Page:The Smart Set (Volume 51, Number 4).djvu/11



LADY MARJORY'S UNDIES
By Anthony VWharton Author of Irene Wycherley, Etc., Etc.

I
THIS is, perhaps, an unpleasant story. Beyond the confession of

a certain sneaking admiration for the accurate and unrelenting accomplishment of a proposed result, I offer no defence—or indeed criticism of any kind—of Miss Barker’s behaviour.

But in common justice to a heroine, however erring, I feel bound here, at this very beginning, to emphasize certain differences in the appearance and bodily condition of Bertie Wright on two—for Miss Barker, at least—memorable dates in his career; the first being July 14th, 1914, on which day Bertie drove her down into Surrey in his side-car and asked her to marry him; the second, November 5th, 1914, on which day she first saw him after his return from France, in Birwich Military Hospital.

II
ON THAT glorious summer afternoon they brought with them the means and materials for a generous afternoon tea, which they made under the fir-trees on Leith Hill. Bertie, having divested himself of his very smart overalls, discovered beneath an equally smart blue serge suit which fitted his very admirable person to perfection.

Something over five feet ten, lean, brown, hard as nails, with laughing grey eyes, blamelessly smooth hair and clean-cut features, he appeared, even to Miss Barker’s fastidious and critical eyes, a very satisfactory and pleasant young male to look upon. Also he was as he looked—cheerful, efficient, imperturbable.

He was, at twenty-four, manager to a motor engineering firm in South London, an uncannily skillful mechanic, an adroit salesman, and a very astute man of his own particular world.

In the irreproachable morning-suit in which he went to church on Sunday mornings he might, Miss Barker had long ago decided, be taken for anyone; that afternoon, as he stood in the sunshine before her and asked her to marry him, she was of opinion that he might even be taken for someone. Her eyes from beneath their long black lashes, strayed calmly over him, wandering lazily from one point of interest to another, questioning, appraising, finding no flaw. And, as I have said before, her standards were very educated and very exacting.

She did not say yes; she did not say no. She was certainly very much in love with this clean, handsome, vigorous-bodied boy, but—well, as you will see, she was a very level-headed young woman. She allowed him to kiss her once or twice, without prejudice, and they returned in the dusk to London, good comrades, perfectly confident, quite content to recognize the prudence of doing nothing in a hurry.

The following week Lady Marjory Lang went to stay with an aunt in Scotland, and Miss Barker—who to Lady Marjory was maid and “Barker,” tout court—accompanied her. They were both still in Scotland when Bertie went overseas as a despatch rider.

He wrote her a calm little note the night before he sailed. Rh