At breakfast, three mornings later, Mr. Laban Skinner and his daughter
dallied over their plates, and sent the waiter out again with some
asperity when he, taking it for granted they must have finished the
meal, came in to clear the table.
Each had been reading a letter, from the early morning mail.
“It is an invitation from the Earl of Drumpipes,” remarked the father,
regarding his daughter over his _pince-nez_, “expressing, in what I am
constrained to describe as somewhat abrupt and common-place terms, his
desire that we should consider ourselves as his guests during the
entire day upon the approaching 24th instant, the occasion being the
anniversary of his birth.” He handed over the note for her inspection
as he spoke. “The impression which his phraseology produces upon me,”
he added, “is that of one performing a perfunctory act of courtesy
to foreigners of his acquaintance, to whom he extends the ceremonial
proffer of a hospitality which he assumes will be declined.”
“Oh, not at all, papa,” commented Adele, briefly glancing at the
note. “All noblemen write in that formal way. It is a part of their
bringing-up. No; he wants us to come, right enough. I have a letter here
from Mr. Linkhaw, explaining the thing. Of course it was a suggestion of
his.”
“I venture the hope,” said Mr. Skinner, “that he improves the
opportunity to also explain the otherwise unintelligible fact that
during an entire week we have had neither ocular evidence nor any other
tangible manifestation of his presence upon this side of the Atlantic.
I do not hesitate to avow my surprise at what, after his manifold and,
I might say, even importunate professions of eagerness to place his
services at our disposal in London, I find myself unable to refrain from
regarding as his indifference to our--our being here.”
“No,” said Adele, confidently, “it’s all right. He was kept longer in
Scotland than he expected--very urgent family business of some sort--and
only arrived in London a couple of days ago, and has been up to his eyes
in work since he came. Besides,” she continued with a little smile, “he
is very frank; he says he has no clothes fit to go about in London with,
but his tailor is working at some new ones for him day and night,
and they are promised for the 23d, so that at the birthday party next
day----”
“I am far from presuming, Adele,” interrupted the father, gravely,
“to ascribe to you a deficiency or obtuseness of perception where
considerations of delicacy are involved; but I think I am warranted in
pointing out that at home, at least in the social environment to which
you have been from your infancy accustomed, a young gentleman would
intuitively eschew a subject of this nature in his correspondence with a
young lady.”
“Oh, they’re different here,” explained the daughter, with nonchalance.
“They talk quite openly over here of lots of things which we never dream
of mentioning. You remember that lady in front of us at the theatre
last night--when the men in their dress suits came over to talk with her
between the acts--how she told them right out, that although it was
so hot she had to fan herself all the while, still her legs felt quite
shivery. Now, a speech like that would stand Louisville on its head, let
alone Paris, Kentucky, but here it passes without the slightest notice.
It’s the custom of the country. I rather like it myself.”
Mr. Skinner sighed, and pecked timorously at his egg with a spoon. “I am
not wanting, I trust, in tolerance for the natural divergences of
habit and manner which distinguish the widely-separated branches of
the Anglo-Saxon race, or in a desire to accommodate myself to their
peculiarities when I confront them in the course of foreign travel;
but I with difficulty bring myself to contemplate with satisfaction the
method of partaking of a soft-boiled egg which obtains favour in these
islands. To my mind, the negation of the principle of a centre of
gravity involved in the construction of this egg cup, combined with the
objectionably inadequate dimensions of the spoon----”
“Dig it out on to your plate, then; the waiter won’t come in again till
I ring,” suggested the daughter.
“I prefer the alternative of abstention,” he answered. “The spectacle of
stains upon the cloth or upon the plate would be equally suggestive to
the servant’s scrutiny.”
He rose as he spoke. Adele, gathering up the letters, did likewise, and
rang the bell.
Mr. Skinner, having glanced out at the river panorama from the balcony
window for a little, and then looked over the market columns of a
newspaper, turned again to his daughter.
“I gather that we are to accept the invitation of the Earl of
Drumpipes,” he remarked, tentatively.
Adele nodded. “Why, of course,” she said; “that’s to be the formal
beginning of everything. It is intended to make our position here
perfectly regular. Lord Drumpipes is the head of Mr. Linkhaw’s
family. It is entirely becoming that he should take the initiative in
recognising us.”
“Ah yes, in recognising us,” he repeated. “I suppose, Adele, it would
be futile for me to recur to the question whether you have sufficiently
weighed the opposing considerations with regard to Mr. Linkhaw, and
the----”
“Mercy, yes!” interposed Adele, with promptitude. “Don’t let’s have that
all over again. I’ve quite settled everything in my own mind.”
“Since I was afforded the opportunity of personally observing and
conversing with the Earl of Drumpipes,” pursued the father, “and of thus
forming authoritative conclusions as to the British nobility in general,
I have devoted much thought to the subject. While I do not suggest that
my well-known views upon the aristocratic institution, as a whole,
have undergone any perceptible transformation, I do not shrink from
the admission that the thought of being connected by marriage with the
bearer of an hereditary title no longer presents itself to me in such
repulsive colours as was formerly the case. If, therefore, with your
undoubted advantages, it should occur to you to entertain the idea of a
possible alliance with the nobility, I would not have you feel that my
convictions formed a necessarily insuperable barrier to----“,
“No, no!” the daughter broke in, with a laugh. “I’ll promise to
disregard your convictions as much as you like. But now I want you to
go out, and kill time by yourself somewhere till luncheon. I want to be
left alone. There _is_ some place where elderly American gentlemen can
go, isn’t there, without getting into mischief? Oh yes, you must go, and
not just downstairs to hang about the hotel entrance, but straight away
somewhere. Why? My dear papa, I have my secrets as well as you.”
“But that secret of mine,” he protested feebly, “I assure you, Adele,
that it is really nothing at all. That is, it does involve matters
both interesting and important; but the fact that I am precluded from
mentioning them is in the nature of a pure accident, and wholly without
significance.”
“Good-bye till luncheon time,” answered Adele, with affable firmness.
“And mind you quit the premises.”
Mr. Skinner found his hat, smiled dubiously at his daughter, and without
further parley took himself off.
Adele, left alone, looked at the watch in her girdle, and compared its
record with that of the ornate clock on the mantel. She took up the
paper and ran an aimless eye over one page after another. Then she
walked about with a restless movement, pausing from time to time to bend
a frowning yet indifferent inspection upon the scene spread out beyond
the balcony.
At last there came a tap on the door, and at sound of this, even as
she called out a clear, commanding “Come!” she withdrew all signs
of perturbation, or of emotion of any sort, from her beautiful dark
countenance.
It was Vestalia who entered the room--Vestalia, clad in daintily
unpretentious and becoming garments, neatly gloved, and with much
radiant self-possession upon her pretty face. She paused upon the
threshold, nodded rather than bowed to her hostess, and let a little
smile sparkle in her eyes and play about her rosebud of a mouth.
“Your father does not succeed very well in keeping his secrets,
I observe,” she remarked, pleasantly, by way of an overture to
conversation.
“Won’t you please to be seated,” said Adele, with exaggerated calmness.
She herself took a chair, and slowly surveyed her visitor as she went
on: “My father has no secrets from me. He tries to have--once in a blue
moon--but it doesn’t come off. I may tell you frankly, however, that
he has in this case told me nothing. I found your address, and other
information, in looking through his pockets. I am under no obligation to
tell you this: I simply feel like it, that’s all. I hate dissimulation.”
“And I suppose you have your things made up without pockets,” suggested
Vestalia, amiably.
Adele put some added resolution into her glance. “I wrote asking you to
call,” she said coldly, “because it became a nuisance not to know what
you were up to.”
“Ah,” replied Vestalia, “it looks as if your father must have destroyed
some of our correspondence. How thoughtless of him!”
Miss Skinner paused, and knitted her queenly brows a trifle. She did
not seem to be getting on. “I have no wish to waste time in trying to be
funny,” she avowed, after some hesitation. “Now that you are here, have
you any objection to telling me why you swore my father to keep a secret
from me?”
“Oh, just a whim of mine, nothing more,” Vestalia assured her, lightly.
“I frequently have notions like that, that I can’t in the least account
for.”
“No, you had a reason,” insisted the other, with gravity. “And you must
tell me what it was. I have been frank with you.”
“And I will not be behind you in candour,” said Vestalia, as if won by
an appeal to her better self. “It was because you looked at me in the
Museum as if you thought my hair was dyed.”
“Well, so it is, isn’t it?” demanded Adele, bluntly.
“Upon my honour, no!” the other replied. “And now you look at me as if
you thought that that wasn’t much to swear by. It’s possible that you
do not realise it, but your eyes leave something to be desired in the
matter of politeness.”
“I’m afraid that’s true,” Adele assented. “I have an effect of looking
very hard at things, simply because I’m near-sighted. I ought to wear
glasses, but they do not suit me.”
“Yes,” said Vestalia, with a meditative look, “it would be a pity for
you to put them on. They _would_ detract from your face. It is very
beautiful as it is--for a dark style.”
“Sometimes I feel that I am almost tired of being dark,” confessed
Adele. “Your hair is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. I could see
that your gentleman-friend at the Museum admired it immensely.”
“Oh yes, he said so repeatedly,” Vestalia replied, with a demure display
of pleasure at the recollection.
Again there was a little pause. Then Miss Skinner essayed another
opening. “Your name--Peaussier--would indicate French extraction,” she
remarked. “And French people are so very dark, as a rule, aren’t they?
My mother was a Creole--from Louisiana, you know--and I suppose that
accounts for my colour.”
“Well, my mother was Scotch,” explained Vestalia, “and they are sandy.”
“The Scotch gentleman that you were with at the Museum--he was decidedly
a dark man,” suggested Adele, with a casual manner.
“Now that I think of it, so he was,” said Vestalia.
The measured and ceremonious ticking of the expensive clock on the
mantel had the silence to itself for a space, while the two ladies
looked at each other.
“So you won’t tell me anything?” Miss Skinner exclaimed at last.
“The trouble is, don’t you see, that I am quite in the dark as to what
you want to know. If you will tell me just what was in your father’s
pockets, I can judge then what gaps exist in your information.”
Adele laughed aloud. “I believe you are really a tip-top good fellow,
in spite of everything,” she declared. “Do tell me what it is you are
doing! I assure you you’re utterly wrong in thinking that I am a person
to guard against, to keep secrets from. Come, don’t you see how much
I really like you? And you won’t trust me! I suppose it is the blonde
temperament, suspicious and unresponsive and calculating. Or no, I don’t
mean that, you know I don’t, but you might repose more confidence in me,
when I have told you everything.”
“Everything?” murmured Vestalia, sweetly.
“About papa’s pockets, you know.”
“Ah, yes.”
“It was all your fault,” urged Adele. “It was you who drove me to it.
And if you don’t tell now, goodness only knows what crimes I may not be
driven to commit, in addition.”
“Let me hasten to avert this woful catastrophe,” cried Vestalia. “The
matter is simplicity itself. I am by profession, trade, whatever you
call it, a tracer of pedigrees, genealogies. I served my apprenticeship
under an American lady, who worked entirely for American customers. She
is dead now, and the business is broken up, and I have been idle for
a long time. When I saw your father and heard his name, a thought
occurred to me. I know a good deal about the Skinners in England.”
“Papa was born in England himself, you know,” interposed Adele, with
rising interest.
“Yes, I know,” Vestalia went on. “As I said, I have exceptional sources
of information about the family, and it occurred to me that very likely
he would be glad to have the records searched, and a full pedigree drawn
up. I wrote to him, accordingly--he had mentioned this hotel--and I came
and saw him downstairs in the reception-room, and he seemed delighted
with the idea, and gave me a commission at once. What was more important
still, he was kind enough to pay me something in advance. It came just
at the moment to--to supply a very urgent want, too, I can tell you.”
“Ah, poor girl!” said Adele, tenderly. “But why on earth were you afraid
that _I_ should know? I don’t believe your story about the hair, you
know.”
“Really it _was_ that,” protested Vestalia. “I could see that you didn’t
like me. I _was_ afraid of you--that is, of your prejudicing your father
against me. And if you only knew how desperately I was in need of the
job! Don’t you remember, you did look very sharply at me.”
“If I did, it was because I was surprised to--to--see who you were
with.”
“How do you mean?” queried Vestalia, puzzled. “We were both entire
strangers to you, surely.”
“No. I recognised the gentleman from a picture I had seen of him. I had
a kind of idea that he was not precisely a nice gentleman for you to be
with.”
“Then you had a preposterous and wickedly mistaken kind of idea,”
said Vestalia, with decision. “There isn’t a truer or nobler-spirited
gentleman on this earth than he is. I have reason to know what I say. If
anybody has told you otherwise, you have been lied to, that’s all.”
“Dear, dear, how much you are in earnest,” cried Adele. “You must be
_my_ friend, and defend me behind my back like that, too. If he liked
your hair immensely, why, so do I.”
“Don’t let us joke about him,” put in Vestalia, with seriousness. “I
feel very keenly about my obligation to him. He saved my life--and--and
I’d rather talk about something else. We were speaking of the
Skinners--and their pedigree.”
Adele assented, with an inclination of the head, to the diversion,
though her eyes retained their gleam of surprised curiosity. “Yes, the
Skinners,” she said, vaguely.
“I can trace them up to Sir Theobald Skinner, Knight, who obtained a
grant of the Abbey lands of Coggesthorpe, Suffolk, in 1541--who in turn
was the grandfather of Walter Skinner, who married Elizabeth, daughter
and co-heir of John Banstock, Esquire, of Meechy, Norfolk, and became
first Lord Gunser.”
Adele pricked up her ears. “What is that? Are we related to the
nobility? Oh, that is what papa meant by something interesting and
important! Who would have supposed he could be so sly? Oh, sure enough,
that would account for----” She broke off short, and smiled, first
knowingly to herself, then with frank cordiality to Vestalia. “Oh, go
on,” she urged. “Tell me about our lords.” Vestalia shook her head.
“We--that is, you have no lords nowadays,” she admitted, ruefully. “The
Gunser peerage became extinct in the male line nearly two hundred years
ago. The collateral branches of the family sank to be yeomen on the
soil their ancestors had owned--some of them became even peasants,
agricultural labourers. There are no prosperous or polite Skinners
nowadays--except _your_ immediate branch.”
“And even I haven’t got polite eyes,” laughed Adele. “Yes, I remember
papa telling how poor his people were. He hardly knew the taste of meat,
he said, till he went to America as a boy. And so you have traced all
his relations out. Are there any cousins or near connections living now,
do you know? He had a brother older than himself, Abram was his name,
I fancy, and he enlisted in the army and went to the dogs, I think. At
least, father never heard of him afterward.”
“He is dead,” Vestalia re-assured her. “He did go to the dogs, as you
say. He had some sons, but they are dead too.”
“And so there were actually Skinners in the peerage!” mused Adele,
aloud. The thought seemed to excite her. She rose and looked at herself
in the mirror, over Vestalia’s head. The latter stood up as well.
“Oh, must you be going?” said Adele. “There was so much I wanted to say
to you. We must meet soon again. I am going to insist upon that. You
see, I know absolutely no one over here of my own sex, except you. It
will be different in a few days, now, but that won’t make any difference
with my liking you. Oh, yes--I wanted to ask you--do you know a Mr.
Linkhaw?”
Vestalia looked blankly at her interrogator for a moment, then flushed a
little and smiled confusedly. “I have heard the name,” she replied, “but
I have never seen the gentleman bearing it.”
Adele drew her brows together in a half-frown. “He is a great friend of
the gentleman who was with you at the Museum,” she said, doubtingly.
“Yes, I gathered that,” answered Vestalia. “It was in that way that I
heard the name.”
“Really, how curiously we two are mixed up together!” cried the other,
with dawning impatience. “You could tell me ever so many things that I
am dying to know, if you only chose to. It is provoking to have to grope
about in the dark like this. And you won’t even get vexed with me, and
talk back. Even that way I might learn something--and we could make it
up afterward, as easy as not.”
“Ah, but that is what I came resolved under no circumstances to do,”
explained Ves-talia, with affable placidity. “Nothing would tempt me to
get vexed with you.”
“Suppose I insisted upon talking unpleasantly about the gentleman at the
Museum,” suggested Adele, with potential malice in her tone.
“I don’t say you can’t grieve me and hurt me, but you can’t make me
angry with you. You see, I know things which you don’t know, which would
entirely alter your views about me, and about other matters, if you were
aware of them. So it would be unfair in me to blame you for remarks made
in ignorance of the truth.”
“But it is precisely against this ignorance that I protest with all my
might!” said Adele with vehemence. “It is that that is unfair. It makes
me ridiculous.”
“I don’t see the sense of it myself,” agreed Vestalia, simply. “I always
thought it would be the simplest course to tell you everything at once.
Or no--what have I said?” she hastened to add, in deprecation of the
other’s kindling eye; “I didn’t feel that way at first. It was I who
originally suggested that you shouldn’t be told, at the start. I _was_
afraid of you, you know. But now I feel quite differently. I would
gladly have you know everything--but your father has other views. It is
his secret, now, much more than it is mine. I don’t think there is any
reason why I shouldn’t tell you that much.”
“Oh-h!” groaned Adele, in wrath at her helplessness. “Well, tell me
this, anyway, how long is this tomfoolery to be kept up?”
“No, don’t ask me,” answered Vestalia, sympathetically at last. “I don’t
know. I can only say that I’m as tired of it now as you are. I wish you
would believe that. It would make me easier in my mind.”
“Well, I do believe it, then,” the dark girl replied, with impulsive
readiness. “Oh, and something occurs to me that I daresay you _can_ tell
me. You remember the day at the Museum. Well, the gentleman who was with
you called here next day, papa having in the meantime seen you secretly,
downstairs. Now, papa seemed clearly annoyed with that gentleman, when
he came up and found him here. Now, why was that?”
Vestalia reflected. It was evident enough that the question honestly
puzzled her. “All I can think of,” she replied, after consideration,
“is that your father had taken it for granted that this gentleman was my
husband--and when it came out in our interview that he wasn’t then your
father questioned me very closely about him, and it happened that it was
a subject upon which I couldn’t very well tell him much, and I daresay
he formed an unfavourable opinion of Mr. Mosscrop on that account. That
is the only explanation I can think of. I know he said he thought it
would be well for me not to see him again, or even hold communication
with him--but I did write him a letter that very day all the same.” It
was Adele’s turn to ponder. “But why,” she began, hesitatingly, “why
should papa take it upon himself to tell you what to do and not to do?
What business is it of his? And, if he disliked the thing, why should
he remain friendly to you, and snub the gentleman you call Mr. Mosscrop?
Not that he minded it, or that it amounted to anything, but it puzzles
me that papa should behave in that curious fashion.”
“Yes, it would have been more natural to show the woman the cold
shoulder, and think nothing amiss of the man,” assented Vestalia,
gravely. “I quite agree with you there.”
“Well, that _is_ the way of the world, isn’t it?” put in Adele, in
apologetic tones. “Don’t dream that I suggest anything wrong.”
“Oh no,” said the other patiently, but with a note of weariness in her
voice. “It doesn’t matter, one way or the other.”
“You love him, then?” Adele’s black eyes glowed with a sudden kindly
warmth which went to Vestalia’s heart.
“Oh, how can I tell you?” she faltered. “It is all so stupid--and I
am so unhappy? He was goodness itself to me, and he must think that I
behaved like a brute--a common girl of the streets--or meaner still,
for at least it’s said they have _some_ sense of gratitude. He came like
Providence itself to help me, when I was absolutely starving and turned
out of doors like a dog--and I _was_ grateful, and yet here he must be
thinking that I’m the very scum of the earth!”
She gazed at her companion out of swimming eyes, and for answer Adele
kissed her.
“I will go now,” she stammered, hastily, as if the caress had further
unnerved her. “I’ve stayed longer than I meant. Yes, I will come
again--if you tell your father that I’ve been, and he says I may come.”
“I’d like to see him say anything else!” cried the young lady from
Paris, Kentucky. “The idea!”
And when the door had closed upon Vestalia, this dark beauty clenched
her hands, and strode indignantly about the room, and repeated between
set teeth, “The very idea!”
CHAPTER XI
Vestalia paused at the street entrance of the hotel, and looked
doubtfully up the hill toward the shifting outline of the strident,
crowded Strand.
The prospect repelled her, and she bent her slow steps in the other
direction. Crossing the empty, sun-baked roadway of the Embankment, she
strolled westward in the partial shade of the young lime-trees, which
maintain a temerarious existence along the line of the river’s parapet.
She looked over the stonework to the water from time to time as she
walked, and every glance instinctively wandered up-stream toward the
stretch of Westminster Bridge, poised delicately in the noonday haze
across the body of the sleepy flood. The stately beauty of the opposing
piles of buildings which it linked one with the other, and brought
together into the loftiest picture the Old World knows, came as she
moved toward it to soothe and uplift her spirits. Her lips parted
with pleasure at the spectacle, and at the thought that there, in that
glorious span between St. Thomas’ and St. Stephen’s, her own romance had
been born.
The warm serenity of the scene, the inimitable composure of its vast
parts, lying under the sunshine in such majestic calm, seemed to chide
the weak flutterings and despondencies to which she had surrendered her
bosom. The romance which absorbed her mind, of which, indeed, her whole
being had become a portion, had its home there, in the heart of that
benignant grandeur. The grace and charm and noble strength of what she
gazed upon rebuked her timid want of confidence in Destiny, as it shapes
itself on Westminster Bridge. She walked forward with a firmer step,
her head up, and her eyes drying themselves by the radiance of their own
glance.
And so, being borne along by the powerful spell which this great vista
has cast about her, she had no sense of surprise when it caught up also
David Mosscrop in its train, and placed him at her side. It was at the
corner of the bridge, and a momentary clustering of pedestrians brought
to a stand-still by a policeman’s uplifted hand had diverted her
thoughts, and then someone touched her on the arm.
She turned and drank in what had happened with tranquil, tenderly
self-possessed eyes. She gave no start, as of a mind caught unawares.
She was conscious of no wonder, no tremor of disturbance at the
unexpected. The luminous regard in which she embraced the newcomer
was as unreasoningly ready for him as are the spontaneous raptures of
dreamland. No words came to her lips, but it was in the air that she had
known he was coming.
“I was just going to hunt a fellow up at his club across there,” said
Mosscrop, his coarser masculine sense suggesting an explanation, “and I
chanced to look over here, and I made sure it was you, and----”
He stopped short too, and the slower fires kindled in the glance which
met hers. They looked into each other’s eyes, in a long moment of
silence. He drew her arm in his, while the glamour of this sustained
gaze rested still upon them. Then, with a lengthened happy sigh she
spoke.
“I want to go again to that dear little place where we breakfasted,” she
said softly. “You must let me have my own way. I have money in my purse,
now, and you must come and lunch with me. And it must be--oh, it _must_
be there.”
They drove thither, this time in a high-hung, sumptuous, noiseless
hansom, which sped with an entranced absence of motion through the busy
streets.
“It is like fairyland again,” she whispered, nestling against him in
the narrow, deeply-padded enclosure. And he, resting his hand upon hers
under the shelter of the closed doors, breathed heavily, and murmured a
cadence without words in ecstatic response.
In some ridiculous fraction of time they were at their journey’s end.
The impression of having travelled on a magic carpet was in their minds
as, almost ruefully, they woke from their day-dream of arrow-flight
through space, stepped out, and paid the cabman. They laughed together
at the thought, without necessity of mentioning what amused them.
Vestalia, before they entered the restaurant, drew her companion a few
doors up the street, and halted before the narrow window of the old
French bootmaker’s shop. Here they laughed again, he merrily, she with a
lingering, mellow aftermath of feeling in her tone.
It was only when they were seated in the little room above and she had
drawn off her gloves, and after a joyous insistence upon doing it all
herself, had chosen some dishes from the card and sent the waiter off
with the order, that their tongues were loosened.
David leaned back in his chair, and beamed broad content. He began to
talk in the measured, smooth-flowing tone which she remembered so well.
“First of all, dear girl,” he said, “I want to put on the record my
boundless delight at finding you once more. I take off my hat to the
gods. They have devised in my behalf a boon which swallows up all the
imaginable ills of a lifetime. I swear to complain of nothing they do
for the rest of my days. They have given you back to me; and if I am
dull enough to lose you again, why, I will bow my head submissively to
the deserved mishaps of an ass.”
The girl’s blue eyes twinkled with a soft, glad light. “It is a great
joy to hear your voice again,” she said, gently. “The echoes of it have
kept up a little faint murmur in my ears ever since we parted, as if
some spirit was holding a phantom shell close to my head. And now it is
as if we hadn’t parted at all, isn’t it?--I mean, for the present.”
“Ah, it matters so little what you mean,” he replied, in affectionate
banter. “I erred once, to my profound misfortune, in deferring to your
mental processes, and permitting them to translate themselves into
actions. Do not think that I shall be so weak again. The key shall never
fail to be turned on you hereafter.”
She laughed gaily, and shook her head in playful defiance. “Ah, but
suppose----” she began, and then let a glance of merry archness complete
her sentence.
“I confess to curiosity,” he said. “I should prize highly your
conception of the motives which prompted you to run away from me.”
Her mood sobered perceptibly. “I did it because it was right.”
“As a mainspring of human action, that is inadequate,” he commented.
“Almost all painful and embarrassing things are right, but wise people
avoid them as much as possible none the less.”
“No, it was right for me to go,” she persisted. “I couldn’t stay and be
dependent upon someone else, no matter who that someone else was. Your
kindness to me that whole day was more grateful to me than you can
think. I was so frightened in that early morning there on the bridge, so
desolate and helpless and sick with dread of what was going to become
of me, that I didn’t dream of hesitating to take shelter in your--your
friendship. It was like going under some hospitable roof while there was
a drenching rain outside, and I was very thankful for the refuge. But
when it cleared up, I couldn’t go on staying, just because I had been
made welcome, now, could I?”
“Since you ask me, I declare with tearful emphasis that you could.”
“No, seriously,” urged Vestalia; “don’t you agree with me that women
should be just as self-reliant and independent as men?”
“Me? I agree absolutely. I would have women insist upon the most
unflinching independence, all the world over. I feel so keenly on that
point, that out of the entire sex I would make only one exception. Very
few people would take such an advanced position as that, I imagine. Just
fancy how far I go! There are hundreds of millions of women, and I would
have them all independent but just one. By a curious accident it happens
that you are that one--but you will be fair-minded enough to recognise,
I feel convinced, that this is the merest chance.”
She made a droll little mouth at him, and he went on:
“Yes, it is very strange. I cannot pretend to account for it, but you
do undoubtedly form an exception to what would otherwise be a universal
rule. The thought of other women earning their own living fills me with
joy. I am fascinated by it, I assure you. I feel like bursting into song
at the barest suggestion of the idea. But this very excess of reverence
for the general principle begets a corresponding vehemence of feeling
about the one solitary exception. That is in accordance with a natural
law. Surely you respect natural laws? Well, the vaguest adumbration of
an idea of your doing things for yourself convulses me with rage. The
notion that my right to take entire charge of you is disputed seems
monstrous and abominable to me. It is a denial of my mission on earth,
and I am bound to combat it with all my powers.”
Vestalia smiled. “I see what you mean. You are just an old prehistoric
savage like the rest of your sex. Your one idea is to drag a woman off
into your cave and keep her there, with a big rock rolled up in front of
the door when you’re away.”
“I would not have you disparage the primitive instincts,” urged
Mosscrop, with an air of solemnity. “My word for it, we should be an
extraordinarily uninteresting lot without them. They are the abiding
bone and flesh and muscle of humanity, upon which it pleases each
foolish generation in turn to stretch its own thin, trivial pelt of
fashionable convention. My desire to seize you, and drag you off to
my own cave, and make a life’s business of keeping you there, always
beautiful, always happy, always replenishing the well-spring of joy in
my existence--you choose that as something typical of the primeval man
surviving within me. Let me tell you, sweet little Vestalia, that
the human mind would cease tomorrow from its eternal wistful dream of
progress if it were not for the hope that advancing civilisation will
bring improved facilities for that sort of thing. The world would wilt,
and curl up like a sapless leaf, and drop from its solar stem into
gaseous space, if that anticipation were taken away. The race keeps
itself going only by cherishing the faith that sometime, somewhere in
the golden future, this planet will be arranged so that the right woman
will always get into the right cave. That is what people mean when they
speak of the millennium.”
“That is all very well,” said Vestalia, “but it deals with everything
from the man’s point of view. Consider the other side of the case. What
do you say to the woman’s disinclination for cave-life--is that not
entitled to respect?”
“Possibly,” answered David, reflectively--“if one were able to believe
in it.”
The waiter entered at this point with a burdened tray in his arms, and
Vestalia took up the wine list. “Which is it that we had--that in the
lovely high green bottles, with arms like a vase?” she asked Mosscrop.
“We must have the same again.”
“You have told me nothing as yet,” said David, reproachfully, when they
were alone again, “of all the thousand things I long to know.”
“It is so hard to tell,” she explained, with hesitation. “That is, there
are things that I am supposed not to tell to anybody, at present,
at least. And as for what I ought not to tell _you_--why I have been
instructed to avoid you altogether. I was even told not to write
you--but I did all the same--just once.”
David took a crumpled envelope from an inner pocket over his heart, held
it up for her inspection, and replaced it. But even as he did so sombre
shadows began to gather on his face. He laid down his knife and fork,
and, biting his lips, looked out of the window.
Vestalia swiftly recalled gruesome associations with that look. She
stretched forth her hand, and laid it on his arm. “You mustn’t look out
there,” she protested. “It has a bad effect on you. Look me in the face
instead--please!”
He shook his head impatiently, and stared with dogged, blinking eyes at
the opposite roofs. “You don’t realise what it has all meant to me,” he
said at last, his gaze still averted. The quaver in his voice profoundly
affected the girl.
“Listen to me--David,” she said, with something of his pathos reflected
in her tone. “Turn and look at me. I haven’t the heart for even a moment
of misunderstanding today. There isn’t anything on earth I won’t tell
you. But you must look at me!”
He slowly obeyed her, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes.
“But apparently there are things which it would be merciful not to tell
me,” he said, struggling for an instant for composure. Then his brows
knitted themselves, and flashes played in the darkness of his glance.
“Who forbids you this or that?” he demanded, the angry metallic growl
rising in his voice. “Four days ago you were all alone in the world!
You told me so! In detail you assured me of your isolation. What are
you talking about now? You speak of receiving instructions--to avoid me
altogether, to write no letter to me! Oh, I ask for no explanations----”
he went on stormily, pushing back his chair to rise from the
table--“don’t think I claim any right to question you. But I find myself
mistaken, that is all! I am a silly duffer at a game of this sort. I
take things in earnest, while the others are laughing in their sleeves.
Well, I’ve had my lesson. Before God, I’ll never----”
Vestalia screamed at him. She had half-risen in her place, gazing with
bewildered, affrighted eyes, till some vague inkling of his meaning
dawned upon her brain. “Foolish David! Foolish!” she cried aloud now.
“Stop it! Stop it! You don’t know what you’re saying! Keep still, and
let me talk to you!”
She bent across the table, and peremptorily shook his shoulder to
enforce her words. “You’re all wrong!” she clamoured, as his tempest of
wrathful words subsided. Upon the silence which followed she implanted
firmly the added comment: “Oh, you goose!”
He looked up sullenly to her, as she stood now erect--and, meeting the
glance in her eyes, felt himself clinging to it. There was for him
the effect of sunshine in it--of clouds parted, of radiance and calm
restored about him. Breathing hard, he gazed into her face, and came
somehow to know from what he saw in it that he had been making a fool of
himself. This perception assumed sharp outlines in his mind before she
had spoken a word.
“Now, will you behave yourself, and listen to me?” she demanded, with
austerity. His shattered aspect of contrition was a sufficient answer,
and she seated herself confidently. “Now I will explain things to
you--although you don’t deserve it in the very least,” she began, in
formal tones. “To commence with, you remember that American father and
daughter that we met at the Museum, down in the basement?--well, it
happened that--happened that--Oh, my poor boy, how _could_ you think so
stupidly of me?”
David had drawn up to his place again. He held Vestalia’s hands in his
at this juncture, somehow, and the enchanted table narrowed itself until
there was no barrier of space between their lips.
The little kiss sweetened the air. The two, even while they exchanged a
glance of shy surprise, thought of it with reverence. They instinctively
gave to its contemplation a moment of tender silence.
“How shrewd you were in discerning my leaven of savagery,” he remarked
at last. “Or leaven? we’d better say principal ingredient!”
“I like you that way,” said Vestalia, quietly.
He smiled at her in dreamy incredulity. “I wonder if you do,” he mused.
“They say women do like men who beat them. The police courts seem to
support the idea. But there is a difficulty, you see. If you liked me
because I behaved badly to you, then I should dislike you on precisely
that account. So you mustn’t suggest approbation. No, I was very rude
and stupid, and I am profoundly ashamed of myself. I should be ashamed
to offer an excuse, too, if it were not just the one it is. I happen to
be head over heels in love with you, dear little lady.”
“And precisely what is that an excuse for?” demanded the girl, with a
fine show of ingenuous calm.
“For letting my luncheon get cold,” he replied, taking up his fork.
With the laughter of pleased children, they resumed the broken course of
the meal.
“It doesn’t begin to be as nice as _your_ breakfast,” she commented
after a little.
“I don’t think it is a day for things to eat,” he said, pushing the
plate aside. “I want to do nothing but just look at you--perhaps talk
a little--but hear you talk much more. I am conscious of an indefinite
hunger for the mere visual charm of you, sitting there opposite me. It
seems as if it would take years to satisfy that alone. Do you know that
you are very beautiful, dear, in your new clothes?”
She regarded his face with a keen, almost anxious glance, before she let
the softer look dominate her own. “I am going to hurry to tell you
where I got them,” she said. “They are the gift of my uncle--my father’s
brother. This was what I was beginning to explain when--when you got so
unhappy.”
“Yes--that is the merciful word--unhappy,” he assented, with gratitude.
“I have been deeply out of sorts--mentally--since I lost you that night.
There is a special devil inside of me, Vestalia, who sometimes lies low
for long periods, and hardly reminds me of his existence, but since last
Thursday he has been out on the war-path, night and day. My nerves are
stretched like fiddle-strings, just with the effort of holding him.
The sight of you is death to him, dear. He is gone now--clean out of
existence. And while you stay, he won’t return. But the wretch has left
me tired and a little tremulous. I want to rest myself by just looking
at you.”
She, smiling with demure pleasure at his speech and his look, related
to him briefly the story of the Skinner pedigree. “It occurred to me the
minute I woke up in the early morning,” she declared. “I shall always
believe that I really dreamed it first. Are you interested in dreams?”
“Oh immensely--at the time.”
“No; but there _is_ something in them. I assure you, the idea never
entered my head the day we met them. But before I was fairly awake
next morning, lo, there it was, all worked out. The old gentleman
was politeness itself. He came down immediately, when I sent my note
upstairs. When I told him about wanting to make a pedigree of the
Skinners, the notion appealed to him at once. Then I told him about
something else, and that appealed to him a good deal more.”
Vestalia paused here, and began to regard her companion with signs of
diminishing confidence. “I can’t go any farther without making a most
humiliating confession to you,” she faltered.
“Then don’t go any farther, I beseech you,” he answered. “Truly, I do
not find myself stirred very much by this entire demonstration of
your ability to do things off your own bat. It is independent and
praiseworthy and all that, no doubt, but I still have a lingering
feeling that you ought to have stayed to breakfast, you know, and left
mere commercial details to me. And I certainly shrink from humiliating
confessions. Skip the unpleasant parts. We will have no skeletons at our
feast to-day.”
“Ah, but they can’t be skipped,” sighed Vestalia. She drew nearer to
him, across the table, and lowered her voice. “I foolishly told you some
things that were not so--that first morning,” she confided in doleful
tones. “It was a kind of romance about myself that I had built up in my
own mind, and without much thought I gave it to you as truth. So long
as I kept it to myself it did no harm; it even made life easier and more
endurable for me, like a poor child making-believe that she and her rag
doll are princesses. But it was different to tell you. My father was
not a French gentleman. He was not an officer, and he wasn’t killed in
a duel. He was never in France any more than I was. My mother _was_
Scotch, but she did not belong to any noble or wealthy family. She did
not leave any family jewels with a crest on them, and no one cheated
her out of a private fortune, because she never had such a thing. It was
just my individual fairyland that I described to you as real. I didn’t
even tell you my true name.” David smiled solace upon her distressed
aspect “You speak as if it were of importance. Dear child, do we value a
rare and beautiful lily the less, because the gardener has put the wrong
label on it by mistake? Tut--tut! Names and lineage and all that--it is
the idlest stuff on earth to me. The story that you told me was pleasant
in my ears only because it came from your lips. The discovery now that
it was _all_ yours--that it was not the mere recital of dull facts, but
was the child of your own inner imaginings--why that only makes it the
more delightful to me. I simply gave it store-room in my memory before;
I love it now--and at the same time I find I have quite forgotten it.
There is a paradox for you!”
Vestalia essayed a smile through her tears. “You are always kinder than
even I expect you to be,” she faltered; “but I did tell you a--a story,
and by rights you should be very angry with me.”
David laughed. “Hans Christian Andersen told me many stories, but I
worshipped him increasingly to the end. Dear lady, the stories are the
only veritable things in life. The alleged realities of existence pass
by us, or roll over us, and leave us colourless and empty. The genuine
possessions of our souls--the things that shape and decorate and furnish
our spiritual habitations--are the things that never happened. I note
a twinkle in your eye. You fancy that I have said an inept thing. You
think that I shall have to go back and explain that at least what
has happened to us forms an exception to the rule. Ah, sweet little
Vestalia, have you forgotten your own remark, here in this very room?
‘It isn’t like real life at all,’ you said; ‘it is the way things
happen in fairy tales.’ I take my stand upon that definition. We have
deliberately repudiated what are described as the realities of life.
We discard them, cut them dead, decline to have anything whatever to do
with them. We declare that it is fairyland that we are living in, and
that we refuse to come out of it to the end of our days.”
Vestalia gazed into his eyes with wistful tenderness. “To the end of
our days!” she murmured softly, wonderingly. Then she recalled the task
still unfinished. “I took the name of Peaussier,” she forced herself to
continue, “because it was a translation of my own name. I looked in the
dictionary, and found that it was the French for Skinner.”
David lifted his brows. “You don’t mean----” he began, confusedly.
“Yes;” she forestalled his question. “The old gentleman at the Savoy is
my father’s own brother. My father was Abram Skinner. He was not a lucky
man, or, in his later years, a very nice man either. He was always poor,
and toward the end he was in other troubles too. My home was a thing to
shudder at the recollection of. I ran away from it after mother died,
and he’s gone, too, now. I changed the name, to wash my hands of the
whole miserable thing. And then to think of the wonderful chance--to
stumble upon my own uncle, a man of fortune and education, and the
kindest heart alive--is it not the most extraordinary thing that ever
happened in this world?”
“Very possibly it might be regarded as extraordinary--out in the
so-called world,” David assented, reflectively. “But it is just the
thing that would be expected in fairyland. Yes, it seems, on the face
of it, a beneficent occurrence. It is good for you to be seized and
possessed of a rich uncle--from some points of view. But from others--a
doubt suggests itself, Vestalia, whether your uncle is well-affected
toward the fairies. Standard Oil does not lend itself without an effort
to the fantastic. What if your uncle beckons you to come forth from
fairyland?”
“And leave you behind--is that what you mean?” asked Vestalia, slowly.
“That would depend--depend on how much you wanted me to stay.”
David put out his left hand to take hers, where it lay upon the cloth.
With his right he drew out his watch. “The name Skinner,” he said, “is
all right for the folk at the Savoy. It is not a suitable name for you.
I sympathise fully with your impulse to abandon it. The expedient which
you adopted was, no doubt, the best that offered itself at the moment,
but I think I know a better. I must leave you now, and hurry into the
City. This is Monday. Dear love, on Thursday I claim the whole day from
you. We will breakfast here at eight--it is not too early, is it?--or
say rather that at just eight I will come and find you on Westminster
Bridge. The day must begin there, mustn’t it? And--strangely
enough--Thursday is in a sort another birthday of mine.”
“And of mine too?” she asked, with a light in her eyes.
CHAPTER XII.
In the early afternoon of Thursday, David Mosscrop walked apart on
shaded gravel-paths, beneath arches of roses and the feathered canopy of
cedars high above, with Adele by his side.
“Oh, it’s all right. The waiter will come out and tell us when it is
ready,” he said reassuringly, in comment upon her backward glance. “I
want to speak with you. There was no such thing as a word with you by
yourself on the road.”
“Why, we talked every mortal minute,” she protested.
“Ah yes, we talked, but I don’t recall that anything was said.”
“I daresay _my_ conversation is empty to the last degree,” she observed;
“but I am usually spared such frank statements of the fact.”
“Ah, but I want to be thought of as something a little different from
the usual,” urged David.
“Your efforts in that direction have been extraordinarily successful.
Pray, do not imagine that they are unappreciated. I admit freely that
you seem to have quite exhausted the unusual, my Lord.”
“No; I’ve still got something up my sleeve,” said David, lightly enough.
But the tone in which she had uttered those final two words caught his
attention. They carried a suggestion of emphasis which fell outside the
bounds of genial banter. Meditating upon it he stole a covert glance at
her, and encountered two wide-awake black eyes intently scrutinising
him in turn. “It was about that I wished to consult you,” he added,
conscious of an embarrassed tongue.
“Won’t it be better to stick to scenery?” she asked. Yes, there was
undoubtedly a mocking touch in her voice. “That is so safe a subject.
This dear old hotel here, now, how perfectly satisfying it is! Those
wonderful trees out in front, and the white chalk hill behind, and this
garden, and then the comfort and charm of everything inside, and the
thought that people have been coming here for hundreds of years, or is
it thousands?--it is so different from anything we have in America--even
in Kentucky. And then the whole drive from London--through such
delicious country, all so rich and smooth and neatly packed together,
and so full of the notion that people are all the while planting and
pruning and admiring every inch of it that you can’t help feeling
affectionately toward it yourself! Perhaps there _is_ a certain hint of
the artificial about it, but somehow that seems rather in keeping with
the day than otherwise, doesn’t it, my Lord?”
While he hesitated about an answer, she touched him on the arm. “Here
are papa and Mr. Linkhaw coming along after us--probably to tell us
luncheon is ready. Shan’t we wait for them?”
“Heavens, no!” cried David, starting forward. “We’ve been chained
to them on the top of the coach for two whole hours,” he went on, in
defensive explanation of his warmth. “Really, we have earned the right
to a few quiet words by ourselves.”
“Oh, _I_ don’t mind,” said Adele, quickening her pace to suit his. “Only
it’s fair to warn you, though, that my temper has its limitations. I am
a variable person. Sometimes it happens that all at once I weary of a
joke, after it has been carried to a certain length, and then I can be
as unpleasant as they make ’em.”
“I find that my own sense of humour has a tendency to flag under
sustained effort, as I get older,” said David. “But there are so many
pleasantries afloat--perhaps you wouldn’t mind indicating the one which
particularly fatigues you, and I will put my foot on it at once.”
“Oh, by no means! That would be far too crude. We are all your guests,
and you are in charge of the entertainment, and I couldn’t dream of
suggesting anything.”
“Except that you find yourself no longer amused,” ventured David,
cautiously.
“Oh. not at all.” She spoke with perfunctory languor, and simulated a
little yawn. “I daresay it is all immensely funny, only I got up earlier
than usual this morning, and no doubt that has dulled my wits somewhat.”
David perceived on the instant how matters stood. “I also rose at an
extravagantly early hour,55 he said, and it is about my reasons for
doing so that I want to tell you. But, first of all, let us be frank
with each other. I have done nothing but accede to a situation created
for me by Archie and yourself. It has been within your power to end it
at any moment you choose. It has been all along much more your joke
than mine. It isn’t fair to round on me for merely humouring your own
conception of sport.”
Adele halted momentarily, and surveyed his composed, swarthy countenance
with lifted brows. “So you saw all along that _I_ knew!” she exclaimed,
in honest surprise.
“How could I have imagined that so clumsy a performance as mine would
deceive so clever a young woman?” he rejoined, with a sprightly bow.
“Oh, you did it awfully well,” she assured him, complacently. “But tell
me, did Archie suspect that _I_ knew?”
“I have been intimate with Archie from the cradle,” said David, “but I
am still very shy about forming opinions as to his mental processes.
In this case, however, I think it is safe to say he didn’t suspect--and
still doesn’t suspect.”
“Poor old Archie,” mused Adele, with a ripening smile. “I knew who
he was before I’d even laid eyes on him. A school-friend of mine in
Galveston wrote to me that she had met a real Earl, who insisted on
being known as Mr. Linkhaw, and that he was returning to England by way
of Kentucky. I’ve had three months of the rarest fun in never letting on
that I had the remotest suspicion. You can’t imagine how comical it was.
He used to get, quite tearful sometimes, I abused the aristocracy
so fiercely. And then, the joke was, papa began--his whole idea of
conversation is to take up to-day what I’ve said yesterday, and multiply
my words by a hundred and twelve, and produce the result as his own; and
he worked up the anti-Earl agitation till Archie very nearly went off
into chronic melancholia. It was better than any comedy that ever was
written--but then you stumbled your way into the middle of it, and
got it all twisted and tangled up--and it hasn’t been so amusing since
then.”
“My dear Miss Skinner,” protested David, “I think my entrance upon the
scene deserves a gentler verb. If you will search your memory, you will
find that I came in by express invitation. It was you who deliberately
thrust my mock honours upon me.”
“Oh, I know that,” she responded, readily enough. “I thought that would
only make the thing funnier still--but somehow it hasn’t. It isn’t
anything about Archie and me, you know. But there is another element
in the case that I feel very keenly about. It has been puzzling me for
days, but I only learned the truth last night. I simply _made_ papa tell
me. I refused flat-footed to come here to-day, or to do anything else
that was reasonable, unless he _did_ tell me. I have a cousin here in
England, Mr. Mosscrop, a daughter of my father’s own brother, and she is
one of the dearest girls that ever lived.”
“I can readily credit that,” declared David, pointing his meaning with a
little inclination of the head.
“Oh, she is far nicer than I am,” cried Adele. “_She_ wouldn’t trifle
with the feelings of the man she loved, or play tricks with him just for
the sake of fun. In fact, I almost blame her for taking such things too
seriously. She hasn’t had too easy a time of it, poor girl, and it has
made her, _I_ think, altogether _too_ humble. She met a young man in the
midst of her troubles who, it seems, was civil to her, and even kind
as men go, and what does she do but just sit down and worship the very
memory of him, and cry out her pretty blue eyes over it--and he--he
walks off and never gives her another thought. That’s the _man_ of it!”
A gleam of indignation flashed through the moisture in her own eyes
as she bent them upon her companion. Her bosom heaved the more as she
discerned a broad smile extending itself upon his face.
“Although I might demur to details,” he said, restraining the gaiety
which struggled for expression in his voice, “I must not pretend to fail
to recognise the portrait you have drawn. I am the guilty man!”
“You laugh at it!” she exclaimed. “To you it seems a joke!”
“Are you so certain that there isn’t a joke concealed somewhere about
it?” he suggested, calmly.
“I lose patience with you! You make a jest of everything. Tell me this
much: Do you or do you not know her present address?”
“I know precisely where she is to be found at the present moment,” said
David, speaking now with gravity.
“Well, and have you been there to see her? Have you written to her
there? Have you given her the slightest sign since she has been there of
any desire on your part to ever see her again?”
“I must answer ‘No’ to each question, I am afraid,” he responded, and
had the grace to hang his head.
His evident humility only momentarily impressed her. “I am disappointed
in you,” she said. “Where will you find a sweeter or truer woman? Don’t
think I am throwing her at your head! Quite the contrary. If you were to
ask for her now, I should advise with all my might against you. But you
have behaved like a simpleton. I am going to have her always live with
me, or near me. She is my own flesh and blood, and I love her as if
she were my sister. She doesn’t know, as yet, that I am aware of the
relationship; but I have written to her this very morning, telling her
to come and see me to-night, when I get back. I am going to spend some
money in Scotland.”
“It will be profoundly appreciated, believe me.”
She sniffed at his interjection. “I intend to buy land right and left in
Elgin, and if Skirl Castle isn’t good enough--I don’t think much of
it from the photographs--we’ll build a bigger one, and we’ll make
that whole section hum; and Vestalia shall be as big an heiress as it
contains, and the lucky man who marries her shall be treated like a
brother of mine and Archie’s. And that is what you have thrown away.
I say it to you frankly, because it is all over so far as you are
concerned. She will listen to me, and my mind is quite made up--and papa
can tell you what _that_ means!”
“Even if your decision were not irrevocable,” said David, solemnly, “my
answer would of necessity be the same. I would do much to please you,
but I do not see my way to marrying your cousin.”
They had paused to exchange these last sentences, and now upon the
instant the Earl and his elderly companion came up. David essayed a
revelatory wink to the nobleman, but it fell upon the stony places in
Lord Drum-pipes wondering stare.
Mr. Skinner wiped his brow decorously, and breathed appreciation of
the halt. “Sir,” he began, addressing David, “I must assume that I am
enjoying the opportunity of studying a district of England peculiarly
favoured by Nature, and exceptionally embellished as well by the hand of
man; but I wish to give expression to emotions of unmixed delight at all
that I observe about me. We have inspected the internal appointments
of the ancient hostelry, and have revelled, sir, in the luxurious yet
studiously regulated beauties of this garden, and I confess that the
novelty of the one and the charm of the other far surpass anything----”
“Papa,” interposed his daughter, with cold severity, “we will leave
these gentlemen to enjoy the novelties and charms by themselves for a
few minutes, if you please. I have an explanation to make to you, since
no one else offers it, and I think it should be no longer deferred.”
She took her father’s arm as she spoke, and led him in a direct line
across the sward toward the broad, low-lying, ivy-clad rear of the
hotel. “Oh, it’s all right; they don’t mind your walking on the grass in
England,” the two young men heard her say as she departed.
These partners in deception gazed after her for a space. Then they
looked at each other.
“Davie, I don’t like it,” said the Earl.
“Don’t like what?”
“I’m afraid she’s got some kind of an inkling. It looks as if a
suspicion were dawning in her mind. I warned you she was keen of scent.”
Mosscrop burst forth with a peremptory guffaw of laughter. “You duffer
of the earth,” he cried, “she knew all about you before ever she laid
eyes on you!” He unfolded the chuckling narrative forthwith, to the
Earl’s profound astonishment and concern.
“Why then, man,” Drumpipes ejaculated at last, staring hard at the
close-cropped lawn, “I can’t tell in the least if she loves me for
myself alone.”
“Oh, you read that in some novel,” objected David. “It’s a mere phrase;
it has no significance in real life.”
“Yes; but,” the other pursued, dejectedly, “I don’t see how I can make
sure that she loves me in any kind of way.”
“At all events, she’s going to marry you,” David re-assured him. “She
mentioned the fact to me, casually. And she’s going to buy up Elgin
right and left, and build a new Skirl Castle as big as Olympia, and
generally make everything else north of the Grampians ‘sing small’--I
believe that’s the phrase.”
The Earl assimilated this intelligence with a kindling eye. “Man, it’s
fine!” he cried, as the prospect spread itself out before his mental
vision. “Ah, poor Davie, you dinna ken what it is to be in love!”
Mosscrop sighed. “When you talk Scots, Archie,” he said, “I know it’s
going to cost me money. I foresee that you’ll kick about the bill. But,
hurry, man, and catch up with them. She’s quite capable of flouncing out
of the house, and dragging her father along, too, while the fit is on
her; and that would only mean more bother to coax them back. Come on!”
He started at a brisk pace in pursuit, and Drumpipes strode eagerly
beside him. They overtook their guests on the very threshold of the
door, and the Earl called out a breathless, entreating “Adele!” The
girl, upon reflection, turned, and surveyed the pair with an austere
eye.
“Wait a moment, papa,” she said in her coldest tone; “one of these two
gentlemen seems to feel authorised to address me by my Christian name,
and apparently has also some communication to make to us.”
“Well,” stammered Drumpipes, hesitatingly, “there’s an awfully good
luncheon been ordered, you know.”
Mosscrop emitted an abrupt, resonant note of laughter, and in the
silence which ensued displayed violent muscular efforts to keep a grin
from convulsing his face.
Adele preserved the severity of her aspect for a little. “I think it
might occur to _you_, Lord Drumpipes,” she began, markedly addressing
her remarks to the rightful bearer of the title, “that after what has
happened--and on this point, I can assure you my father feels exactly as
I do----”
She stopped here, with the effect of appealing to her father for
immediate confirmation of their inflexible joint attitude.
“I need scarcely observe,” began Mr. Skinner, putting up his _pince-nez_
and looking down upon the two young men with sternness from the vantage
of the door-step, “that whatever course my daughter deems it consistent
with her dignity to pursue, in the face of the extraordinary, and, I may
confidently add, unprecedented circumstances which we are called upon
to--to confront, has my most unswerving adhesion.”
A waiter opened the door inward at this instant, and overlaid Mr.
Skinner’s peroration with a clear-cut message, Germanic in its
nonessentials, but broadly human in import.
The old gentleman gasped, twiddled the string of his glasses in his
fingers, and leant his head sidewise toward his daughter. “Yes, but what
_is_ it we’re going to do?” he inquired in a nervous whisper.
“Do?” cried Mosscrop, who had caught her glance in his own, and
convicted it of latent merriment, “Do? Why we’re going to laugh at a
harmless pleasantry happily ended, and pass in to luncheon.”
“Yes, papa,” said Adele, upon consideration, and with a dawning smile
upon her lips, “I think that _is_ what we’re going to do.” When
they found themselves standing about the table in the private room,
overlooking through open French windows the delightful sunlit garden
from which they had come, Mosscrop seized the moment of hesitation about
seats to hold up his hand. Though he had been bereft of his borrowed
dignities, the air of natural command sat easily upon him.
“I have to ask you for a minute or two of delay,” he said. “It will
explain itself.”
He wrote something on a card as he spoke, and gave it to the waiter with
a closely-guarded whisper of injunction. As the servant left the room,
David turned to the others with a radiant face.
“Mr. Skinner,” he began, “and my younger friends, there is a toast which
in England is always drunk standing. It occurs to me to propose it to
you, on this single occasion, before we have taken our seats at all. As
has been remarked with characteristic perspicacity, the circumstances
which we find ourselves called upon to confront are extraordinary in
character, and altogether unprecedented. Through the courtesy of
my friends, I have for a brief period had devolved upon me the
responsibility of behaving, at stated intervals, as a member of the
Scotch peerage should behave. I view my deportment throughout this
ordeal, in retrospect, with a considerable degree of satisfaction. I
have spared no pains to realise my conception of the part. The essential
thing about a successful peerage, I take it, is that it should be
invested, for ordinary eyes, with a glamour of unreality. A Baron should
be perceptibly romantic. A Viscount, if he respects his station should
quite envelope himself in the mists of the improbable. As for an Earl,
he should live frankly in fairyland. My imagination does not run to
Marquises and Dukes, but I think I may say I have grasped the ideal of
an Earl.”
“The true ideal of an Earl,” interposed Drumpipes, with inspiration, “is
never to let victuals get cold.”
Mosscrop smiled and nodded. “Only a minute more,” he said. “I spoke
about fairyland. I have been under its spell all this week. I have
committed myself to its charm for the rest of my days. When you return
to London this evening, northward, it is Archie Who will drive you. I
go southward to the Loire country instead, under the magic of the
enchantment which beckons and guides and propels me, all in one. To quit
riddles, good people, you will notice that there is a fifth place laid
here before us. To connect this fact with the toast, the seat is waiting
for _my_ Queen. This is Sherry, decanted from the ‘Anchor’s’ oldest bin.
I suggest to you the filling of your glasses.”
He moved toward the door as he spoke, opened it, and turned to the
others, with Ves-talia on his arm.
“Mr. Skinner,” he said gently. “We crave your approbation for what we
have done. We were married by the registrar of St. Dunstan’s at ten
o’clock this morning, and your niece came on here direct by train,
bringing her luggage and my own, which I thank God devoutly will always
travel together in future. We love each other very, very much.”
There fell here upon the masculine vision the spectacle of two
women entwined in each other’s arms, and of two beautiful heads, one
raven-black, one glowing like light through clouded amber, bent tenderly
together. The sound of little moans proceeded from this swaying,
interlocked group, and then of kisses and of subdued ecstatic sobbing
laughter.
Lord Drumpipes, staring vacantly from these women to his boyhood friend,
gulped his sherry in an absent-minded way. David, in rapid whispers,
outlined meanwhile the situation to his bewildered ear.
“Eh!” he called out at last. “It is the same lassie? The yellow-haired
one? The one who smashed my moosie?”
“Shut up, you loon!” growled David fiercely, under his breath. “Is this
the time to blab about such things? _I_ kicked your your old cow into
splinters, and I’ll serve the rest of the idiotic show the same way
if you mention the word ‘moose.’ Chuck it, man! That’s a thing for the
girls to tell each other a year hence, perhaps. Have some delicacy about
you!” He turned to Mr. Skinner, who stood as one petrified, his gaze
riveted upon the young women.
“I’ve been explaining to my friend, Lord Drumpipes,” David said, lifting
his voice, “the romantic nature of my acquaintance with your niece, my
wife. I think you have been told about it.”
Mr. Skinner shifted his glance to the speaker. “To some extent--to some
extent,” he murmured weakly. “It has taken me greatly by surprise. I
scarcely know-----”
David had advanced, and was holding out his hand, with a confident,
masterful sort of smile.
“I suppose it’s all right,” the old gentleman said, sending confused,
appealing glances toward his inattentive daughter. “Adele seems not to
object--I take it for granted that----”
Adele lifted her head, and drew a protecting arm round Vestalia. “Hold
up your chin,” she whispered, audibly. “They’re nothing to be frightened
of. You know everybody except your cousin Archie, and he’s only to be
feared by creatures who can’t shoot back.”
The bride, nestling against the other’s shoulder, raised a luminous
face, and looked about her with a smile of frank happiness.
“Frightened?” she queried, and then shook her fair head joyously in
answer.
The waiter came in with the tureen.
THE END.