His Lordship Tenth Earl of Brinstead to Wed One of Red Gap’s
Fairest Daughters
My hands so shook that in quick subterfuge I dropped the sheet, then
stooped for it, trusting to control myself before I again raised my
face. Mercifully the others were diverted by the journal. It was
seized from me, passed from hand to hand, the incredible words read
aloud by each in turn. They jested of it!
“Amazing chaps, your pressmen!” Thus the tenth Earl of Brinstead,
while I pinched myself viciously to bring back my lost aplomb. “Speedy
beggars, what, what! Never knew it myself till last night. She would
and she wouldn’t.”
“I think you knew,” said the lady. Stricken as I was I noted that she
eyed him rather strangely, quite as if she felt some decent respect
for him.
“Marriage is serious,” boomed the Mixer.
“Don’t blame her, don’t blame her--swear I don’t!” returned his
lordship. “Few days to think it over--quite right, quite right. Got to
know their own minds, my word!”
While their attention was thus mercifully diverted from me, my own
world by painful degrees resumed its stability. I mean to say, I am
not the fainting sort, but if I were, then I should have keeled over
at my first sight of that journal. But now I merely recovered my glass
of champagne and drained it. Rather pigged it a bit, I fancy. Badly
needing a stimulant I was, to be sure.
They now discussed details: the ceremony--that sort of thing.
“Before a registrar, quickest way,” said his lordship.
“Nonsense! Church, of course!” rumbled the Mixer very arbitrarily.
“Quite so, then,” assented his lordship. “Get me the rector of the
parish--a vicar, a curate, something of that sort.”
“Then the breakfast and reception,” suggested Mrs. Effie with a
meaning glance at me before she turned to the lady. “Of course,
dearest, your own tiny nest would never hold your host of friends----”
“I’ve never noticed,” said the other quickly. “It’s always seemed big
enough,” she added in pensive tones and with downcast eyes.
“Oh, not large enough by half,” put in Belknap-Jackson, “Most charming
little home-nook but worlds too small for all your well-wishers.” With
a glance at me he narrowed his eyes in friendly calculation. “I’m
somewhat puzzled myself--Suppose we see what the capable Ruggles has
to suggest.”
“Let Ruggles suggest something by all means!” cried Mrs. Effie.
I mean to say, they both quite thought they knew what I would suggest,
but it was nothing of the sort. The situation had entirely changed.
Quite another sort of thing it was. Quickly I resolved to fling them
both aside. I, too, would be a dead sportsman.
“I was about to suggest,” I remarked, “that my place here is the only
one at all suitable for the breakfast and reception. I can promise
that the affair will go off smartly.”
The two had looked up with such radiant expectation at my opening
words and were so plainly in a state at my conclusion that I dare say
the future Countess of Brinstead at once knew what. She flashed them a
look, then eyed me with quick understanding.
“Great!” she exclaimed in a hearty American manner. “Then that’s
settled,” she continued briskly, as both Belknap-Jackson and Mrs.
Effie would have interposed “Ruggles shall do everything: take it off
our shoulders--ices, flowers, invitations.”
“The invitation list will need great care, of course,” remarked
Belknap-Jackson with a quite savage glance at me.
“But you just called him ‘the capable Ruggles,’” insisted the fiancée.
“We shall leave it all to him. How many will you ask, Ruggles?” Her
eyes flicked from mine to Belknap-Jackson.
“Quite almost every one,” I answered firmly.
“Fine!” she said.
“Ripping!” said his lordship.
“His lordship will of course wish a best man,” suggested
Belknap-Jackson. “I should be only too glad----”
“You’re going to suggest Ruggles again!” cried the lady. “Just the man
for it! You’re quite right. Why, we owe it all to Ruggles, don’t we?”
She here beamed upon his lordship. Belknap-Jackson wore an expression
of the keenest disrelish.
“Of course, course!” replied his lordship. “Dashed good man, Ruggles!
Owe it all to him, what, what!”
I fancy in the cordial excitement of the moment he was quite sincere.
As to her ladyship, I am to this day unable to still a faint suspicion
that she was having me on. True, she owed it all to me. But I hadn’t a
bit meant it and well she knew it. Subtle she was, I dare say, but
bore me no malice, though she was not above setting Belknap-Jackson
back a pace or two each time he moved up.
A final toast was drunk and my guests drifted out. Belknap-Jackson
again glared savagely at me as he went, but Mrs. Effie rather
outglared him. Even I should hardly have cared to face her at that
moment.
And I was still in a high state of muddle. It was all beyond me. Had
his lordship, I wondered, too seriously taken my careless words about
American equality? Of course I had meant them to apply only to those
stopping on in the States.
Cousin Egbert lingered to the last, rather with a troubled air of
wishing to consult me. When I at length came up with him he held the
journal before me, indicating lines in the article--“relict of an
Alaskan capitalist, now for some years one of Red Gap’s social
favourites.”
“Read that there,” he commanded grimly. Then with a terrific
earnestness I had never before remarked in him: “Say, listen here! I
better go round right off and mix it up with that fresh guy. What’s he
hinting around at by that there word ‘relict’? Why, say, she was
married to him----”
I hastily corrected his preposterous interpretation of the word, much
to his relief.
I was still in my precious state of muddle. Mrs. Judson took occasion
to flounce by me in her work of clearing the table.
“A prince in his palace,” she taunted. I laughed in a lofty manner.
“Why, you poor thing, I’ve known it all for some days,” I said.
“Well, I must say you’re the deep one if you did--never letting on!”
She was unable to repress a glance of admiration at me as she moved
off.