Mosscrop had not the heart to breakfast alone in his deserted lodgings.
The impulse to get away mastered him on the instant of its appearance.
He strode forth as if delay were fraught with sore perils. At a shabby
luncheon-bar in the Strand below he consumed a cup of abominable
coffee and a dry sausage-roll in the same nervous haste. The barmaid in
attendance was known to him. She annoyed him now by displaying in her
manner the assumption that he wished to laugh and joke with her as
usual. He glowered at her instead, and met her advances to conversation
with a curt nod.
“You must have got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning,” she
commented loftily.
“Very likely,” he answered with cold brevity, counting out the necessary
coppers and turning on his heel.
Outside he seemed to himself to choose the direction of his steps quite
at random. He walked slowly, trying to fasten his brain down to the task
of conjecturing what on earth it all meant. Alas, his mind was as empty
as those desolate rooms up at the top of Dunstan’s Inn. The power
of coherent speculation had left him. It was hardly possible even
to arrange in decent sequence the details of what had happened. An
indefinitely sweeping rage at destiny in general oppressed all his
faculties. He muttered meaningless oaths under his breath as he went
along, directed at an intangible “it” which was equally without form
and personality, a mere abstract symbol of the universal beastliness of
things.
The notion of cursing Vestalia did not suggest itself. So far as he
had any intelligible thoughts about her, they were instinctively
exculpatory. She seemed indeed to have behaved stupidly, but it must
have been under a misapprehension of some sort. Something perverse had
happened to lead her off into a foolish course of action. He resolutely
declined to open his mind to any other view of her. She must have
quitted the Inn for some reason which wholly satisfied her sense of
honourable conduct. What was this reason? Had she conjured it up out of
her own meditations, or had it been furnished to her from an external
source?
All at once he stopped short, mental and bodily progress alike arrested
by a striking thought. “Damn _him!_” he murmured to himself, as he
turned this new idea over. How that it had come to him, he fairly
marvelled at the dulness which had failed to discover it at the
beginning. It was as plain as the nose on one’s face--the Earl had
bidden Vestalia to begone. “Ah, that miserly, meddling fool of a
Drumpipes!” he groaned, between clenched teeth.
This laying bare of the mystery brought no consolation. The day was as
irretrievably ruined, the tender little romance as ruthlessly crushed,
as ever. A certain doubtful solace seemed to offer itself in the shape
of a quarrel with Drumpipes, but Mosscrop shook his head despondently at
it. What good would that do? And for that matter, how should one go to
work to quarrel with that tough-hided, fatuous, conceited, dense-witted,
imperturbable, and impenetrable idiot? He would never even perceive
that the attempt was being made. David piled up in reverie the loathly
epithets upon the over-large bald head of his friend with a savage
satisfaction. “You preposterous clown!” he snarled at the burly blond
image of the absent nobleman in his mind’s eye. “You gratuitous and
wanton ass! Oh, you unthinkable duffer!”
And somehow there was after all a kind of relief in these comminatory
exercises. The dim light of a possible diversion began to filter through
the storm-cloud of Mosscrop’s wrath. He was still bitterly depressed,
and furious as well, of course, but self-possession was returning to
him, and with it the capacity for planning and ordering his movements.
It occurred to him that he ought to do something to turn his thoughts
temporarily at least from this world-weary sadness.
Up on the opposite corner his eye caught the legend “Savoy Street.” He
stared at the small sign, perched above the dingy brick cornice of the
first-floor, for a moment with an unreflecting gaze. Then he turned
and walked briskly down the steep hillside thoroughfare, and into the
courtyard of the great hotel which, like the street and the quarter,
commemorates in its name the first of a long and steadfast line of needy
Continental princes whose maintenance the British tax-payer has found
himself fated to provide.
At the desk, he wrote out a card and sent it up as an accompaniment to
the inquiry whether Mr. Laban Skinner was in or not.
No, it was reported presently; Mr. Skinner had gone out--but the young
lady was in.
David pondered this unexpected intelligence. “Did she tell you that she
was in?” he asked the boy, suspiciously.
Yes; she had done so.
Mosscrop discovered that he had been quite unprepared for this. He knit
his brows and ruminated upon it. His impression had been at the time
that the girl disliked him, or at least disliked the proposition
which her absurd father had made. It seemed to him, moreover, that he
disliked, her in turn. She had stared rudely at poor Vestalia--but
then it should be remembered in fairness that all women did that to one
another. Her attitude towards him had been ostentatiously apathetic,
almost to the point of insolence; and yet he recalled that in that
moment when he had caught her unawares, she had been displaying a
notable interest in what was going on. The notion that there had been
a sort of challenge underlying the mask of studied indifference she had
presented to him returned to his mind. And he still needed diversion,
too, as much as ever.
“If you will show the way,” he said to the boy at this juncture.
The lift bore them a long distance upward, quite to the roof it seemed.
David formed the impression that rents must be cheap at that altitude;
hut when he took the first glance round the sitting-room into which he
found himself presently ushered, the idea vanished.
It was a large and imposingly-appointed room, exhaling, as it were, an
effect of high-priced luxury. The broad windows at the front came down
to the floor, and opened upon a balcony. There were awnings hung outside
to ward off the sunshine, and this threw the whole apartment into a
mellow twilight, contrasting sharply with the brightness of the corridor
Mosscrop had just quitted.
He looked about him, hesitatingly, to make sure that there really was
no one in the room. The glimpse of some white drapery fluttering against
the edge of a chair out on the balcony caught his eye, and he moved
across to the nearest open window. The noble prospect of the Thames
viewed from this height impressed itself with great vividness upon his
mind, even in advance of his perception that he had indeed found Miss
Skinner. He looked downward with a gaze which embraced both the girl
and the river, and for a moment they preserved an equally unconscious
aspect.
The young lady then lifted her head, sidewise, and acknowledged
Mosscrop’s presence by a slow drooping movement of her black lashes.
“How do you do?” she remarked, placidly. “Bring out a chair for
yourself.”
He did as he was told, and seated himself near the balustrade, so that
he partially faced her; but he looked again at the wonderful picture
below, to collect his thoughts.
“I had no idea it was so magnificent up here,” he said at last.
“Indeed,” commented his companion. It was impossible to say whether the
remark was in the nature of an exclamation or an inquiry. Mosscrop found
himself compelled to glance up, if only to determine this open question.
The realisation that she was extremely well worth looking at swept over
him like a flood, at the instant of his lifting his eyes. It suited her
to be hare-headed, and to wear just the creamy white cashmere house-gown
that he beheld her in. The glossy plaits and masses of her hair were
wonderful. In the softened, tinted half-shadow of the awning her dark
skin glowed with a dusky radiance which fascinated him. Her mien was as
imperious as ever, but it suggested now an empress disposed to play, a
sultana whose inclination was for amusement.
“Did you come up to see the view? I daresay it is even better from the
leads. You call them leads here, don’t you? Your novels always do, I
know.”
This speech of hers, languidly delivered, had its impertinent side,
without doubt, but Mosscrop caught in its tone a not unamiable
intention. She did not smile in response to the puzzled questioning of
his swift glance, but he convinced himself none the less that it was a
pleasantry. He noted in this instant of confused speculation that she
had a book in her lap--a large, red-covered volume with much gilt on the
binding--and that she kept a finger in it to mark some particular place.
“Your father was good enough to ask me to call,” he reminded her, with
gentleness.
“I asked for him, and I----”
“You are disappointed to find him out?” Yes; there could be no doubt she
was amusing herself. “Oh, that depends,” ventured David, with temerity.
The girl surveyed him at her leisure. “If I remember aright,” she
said, “you were invited conditionally. You were to come, or rather to
communicate with us, if you decided to close with my father’s offer. So
I suppose you’ve made up your mind to accept.”
“Well, I should like to talk more about it; get a clearer idea of what
was proposed.”
“My father takes great pains in expressing himself. I should have said
his explanation was as full as anything could well be on this earth.”
“To speak frankly,” replied David, “I got the idea that you didn’t care
much about your father’s scheme--in fact, that you disliked it. That’s
what I wanted to be clear about. It would be ridiculous for me to be
going round, delivering instructive lectures to you on antiquities and
ruins and so forth, and you hating me all the while for a bore and a
nuisance. It would place us both in a false position.”
“And you can’t stand false positions, eh?”
Mosscrop rose. “I’m afraid I can’t stand this one, at all events,” he
answered, with dignified brevity.
“Oh, you mustn’t think of going!” his hostess protested, with a
momentary ring of animation in her voice. “My father’s liable to return
any minute, and he’d be greatly put out to find he’d missed you.”
“I could wait for him in the reception room downstairs,” he suggested,
moodily--“or, for that matter, I don’t know that it’s very important
that we should meet at all.”
“I don’t call that a bit polite,” she commented.
“I’m afraid your standards of politeness are beyond me,” he began,
formally. Then the absurdity of the thing struck him, and he grinned in
a reluctant fashion. “Do you really want me to stay?” he asked, with the
spirit of banter in his tone.
“Oh that depends,” she mocked back at him. “If you can be amusing, yes.”
“Just how amusing must I be?” He propped into his chair again, and this
time laid his hat aside.
“Oh, say as much so as you were yesterday with the young lady of the
butter-coloured hair. I think that would about fill the bill.”
Mosscrop ground his teeth with swift annoyance. Then he chuckled in
a mood of saturnine mirth. Finally he sighed, and dolefully shook his
head.
“Ah, yesterday!” he mourned, drawing a still deeper breath.
“You were extremely entertaining, then,” pursued the other, ignoring
his emotions. “Do you find yourself--as a usual thing, I mean--varying a
good deal from day to day? I ask entirely from curiosity. I’ve never met
anyone before in precisely your position.”
“No, I should think not!” he assented, with gloomy emphasis. “I can
well believe that my position is unique in the history of mankind. Such
grotesque luck could scarcely repeat itself. But I beg your pardon--it
isn’t a thing that would interest you; I had no business to mention it
at all.”
“It was I who mentioned it, I believe,” she corrected him calmly.
There was obvious meaning in her insistence. He looked up at her in
vague surprise, the while he mentally retraced the steps by which
the conversation had reached this point. There was undoubtedly a very
knowing expression in her eyes. Clearly she had meant to associate
Vestalia with what she described as his position--the position which
she deemed so unusual; it was equally plain that she desired him to
understand that she did so. It was impossible that she should know
anything of what had happened. He searched his memory, and made sure
that no personal hint of any sort had drifted into that rambling
discourse of his in the Assyrian corridors, which the Americans had more
or less overheard. What then was she talking about?
Ah, what indeed? She lay back in her chair, and met his gaze of
bewildered interrogation with a fine show of composure. She looked
at him tranquilly through lazy, halfclosed eyelids. His suspicions
discerned beneath the passive surface of this regard animated
under-currents of ironical amusement and triumph. There was nothing
overt upon which he could found the challenge to an explanation, but as
he continued to scrutinise her, he could fancy that her whole presence
radiated the suggestion of repressed glee. Whatever the mystery might
be, she was extracting great delight from her possession of a clue to
it.
“Yes, it _was_ you who mentioned my position,” he remarked, groping
lamely for some sure footing on which to redress his disadvantage. “I
don’t know that! quite follow you; wherein do you find my position, as
you term it, so exceptional?
“You yourself have boasted that it couldn’t be matched in all history,”
she reminded him. Her tone was casual enough, but the sense of sport
began to gleam unmistakably in her eyes.
“Now you argue in a circle,” he remonstrated, with a shade of
professional acerbity in his voice. “Your remark came before mine, and
hence cannot possibly have been based upon my subsequent comment. If
I may be permitted the observation, they seem to teach logic but
indifferently in the United States.”
“Oh, that is why we came here,” retorted the girl, with ostentatious
_naïveté_. The conceit pleased her so much that she bent forward, and
assumed the manner of one communicating an important fact. “That is why
I had my father make you an offer at once. You know, most professors,
and teachers, and so on, are so hard to understand. But the moment I
laid eyes on you I said, ‘There’s a man that I can see through as if he
were plate-glass; I can read him like a book.’ And, of course, that must
be the most valuable of all qualities in an instructor.”
“So I am entirely transparent, am I? I present no secrets to your
gaze?” Mosscrop spoke like one in whom pique and a sense of the comical
struggled for mastery. “Then I cannot do better than beg you to tell me
some things about myself. Why, for example, do I sit here patiently and
submit to be laughed at, heckled, satirised, and generally bully-ragged
by a young lady, whose title to do these things is not in the least
apparent to me?”
“Why, don’t you remember? You’re waiting for papa.”
“And incidentally providing his offspring, in the _interim_, with
much harmless and chaste entertainment,” put in Mosscrop, drily. “I am
charmed to have diverted you so successfully. It occurs to me, since you
are so readily amused, that you must have been wofully bored before I
made my happy appearance.”
“Oh, quite the contrary,” exclaimed the girl, with a sudden stress in
her tone, which hinted that this was what she had been waiting for. She
opened the volume, as she spoke, at the place marked by her finger. “I
was reading in the Peerage, you know. It is a most entrancing book. I am
never dull when I am reading about earls and things.”
“I have heard that the work enjoys a remarkable popularity in your
country,” David remarked, sourly.
“There is such romance in it!” she went on, in mock rhapsody; “it makes
such appeals to the imagination! It puts you at once in an atmosphere
of chivalry, of knightly adventures and exploits, of tournaments and
chain-armour, and courts of love----”
“And of divorce, and bankruptcy, too,” he interposed. “Don’t forget
those.”
The girl looked grave for a moment, and nodded her head as if in
relenting apology. Then she recovered her high spirits by as swift a
transition.
“And such splendid old names as you get, too!” she continued, with her
eyes on the open page. “Listen to this, for example. Could anything be
finer?”
_DRUMPIPES, Earl of. (Sir Archibald-Coro-nach-Dugal-Strathspey-Malcolm-
Linkhaw) Viscount Dunfugle of Inverdummie, and Baron Pilliewillie of
Slug-Angus, Morayshire, all in the peerage of Scotland, and a Baronet of
Nova Scotia. Born August 24th, 1866. Succeeded his grandfather as 19th
Earl January 10th, 1888. Married May 2nd, 1890, Janet-Eustasia-Marjory,
3rd daughter of the Master of Craigie-whaup by his wife, the Hon.
Tryphena Pincock (who deceased March 6th, 1879), elder daughter of the
4th Baron Dubb of Kilwhissel. Seat, Skirl Castle, near Lossiewink,
Elgin. Club, Wanderers._
She read it all with marked deliberation and distinctness of utterance.
When she finished, silence reigned for some time on the balcony.
“Well, am I not right?” she asked at last, lifting her head, and
flashing the full richness of her black eyes into Mosscrop’s face.
“Don’t you admit the inspiration of such names?”
David answered in a hesitating, dubious manner. “I am more curious about
the source--and scope--of _your_ inspiration,” he said.
“Unhappily, it cannot be pretended that _you_ are transparent. You
confront me with an opacity against which my feeble wits beat in vain. I
can see that it is known to you that I know Drumpipes. But why this fact
should assume in your mind such portentous and mysterious dimensions,
and why you should treat it with the air of one who has unearthed
a great conspiracy, a terrible secret, I can’t for the life of me
comprehend.”
“Ah, you are more complicated than I had thought,” she replied. “I did
not imagine you would keep up the defence so long.”
“Me?--a defence? never,” cried David, incited in some vague way by this
remark to an accession of assurance. “I defend nothing. I surrender with
eagerness. I roll myself at your feet, Miss Skinner. All I crave in
return is that you will put a label on my submission. It may be weak,
but I should dearly like to know what it is that I am abandoning.”
“What I should suggest that you give up is your attempt to deceive
me--us--as to your identity.”
“Ah! am I indeed someone else, then? Upon my word, I can’t congratulate
the other fellow.”
“You wrote your name down for my father yesterday, and again on this
card here this morning, as Mosscrop--David Mosscrop.”
He assented by a nod, and allowed the beginnings of an abashed and
contrite look to gather upon his face.
“Well, it just happened that, the moment I first laid eyes on you, I
knew who you really were. By the merest accident, your picture had been
shown to me--by a gentleman who knows you intimately, and is indeed
distantly related to you--on shipboard coming over. I recognised you
instantly, there in the Museum, and I made papa speak to you. I was
curious to see what you would say and do.”
“I’m afraid you were disappointed. Did you think I would shout and
dance, or what?” He struggled with some degree of success to speak
impassively.
“I had never met any one before in your position in life, and I had the
whim to experiment on my own account.” She said this as if defending her
action to herself more than to her auditor.
“And may I have my little whim gratified too?” he asked. “I am extremely
curious to know how you like your experiment as far as you have got with
it.”
She did not answer immediately, and he occupied the interval by an
earnest mental scuffle after some clue to what she was driving at. He
knew of no man who possessed his portrait--at least among those who went
down to the sea in ships. He had had no photograph taken for years,
to begin with. A distant relation of his, she had said, and on a very
recent voyage from America. Who the deuce could it be? What acquaintance
of his had been of late in America? All at once the answer leaped upward
in his mind. He laughed aloud, with an abruptness which took him
not less than his companion by surprise. But then a puzzled scowl
overshadowed the grin on his countenance. He saw a little way farther
into the millstone, but that was all.
“I hope you don’t regret your experiment,” he repeated. “It would
have been simpler, perhaps, if your father had mentioned that you
were friends of Mr. Linkhaw’s. That in itself would have been an ample
introduction.”
“Perhaps we should have done so, had you been alone.” Her tone was cool
to the verge of haughtiness.
He rapidly considered what this might mean. Her remark clearly indicated
that Vestalia’s presence had seemed to her reprehensible. Why? There
was some intricacy here which he could not fathom. That confounded
Drumpipes had told her--what? Eureka! He had it! The picture that she
had seen was a little cheap ambrotype of Drumpipes and himself, standing
together, which had been made by a poor devil of a wayside photographer,
two Derby days before. Undoubtedly that was what the Earl had shown
her--the only one he could have shown her. And--why of course--Drumpipes
had pointed him, David, out as the Earl. What his motive could have
been, heaven only knew, but this was palpably the key to the riddle.
He grasped this key with decision, on the instant. He straightened
himself, frowned a little, and laboriously stiffened the tell-tale
muscles about his mouth.
“I don’t think I quite like this notion of Linkhaw’s babbling about me
and my affairs,” he said, with austerity.
“Oh, I assure you,” she protested, anxiously, “he was very cautious. He
only gave the most sparing answers to my questions. I had to literally
drag things from him.”
“But what business had he showing my picture about to begin with? He
shall hear what I think of it! Men’s allowances have been stopped for
less than that.”
“It will be very unjust indeed if you visit it upon him,” the girl
urged, almost tremulously; “it was all my fault. I asked him one day
if he had ever met a nobleman, and he, quite as a matter of course,
mentioned that one of his own relatives was an Earl. One day, later, he
was showing me a little tin-type of himself, and he merely said that you
were the other person in the picture, that was all.”
“And then you proceeded to drag things from him. I believe that was your
phrase,” remarked David, in a severe tone. The sensation of having this
proud and insolent beauty in a tremor of entreaty before him was very
delightful.
“Naturally, I asked him questions,” she replied, with a little more
spirit. “Earls don’t grow on every bush with us. And for that matter,
why, goodness me! he did nothing but praise you from morning till night.
By his account, one would think butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth. He
made you out a regular saint. I was quite prepared to see you with a
halo round your head--and instead, I----”
She stopped short, with a confused and deprecatory smile. David, noting
it, rejoiced that he had taken a peremptory tone about the garrulous
Linkhaw.
“Instead, you discovered that I was a mere flesh and blood mortal like
the rest.” He permitted himself to unbend, and even to smile a little,
as he furnished this conclusion to her sentence. “Was it a very painful
disillusionment?”
“Oh, I’ve read and heard enough about the lives that your class lead
here in Europe,” she replied, with a marked reversion toward her former
manner. “I don’t pretend that I was really surprised.”
David assumed a judicial expression. “Considering the way we are brought
up, and the temptations that are thrust upon us,” he said, impartially,
“I would not say that we are so much worse than other men.”
“But you are pretty bad--that you must admit.”
Before David had satisfactorily framed the admission expected of him,
the sound of an opening door and of footsteps came from within.
“It is papa,” whispered the girl, leaning forward in a confidential
manner. “I’m going to tell him.”
“I see no valid objection,” answered David, with dignity.
CHAPTER VIII.
As the balcony was too small for another chair, and Mr. Skinner did not
come to the window, his daughter led her guest into the sitting-room.
“Papa,” she said, “you will recall the gentleman whom we met yesterday
at the British Museum.”
Mr. Skinner lifted to its place the _pince-nez_ which depended on a
gold thread from the lapel of his carefully-buttoned frock-coat, and
scrutinised the person indicated in a painstaking manner.
“Ah, yes, indeed,” he said, continuing his gaze, but with no salutation,
and no offer of the hand.
“It’s so dark in here, I don’t believe you do,” she remarked, to cover
the awkwardness of the moment. “The sun has gone now, any way,” and she
moved back and put a hand upon the awning-cord.
“Permit me,” said David, hurrying to her side, and pulling at the shade.
“He’s out of sorts about something,” the girl murmured furtively. “Don’t
mind it; just leave him to me.”
In the brightened light, Mr. Skinner’s demeanour seemed no more cordial.
He regarded his visitor with a doubtful glance, and gave indications of
a sense of embarrassment in his presence. The daughter, however, was in
no respect dismayed by her responsibility.
“Papa,” she said with brisk decision, “it was all a joke yesterday. Our
friend was so amused by your offer yesterday----”
“I beg your pardon, Adele,” the father interposed ceremoniously, “but it
becomes immediately incumbent upon me to express my dissent. To obviate
any possible misconception, it should be explicitly stated that,
although it is true that the task of formulating the proposal to which
you allude did undoubtedly devolve upon me, the proposition itself, both
in spirit and suggestion, originated in your own consciousness.”
“All right,” she hurriedly went on, “have it anyway you like. The point
is that this gentleman thought it was funny, and so he capped it with
his own little joke by pretending to be some one else. He made up that
name he gave you on the spur of the moment, just for sport. He came
here this morning, just to explain. He was nervous about the deception,
innocent though it was. Papa, let me introduce to you Mr. Linkhaw’s
relation, of whom he spoke so often, you know--the Earl of Drumpipes.”
Mr. Skinner took in this intelligence with respectful deliberation. He
bowed meanwhile, and, after a moment’s deferential hesitation, shook
hands in a formal way with David, and motioned him to a seat.
“Sir,” he began, picking his phrases with even greater care, “you will
excuse me if I do not address you as ‘My Lord,’ since it is a form of
words which I cannot bring myself to regard as seemly when employed
by one human being toward another; but I gather from my daughter’s
explanation that your statements yesterday concerning your identity were
conceived in a spirit of pleasantry. Under ordinary circumstances, sir,
the revelation that an entirely serious and decorous suggestion of
mine had been received with hilarity might not convey to my mind an
exclusively flattering impression. But I do not, sir, close my eyes
to the fact that a wide gulf of usage and custom, and, I might say, of
principles, separates a simple Jeffersonian Democrat like myself from
the professor of an hereditary European dignity. I am therefore able,
sir, to accept, with comparatively few reservations, the explanation
which you have tendered to my daughter, and vicariously, as I understand
it, to me.”
David repressed a groan, and hastily cast about in his mind for a decent
pretext for flight. “I assure you that it greatly relieves me to find
you so courteously magnanimous,” he said. “I merely yielded to the
playful impulse of the moment; and as your daughter has so kindly
told you, I made haste thereafter to repair my error, when its possible
misinterpretation occurred to me.” He bowed again, in response to the
other’s solemn genuflection, and looked toward the door.
“I should be pleased, sir,” Mr. Skinner said, “if you would honour us by
remaining to luncheon.”
“Ah, I should have liked that so much,” answered David, with fervour,
“but unhappily I have an engagement at Marlborough House. It will be no
end of a bore, but it can’t be helped. An invitation there, you know, is
equivalent to a command. That is one of the drawbacks of a monarchy--but
of course every system has its weak points.”
“That is a generalisation,” returned Mr. Skinner, “to which I am not
prepared to give unmeasured adhesion. I will explain to you, sir,
briefly, the reasons which dictate my hesitation to entirely----”
“I’m afraid, Mr. Skinner, that I must tear myself away,” put in David,
anxiously consulting his watch. “The Prince never forgives a fellow
being late. He has to live so much on a time-table himself, you know,
forever catching trains, and changing his uniforms, and turning up at
the exact minute all over the place, laying corner-stones, and opening
docks and unveiling statues, and so on, that it makes him intolerant of
other people’s lapses. And he’s got a fearful memory for that sort of
thing.”
“I assume that you speak of the Heir Apparent,” commented the other. “Am
I to understand that you live in a state of personal subjection--that a
nobleman in your position, for example, contemplates with apprehension
the contingency of causing even the most trivial and transitory
displeasure to the personage alluded to?”
“Apprehension, my dear sir? Positive horror! Ah, you little know the
reality! Thoughtless people see us from the outside, and they lightly
imagine that our lives are one ceaseless round of luxurious gaiety and
gilded pleasure. They fancy that to have titles, to bear hereditary
distinctions, to fill high places at Court, must be the sum of human
happiness. Of course, I suppose we do have a better time than the
average, but we pay a price for it. We smile, it is true, but there
is always a shudder beneath the smile. A mere breath, a suspicion, the
veriest paltry whim of royal disfavour, and we might better never have
been born! And so,” he finished with an uneasy graciousness, “you will
understand my abrupt leavetaking now.”
“I promise myself on another occasion, sir,” said Mr. Skinner, with more
warmth, “the privilege of discussing these topics with you at length. I
do not deny that I am myself, to-day, somewhat preoccupied, and lacking
in the power of intellectual concentration. Another occasion, I trust,
will find me better fitted to bestow upon these subjects the alertness
of comprehension and clarity of judgment which their importance demands.
At the moment, I confess my mind is burdened with another matter.”
“O, papa--you haven’t gone and lost your letter of credit!” The girl
intervened with accents of alarm.
The old gentleman shook his head, and smiled in a dubious fashion. “No,”
he replied, hesitatingly, “it is merely that I--I have been enjoined to
secrecy about a very curious and interesting revelation which has
been made to me, and concealment is profoundly alien to my nature. The
necessity for maintaining a mysterious reserve weighs upon me, sir, with
unaccustomed oppression.”
“It is something that you have learned this morning?” demanded the
daughter. “I’ll make you tell me as soon as we’re alone.”
“Ah, that cannot be,” the father answered. “My faith has been honourably
pledged, and must be scrupulously observed.”
“But surely it couldn’t have been stipulated that _I_ was not to know,”
she urged. “That would be absurd. And besides, who knows of even my
existence over here?”
“Incomprehensible as it may appear to your perceptions,” responded Mr.
Skinner, “it happens that you were particularly alluded to in the terms
of the confidential compact imposed upon me.”
“Then you had no business to enter into it at all,” she replied,
vigorously. “Papa, I am surprised at you!”
There was something in his thoughts which lit the old gentleman’s dry
countenance with a transient gleam of enjoyment. “I hazard the humble
opinion that your surprise will be appreciably augmented when, at the
proper time, the truth shall have been revealed to you.” He turned, with
the flicker-ings of a whimsical smile in his eye, to their guest. “It
is an extraordinary coincidence, sir; but you are also in a manner
associated with the occult event to which I may not at present more
pointedly refer.”
David musingly looked the old gentleman in the eye. “Yes, I know,” he
answered; “but I agree with you that it should not be divulged to your
daughter. As you have said, we men of the world are in duty bound to
keep a decent veil drawn over certain phases of life. I am quite
with you in that, sir; we cannot sufficiently respect and guard the
sweet-minded innocence of our young ladies.”
Mr. Skinner looked hard at the nobleman, and drew up his slender figure.
“My memory, sir,” he announced stiffly, “fails to recall any observation
resembling in the slightest degree, either in form or sentiments, that
which you have ascribed to me. Forgive me, sir, if I venture to further
remind you that I have no desire to regard myself, or to be regarded, as
a man of the world, in the sense in which I understand that term to be
used by the aristocratic class in Great Britain.”
The young lady seemed to share her father’s feelings in the matter. “You
must remember, Lord Drumpipes,” she put in, coldly, “that our standards
in such things are not yours. I daresay it seems natural enough to one
in your position, and with your antecedents and associations, that a
venerable, white-haired old gentleman should have disgraceful secrets
which he ought to conceal from his family; but we take a different view
of the meaning of the word ‘gentleman,’ and of the obligations which it
involves.”
“Ah, now I have offended you!” cried David, with a show of remorse. “I
assure you that my only thought was to help your good father out of
a fix. If I have done wrong, I beg you will put it down to my
overeagerness to be of assistance. And now,” he stole a dismayed glance
at his watch, “now I really must run. Good-bye! Good-bye, Mr. Skinner.
Remember that I count upon that famous discussion with you. And you
may rely entirely upon my discretion--in the matter of your secret, you
know.”
Father and daughter stood for a moment, gazing at the door behind which
their noble guest had disappeared. Then the girl turned her eyes with
decision upon the author of her being.
“Papa,” she said, with calm resolution, “what did he intend to convey by
his remarks about this secret of yours?”
“Why, Adele,” the other protested, faltering a little under her look,
“you yourself repudiated, in the most eloquent and unanswerable words,
the bare suggestion that I could possibly be animated by the desire to
cloak any unworthy deed or incident from your observation.”
“That was for _his_ benefit,” she replied, tranquilly. “I was determined
that he should know what we thought of _his_ code of morals. But that
does not at all affect the question of what you have been doing. Do I
understand that you are going to insist on refusing to tell me where you
have been, whom you have seen, what your so-called secret is about?”
“Adele!” he urged, “I really must preserve a reticence as to the
essential details of the matter in question--perhaps only for a few
days--at least until the obligation of secrecy is removed. You would not
have me recreant to my plighted faith, would you?”
“But what business had you going and making her any such promise?”
“Her!” Mr. Skinner said, feebly smiling; “you jest, my dear Adele. How
can you conceivably imagine it was a ‘her’?”
“I don’t imagine; I know,” responded the daughter, with a hard, dry
smile. “You have been seeing that yellow-haired girl that Lord Drumpipes
had with him at the Museum yesterday. The letter which summoned you
forth this morning was from her. You made some paltering excuses to me,
and went out to meet her--and you won’t look me in the eye and deny it.”
In truth he did not take up her challenge. He hung his head, looked
away, and shuffled with his feet. “All I am at liberty to say,” he
remarked at last, with visible emotion, “is that my grief at being
compelled to rest temporarily under the unwelcome shadow of your
suspicion is, to some slight extent, mitigated by the consciousness that
when you know all you will do ample justice to the probity of my motives
and the honourable character of my actions. I might even go further, and
express the conviction that the outcome will be of a nature to afford
you unalloyed personal satisfaction.”
“That may all be,” returned Adele; “but, in the meantime, you don’t go
out in London any more by yourself!”
*****
Mosscrop laughed to himself as he ran down the stairs of the hotel.
The spirit of mirth remained with him while he more slowly ascended the
flight of steps, and the dingy passage and covered by-way leading up to
the Strand. It was the most comical thing he had ever heard of, and he
chuckled again and again during the climb. But upon the bustling crowded
thoroughfare it somehow ceased to seem so funny, or at least its value
as a source of entertainment began to diminish rapidly. He found his
mind reverting irresistibly to the disappointment of the early morning.
The image of Vestalia rose upon his mental vision, and would not go
away. He brooded over it as he walked, and recognised that intervening
incidents and personalities had in no sense dimmed his interest in it.
He pictured her wonderful hair again, her bright-faced smile, her dear
little airs and graces, with a yearning emptiness of heart.
The luncheon obtainable at the Barbary Club was even more unpalatable
than usual, which was saying much. The familiar fact that the waiters
were Germans struck him afresh, and took on the proportions of an
international grievance. There were some fellows upstairs playing at
what they supposed was whist. He stood for a while over the shoulders of
a couple of the gamesters, and noted, with a cynical eye, the progress
of their hot rivalry as to which should contribute the larger incapacity
and the finer stupidity to the losing of the rubber. When they asked him
if he wanted to cut in, he turned away with a snort of derisive scorn.
Over in the billiard-room there were only the marker and the member who
played far worse than anybody else in the club. David sourly consented
to occupy himself with this egregious outsider, and was beaten by him.
The result was so clearly due to accident that he laid some money on
the next game. Again the duffer fluked like mad, and won, and in a third
game his luck was of such a glaring character, that Mosscrop could not
refrain from loud comment. This his antagonist resented. They parted
with harsh words, and Mosscrop, cursing the hour when it first occurred
to him to identify himself with such a squalid pot-house, hastened
angrily to shake its dust from his feet.
He made his way, by devious streets whose old book-stalls for once
beckoned him in vain, to Bloomsbury and the Museum. A kind of idea had
grown up unobtrusively in the background of his thoughts, that possibly
he might find Vestalia there. It assumed the definite outlines of an
expectation as soon as he entered the building. When he stood in the
reading-room itself, and began a systematic scrutiny of its radiating
rows of readers, it was with as much confidence as if he had come by
appointment. The failure to discover her disturbed and annoyed him. He
made a slow tour of the inner circle, then another of the broader
outer ring, and suffered no one of the professed students to escape his
examining eye.
What a crew they were! He had never realised it before. His hostile
inspection laid bare the puerile devices of the young fools who came
by concerted arrangement, took down books at random, and, sitting close
together, carried on clandestine flirtations under the sightless mask
of literature. He glowered with a newly-informed vision at the
extraordinary females whom no one had planned to meet--the lone women
with eccentric coiffures and startling costumes, who emerge from heaven
knows where, and mysteriously gather here in quest of something which
it seems incredible that even heaven should be able to define. Observing
now the vacuous egotism of their flutterings and posturings in other
people’s way, the despairing clutch at public attention made by their
outlandish vestiture and general get-up, David’s thoughts settled grimly
upon the fact that there were lands, the seats of ancient civilizations,
where superfluous female children were drowned at birth. Here, he
reflected, with sullen irony, we teach them to read and write, and build
and stock a vast reading-room for them instead. His mood preferred the
Ganges to the Thames.
There was more pathos in the spectacle of another class of habitual
attendants--the poor, shabby, hungry serfs of the quotation merchant.
Mosscrop knew the genus by sight, and in other times had had amusement
from their contemplation. How a sombre rage possessed him as he beheld
them toiling unintelligently, hopelessly, under the lash of starvation.
He watched one of the slave-drivers for a while, a short, red man, of
swollen spiderish aspect, who moved about keeping these sweated wretches
at their toil, now doling out a few pence to one who could remain erect
unnourished not a minute longer, and who slunk out forthwith with a
wolfish haste, now withering some other with whispered reproaches of
threats. Mosscrop longed to go and break this creature’s neck, or at the
very least to kick him, with loud curses and utmost contumely, from the
room.
He went out himself, instead, animated by a freshening spirit of
resentment at the futility of existence. From sheer force of habit, he
dawdled in front of shop-windows, turned over hooks and prints in one
after another of his accustomed resorts for second-hand merchandise, and
otherwise killed time till the dinner hour. But he did it all without
any inner pretence that the process afforded him consolation. Even when
he met some fellows from the Temple, in Chancery Lane, and joined them
in a series of visits to ancient bars in the vicinity, where they all
stood at wearisome length, and argued with intolerable inconsequence
about wholly irrelevant matters over their drinks, his thoughts
maintained a moody concentration upon the theme of his personal
unhappiness. The stray contributions which he offered to the general
conversation were all of an acrid, not to say truculent, character. He
had a sort of dour satisfaction in the utterance of offensive gibes and
bitter jokes. Twice the threat of an altercation arose, in consequence
of these ill-natured comments of his, and David sullenly welcomed the
imminent quarrel; but the intervention of the others, without any help
from him, cleared the atmosphere again. Even the peacemakers, however,
evinced the opinion that he was behaving badly, and nodded cheerful
adieus when at last he declared that they were a parcel of uninspired
loons, with whom he marvelled to find himself consuming valuable time.
They lifted their glasses at him mockingly as he strode away, with the
gleam of an unexpressed “good riddance!” in their eyes.
The consciousness that he had made himself disagreeable to these
fellows had its uses as a counter-irritant to his inner self-disgust. It
rendered solitude at least a trifle more supportable. He bought a novel,
and read it beside his plate at Simpson’s, where the heavy joints and
weighty old ale just fitted his mood. The book was one which the papers
were talking of for the moment. David reflected grimly as he skimmed
the opening chapters that Vestalia had asked him why he didn’t write a
Scotch novel. They were all the vogue, she said, and while the fashion
lasted, it was nonsense for any Scotchman to pretend that he could not
profitably occupy his leisure time. He had replied, with some flippancy,
that his imaginative powers might compass the construction of a tale,
hut were unequal to the task of inventing also a whole dialect to tell
it in. How, as the whim returned to him, his fancy parodied a title for
this unborn work. How would “A Goddess, Some Merely Ordinary Fools and
Lord Drumpipes” do?
Ah! that Drumpipes! David paid his bill, lit a cigar, and sallied forth,
suddenly informed with the notion of going to the Inn, and having it out
with the Earl. He doubled up his fists as he hurried along.
The top floor at Dunstan’s was wrapped in darkness. Mosscrop knocked and
kicked first at “Mr. Linkhaw’s” door to make sure that no one was in,
then opened his own, and struck a light. The apartment wore still in
his eyes the chill desolation of aspect which he remembered from the
morning. There had been a change in the weather, and the suggestion of
a fire was in the damp air. He put on his loose jacket and slippers,
recalling sadly as he did so the vision he had beheld only twenty-four
hours before, of that pretty little ermined footgear on the fender
beside his, in front of the glowing grate. He brought out the decanter
and a glass, and sighed deeply.
Then all at once he caught sight of something white in the letter box.
In the same instant he was tearing open a stamped envelope, addressed in
a large, strange hand which yet he knew so well, and excitedly striving
to gulp in the meaning of the whole written page before him, without
troubling to read the lines in their sequence. Yes, it was from her,
and--yes, it contained words of kindness and even of tenderness which
shone brilliantly forth here and there from the context. He pulled
himself together, and walking over to the light, began resolutely at the
beginning.
*****
“Dear Mr. Mosscrop,--I hope you were not _very_ much disappointed at
finding me gone this morning, or rather, I hope you _were_ a little
disappointed, but will not be so any longer when you get this
explanation. I don’t know either that it can be called an explanation,
for it doesn’t seem to me that I am at all able to explain even to
myself, much less to you.
“The fact is that you were so kind and so sweet to me, that I simply
_had_ to do what I have done. I saw it all, after we had parted. Under
the circumstances, and especially considering the delicate and noble
manner in which you had treated me, it was the _only thing_ I could do!
“I should have left a message for you in your letter-box, but there
was not a scrap of paper, not even a book out of which I could tear a
fly-leaf, in Mr. Linkhaw’s room, nor writing materials of any sort. I
have bought this paper at the stationer’s, and am writing this note in
an hotel writing-room.
“The dear dressing-bag, and the other beautiful things which I owe to
you, I took away with me because it would have broken my heart to leave
them, and I felt sure you would be glad to have me take them. Every time
I look at them, and all other times too, I shall think of the best man I
ever knew or dreamed of. Something _very important_ has occurred, which
may turn out to be of the _greatest possible advantage_ to me. It is
very _uncertain_ as yet, and I cannot tell you about it at present, but
soon I hope to be able to do so.
“In the meantime, please believe in my undying gratitude. Vestalia.”
*****
David drew a long breath, poured a drink for himself, lit his pipe, and
sat down to read the letter all over again. He arrived slowly at the
conclusion that he was glad she had written it--but beyond that his
sensations remained obstinately undefined. The girl had disappeared
behind a thick high wall which his imagination was unequal to the task
of surmounting. A few stray facts assumed a certain distinctness in his
mind: she had evidently gone off quite of her own accord, and she had
appreciated the spirit of his attitude towards her the previous day, and
she had encountered on this, the following day, something or somebody
which might bring her good luck. What kind of good luck? he wondered.
There was an implied promise in her words that he should be informed
when this mysterious beneficence assumed shape. This had very little
comfort in it for him. In fact, he found he rather hated the idea of her
enjoying good luck in which he had no share.
Suppose instead that it didn’t come off. Would she return to him then,
or at least let him know, so that he might hasten forward again as her
special providence?
Ah, that is what he had wanted to be--her providence. The notion
of doing everything for her, of being the source of all she had, of
foreseeing her wants, inventing her pleasures, ministering joyfully
to the least of her sweet little caprices--the charm of this _rôle_
fascinated him more than ever. He recalled in detail the emotions of
delight he had experienced in buying things for her. By some law which
he recognised without analysing, the greatest pleasure had arisen from
the purchase of the articles which she needed most. There had been only
a moderate and tempered ecstasy in paying for champagne, but oh, the
bliss of buying her boots, and those curling-irons, and the comb! He
thrilled again with it, in retrospect. What would it have been to see
her clad entirely in garments of his providing?
But the cage was empty--the bird had flown. Would she come back again?
Was there really the remotest hint of such a possibility in her letter?
No. He read it still again, and shook his head at the fender with a
despairing groan. The gloom of his reverie benumbed his senses. He
let his pipe go out, and suffered the glass at his elbow to remain
untouched, as he sat with his sad thoughts for company, and did not even
hear the footsteps which presently ascended the stairs.
A soft little knock at the door startled him from his meditations. He
stood up, with his heart fluttering, and lifted his hand in wonderment
to his brow. Had he been asleep and dreaming?
The dainty tapping on the panel renewed itself. David moved as in a
trance toward the door.
CHAPTER IX.
Mosscrop turned the spring-lock noiselessly, and drew the door open
with caressing gentleness. His eyes had intuitively prepared themselves
to discern the slender form of Vestalia in the dim light of the passage.
They beheld instead, with bewildered repulsion, a burly masculine bulk.
Wandering upward in angry confusion from the level on which they had
expected her dear face, they took in the fatuous, moon-like visage of
Lord Drumpipes.
“Dear God!” groaned David, in frank abandonment to disgust.
“I came up quietly this time,” said the Earl. “You made such a row about
my being noisy last night, I thought to myself, ‘Now, anything to please
Davie! I’ll steal up like a mouse in list-slippers.’”
David scowled angry impatience at him. “Who the deuce cares what _you_
do?” he demanded, roughly. “You might have marched up with a Salvation
Army band, for all it matters to me.”
“Ah,” said Drumpipes, placidly pushing his way past Mosscrop through
the open door. “Well, give me a drink, Davie, man, and then tell me all
about it. Where may the lady be at the present moment?”
Mosscrop came in, and produced another glass with a gloomy air. He
watched the Earl seat himself in the biggest chair and help himself
from the decanter, and light his pipe, all in moody silence. “She’s gone
away,” he said at last, coldly.
“And a good job, too!” remarked the other. “Distrust all yellow-hair,
Davie! Have you been in my place and seen what that woman did? There was
my Athabaska moose actually torn from the wall, and pulled to bits
on the floor! It’s a matter of fifty shillings, or even more, Davie.
Considering what you’d already spent on her, I call that heartless
behaviour on her part. She must be a bad sort indeed to take all you
would give her, and fool you to the top of your bent, and then wantonly
destroy property that she knew you’d have to make good, before she took
French leave. Ah, women are not given that kind of hair for nothing!
You’re well out of a thankless mess, Davie.”
Mosscrop looked musingly at his friend. He smiled a little to himself,
and then sighed as well. A calmer temper returned to him. “I don’t take
your view of it, Archie,” he said, almost gently. “I have been as sad
about it as a child who’s lost its pet, but I’m less disconsolate than
I was. Some compensations occur to me--and besides, I have a letter from
her. It came to-night, and from its tone----”
“Burn it, man, burn it!” the other adjured him, with eager fervour.
“Drive the whole business from your mind! If you’ll give me your solemn
word, Davie, not to see her again”--the Earl paused, to invest his
further words with a deeper gravity--“if you’ll promise faithfully to
have no more to do with her, I’ll forgive you the moose. I said fifty
shillings, but I doubt your getting a good job much under three pounds.
Well, then, if you say the word, I’ll pocket that loss. Hang it all,
you’re my boyhood friend, and I’d go to a considerable length to save
you from a dangerous entanglement of this sort. Although it was by no
means an ordinary head. Man, I fair loved that moosie!”
Mosscrop’s smooth-shaven and somewhat sallow visage had gradually lost
its melancholy aspect. A cheerful grin began now to play about
the corners of his mouth. “Archie,” he said with an affectation of
exaggerated seriousness, “a moose more or less is not worth mentioning
by comparison with the situation which is about to confront you. I know
the particular beast you speak of. It was not up to much. The fur was
dropping out in patches on its neck, one of its eyes was loose, and
the red paint on the nostrils was oxidized. You would not have got
twelve-and-six for it anywhere in the world. But if it had been
the choicest trophy that was ever mounted, and then its value were
multiplied a hundred-fold, it would still be a waste of your time to
give it a second thought. Graver matters demand your attention, Archie.”
The Earl’s countenance lengthened, and he set down his glass. He
apparently did not trust himself to speak, but stared in alarmed inquiry
at his friend.
“As you said a while ago,” pursued David, with vexatious deliberation,
“we have been pals from boyhood. My father was your grandfather’s man of
business, and was your factor till his death. You and I played together
before we were breeched. We went to school together, and I spent more
holidays at Skirl with you than I did at home. So I know the ins and
outs of your family and its affairs practically as well as you do. I
know your sisters----”
“You don’t mean that Ellen has given up her Zenana mission work in
Burmah, and returned here to England?” Drumpipes interposed, with a
convulsive catch in his breath.
“No; the Lady Ellen, so far as I know, is still peacefully occupied in
harrowing up the domestic life of the Orient in her well-known and most
effective manner.”
“Well, anything else _must_ be a minor evil,” said the Earl, with an
accent of relief. “Whichever of the rest of them it is, Davie, I tell
you at the outset that I wash my hands of the business. My sisters
rendered the first twenty-five years of my life a torment upon earth.
They bullied me out of all peace in life as a youngster; they made
my rotten marriage for me; they took my money and then blackened my
character in reward; they----”
“Oh, I know all those gags by heart,” interposed Mosscrop. “They’re
really very decent bodies, those sisters of yours; if they had a fault,
it was in believing that they could make a silk purse out of a sow’s
ear. But it’s not about them at all that I was speaking. The point is,
Archie, that I have made the acquaintance of Mr. Laban Skinner and his
extremely attractive daughter.”
The Earl took in this intelligence with ponderous slowness. He sipped at
his glass in silence, and then stared for a little at his friend. “Well,
what is there so alarming about that?” he demanded at last, roughening
his voice in puzzled annoyance. “They’re respectable people, aren’t
they? And what the deuce are you driving at, anyway?”
“Ah, if you take that tone with me, old man, I pull out of the affair at
once.”
Drumpipes scowled. “What affair? How do you know there is any affair!
And what business have you got being in it, if there is an affair?
You’re over-officious, my friend. You take too much on yourself.”
Mosscrop laughed with tantalising enjoyment in his eyes. “Confess that
you think of making a Countess of the lady.”
“Well, and what if I do?” the Earl retorted. “Damn it all, man, I
haven’t to ask your leave, have I? And, come now, I put it to you
straight, have you ever seen a finer woman in your life?”
David lifted his brows judicially, and held his head to one side. “Oh,
I’m not saying she’s amiss--in externals,” he admitted.
“Man, she’s wonderful! Just wonderful!” cried the other. “Did you mind
her walk? It is as if she’d never been outside a palace in her life.
And the face, the eyes, the colour, the figure--what Queen in Europe can
match them? Man, since I first laid eyes on her, I’ve not been myself at
all. The thought of her bewitches me. I hardly know what I’m doing. I’ve
been to-day to my tailor’s, and I gave him orders that fair took his
breath away. The most expensive clothes, and even furs, I ordered with
as light a heart as if it were a matter of sixpences. The man knows
me from childhood, and he gazed at me as if I was clean daft. He was
shaking his head to himself when I came away. Oh, I’m quite a different
person, I assure you. I literally hurl money about me, nowadays.”
“You must indeed be in love,” said Moss-crop. “The father--he gives one
the notion of a man of wealth.”
The Earl’s face glistened. “He’s in the Standard Oil Company!” he
whispered, impressively.
This fact created an atmosphere of dignified solemnity for itself. The
two men looked at each other gravely for a while, saying nothing. Then
the Earl, with a contemplative air, refilled his glass.
“She is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he said, earnestly;
“and I think she will marry me.”
“Physical beauty and Standard Oil do make an alluring combination,”
remarked David philosophically; “but----”
“Oh, there are no ‘buts,’” Drum-pipes insisted. “She’s as fine in mind
and temper as she is in body. I’m very particular about intellect, as
you know, and I’ve studied her closely. She has a very sound brain,
Davie--for a woman. But how on earth did you come to stumble upon them?”
Mosscrop did not explain. “The thing that impressed me about her,
curiously enough,” he said, with tranquil discursiveness, “was her
extremely democratic aversion to our ranks and hereditary titles. She
and her father seem to be the most violent anti-aristocrats I ever
knew.”
“Yes, that _is_ a trifle awkward,” the Earl admitted. “I don’t think
it’s more than skin-deep with the old man, but Adele--that’s her name,
as beautiful as herself, isn’t it?--she’s tremendously in earnest about
it. That has rather queered my pitch--I haven’t told them, you know,
about the title and all that. They know me just as simple Mr. Linkhaw.”
“‘Simple’ is so precisely the word,” commented Mosscrop.
“Well, what was I to do?” the other protested in self-defence. “I was
travelling under that name in Kentucky--went there to look at a big sale
of thoroughbreds, you know--and met the father, and then I met the girl,
and they had me to their house in the country--a magnificent place, by
George--and she had so much to say against the classes here, and took
such a strong position against titles and all that--why, I _would_
have been a juggins to tell her at the start; and after, it gradually
occurred to me that I wouldn’t say anything at all, but just go on and
win her as plain Mr. Linkhaw. Then I could be sure I was being loved for
myself alone, couldn’t I?”
“Your sentimentality is most touching,” said David; “but I fear it will
cost you heavily.”
“Oh, by the way, yes,” remarked Drum-pipes, collecting his thoughts;
“you said something awhile ago about there being a bother of some
sort. What is it?” Then an idea occurred to him, and he lifted his head
eagerly. “You haven’t gone and blabbed about me, have you--told her who
I was, and all that?”
“Quite the contrary,” smiled David. “It was she who recognised _me_ at
once as the Earl of Drumpipes. It seems you showed her my picture on
shipboard, and told her who I was, and all about me. Do you recall the
incident?”
The Earl nodded, foolishly. “It’s my confounded imagination,” he
groaned. “I’m always making an ass of myself like that. God only knows
why I should have gone out of my way to invent that idiotic rubbish. But
you get awfully bard up for conversation on shipboard, you know. And so
it all came out, and she’s chuckling to think what a clumsy liar and guy
I made of myself--and I’ve gone and ordered all those clothes--and----”
“Be reassured, most noble Thane,” cried David, gaily. “There has been no
disclosure. Nothing came out. I accepted the situation. I did not for an
instant betray you. I said, ‘Certainly: I _am_ the Earl of Drumpipes,’
without so much as the flicker of an eyelid. There’s friendship for you,
if you like.”
“And did she believe--” the Earl began to ask. Then he choked with
rising mirth, gasped, rolled about in his chair, and finally burst forth
in resounding laughter. “She thinks you--you”--he started out again, and
once more went off in loud merriment. “It’s the funniest thing I ever
heard of,” he murmured at last, restoring his composure with difficulty,
and grinning at Mosscrop through eyes wet with joyful tears.
“It delights me to see how keenly the humorous aspect of the matter
appeals to you,” observed David, “because there is another phase of it
which may seem to be deficient in gaiety.”
“No; you as the Earl, that’s too funny!” persisted Drumpipes, with a
fresh outbreak of laughter. But this somehow rang a little false at
the finish. A half-doubtful look came into his eyes, and sobered his
countenance. “But you’ll stand by me in this thing, old man, now that
you’ve begun it, won’t you?” he asked, in in an altered tone.
“But I didn’t begin it,” David pointed out calmly. “You began it
yourself, and she took it up of her own accord. I’ve simply sacrificed
myself in your interest. I stood still, and heard my motives aspersed,
my character vilified, my objects in life covered with contumely, all on
account of your hereditary crimes, and took it all like a lamb. But
to assume that I’m going to do this again, or indefinitely, is another
matter. I don’t mind submitting to a single temporary humiliation for
a friend’s sake, but to make a profession of it is too much. If it
were even a decent fullblown peerage it might be different, but to be
traduced for nothing better than a Scotch title--no, thank you!”
“You’re not the friend I took you for,” commented the Earl, in depressed
tones. “For that matter,” he added, defiantly, “we were Pilliewillies in
Slug-Angus before the Campbells were ever heard of, or the Gordons had
learnt not to eat their cattle raw. And no Linkhaw has ever said to a
Mosscrop, ‘I see you’re in a hole and I’ll leave you there.’”
David smiled. “No, you would always give a hand--for a fixed price.
Well, Archie, I’m not saying I won’t see you through all this, but
there must be conditions. And there must be a plan. What on earth do you
intend to do?”
“Well, my idea is,” the other answered, hesitatingly, “that I should ask
her to be my wife while she still supposes I am merely Mr. Linkhaw. She
is like all American girls in this, that she believes entirely in love
matches. So if she will marry me as Mr. Linkhaw, it will signify that
she loves me. Very well then, that being the case, I can say to her
afterward that I ventured upon a trifling deception, solely to have the
chance to win the woman I wanted, and to make sure that I was being
loved for myself alone. And then, hang it all, I don’t believe it lies
in any woman’s skin to be angry at finding that she’s been made a
countess unawares. If I said I was an Earl and turned out not to be one,
then she’d have a grievance, but it’s the other way about.”
“Precisely,” put in David, “that particular ignominy is reserved for me.
But suppose she doesn’t accept you.”
“That’s hardly worth supposing. It’s as good as understood between us, I
think, that she will accept me.”
“But then suppose she jilts you, after you disclose to her that you are
not plain Mr. Linkhaw.”
“If that’s well managed, I’m not afraid of it, either. You see, her
father’s not an out-and-out American. He was really born in England,
and went out there as a boy. That’s a very curious thing, you know.
Englishmen who go there, and like the place, get to be more American
than the Yankees are themselves. But they don’t change their blood, do
they? And women are pretty much alike, too, whatever their blood may be.
They’re all organised to stand a coronet on the corner of their pocket
handkerchiefs. No, it’ll be all right, if only you stay by me.”
“Ah, now we come to realities,” said Moss-crop, genially. “It’ll be
rather an expensive business, Archie. I have very high notions, my
friend, as to the scale on which an Earl should comport himself. I could
not dream of doing the thing on the thrifty and contracted basis which
suits you. The task is a difficult one to me. I shall have to sit and
look entirely devoid of mental sensations of any sort for hours at a
time. I know nothing of football and cricket, and have not the name of
a single jockey on my tongue; this will render conversation an
embarrassing matter for me. I shall suffer continually from the
knowledge that I am being regarded as a vicious fool, a rake, a gambler,
and libertine of the most heartless description, and this will wear a
good deal on my nerves. Compensation of some sort I must have. Now, I
entertain the theory that a nobleman should never have any small change
about him at all. Tips to waiters I would make a great point of. They
should invariably be of gold. To slip a sovereign into a hall-porter’s
hand is also a valuable action. His subsequent demeanour gives the cue
to the attitude of the whole visible world toward you. A four-in-hand
to Brighton is good substantial form, too, if enough pains be taken with
the outfit. A private hansom in town is, of course, indispensable.
I realise, Archie,” he concluded’ apologetically, “that I am not
displaying a specially comprehensive grasp of the requirements of rank.
I can only think of a few things now, on the spur of the moment; but
I will concentrate all my energies on the task once I take it up in
earnest. You may trust me to rise to the occasion. I will be a nobleman
that mere baronets will turn round in the street to look after.”
Drumpipes exhibited a wan and troubled smile. “You’d have your joke,
Davie, out of any man’s distress,” he said, weakly.
“Joke!” cried Mosscrop. “You make a woful error there, Archie. Never was
man more serious.”
“But there’d be no opportunity for you to spend money, or display
yourself,” urged the other. “Not, of course, that I would begrudge a
pound or two, more or less, if there were a real need of it. But in this
case, the whole point is that you should lie low, and not be seen any
more. There is no necessity that she should meet you again. In fact, the
more I think of it, the clearer it is that she shouldn’t. It might spoil
everything, don’t you see?”
“Oh no, my lad!” rejoined David, cheerfully. “I’m not of the hermit
variety of aristocrat. I’m the kind of Earl who’s on the spot, and who
lets people know that he is present. I will have rings on my fingers and
bells on my toes. I will--why, let me see!”
His face brightened at some wandering thought. “Why, man, I have a
birthday in six days’ time! That’s it, the 24th. I knew there was the
difference of a year lacking a week between us. She read it to me
this morning out of the peerage--August 24th. Very well, then, I will
celebrate the anniversary as it has never been celebrated before. I will
provide an entertainment for my immediate friends upon a scale befitting
my position and the importance of the event commemorated. What do you
think of a special saloon-carriage to Portsmouth, and a dinner on my
yacht, eh? One could be hired and manned for the occasion, and a staff
of cooks and servants sent down from an hotel here. Or could you get
them in Portsmouth? Does anything more appropriate occur to you?”
“Go on with your jest,” replied the other, sullenly. “All I can say is,
it’s in damned bad taste, though. Here I am in this predicament, and you
pour vinegar into my wounds instead of oil.”
“Standard Oil, I assume that you refer to. No, you shall have the oil,
Archie. You shall be my guest on the occasion, and you shall meet Mr.
and Miss Skinner. We four will constitute the party; and I will provide
such an engaging spectacle of the nobleman, the bearer of hereditary
dignities and titles, seen close at hand among his intimate friends,
that the lady will be moved to admiration. She will say, ‘Ah, I never
guessed before how delightful an Earl could be, how perfect in manners,
how admirable in tact, how superb in his capacity as host.’ I will
reconcile her to the aristocracy _en bloc_.”
“Say, you know,” interposed Drumpipes, “I’m not sure there isn’t
something in that.”
“Something in it? My dear sir, it’s rammed with fructifying
probabilities. I give this party, and I do it as an Earl should do
things. I exert myself to fascinate this transatlantic twain. I lead
their imaginations captive to my hereditary seductiveness. I make them
feel that to be the guests of an Earl is more than beauty and fine
raiment and Standard Oil. I excite them to a warm glow of tenderness
toward feudalism, a mood that melts at mere thought of the mediaeval. At
that psychological moment you jump in and intimate that you’re something
of an Earl yourself--and there you are!”
Drumpipes nodded approving comprehension, while he pondered the project
thus outlined. “I’m not sure I don’t like the scheme,” he repeated.
“It’s risky, though. She’s fearfully keen of scent, that girl is. If
you didn’t play it for all you were worth, every minute, she’d twig the
thing like a shot. You’d leave her with me a good deal, wouldn’t you,
and devote yourself to the old man? That would be the safest, you know.”
“That would hardly do. It wouldn’t be in character. When an Earl is
giving a party, and there is a beautiful young woman about, he doesn’t
go and talk with windy old fossils in frock-coats. It would look
unnatural. It might as like as not excite suspicion. And now you’d
better clear out. I want to go to bed.”
The Earl rose, stood irresolute for a moment, and then put a hand on
Mosscrop’s shoulder. “Davie,” he said gravely, “there’s one thing you
must remember. You’re not a good man to handle money--if I didn’t know
your forbears, I’d never credit your being a Scot at all--remember,
laddie, that those lawyers have run up terrible bills against me, and
farm values have all dropped in the most fearful fashion, and I’ve not
kept so tight a hand on the purse-strings of late, myself, as usual, and
so do this thing as moderately----”
“Oh, you be damned!” laughed Mosscrop, and pushed him from the room.
When he was alone, the notion of going to bed seemed to have lost its
urgency. He lighted his pipe, and sat down to read Vesta-lia’s letter
once again.