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THE MESSENGER
by
ELIZABETH ROBINS
Author of "Come and Find Me," etc.
With Illustrations by George Giguere
New York
The Century Co.
1919
Copyright, 1919, by
Elizabeth Robins
Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
The Century Co.
Published, September, 1919
TO
S. C.
[Illustration: "Now your finger-print, if you please"]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Now your finger-print, if you please"
"O Gavan, save me!"
"I have a cabin below. I place it at the lady's disposal"
"The name of the man in the War Office!"
THE MESSENGER
CHAPTER I
"After all, we aren't _yet_ living in the millennium, Julian. What I'm
afraid of is that some day you'll be wanting to carry these notions of
yours beyond the bounds of what's reasonable."
"You mean," said the other young man, with a flash in his dark eyes,
"you mean you're afraid I may just chance to be honest in my 'notions,'
as you call them, of a scheme of social justice."
As far off as you saw Gavan Napier, you knew him as a scion not only of
the governing class, but in all likelihood of one of the governing
families. Exactly the sort of man, you would say, to have Eton and
Balliol in the past, a present as unpaid, private secretary to a member
of his Majesty's Government, and a future in which the private secretary
himself would belong to officialdom and employ pleasant, more or less
accomplished, and more rather than less idle, young gentlemen to take
down occasional notes, write an occasional letter, and see a boring
constituent.
It was no boring constituent he was seeing now, out of those cool blue
eyes of his, yet he followed with evident dissatisfaction the figure of
a woman who had appeared an instant over the sand-dunes and who, as
Napier turned to look at her instead of at his ball, changed her tack
and sauntered inland.
"What do you suppose she's always hanging about for?" Napier asked his
companion.
"As if you didn't know!"
"Well, if _you_ do," retorted Napier, "I wish you'd tell me."
"I shall do nothing of the kind. You're quite conceited enough." Julian
shouldered his golf clubs (it was against his principles to employ a
caddie) and trudged on at the side of his unencumbered friend. The eyes
of both followed the lady disappearing among the dunes.
"I've seen her only two or three times," Julian said, "but I've seen she
hasn't eyes for anybody except you."
"_That's_ far from being so," Napier retorted. "But if it were, I should
know the reason."
"Of course you do."
"But _you_ don't," Napier still insisted. "The reason is I'm the only
person in the house who isn't Miss von Schwarzenberg's slave."
"Oh! I took her at first for just a governess."
"She's a lot besides that!" Napier wagged his head in a
curiosity-provoking way.
"There's been so much to talk about since I got back," Julian went on,
"or else I've been meaning to ask about her."
"She interests you?" Napier asked a little sharply.
"I confess," said Julian, "I haven't understood her position at the
McIntyres."
"If _I_ haven't--it isn't from lack of data. Only,"--Napier wrinkled his
fine brows--"did you ever know a person that nothing you know about
them seems to fit? That isn't grammar, but it's my feeling about that
young woman."
The two played a very evenly matched game. As they walked side by side
after their balls, Julian wondered from time to time whether the subject
of Miss von Schwarzenberg had been introduced to prevent his reverting
to that vision of his--all the clearer since his tour round the
world--of a reconstituted society in which vested privilege should no
longer have a leg to stand on. Or could it be that Gavan was seriously
intrigued by the Rhine maiden who, more or less as a special favor, had
consented to superintend the studies and to share the recreations of
"that handful," Madge McIntyre, aged sixteen? This girl, with the boyish
face and boyish tastes and boyish clothes (whose mane of flaming hair
had helped to fasten on her the nickname of Wildfire McIntyre), Julian
already knew slightly as the only and much-spoiled daughter of Napier's
chief. Sir William McIntyre, K. C. B., adviser to the Admiralty and
laird of Kirklamont, had been the notable chairman of endless shipping
companies and prime promoter of numberless commercial enterprises, until
he accepted a seat in the cabinet, a man of vigor and some originality
of mind, in contrast to his wife--a brainless butterfly of a woman who
complained bitterly that she had less trouble with her four sons than
with her one daughter. The one daughter, by ill luck, had an
inconvenient share of her father's force of character. She had ruled the
house of McIntyre till the advent of the lady in question.
That lady's predecessor had been a Miss Gayne. Miss Gayne had been in
possession till a fateful morning last summer when Madge, driving along
the coast road, came in sight of Glenfallon Castle, and pulled up her
pony with a jerk that nearly precipitated poor Miss Gayne out of the
cart. "My goodness gracious, the Duke is back!"
Glenfallon, on its cliff above the Firth, commanded a view north and
south over the many-bayed and channeled mainland, out over rocky
islets--shining jewels of jacinth and jasper and azurite, spilled
haphazard into the sea--clear away to that great gray expanse miscalled
by the new governess the German Ocean. Nobody had lived at Glenfallon as
long as Madge could remember, so that she might perhaps be pardoned for
emitting that excited scream at sight of two young men in tennis
flannels busying themselves about the net.
"We mustn't sit here staring at them," Miss Gayne remonstrated.
Miss Gayne picked up the reins which Madge had let fall. Madge seized
them with an impatient "Don't!" and flung them round the whip.
"It isn't proper to sit like this, staring into a stranger's tennis
court. At two strange young men, too!"
"I'm only staring at one. You can have the other."
Presently a tennis ball came over the wall and bounced into the road.
Before Miss Gayne could remonstrate, Madge was out of the cart and had
sent the ball hurtling back.
The younger man caught it, and the elder advanced to the wall to thank
the young lady. He was a very good specimen of fair, broad-shouldered,
blunt-featured manhood, but when he opened his mouth he spoke with a
foreign accent.
"When are you expecting him?" demanded Madge.
"Expecting whom? We are not expecting anybody, I'm afraid, and the more
pleased to see _you_." He made his quick little bow and turned, to
present his brother. "This is Ernst Pforzheim and I am Carl."
Madge nodded, deliberately ignoring Miss Gayne's hurried approach and
disapproving presence.
"How do you do? Have you bought Glenfallon?"
No, they had only leased it. They hoped the change and quiet might do
their father some good. He hadn't been well ever since ... ever since
they lost their mother.
"We have great hopes of this fine air and perfect quiet," said the
elder. "The quiet is the very thing for our father--but for us it may
become a little _triste_. So we play tennis. Do you play tennis,
Miss ... a ... Miss...?"
"Do I play tennis?" Madge did not long leave any doubt on that score.
The adventure was not smiled on at home, but poor Miss Gayne got all the
blame.
There was a touch of irony in the lady's being succeeded by some one
recommended by, or at least through, these very undesirable and
undoubtedly foreign acquaintances.
The same success which the Pforzheim young men had with their country
neighbors generally, they had with Madge. Everybody seemed to like them.
Lady McIntyre liked them from the first. "Such charming manners! And so
devoted to their poor father!"
With his pleasant malice Napier described the Pforzheims at Kirklamont,
and Lady McIntyre's graciousness that "'_so_ hoped to make your father's
acquaintance.'" The Pforzheims shook their heads over the poor
gentleman's condition, "'confined to a darkened room.'"
"'But we heard that he was out yesterday evening, in your new steam
launch.'
"'Ah! that ... yes ... that is because his eyes are very painful. He
can't bear the least light. So he gets no exercise and no change of air
during the day.'
"'Well, in that case of course he couldn't expect to sleep!' And then
Lady McIntyre had an inspiration. 'Doesn't it sound,' she appealed to
Sir William, 'extremely like the kind of insomnia Lord Grantbury suffers
from? I believe it's the very identical same. And Lord Grantbury has
found a cure.'
"Great sensation on the part of the Pforzheims. Oh, _would_ Lady
McIntyre tell them.... They'd be eternally grateful if she would only
get Lord Grantbury's prescription. But Lady McIntyre could produce it at
once. She did produce it. And what did Julian think it was?"
Julian shook his head. He knew quite well now that Arthur was telling
him this yarn in order to avoid reopening the subject of their
disagreement--the only one in their lives. So he bore with hearing that
Lord Grantbury's remedy for insomnia was a combination of motion and
absence of daylight. Lord Grantbury had contended that light was a
strong excitant. That the consciousness of being seen, of having to
acknowledge recognition, or even of knowing your label was being clapped
on your back--all that was disturbing in certain states of health. "'So
he has himself driven out, they say, about eleven o'clock at night in a
sixty-horsepower car, and goes whizzing along lonely roads where there's
no fear of police traps, as hard as he can lick. When he comes back, he
finds that all that ozone, and whatever it is, has quieted him. He
sleeps like a top.' The sons were advised to put Father Pforzheim in a
Rolls-Royce car and see what would happen. 'You haven't got a high power
car? Till they can send for one,'--Lady McIntyre appealed to her
husband--'don't you think, William, we might--?'
"But Carl, profuse in thanks, said that unfortunately his father had a
nervous abhorrence of motor cars.
"'How very strange!' said Lady McIntyre.
"'No, it wasn't at all strange. My mother,'--Carl dropped his eyes and
compressed his full lips--'our dear mother was killed in a motor
accident.'
"'But our father,'--Ernst looked up as he brushed a white, triple-ringed
hand across his eyes--'our father finds the water soothing. After all,
Carl, swift motion on the water, why shouldn't that do as well as racing
along a road?'
"'_And_ darkness,' said Lady McIntyre.
"'_And_ darkness!' the brothers echoed her together. 'We can never thank
you enough, Lady McIntyre. We will persevere with your friend Lord
Grantbury's remedy.'" The brothers clicked their heels and pressed their
lips to her hand and left her in a flutter. The poor young men's anxiety
was most touching! Especially Carl's. Lady McIntyre, according to
Napier, doted on Carl. He wasn't so taken up by his filial
preoccupations either, that he couldn't sympathize with the anxiety of a
mother. Lady McIntyre's about Madge. Mr. Carl agreed that Miss Gayne was
_not_ the person. He had seen that at once. No influence whatever. Miss
McIntyre was a very charming young lady. Full of character. Fire, too.
She required special handling.
"'Ah! how well you understand! Now, what do you advise me to do? Seeing
you reminds me,' Lady McIntyre said with her infantile candor, 'that
we've never tried a German governess. We've had so many French ones. And
quite an army of English and Scotch--'
"'Ah! a German governess!'"--he pulled at his mustache. Mr. Pforzheim
promised to consult his aunt. The widow of a Heidelberg professor.
By a special providence Frau Lenz knew of a young lady who was at that
moment in London, on her way home from America. She would be the very
person to consult.
"She was the very person to _get_," Lady McIntyre said, when she came
back from interviewing the paragon. "And, Heaven be praised, I've got
her!"
They had gone back to London on account of that commission Sir William
had insisted on having appointed. There were a lot of people in London
that July, and things going on. Madge in the thick of everything, as
though she'd been twenty-five instead of fifteen. That's how the von
Schwarzenberg found her, neglecting lessons, ignoring laws, living at
the theater, figuring at her father's official parties, sitting up till
all hours of the night, smoking cigarettes till her fingers looked as if
she'd been shelling green walnuts, gossiping, arguing, on every subject
under the sun. That's the situation to which Miss von Schwarzenberg was
introduced as the latest in a long and sorry line.
Napier had watched the transformation.
"They've raised the Schwarzenberg's salary twice." She had subdued every
member of the minister's household.
"Not you, I hope?" Julian said quickly.
Napier laughed. "_She_ would set your mind at rest on that score. Only
the other day she got me into a corner. 'What have you got against me,
Mr. Napier?' she said. 'You don't like me.' It took me so by surprise, I
stammered: '_I?..._ What an idea!' '_Why_ don't you like me, Mr.
Napier?' Mercifully just then Wildfire McIntyre flamed across our
path."