The Mandarin's Fan. Hume Fergus
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mirrors draped with Liberty silk. Everywhere were large bowls of flowers, miniatures of Miss Wharf at various times of her life, curiosities from China and Japan and the near East, and all sorts of odds and ends which Miss Wharf had collected on her travels. Not that she had been to the East, for the evidences of civilisation in those lands came from Dr. Forge and Major Tidman, but Miss Wharf had explored Germany, Switzerland and Italy and consequently had brought home cuckoo-clocks, quaint carvings, pictures of the Madonna, Etruscan idols and such like things with which every tourist loads himself or herself. The result was, that the drawing-room looked like a curiosity shop, but it was considered to be one of the prettiest drawing-rooms in Essex.
Miss Wharf looked too large and too substantial for the frail furniture of the room. She had a double chin and was certainly very stout. Very wisely she had a special arm-chair placed in the window – from which she could see all that was going on, – and here she sat working most of the day. She was great on doing fancy articles for bazaars, and silk ties for such gentlemen as she admired, for Miss Wharf, old maid as she was, liked male society. The Major was her great admirer, so was young Walker, Lady Jabe's nephew. Sophia was not very sure of this last gentleman, as she shrewdly suspected – prompted by Miss Pewsey – that he admired Olivia. Rupert also admired Olivia and wanted to marry her, a proceeding which Miss Wharf objected to. Miss Pewsey supported her in this, for both women were envious of the youth which had passed from them for ever. But Miss Wharf had also another reason, which Miss Pewsey knew, but of which Olivia was ignorant. Hitherto Sophia had kept it from the girl but this afternoon in a fit of rage she let it out. The explosion did not come at once, for Lady Jabe was in the room drinking tea, and Miss Pewsey was flitting about, filling odd vases with flowers. Olivia sat on the settee very straight and very cold, looking dark and handsome, and altogether too splendid a woman for her aunt to tolerate.
"Can't you do something?" said Miss Wharf turning her jealous eyes on the girl. "I should think you must be tired, twiddling your thumbs all day."
"I'll do whatever you wish me to do," said Olivia coldly.
"Then help Lavinia with the flowers."
Olivia rose to do so, but Miss Pewsey refused her assistance in a shrill speech spoken as usual between her teeth and with an emphasis on every other word. "Oh no dear, dear, Sophia," cried Miss Pewsey, "I have just finished, and I may say that my eye for colour is better than Olivia's – you don't mind my saying so, darling," she added to the girl.
"Not at all," replied Miss Rayner who detested the sycophant. "I never give the matter a thought."
"You should think," said Lady Jabe joining in heavily. She was a tall masculine-looking woman with grey hair and bushy grey eyebrows, and with an expression of face that suggested she should have worn a wig and sat on the bench. She dressed in rather a manly way, and far too young for her fifty years. On the present occasion she wore a yachting-cap, a shirt with a stand-up, all round, collar and a neat bow; a leather belt and a bicycling skirt of blue serge. Her boots and shoes were of tanned brown leather, and she carried a bamboo cane instead of a sunshade. No one could have been more gentlemanly. "You should think," added she once more, "for instance you should think of marriage."
Miss Wharf drew herself up in her cold way. "I fancy that Olivia, few brains as she has, is yet wise enough not to think of marriage at twenty."
"It would not be much good if I did," said Olivia calmly. "I have no money, and young men want a rich wife."
"Not all," said Lady Jabe, "there's Chris – "
"Chris is out of the question," said Miss Rayner quickly.
"And pray why is he?" asked Sophia in arms at once. She never liked Olivia to have an opinion of her own.
"Because I don't love him."
"But Chris loves you," said Lady Jabe, "and really he's getting a very good salary in that Tea-merchant's office. Chris, as you are aware, Olivia, is foreign corresponding clerk to Kum-gum Li & Co. He knows Chinese," finished Lady Jabe, with tremendous emphasis.
"Oh," Miss Pewsey threw up her claws, "how delicious to be made love to in Chinese. I must really ask Mr. Walker what is the Chinese for 'I love you.'"
"Olivia prefers to hear it in English," said Miss Wharf, spitefully.
"Quite so, aunt," retorted her niece, her colour rising, "but don't you think we might change the subject. It really isn't very interesting."
"But indeed I think it is," said Lady Jabe smartly, "I come here to plead the cause of poor Chris. His heart is breaking. Your aunt is willing to – "
"But I am not," said Miss Rayner quickly, "so please let us say no more about the matter. Mr. Walker can marry Lotty Dean."
"But she's a grocer's daughter," said Lady Jabe, who was herself the widow of an oil-merchant, "and remember my title."
"Lotty isn't going to marry you, Lady Jabe."
"Nor Chris, if I can help it," said the other grimly.
Miss Wharf was just about to crush Olivia with a particularly disagreeable remark, when the door opened and two gentlemen entered. One was Christopher Walker, a slim, boyish-looking young fellow, in that callow stage of manhood which sees beauty in every woman. The other, who followed, was Miss Pewsey's nephew.
There was nothing immature about him, although he was but twenty eight years of age. Clarence Burgh was tall, thin, dark and had the appearance of a swashbuckler as he swaggered into the room. His black eyes snapped with an unholy light and his speech smacked too much of the Lands at the Back of Beyond, where he had passed the most part of his life. He was an expert rider, and daily rode a bucking squealing, kicking stallion up and down the road, or took long gallops into the country to reduce the fire of the unruly beast. Burgh was bad all through, daring, free, bold, and had a good deal of the untamed savage about him; but he was emphatically a man, and it was this virile atmosphere about him, which caused his withered aunt to adore him. And indeed Miss Wharf admired him also, as did many of the women in Marport. Clarence looked like a buccaneer who would carry a woman off, and knock her down if she objected to his love-making. Women like that sort of dominating lord of the world, and accordingly Mr. Burgh had nothing to complain of, so far as feminine admiration went, during his sojourn in Marport. But he had set his affections on Olivia, and hitherto she had shrunk from him. All the same, brute as he was, she admired him more than she did effeminate Chris Walker, who smacked of the city and of a feather-bed-four-meals-a-day existence.
"Oh," squeaked Miss Pewsey, flying to the hero and clasping him round the neck, "how very, very sweet of you to come."
"Hadn't anything else to do," said Clarence gracefully, casting himself into a chair. All his movements were graceful like those of a panther. "How are you Miss Wharf – Miss Rayner – Lady Jabe. I guess you all look like a garden of spring flowers this day."
"But flowers we may not pluck," sighed Chris prettily.
Burgh looked at him with contempt. "I reckon a man can pick what he has a mind to," said he drily, and then shifted his gaze to see how Olivia took this speech. To his secret annoyance, she did not let on she heard him.
"Will you have some tea, Mr. Burgh," asked Miss Wharf.
"Thanks. It seems to be the sort of thing one must drink here."
"You drank it in China didn't you?" asked Lady Jabe.
Burgh turned quickly. "Who told you I had been in China?" he asked.
"My nephew Chris. He heard you talking Chinese to someone."
The dark young man looked distinctly annoyed. "When was that?" he asked Chris.
"Two weeks ago," replied the other, "you were standing at the corner of the Mansion House talking to a Chinaman. I only caught a word or two in passing."
"And I guess you didn't understand," said Clarence derisively.
"There you are wrong. I am in a Chinese firm, and know the language. As a matter of fact I write their foreign letters for them."
"The deuce you do," murmured Burgh looking rather disturbed; but he said no more on the subject, and merely enquired if the ladies were prepared for the ball at the Bristol