The Honourable Tony eyed him for a moment strangely--and then
shrugged his shoulders.
“At a corpse--exactly. And there you are!”
“Well, where am I? D’you want me to tell Pattie that all you have
to say to her is ‘No, by God’?”
“I want you to tell Pattie just exactly nothing whatever; say that
I was off tiger hunting with the Sultan, and that you couldn’t get
track of me to save your soul.”
“Thanks; I don’t go in for lies--more especially not with Pattie.”
“I see.” The Honourable Tony, his hands deep in his pockets,
evidently saw something not entirely flattering, judging from the
curl to his lip. After a minute, however, he dismissed it with
another careless shrug. “Oh, spare your conscience by all means.
Give Pattie my love, then, and tell her that I’d like most awfully
to run up and wipe her out at tennis, but that I’m so indispensable
here that I can’t possibly make it.”
“That all?”
“Quite all, thanks.”
“But, good Lord, I tell you that she _wants_ you----”
“You misunderstood her.”
“Don’t be a fool. She told me----”
The Honourable Tony jerked forward suddenly, his fingers biting
into Ledyard’s arm, his low voice savage as a whip.
“Drop it, will you? _Drop it!_” At the sight of the blank and
stricken amazement in the other’s eyes he broke off sharply, his
fingers relaxing their grip. “Oh, Lord love us, we’re both fit for
a madhouse! Throw some water over me--pound my head against the
wall--do something but stand there staring like another lunatic.
Pull your jaw back, there’s a good kid.”
Ledyard stared at him wretchedly.
“But, Calvert, I swear that I don’t understand. I thought--we all
thought--that you--that you cared for her----”
“My dear fellow, what in the world has that got to do with it? The
more I cared for her the less likely I’d be to go within a thousand
miles of her. For God’s sake, and Pattie’s sake, and my sake, try
to get this straight. I am absolutely no good. I don’t mean that
I’m one of your deep-dyed, hair-raising villains--no such luck; I’m
simply a waster and rotter of the very first water who’s gone to
and fro over the face of the earth doing the things that he ought
not to have done, and leaving undone the things that he ought to
have done for more years than he cares to remember. You’re worse
than mad to tempt me to forget it; don’t do it again, there’s a
good chap. And while you’re about it, try and remember that the
best there is isn’t half good enough for Pattie.”
Ledyard swallowed hard.
“I don’t care--you can talk till you’re black in the face, and I
won’t believe that you know yourself. If it came to a show-down,
you’d be as good as the best.”
“Thanks. As it’s not likely to, you can take my word for it that
I’m not of the stuff of which heroes are made, even in a pinch.
Now that that’s settled, how about hunting up the little Vallorosa
hussy? It’s getting on a bit.”
“I hope to the Lord she’s decided to settle here for life.”
“Oh, rot. Tell you what, if the young thing doesn’t turn up
pretty promptly, we’ll call out the royal, holy, gold-fringed,
pearl-tasselled, diamond-studded red parasols, and romp over in
time to cadge some light refreshments from His Majesty. He has
a cognac that will make you sit up and yelp with excitement;
Napoleon--the real stuff, I pledge you my word. I suppose that it
will be simply thrown away on you; half a nip of prune cordial
sets the good old world going round for you Yankee martyrs these
days, what?”
“Help!” invoked Ledyard with gloomy fervour. “Glad to know you get
the comic sections regularly.”
“My priceless old thing, we get nothing whatever regularly; that’s
one of the unholy charms. When my royal master and pupil feels
any craving for mail and newspapers and other foreign frivolities
he summons about twenty of the stalwart flowers of the masculine
population and bids them oil and decorate and adorn themselves as
befits the occasion and pop into the old lacquer sampans and yo
heave ho on business of state. A few days or a few weeks later they
turn up like Santa Claus bearing gifts, and I take all the pretty
envelopes with an English postmark and put them in a nice tin can
with a nice round stone, and drop ’em out of the window plop into
the jolly old river--returned unopened, with many, many thanks!
You never can tell when one of the tricky little devils might read
‘Anthony, come home, all is forgiven.’”
“But, my Lord, they must be worried half frantic! How do they know
whether you’re alive or dead?”
“My dear chap, the only thing that the Bolinghams have ever worried
about as far as little Anthony Christopher’s concerned was that he
mightn’t have the grace to die before one of his waggish pranks
landed him in jail or actually cost them something in pounds and
shillings instead of mere lamentations! That’s why I gratified
them by throwing over my share of the title when I came of age.
Lord Anthony, what? No, thanks. But it’s all too clear that you
don’t know Aunt Pamela and Aunt Clarissa, the last of the Bolingham
vestals, or those splendid fellows, Roderick, Cyril, and Oliver.”
“Good-night, I’d hate to be as bitter as that about my worst
enemy.” Ledyard’s honest drawl was chilled and thoughtful.
“Bitter? About my priceless family?” His careless mirth flooded the
quiet room. “No, I swear that’s good! Why, my child, I revel in
’em; I have ever since Oliver used to jerk me out of bed at two in
the morning to wallop the everlasting soul out of me because he’d
lost at _écarté_--ragging along all the time about how it was his
sacred duty as head of the Bolingham family to see that I learned
not to disgrace it again by getting in through the scullery window
at nine o’clock of a fine August night. I wasn’t more than three
feet high, with a face no bigger than a button, but I couldn’t keep
it straight then and I can’t keep it straight now when I think
of that enormous red mug of his with all those noble sentiments
pouring out of it--and the harder he walloped and the nobler he
gabbled, the more I knew he’d lost. I was Satan’s own limb even in
those days, and he generally managed to dig up some excellent and
fruity reason for improving the witching hours with a boot-strap,
but it undeniably was one on both of us that the night that he lost
one hundred and thirty-seven golden guineas I’d been in bed in a
state of grace since early dawn, with a nice bit of fever and a
whopping toothache.”
“And just what did he do about that?” inquired Ledyard grimly. He
did not seem to be as carried away by the humour of the situation
as the Honourable Tony, whose carved dimples had become riotous at
memory.
“Oh, you simply have to credit Noll for resource--he trounced
the skin off me for adding hypocrisy to my list of iniquities!
And there was I, innocent as a water baby of guilt or guile for
twenty-four priceless hours--you’ll have to admit that it was a
good one on me. I’ve taken jolly good care from that day to this
that I didn’t let a night come around without deserving a simply
first-rate caning, let me tell you!”
Ledyard made a gesture of fierce disgust.
“Do you mean to tell me that your own brother beat you night after
night and no one lifted a hand to stop him?”
“Oh, well, come, who do you think was going to stop him?” inquired
the Honourable Tony with indulgent amusement. “After all, the noble
Duke had a fairly good right to see that a cheeky brat learned all
of the sacred traditions of the family from the sacred head of the
family, hadn’t he? Well, rather! All the more to his credit that
the little jackanapes wasn’t his own brother.”
“Wasn’t?” echoed Ledyard blankly.
“Oh, come, come--you don’t mean to say that no one’s told you the
true history of the little black sheep rampant on the Bolingham
arms? No? Oh, I say, I _am_ let down---- I thought all you chaps
used to jaw about it for hours between flights! No one even said
a word about it down the river? Well, there’s glory for you;
it begins to look as though I’d won your kind attentions under
entirely false pretences, my dear kid. All the time that you’ve
been thinking me a purely blue specimen of the British aristocracy
I’ve been a black skeleton and a dancing sheep and a mere paltry
half brother to His Grace the Duke of Bolingham--and it begins to
look as though I were an impostor to boot. I say, I _am_ sick.”
He looked far from sick; leaning back in the long chair with his
brown hands clasped behind his bright head, he looked radiantly and
outrageously amused.
Ledyard gave a vicious kick to an innocuous rattan stool.
“I don’t know what you’re driving at, but if you’re implying that
the reason that I was misguided enough to choose you for a friend,
was that you happened to have a duke for your father, you can shut
your mouth and eat your words. I’d always understood that you were
Bolingham’s son, but I don’t give a curse if he picked you out of
an ash-can, and you know it. Dukes mean nothing in my young life,
let me tell you. If you aren’t Bolingham’s son, who are you?”
“Oh, I’m Bolingham’s son, all right enough, only unlike Noll and
Cyril and Roddie, I don’t happen to be able to claim the Lady
Alicia Honoria Fortescue as my mother. No, no, nothing to bring
the blush of shame to that ingenuous brow, William. The lady died
some eighteen years before I arrived on the scene, so neither of us
can be blamed, you’ll admit. My mother’s name happened to be Biddy
O’Rourke, and I’d be willing to take an oath that she was prouder
of that and being able to dance longer on her toes than any one
else in the London music halls, than of the minor matter of bearing
the title of Duchess of Bolingham and having forty-two servants
call her ‘Your Grace.’ Your Grace! I shouldn’t be surprised if it
fitted her better than the Lady Alicia Honoria.”
“You mean he was married to her?”
“Rather--rather, my young sleuth! There was all too little doubt
on that score to make it pleasant for any one but the unregenerate
Duke and his Duchess. It seemed to afford them considerable
amusement.”
“I didn’t know that dukes married--married artists.” Young Ledyard
eyed his host with suspicion; he had fallen victim more than once
to the soaring flights of that gentleman’s imagination.
“They don’t; that was exactly what furnished all the ripe
excitement. He not only married her, but he was most frightfully
set up about it--fairly swollen with pride. Nothing damped them, as
far as I can learn; Society and the Court and the whole blooming
family went off their heads with excitement and cut her and
insulted her and disowned her--and she laughed in their faces and
danced on their toes. She thought that the whole thing was the most
stupendous joke; Bunny says that there never were five minutes
after she came to Gray Courts that you couldn’t hear her laughing
or singing somewhere about the place--and sometimes doing both at
once.”
“Who’s Bunny?”
“Bunny was her maid--afterward she was my own private slave until
the magnificent Noll showed her the gates of the ancestral home
after she’d locked me up in her room one night when he was out
hunting for me with the boot-strap! She went off into the most
stunning hysterics right outside the door and called him a bloody
roaring monster what ought to have his heart cut out for laying a
finger on an innocent lamb. And when they fished the innocent lamb
out from under the bed and informed him between larrups that his
Bunny had been hurled into outer darkness by two footmen and an
under-gardener, he let out the last howls of his life. He’d reached
the mature age of six and a half, but he hasn’t lost or found
anything since worth a single solitary howl!”
“Why didn’t your mother and father stop them?” demanded Ledyard,
looking stern and sick and still faintly incredulous.
“Because the only active interference they were capable of at the
time would have been with a Ouija board,” explained the Honourable
Tony affably. “Exit Biddy, Duchess of Bolingham, laughing, on the
day that young Anthony Christopher Stoningham Calvert makes his
first bow to a ravished family. I’ll wager that before she slipped
off she realized that it was a good one on all of us, too!”
“Well, but what happened to your father?”
“Oh, the Black Duke, as he was impolitely referred to, hadn’t
extracted any amusement from life before he discovered his Biddy,
and once she was gone, he evidently considered it a dingy affair.
He slunk around the empty corridors for a bit hunting for the echo
of her laughter, but he got tired of that game, too, and died of
pneumonia and boredom without making any particular fuss--though
Bunny swears that after everyone in the room thought he was gone
for good and they all were filing out of the room on the tips of
reverent toes, he flung back his head and gave one great roar of
laughter--the kind of a roar that he used to give when he’d come
on little Biddy in a dark hall, dancing out an imitation of the
Bolingham vestals at their weekly task of patronizing the parish
poor. Bunny said that it fair scared the breath out of their
bodies, but when they went back he was lying there as dead as last
year’s wild boar.”
“Calvert, are you making this up?”
The Honourable Tony turned his head sharply toward his
interlocutor, his dark eyes narrowed to slits. After a moment’s
cold scrutiny of the troubled countenance, he shrugged his
shoulders with a not highly diverted laugh.
“My dear kid, I suppose that I’ve asked for this by over-valuing
your powers of discrimination! Just as a tip, though, I may pass on
to you the information that even the clown in the circus is apt to
draw the line at playing the giddy fool over his mother. I might
add, moreover, that my fertile imagination would balk at inventing
any one as delightful as the lady who did me the honour to be mine.”
Ledyard, flushed to the bone, met the ironic gaze with considerable
dignity.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “As you imply, I’m a tasteless fool.”
“And so you’re in excellent company!” his host assured him. “I will
now rapidly descend from the ancestral high-horse and prove to you,
strictly as a matter of penance, that I am not invariably a liar.
If you’ll wait just half a shake, I’ll present you to Biddy, ninth
Duchess of Bolingham.”
He vanished into the room at the back with a reassuring gleam over
his shoulder at young Ledyard’s startled countenance, and was back
in rather less than half a shake with a shabby black case in his
hands. He put it carefully on the table between them, touched a
spring, and stepped with a low bow.
“There!” he announced. “Madame Biddy, the American kid with the
freckles--you know the one. Mr. Bill Ledyard from Ohio, the Duchess
of Bolingham--from Ireland.”
Out of the black velvet frame there smiled, wicked and joyful, a
tiny vision of gold and ivory and sapphire. The head, with its
froth of bright curls, lightly tilted--the nose tilted, too--and
the lips tilted, too--there she sat laughing down the years, gay as
a flower, reckless as a butterfly, lovely as a dream.
“Buffets and insults and three inimitable step-children and four
incomparable sisters-in-law--and then some artist chap came along
and painted her like this!” The Honourable Tony leaned over,
touching the gauzy folds of the dress with a light and caressing
finger. “She’s a bit incredible, after all, you know! They were
going to crush all that life and laughter clear down into the
earth, and away she went dancing through their fingers into the
dust that was just a flower garden to her. She’s more alive this
minute than they’ll ever be in all their everlasting stale lives.
Ah, Biddy darlin’, look at you now after flirtin’ with the fine
young man from America, and you with the blessed saints to teach
you wisdom all these weary long years.”
Ledyard stared down at her, young and awed and tongue-tied.
“She’s--she’s the prettiest thing that I ever saw--honestly.”
“Oh, prettier than that, young Bill. She’s the prettiest thing that
ever lived--or ever died. And she was such a lovely little lunatic
herself that we get on famously. We know what a joke it all is,
don’t we, Biddy? God be praised, we even know when it’s on us.
There now, back you go, mavourneen, while Mr. Billee Ledyar’ and I
start out hunting for another lady. Bill, take a look across the
_kampong_ at the sun while I hunt up my helmet--if it’s lower than
Bhakdi’s roof you’d better be off. It goes down like a rocket in
these parts, once it gets started.”
Young Ledyard flung open the great wooden door that had barred out
the heat, and a little breeze came dancing in, barely stirring the
strange glossy leaves that clustered about the ladder-like steps.
The sky was blue as steel; behind the black shadow of the Sultan’s
residence there were livid streaks--the world was silent and alien
as a dream. He shivered strongly, and stepped back into the room.
“The sun’s set,” he said. “There’s someone coming across from that
shack you call a palace.”
The Honourable Tony strolled leisurely out of his bedroom.
“Ghundi!” he commented after a brief inspection. “The incomparable
Ghundi.”
“Who the devil’s Ghundi?”
“He’s my head boy, William, and the delight of my soul; the only
honest man I ever knew, saving your presence. I’ve taught him
English, and he’s taught me considerably more than that--oh,
considerably. What tidings, Ghundi?”
The bronze statue saluted with a grave and beautiful precision.
“Master, the Great One says that the white woman stays. Let your
friend return down the waters without her.”
The Honourable Tony lifted his brows.
“Stays with the Great One, Ghundi?”
“With the Great One, Master.”
The Honourable Tony glanced pensively at the dark bulk of the
palace.
“So much for that!” he murmured gently. “Bear my compliments to the
Great One, Ghundi. Is all in readiness at the beach?”
“The raft waits, Master. Go swiftly, or your friend will stumble in
the night.”
“Excellent advice! Latch the door after you, and on your way,
William; I’ll come as far as the beach. No, this way. The air feels
cool as water, doesn’t it? Smell that breeze; it’s straight down
from the jungle.”
“It smells of poison,” cried young Ledyard fiercely. “The whole
place is rank with it--it’s crawling. Calvert--Calvert, come back
with me. I swear I’ll never let you regret it; I swear----”
“And here we are. Gad, we’re just in time if you want to tell the
raft from the river. In you go, my lad, and off you go. Lord love
you for coming!”
“Calvert, I won’t--I’m not going.”
The Honourable Tony laid his hands lightly and strongly on the
boy’s shoulders, pushing him relentlessly toward the water.
“My dearest kid, don’t be an ass. If you stayed one minute longer,
you’d ruin the best memory of my life. I mean it. Off with you.”...
He stood with one arm flung up in a reassuring gesture of farewell
until the bamboo raft with its sandy-haired occupant vanished
around the dim curve of the river. The night was falling with
the velvet precipitation of the tropics--even while he stood its
dark mantle was about him; new perfumes stole from its folds,
troubling and exquisite, and one by one its jewels shone out--the
small, ruddy fires of the _kampong_, an occasional lantern
swinging hurriedly by and, square by square, the distant windows
in the Sultan’s residence, flashing aggressive as a challenge. He
lowered his arm somewhat abruptly. Very gay to-night, the Sultan’s
residence; gayer than was its wont--gay as for some high festivity.
The imperial Bhakdi was not greatly given to such prodigal display
of oil and tallow; his mentor eyed the illumination critically, and
then, with the old indifferent shrug, swung leisurely off through
the blackness toward the shadow deeper than the surrounding shadows
that was home. He ran lightly up the crazy steps, felt for the
latch--and drew back his hand as sharply as though he had touched
hot coal. He had touched something more startling than any coal;
the groping fingers had closed on emptiness. The latched door was
open.
“Ghundi!” His voice cut sharply into the dark space that a few
minutes before had been a room, green-cushioned, white-matted,
commonplace, and serene. “Ghundi!”
Silence--haunted and ominous. The Honourable Tony leaned against
the door frame and addressed the shadows.
“Of course, this is frightfully jolly! I’d have laid out a mat with
welcome drawn up all over it if I’d had the faintest notion of what
was in store for me--though that would have been a bit superfluous,
come to think of it! You seem to have managed nicely without any
mat at all. I hope you’ve made yourself quite at home?”
Silence. The Honourable Tony did not move, but he raised his voice.
“Mrs. Potts! I say, I hope you’ve made yourself quite at home?”
From the hushed depths came a small, frantic commotion.
“Ah, be qui-_yet_!” The desperate whisper came toward him in a
rush. “Be qui-_yet_, I do implore!”
“Oh, my dear girl, come now! Silence may be golden, and all
that--and naturally I’m enormously flattered at finding you lurking
around the corners of my humble abode, but before we do away with
the human voice entirely, why not have a go at straightening out
one or two minor matters? The first being just precisely what in
the devil you’re doing here instead of on Ledyard’s boat?”
“Meestaire Honable Tonee, on my knees I pray to you, be more
quiyet! Lissen, lissen, come more close. I tell you evairy thing.
No, come more close. Do not let them see--do not, do not let them
hear. Ah--ah--more sof’, more still! So!”
Out of the blackness the suppliant whisper drew him like a taut
thread--nearer, nearer--he stumbled over something small and
yielding, swore and laughed in the same quick breath, and felt two
fluttering hands clutch at him, closing over his wrist in frantic
protest.
“No, no, do not laff--hush, do not laff, I say.”
“Well, but what in _hell_?” inquired the Honourable Tony, softly
enough to satisfy even his exigent audience. “No, I say, drop it,
there’s a good little lunatic! I’m after the matches; they’re on
this table somewhere----”
“Honable Tonee--lissen--eef one of those matches you should light,
we die.”
“Oh, we do, do we? Well, death will be a blessed relief for one of
us and a just retribution for the other. Why hasn’t someone killed
you for using that simply frightful stuff long before this, Daisy?”
“What stuff ees that? Ah, ah, Honable Tonee, I am a-frighten to
die; I am a-frighten!”
“But after all, that hardly alters the merits of the case, now does
it? Though even death doesn’t seem to quite expiate the crime! Do
you bathe in it?”
“But in _what_? Lissen--I tell you, lissen----”
“Lissen yourself, my child; it’s I who am going to tell you.
Apparently you’ve had no guidance whatever so far, but precisely
here is where you acquire a guardian angel. Daisy, little girls
have been boiled in oil for less than using one drop of the noxious
fluid in which you are drowning.”
“No, I do not onnerstan’--no, but lissen, I beg, I pray--you mus’
hide me, Honable Tonee, you mus’ hide me fas’ before he come to
keel us both.”
“Hide you?” The Honourable Tony yielded to unregenerate mirth
above the terrified murmurs of protest. “My dear Potts, you
might precisely as well ask a thimble to hide a perfume factory!
Actually, you know, when I was clean over there by the door, it
fairly bowled me off my feet.”
“Hush--oh, hush--eet ees my pairfume?”
“It is indeed--it most emphatically is.”
“You could know eet from that door?”
“I could know it from the far edge of the _kampong_.”
“Then they fin’ me--then, oh, they fin’ me!”
At the sick terror of that small wail the Honourable Tony stirred.
“I say, you’re not really frightened, are you?”
“I am vairy frighten’ to die,” his visitor told him simply. “You
are not?”
“Well, I’d be jolly well let down, I can tell you! It would upset
my schedule no end; so if it’s all right with you we might go on
living for a bit.”
“But that I think we cannot do,” said the small, chilled whisper.