During the morning Miss Brett deftly extracted from manager,
waiter, and chambermaid the known history of the attractive young
man.
Sir Tony Langton—from Deauville—a very popular,
fashionable personage, quite well off, but not rich for that
"set"—staying indefinitely at "Le Sporting."
"How funny!" said Miss Brett.
Then she nosed about the lady—Miss Nora Forttis from
Scotland. Had booked rooms for a week, but been called away by a
wire—was probably returning.
"An elopement," said Miss Brett. "He's waiting for her. How
very exciting! Someone must be ill. Poor young man! I shouldn't
have thought they would have needed to run away; surely he's good
enough for anyone."
"He hasn't much money," remarked Rosamund unwisely. "If her
people don't help them, they'll be frightfully hard up, and Miss
Forttis doesn't like being hard up."
"Oh! He's been telling you things, then?" She scrutinised her
"companion."
"He spoke a few words last night at dinner; he is very
lonely."
"Well, I dare say a quiet, sensible sort of girl like you will
make nice company for him," said Miss Brett, who thought Rosamund
would be a splendid channel of information. "I wonder when they
will get married? At the English Consulate, I suppose."
Rosamund did not heed Miss Brett's gossipy, if kindly,
chatter; she was far too interested in the romantic side of the
incident and the dazzling proximity of Sir Tony Langton, who was
just the kind of person she had sometimes seen in the distance,
never spoken to, nor hoped to speak to, and always liked.
She thought Nora Forttis very lucky, but it never occurred to
her to envy that fortunate lady. You see, Rosamund had always
considered herself beyond or, rather, beneath envy.
It was curious, though, that after she had "settled" Miss
Brett so comfortably for her afternoon nap, she did give a rather
searching look at herself in the glass in the hotel bedroom that
she had hitherto so completely neglected. A mousy little girl,
dun-coloured hair and eyes, and a pale skin and a timid
expression.
For once, for the first time, Rosamund did herself justice.﹃I
don't know,﹄she thought judicially, "that even that wonderful
Miss Forttis would look so very wonderful in this washed-out old
jumper and with her hair done this way. Of course I've got the
kind of face for bobbed hair, but—well, what's the
use?"
Sir Tony was not in the hotel when she timidly took her place
in the lounge, but the waiter brought her a note on a salver.
What a ridiculous thrill in opening that note! From the
marvellous young man, of course. Would she play golf with him
that afternoon, and have tea at the club house, meeting him
there?
Rosamund did not play golf. She would, in sheer politeness,
have to go and tell him so.
And then, on a very strange impulse for her, she asked the
waiter if the hairdressing salon was still open?
And Rosamund with bobbed hair went down to the pretty little
golf course that ran along the dunes. She kept her hat off,
feeling greatly daring, for really that hair-dresser, now in
possession of a good portion of her modest pocket money, had made
those short locks very pretty. "You needn't have mousy hair," he
had said, and Rosamund's was bronze really, and it was a novel,
lovely feeling having the scented curls blowing about your face.
So Rosamund arrived hatless.
Sir Tony was glooming on the verandah of the club house. The
golf course, like the hairdresser, was closing to-day.
There was no one about save a disconsolate caddie and a waiter
reading a novel in a corner.
"You play golf?" he demanded hopefully and sternly. It was
like a threat.
Rosamund shivered. "No. I'm so sorry."
"Or tennis? I saw a decent court."
"No."
Sir Tony looked formidable. "I shall clear out to-day," he
announced.
Rosamund didn't want him to do that. You see, she was so sorry
for Miss Forttis, who had so nobly rushed back to a sick
relative. If he went away—well, you couldn't answer for the
chances of Miss Forttis, could you?
"You promised me tea," she pleaded, feeling shameless.
"Of course. But it looks so beastly here."
"There is," ventured Rosamund, "a very good tea shop in the
Rue du Sud."
"I suppose," he answered listlessly, "you would find it an
awful bore to go there; you must be tired to death of it."
"I've never been there," said Rosamund with devastating
simplicity. "I always wanted to go."
Sir Tony literally sat up. He took a good look at this unique
girl before he spoke, and wondered why last night he had thought
her so pathetically plain, or, rather, not thought of her at all,
save vaguely as a "good sort," quite out of the running. Against
the long reaches of the dunes the clear little profile, the soft
curls, looked provoking.
"Why didn't you go? Why haven't you ever done anything?" he
asked stupidly.
"Nobody," replied Rosamund, not without guile, "ever asked me
to go anywhere or do anything before."
She didn't say that to provoke his pity, but to interest him
in a curious case, and she succeeded.
Sir Tony saw one of the biggest thrills of his life looming
near. "Did you want to be asked?" he inquired with an earnestness
that made the question impersonal.
Truth rushed to Rosamund's lips.﹃Very much. But I never
expected it,﹄she added honestly. "When one is quite so ordinary
as I am—"
Sir Tony rose with alacrity. "I think you are the most
extraordinary person I ever met. Come along and have tea."
He said no more about "clearing out," and Rosamund felt that
she had done the wonderful lady a good turn.
There was more life in the centre of the little town. Some of
the shops were still gay with "end of season" sales; the little
café restaurants yet showed a minimum of well-dressed idlers;
there were a few cars about; Rosamund's tea shop looked costly,
luxurious, and splendidly frivolous and cheerful.
"Not a bad old place," remarked Sir Tony, whose spirits seemed
to have risen considerably during the last half-hour, "I should
think quite gay in the season."
"Yes, there was quite a lot to watch," assented Rosamund.
"But you didn't do anything?"
"Only looked after Miss Brett."
Over the tiny tea-table he studied with interest the girl whom
everyone had overlooked, who was eating wickedly exotic cakes for
the first time, who didn't dance, or play tennis, or golf, or
smoke, or know anything about cigarettes, or cocktails, or
flirting.
During the course of that extravagant tea he probed into the
mystery of this strange being. What could she do? The queerest
things, of course—cooking, sewing, nursing—all those
out-of-date affairs women were trying to forget all about.
"I should have made a good domestic servant if only I had been
stronger" remarked Rosamund sincerely. "I should have made more
money as a cook than as a companion. Miss Brett is very kind, but
the life is a little dull; there is so much sitting about."
"A little dull!" he echoed, incredulous at all these marvels.
And he made her recite exactly what her days consisted
of—her duties and Miss Brett's remarks thereon. This
glimpse into an unknown world so absorbed the young man that when
the prolonged tea was over he found that he had been enjoying
himself immensely.
"I tell you what," he declared enthusiastically, "while I'm
held up here I'll teach you a few things—tennis,
dancing—I saw a gramophone in the hotel—that will be
tremendous fun."
"But you won't be here long enough," faltered Rosamund.
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes danced with excitement.
She had of course decorously put on her wool cap on entering the
town, but pretty sprays of bright curls twisted round her cheeks;
she didn't at that moment look a bit "mousy."
Sir Tony, looking at her, thought and said, in all honesty:
"How awfully jolly meeting you! I don't know how I could have
carried on here."
Rosamund knew exactly what he meant; she had filled up a
boring blank, she had been a novelty to while away a period of
dreary, almost intolerable tedium.
Rosamund accepted the position—she was even grateful for
being allowed to fill it—but she thought, as she carefully
finished her rosy ice—the last ice of the season,
surely—that Nora Forttis ought to be grateful, too—to
her.
She also thought that it was time to bring this lady loyally
into the conversation. Of course Sir Tony was thinking about her
all the time, but he must want to talk about her—only,
perhaps, was too shy to do so.
So "Did you hear from Miss Forttis to-day?" asked Rosamund
politely.
"No, there would scarcely be time. She has gone to a very
out-of-the-way place." He seemed to become rather depressed at
these reflections. "I'll give her a week. If she isn't back then,
I'll clear out."
"A week?" Rosamund's new brightness clouded over. "I—I
couldn't learn very much in a week, could I?"
Sir Tony laughed; his momentary gloom had gone. "What do you
want to learn first?"
"Oh, something about Miss Forttis," returned Rosamund
dutifully.
The lover began a paean about the fair Nora. Rosamund learnt a
lot about her in the next half-hour. She couldn't understand why
the lady could have been induced to break up such a romantic
affair to fly to a sick relative—not for love, mind you,
but for fear of being cut out of a will.
Of course Sir Tony said it was affection for poor Aunt Maire,
and perhaps thought so, but he had, unconsciously enough,﹃given
away﹄Nora in the matter.
"Money is awfully important," said the poor fellow wistfully.
"You can't expect a girl like Nora—"
"Why don't you go, too?" suggested Rosamund heroically.
"I? Why, we shouldn't have had to bolt off here if Nora's
people hadn't hated me. You see," he added with that charming and
rather audacious frankness of his, "they wanted her to marry a
frightfully rich chap called Wedderburn."
And then he spoke no more of Nora Forttis, but seemed much
more interested in hearing all the funny little things about
Rosamund's funny little life—such funny little things and
such a funny little life as he had not guessed could exist
anywhere. He was like a man who has lived in a hothouse full of
exotic blooms all his days, and suddenly finds a tiny common
hedge flower under a microscope.
And Rosamund saw his interest, his approval, and blossomed
under it as she had never blossomed before. They were both gay
and cordial as they walked briskly back to "Le Sporting," and on
the way he stopped at the last florist's left open and bought her
the last bunch of roses, huge, delicious crimson damask roses,
such as Rosamund had never stuck her modest little nose into
before.
On her return she arranged this superb bouquet in Miss Brett's
sitting-room and gave that attentive lady a sparkling account of
the afternoon's adventure—for it did, all of it, seem an
adventure to Rosamund.
Miss Brett's comment seemed to be at a tangent. "You want some
new clothes. You haven't got anything really nice."
Rosamund was truly amazed; this was the first time Miss Brett
had bothered about her appearance.
"I see that you've had your hair bobbed," continued the old
lady. "I always wondered why you didn't before."
Rosamund couldn't answer.
"I suppose it never seemed worth while before," added Miss
Brett reflectively. "That's what I meant about the clothes.
To-morrow we'll go out and buy some."
Rosamund thought that she had caught the meaning now—her
new, her first, her only friend would think her too dowdy and
shabby. Perhaps Miss Brett was ashamed of her!
She hastened to explain, reverting to her most instinctively
prim manner.
"I hope you don't object, Miss Brett. It is only in my own
time, and just someone to listen to Sir Tony—"
"I don't mind," interrupted the old lady briskly. "As you say,
it is in your own time. But I don't see why you shouldn't listen
in a new dress. I've always wanted to make you a present, and now
it is the end of the season I dare say we can pick up something
cheap."
Rosamund murmured gratitude; she didn't quite understand.
"There was no need—"
"No need to have your hair done," finished Miss Brett, "but it
is a success."
Still Rosamund did not understand; she was the sort of girl
who wouldn't.
Miss Brett said no more about the splendid young man. She
followed her comfortable little cure, and gossiped with her
comfortable little doctor, and Rosamund had her dinner and her
tea with Sir Tony Langton, and learnt the foxtrot by the aid of a
gramophone in the empty dance-room, and tried to learn tennis on
the empty court, and listened to all manner of things about that
world which hitherto she had only known from the outside. And not
even very much from the outside, for people like Sir Tony didn't
come much to the resorts patronised by Miss Brett.
The "end of the season" had now definitely closed round them;
the place was so empty that even "Le Sporting" spoke of
closing— it was hardly worth while for three people.
Nora Forttis had sent two voluminous telegrams, and then there
had been a blank of several days.
But somehow that had not seemed to matter, for the sun came
out. Suddenly the empty town was glorious; the crystal golden
light of October seemed to spill and overflow from the abundant
blue heavens and be caught in the abundant blue sea.
In the morning this sparkling light was of a divine clearness
and radiance; in the evening amber, orange, scarlet stained the
serene sky, and in between these were precious, lovely hours on
the silver dunes, on that long bare parade, in the crooked
streets with the closed shops, where the one little café tea
place so gallantly defied the end of the season.
Miss Brett was most triumphantly justifying her doctor and her
cure. She required extraordinarily little attention from
Rosamund—she was always giving her "time off."
"I don't want to be fussed," she would say. "You might just as
well be amusing yourself or trying to amuse that poor young man,
whose fiancée, or whatever she is, seems to be treating him very
badly. But I don't pretend to understand these modern
situations."
Rosamund did not understand, either. She did not try to
understand; she was only aware that life had suddenly become more
interesting than she had ever supposed it would be. You might not
think that it was very exciting to play the part of a substitute,
even to such a splendid person as Sir Tony Langton, but then
Rosamund had never hoped to be even a substitute.
He was grateful.﹃What a bore this waiting would have been if
it had not been for you!﹄he would declare sincerely.
He had never thought that anything could be quite so
interesting and exciting as teaching Rosamund "things." You see,
he had never, like many young men of to-day, met a very humble,
simple feminine creature with a poor opinion of herself and no
hopes or ambitions whatever.
Of course she couldn't learn golf, and she was rather hopeless
at tennis, and her dancing was timid and uncertain, but she
regarded her teacher with such limitless, unaffected adoration,
as a superior, gifted, and impeccable creature, that Sir Tony
didn't mind her slowness as a pupil. She made him feel just as
superior as he had made Nora Forttis feel. He wasn't really a
very clever young man, and certainly not a very quick one, and
all the women he had met so far, clever, smart, up-to-date women
of his own world, had patronised him, in quite a kindly way, of
course, but this was different.
It was almost as unique an experience for Tony as for
Rosamund.
They sat together in the pretty empty dining-room of the
hotel, the one lit table among a waste of blank ones. Rosamund
wore the red frock that had been Miss Brett's present. They had
motored to Ostend that afternoon and brought back a mass of
hothouse freesias that filled a vase between them.
Rosamund took—very timidly—a tiny glass of Crème
de Menthe now, and smoked—very timidly—a tiny
cigarette.
"It's been a lovely day," she said enthusiastically.
And he agreed with equal enthusiasm: "It's been a lovely
day."
They looked at each other across the pretty little table, and
both forgot how plain she was, how insignificant, and how
gorgeous he was, how important. They just saw each other
as— well, as they would most likely continue to see each
other from that moment on.
And then the waiter brought in a telegram and placed it in
front of Sir Tony. The young man started. He had positively
forgotten Nora Forttis.
Rosamund hadn't, and she didn't start. She sat very still, and
looked at the freesias, and wondered if the gorgeous lady would
be kind and ask her to the wedding, the secret, romantic wedding,
and if she'd be just a little grateful.
Sir Tony looked dismally at the envelope and then at his
companion, then, with the air of one gallantly doing his duty,
opened it.
Rosamund felt that she, too, ought to do her duty. She had
rather got out of the way of her old-fashioned conventional
phrases lately, but she groped about to find one.
Before she could speak, however, Sir Tony gave a sharp cry of
delight and waved the telegram aloft.
"I am so glad. That means Miss Forttis is coming soon," said
Rosamund in a brave, queer little voice.
"No, it doesn't!" he cried. "She's changed her mind. Aunt
Maire is better and has talked her over—bless the old
girl!—and Nora's going to marry Wedderburn."
"And you?" asked Rosamund stupidly.
Sir Tony popped his head round the freesias, clasped
Rosamund's hand, and grinned. "I'm going to marry you."
And Miss Brett wasn't surprised.
THE END
Project Gutenberg Australia