“Is matchmaking at all in your line?”
Hugo Peterby asked the question with a certain amount of personal
interest.
“I don’t specialise in it,” said Clovis; “it’s all right while you’re
doing it, but the after-effects are sometimes so disconcerting—the mute
reproachful looks of the people you’ve aided and abetted in matrimonial
experiments. It’s as bad as selling a man a horse with half a dozen
latent vices and watching him discover them piecemeal in the course of
the hunting season. I suppose you’re thinking of the Coulterneb girl.
She’s certainly jolly, and quite all right as far as looks go, and I
believe a certain amount of money adheres to her. What I don’t see is
how you will ever manage to propose to her. In all the time I’ve known
her I don’t remember her to have stopped talking for three consecutive
minutes. You’ll have to race her six times round the grass paddock for a
bet, and then blurt your proposal out before she’s got her wind back.
The paddock is laid up for hay, but if you’re really in love with her you
won’t let a consideration of that sort stop you, especially as it’s not
your hay.”
“I think I could manage the proposing part right enough,” said Hugo, “if
I could count on being left alone with her for four or five hours. The
trouble is that I’m not likely to get anything like that amount of grace.
That fellow Lanner is showing signs of interesting himself in the same
quarter. He’s quite heartbreakingly rich and is rather a swell in his
way; in fact, our hostess is obviously a bit flattered at having him
here. If she gets wind of the fact that he’s inclined to be attracted by
Betty Coulterneb she’ll think it a splendid match and throw them into
each other’s arms all day long, and then where will my opportunities come
in? My one anxiety is to keep him out of the girl’s way as much as
possible, and if you could help me—”
“If you want me to trot Lanner round the countryside, inspecting alleged
Roman remains and studying local methods of bee culture and crop raising,
I’m afraid I can’t oblige you,” said Clovis. “You see, he’s taken
something like an aversion to me since the other night in the
smoking-room.”
“What happened in the smoking-room?”
“He trotted out some well-worn chestnut as the latest thing in good
stories, and I remarked, quite innocently, that I never could remember
whether it was George II. or James II. who was so fond of that particular
story, and now he regards me with politely-draped dislike. I’ll do my
best for you, if the opportunity arises, but it will have to be in a
roundabout, impersonal manner.”
* * * * *
“It’s so nice having Mr. Lanner here,” confided Mrs. Olston to Clovis the
next afternoon; “he’s always been engaged when I’ve asked him before.
Such a nice man; he really ought to be married to some nice girl.
Between you and me, I have an idea that he came down here for a certain
reason.”
“I’ve had much the same idea,” said Clovis, lowering his voice; “in fact,
I’m almost certain of it.”
“You mean he’s attracted by—” began Mrs. Olston eagerly.
“I mean he’s here for what he can get,” said Clovis.
“For what he can _get_?” said the hostess with a touch of indignation in
her voice; “what do you mean? He’s a very rich man. What should he want
to get here?”
“He has one ruling passion,” said Clovis, “and there’s something he can
get here that is not to be had for love nor for money anywhere else in
the country, as far as I know.”
“But what? Whatever do you mean? What is his ruling passion?”
“Egg-collecting,” said Clovis. “He has agents all over the world getting
rare eggs for him, and his collection is one of the finest in Europe; but
his great ambition is to collect his treasures personally. He stops at
no expense nor trouble to achieve that end.”
“Good heavens! The buzzards, the rough-legged buzzards!” exclaimed Mrs.
Olston; “you don’t think he’s going to raid their nest?”
“What do you think yourself?” asked Clovis; “the only pair of
rough-legged buzzards known to breed in this country are nesting in your
woods. Very few people know about them, but as a member of the league
for protecting rare birds that information would be at his disposal. I
came down in the train with him, and I noticed that a bulky volume of
Dresser’s ‘Birds of Europe’ was one of the requisites that he had packed
in his travelling-kit. It was the volume dealing with short-winged hawks
and buzzards.”
Clovis believed that if a lie was worth telling it was worth telling
well.
“This is appalling,” said Mrs. Olston; “my husband would never forgive me
if anything happened to those birds. They’ve been seen about the woods
for the last year or two, but this is the first time they’ve nested. As
you say, they are almost the only pair known to be breeding in the whole
of Great Britain; and now their nest is going to be harried by a guest
staying under my roof. I must do something to stop it. Do you think if
I appealed to him—”
Clovis laughed.
“There is a story going about, which I fancy is true in most of its
details, of something that happened not long ago somewhere on the coast
of the Sea of Marmora, in which our friend had a hand. A Syrian
nightjar, or some such bird, was known to be breeding in the olive
gardens of a rich Armenian, who for some reason or other wouldn’t allow
Lanner to go in and take the eggs, though he offered cash down for the
permission. The Armenian was found beaten nearly to death a day or two
later, and his fences levelled. It was assumed to be a case of Mussulman
aggression, and noted as such in all the Consular reports, but the eggs
are in the Lanner collection. No, I don’t think I should appeal to his
better feelings if I were you.”
“I must do something,” said Mrs. Olston tearfully; “my husband’s parting
words when he went off to Norway were an injunction to see that those
birds were not disturbed, and he’s asked about them every time he’s
written. Do suggest something.”
“I was going to suggest picketing,” said Clovis.
“Picketing! You mean setting guards round the birds?”
“No; round Lanner. He can’t find his way through those woods by night,
and you could arrange that you or Evelyn or Jack or the German governess
should be by his side in relays all day long. A fellow guest he could
get rid of, but he couldn’t very well shake off members of the household,
and even the most determined collector would hardly go climbing after
forbidden buzzards’ eggs with a German governess hanging round his neck,
so to speak.”
Lanner, who had been lazily watching for an opportunity for prosecuting
his courtship of the Coulterneb girl, found presently that his chances of
getting her to himself for ten minutes even were non-existent. If the
girl was ever alone he never was. His hostess had changed suddenly, as
far as he was concerned, from the desirable type that lets her guests do
nothing in the way that best pleases them, to the sort that drags them
over the ground like so many harrows. She showed him the herb garden and
the greenhouses, the village church, some water-colour sketches that her
sister had done in Corsica, and the place where it was hoped that celery
would grow later in the year.
He was shown all the Aylesbury ducklings and the row of wooden hives
where there would have been bees if there had not been bee disease. He
was also taken to the end of a long lane and shown a distant mound
whereon local tradition reported that the Danes had once pitched a camp.
And when his hostess had to desert him temporarily for other duties he
would find Evelyn walking solemnly by his side. Evelyn was fourteen and
talked chiefly about good and evil, and of how much one might accomplish
in the way of regenerating the world if one was thoroughly determined to
do one’s utmost. It was generally rather a relief when she was displaced
by Jack, who was nine years old, and talked exclusively about the Balkan
War without throwing any fresh light on its political or military
history. The German governess told Lanner more about Schiller than he
had ever heard in his life about any one person; it was perhaps his own
fault for having told her that he was not interested in Goethe. When the
governess went off picket duty the hostess was again on hand with a
not-to-be-gainsaid invitation to visit the cottage of an old woman who
remembered Charles James Fox; the woman had been dead for two or three
years, but the cottage was still there. Lanner was called back to town
earlier than he had originally intended.
Hugo did not bring off his affair with Betty Coulterneb. Whether she
refused him or whether, as was more generally supposed, he did not get a
chance of saying three consecutive words, has never been exactly
ascertained. Anyhow, she is still the jolly Coulterneb girl.
The buzzards successfully reared two young ones, which were shot by a
local hairdresser.