The machinating married woman! No bachelor is safe with her. I said nothing.
“Then it is true!” said Miss Dixon, “and I shall need two wedding presents. Mr. Butterfield, the unassailable bachelor! I shall give you _Paradise Lost_, Mr. Butterfield.”
“Ladies,” I answered, “you are unfair. You catch me in a weak moment, suffering from sunstroke, and accuse me of good resolutions. Does my previous bad character go for nothing? May I not have a half-hour’s weakness without hearing of it again? It is my first offence. Oh, how difficult is the true Bachelor Ideal!”
“Then you are not engaged, Mr. Butterfield?” said Millicent.
“Not to my knowledge, Miss Dixon. I admit to a certain wavering. If it comes again I will take you into my confidence; in the meantime we will discuss Miss Beaumont’s wedding present.”
We went into committee on the subject. I was still the Compleat Bachelor.
I could not help smiling as I rang Mrs. Kit Carmichael’s bell. It wanted a good hour to calling time, and I was sure to arrive in that embarrassing period of the afternoon when morning attire is being exchanged for the tea-gown, and the indiscreet visitor is left to meditate on the hollowness of social obligations in an empty drawing-room. It is an hour I take a peculiar delight in. I like to see the piano before Schubert’s songs have replaced the thumbed exercise-book, and to divine midday practisings, scarcely over, by young ladies lanky in stocking, with surreptitious chewing-gum in their pockets. It has still the charm that “going behind” had for me in my early theatrical days.
I had made some masculine pretext for leaving Carrie behind, and she was to follow later. I had a small reason of my own for wishing to see Mrs. Kit alone.
Mrs. Kit’s maid admitted me. That young person always seems inclined to laugh when she sees me. I swear I have never encouraged her.
The drawing-room door was opened to me, but I walked past it, beckoned by a distant sound of childish romping, and a young mother’s call of “Come here, Chris.” I made all the noise in my approach that pretended stealth demanded; I am delicate in my freedom.
Now, that is a part that needs a nice discrimination in the true performing of it. Intimacy has no severer test. Show me the indiscreet bachelor friend whose title falls short, be it only by a syllable, of the full warranty, and I will show you a man who shall wait for invitations, and to whom the fiery sword of “not at home” shall be displayed. The young wife in particular is apt to be touchy.