Giant’s Bread · Book II · IV · Chapter 2 4 1

I

“We want another man,” said Mrs. Vereker.

Her eyebrows, slightly enhanced by art, drew together in a straight line as she frowned.

“It’s too annoying young Wetherill failing us,” she added.

Nell nodded apathetically. She was sitting on the arm of a chair, not yet dressed. Her golden hair hung in a stream over the pale pink kimono she was wearing. She looked very lovely and very young and defenceless.

Mrs. Vereker, sitting at her inlaid desk, frowned still more and bit the end of her penholder thoughtfully. The hardness that had always been noticeable was now accentuated and, as it were, crystallized. This was a woman who had battled steadily and unceasingly through life and was now engaged in a supreme struggle. She lived in a house the rent of which she could not afford to pay and she dressed her daughter in clothes she could not afford to buy. She got things on credit⁠—not, like some others, by cajolery, but by sheer driving power. She never appealed to her creditors, she browbeat them.

And the result was that Nell went everywhere and did everything that other girls did and was better dressed while doing so.

“Mademoiselle is lovely,” said the dressmakers, and their eyes would meet Mrs. Vereker’s in a glance of understanding.

A girl so beautiful, so well turned out, would marry probably in her first season, certainly in her second⁠—and then a rich harvest would be reaped. They were used to taking risks of this kind⁠—Mademoiselle was lovely, Madame, her mother, was a woman of the world and a woman, they could see, who was accustomed to success in her undertakings. She would assuredly see to it that her daughter made a good match and did not marry a nobody.

Nobody but Mrs. Vereker herself knew the difficulties, the setbacks, the galling defeats of the campaign she had undertaken.

“There is young Earnescliff,” she said thoughtfully. “But he is really too much of an outsider⁠—and not even money to recommend him.”

Nell looked at her pink polished nails.

“What about Vernon Deyre?” she suggested. “He wrote he was coming up to town this weekend.”

“He would do,” said Mrs. Vereker. She looked sharply at her daughter. “Nell, you’re not⁠—you’re not allowing yourself to become foolish about that young man, are you? We seem to have seen a great deal of him lately.”

“He dances well,” said Nell. “And he’s frightfully useful.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Vereker. “Yes. It’s a pity.”

“What’s a pity?”

“That he hasn’t got a few more of this world’s goods. He’ll have to marry money if he’s ever going to be able to keep up Abbots Puissants. It’s mortgaged, you know. I found that out. Of course, when his mother dies⁠ ⁠… But she’s one of those large healthy women who go on living till they’re eighty or ninety. And besides, she may marry again. No, Vernon Deyre is hopeless considered as a parti. He’s very much in love with you, too, poor boy.”

“Do you think so?” said Nell in a low voice.

“Anyone can see it. It sticks out all over him⁠—it always does with boys of that age. Well, they’ve got to go through calf love, I suppose. But no foolishness on your part, Nell.”

“Oh, Mother, he’s only a boy⁠—a very nice boy, but a boy.”

“He’s a good-looking boy,” said her mother dryly. “I’m only warning you. Being in love is a painful process when you can’t have the man you want. And worse⁠—”

She stopped. Nell knew well enough how her thoughts ran on. Captain Vereker had once been a handsome, blue-eyed, impecunious young subaltern. Her mother had been guilty of the folly of marrying him for love. She had lived to rue the day bitterly. A weak man, a failure, a drunkard. Disillusionment enough there in all conscience.

“Someone devoted is always useful,” said Mrs. Vereker, reverting to her utilitarian standpoint. “He mustn’t, of course, spoil your chances with other men. But you’re too wise to let him monopolize you to that extent. Yes, write and ask him to drive down to Ranelagh and dine with us there on Sunday next.”

Nell nodded. She got up and went to her own room, flung off the trailing kimono and started dressing. With a stiff brush she brushed out the long golden hair before coiling it round her small lovely head.

The window was open. A sooty London sparrow chirped and sang with the arrogance of his kind.

Something caught at Nell’s heart. Oh! why was everything so⁠—so⁠—

So what? She didn’t know⁠—couldn’t put into words, the feeling that surged over her. Why couldn’t things be nice instead of nasty? It would be just as easy for God.

Nell never thought much about God, but she knew, of course, that he was there. Perhaps, somehow or other, God would make everything come right for her.

There was something childlike about Nell Vereker on that summer’s morning in London.