When the young men reached Kirklamont, the McIntyres were already
gathered about the tea-table in the hall of the big, ugly, Scotch
country house. "The family" consisted at the moment only of three, the
fourth person present being Miss von Schwarzenberg, for it was mid-July.
In another month the absent sons (two soldiers and a sailor) would come
up for the shooting and bring their friends.
All this presupposed--as nobody found the least difficulty in
doing--that Sir William's recent "little heart attack" would leave no
legacy more destructive of the usual routine than abandonment of London
a fortnight or so earlier than had been planned. A more acute anxiety
might have touched Lady McIntyre had her husband not deliberately thrown
her off the track. He dubbed the great specialist "a verra reasonable
fella," who didn't make a mountain out of a molehill. The patient did
not add the means by which he had been coerced into turning his back on
public affairs at a moment made so critical for the Government by Irish
affairs.
"A break in the London strain, at once and often, or else smash."
That was the dour deliverance which had installed the McIntyres in their
beloved Kirklamont two weeks earlier than they could have hoped. It was
a party which, with a single exception (again Miss von Schwarzenberg),
had shaken off London by every token of tweed garment, stout boots, of
golf stockings, and of gaiters.
Cup in hand, Sir William, as became the head of the house, stood planted
on wide-apart legs in front of the fireplace--a sanguine-colored, plump,
little partridge of a man with a kind, rather _ruse_ face.
Lady McIntyre, behind the urn--fair, fluffy-haired, blue-eyed--looked,
as such women will, far older in the country than she did in her "London
clothes." But she was far too correct not to make any sacrifice called
for by the unwritten law of her kind. Behold her, therefore, bereft of
all fripperies save the dangling diamond ear-rings, which emphasized
painfully an excuse for frivolity which had been outlived. To tell the
blunt truth, Lady McIntyre looked like some shrunken little duenna,
attendant on the opulent majesty of the heavy-braided, ox-eyed Juno at
her side. For Miss von Schwarzenberg shared the High Seat--otherwise
Lady McIntyre's carved settle. At her feet sat Madge, her pupil, and an
Aberdeen terrier.
"You _really_!"--the high-pitched excitement in the girl's voice reached
the young men depositing their golf clubs and caps in the lobby--"you
really and truly want to learn golf--_after all_?"
"If nobody has any objection," a voice answered, in an accent very
slightly foreign, and to the English ear suggesting, as much as
anything, Western American.
"Objection! Quite the contrary. Capital idea!" Sir William spoke
heartily.
Bobby, fourteen but looking nearer eighteen, spilled over and sprawled
out of an arm-chair as he beat the arm, and cried out with animation and
a mouth full of griddle cake, "Bags I teach you, Fraeulein!"
"I hope you've been taking it out of Gavan," Sir William had called out
by way of greeting to Julian. Julian played up by proceeding to describe
with mock braggadoccio how he'd completely taken the shine out of the
champion. That person, handing tea, contented himself with privately
observing yet again how his friend, long and lithe and dark, offered to
the rotund little figure of the eminent official a contrast that
ministered pleasantly to a sense of the ludicrous. Sir William's bald
bullet head barely reached the height of Julian's chest. But it was
notorious--and Napier had not worked for two years with Sir William
without finding good reason to share the prevalent opinion--that inside
the aforesaid bullet was an uncommon amount of shrewd sense and a highly
developed skill in organizing power.
Sir William ran his department as he ran his vast commercial
enterprises, with an ease that was own child of intelligence of a high
degree. But now, as though it were the main factor in life, he talked
golf.
The governess, after a perfunctory "how do you do" to the visitor, had
leaned over to stroke the Aberdeen. The lady's full-moon face--with its
heavy, shapely nose, its smooth apple cheeks, its quiet, beautiful
mouth--was bent down till her chin rested on her generous bust. It
occurred to Napier that she often adopted this pose. It gave her an air
of pensiveness, of submission, the more striking in a person of so much
character.
Also, the little tendrils of yellow hair that escaped from under the
Gretchen-like banded braids cast delicate shadows on the whitest neck
Napier had ever seen. Oh, she had her points.
"Did you hear, Mr. Grant?" Madge called out. "Miss von Schwarzenberg
says now she wants to learn our foolish national game."
"Never!" Julian turned back to the tea-table. His tone was faintly
ironic--as though the sensation created by this lady's conversion to
golf seemed disproportionate to its importance.
Lady McIntyre lifted her appealing eyes. "I wonder if you'd be very
kind, Mr. Grant, and help the children to teach Miss von Schwarzenberg?"
The almost infinitesimal pause was cancelled, obliterated, by Miss von
Schwarzenberg's promptitude. "Oh, I couldn't think of being such a
trouble." She had risen. "Sit here, Mr. Grant," she said. "Yes,
_please_. I've finished." In spite of his protest, she retired to a
chair on the far side of the fireplace--Napier's side--and picked up her
knitting.
Madge followed, dog-like, and so did the Aberdeen.
"It _is_ a comfort," Lady McIntyre went on, "to find such a terribly
clever person"--she nodded significantly in the direction of Miss von
Schwarzenberg--"taking an interest in the things ordinary mortals care
about. It's been the one fault I've had to find with Greta. She doesn't
play games. They don't, you know. But the Germans are a wonderful
people! Take this young girl"--she lowered her voice. But, however,
little of the conversation was lost on Miss von Schwarzenberg. She
knitted steadily. Madge played with the dog.
"Greta's only twenty-five or six," Lady McIntyre went on. "Her father
was an officer of Uhlans. An invalid now. And somehow they lost their
money. An uncle in America is tremendously rich, and he's had Greta at
one of the great women's colleges over there. She insisted on going home
every summer ... _so_ domestic, the Germans! I always think it's
extremely nice of them to feel affectionate toward such a horrid country
as Germany--don't you, Mr. Grant? And such a language to wrestle with,
poor things! Do you know, they call a thimble a finger hat? Yes, and a
pin a stick needle!"
"Well, well!"--Sir William broke off in the middle of the golf
discussion, and rattled his seals with great vigor, as though they were
a summons to industry--a simulacrum of factory bell or works whistle. "I
must write one more letter. No, I don't need you, Gavan."
"But that translation?"
"It's done."
"Done!" said the astonished Napier.
"And couldn't be better," said Sir William, as he disappeared into the
library.
"Miss Greta did it!" triumphed Bobby.
"I wonder," said the lady, smiling, "which of you two would go and get
me the rest of my wool?"
Bobby was on his feet, staring helplessly round.
"In your work bag?" asked Madge.
Greta nodded, and the two raced each other upstairs. Miss Greta lifted
her candid eyes. "Does it require a _great_ deal of practice, Mr.
Napier, to play golf passably?" She blushed slightly as she went on: "I
suppose I've hoped that if I watched you, I'd stand a better chance of
playing a fair game myself some day. Fair, that is," she added, with her
meek droop of the braid-crowned head, "fair for a woman."
"I'm sure you know," Napier returned a little impatiently, "that plenty
of women play very well."
"Do you mean," she inquired with her soft persistence, "you'd ever be so
kind as to give me a tip or two?"
He didn't answer at once, and she turned in her chair to look at him.
Out from her disarranged cushion rolled a large ball of field gray. It
bumped against Napier's ankle and rebounded to the wall.
"Isn't this the wool you were looking for?" He took it up by the loose
end, and rapidly unrolled several yards of it.
"Thank you _so_ much! I can't think how it got down here." She took the
ball from him, and remained standing while she rewound. "After all, I
sha'n't much more than have time to get on my things." She glanced at
the clock.
"Where are you going?" Lady McIntyre asked the question from habit.
Seldom was Greta allowed to leave the room without that question.
"You were so kind as to say I might have the cart."
"Oh, yes," Lady McIntyre remembered.
"What for?" asked Bobby, tumbling downstairs. "Want to be driven
somewhere? Bags I--"
"Certainly _not_!" Madge called out to him. And then in a markedly
different tone, "I've turned everything out of.... Oh, you've got it!"
It was all right, Miss Greta said comprehensively. She would go to the
station alone.
"Oh, _please_ let me come!" Madge begged.
Miss von Schwarzenberg shook her head. Madge looked at her wistfully. "I
_wish_ she wasn't coming!"
Then with a gleam, "I believe you do too!"
Miss von Schwarzenberg smiled.
"Who is it?" demanded Bobby.
"Oh, a little American friend of mine. A girl I went to school with."
"Her name's Nan Ellis," Madge informed the company gloomily, "and she's
not much to look at, and not at all rich, and not much of anything that
I can discover. Just a millstone round Miss Greta's neck."
"We mustn't say _that_." Miss Greta was winding the last couple of
yards. "You see, she's an orphan, and I rather took her under my wing at
school--poor child!"
Bobby asked if the American was going to stay with us.
"Oh, no," said the wool winder, now at the end of her task. "At the inn,
of course." Miss Greta glanced again at the clock as she gathered up her
knitting.
"Cart wasn't ordered till six," Madge threw in. "Don't you mean to bring
her here at all?"
"I should be delighted. But--I can't flatter myself that my little
friend would interest _you_." She swept the circle. "Quite a _nice_
girl, but ..." (a deprecatory wave of one hand), "well, crude. Western,
you know. She has grown used to looking to me for the summer. I tried to
explain that--" the pause was eloquent of a delicate desire to spare
feelings--"that I wasn't taking a holiday myself this year. But,"--on
her way out of the hall Miss Greta laughed over her shoulder--"she's not
perhaps so very quick at--how do you say it?--not so quick at the
uptake." She turned at the sound of a motor car rushing up the drive.
Through the open lobby doors a girl was seen rising from her seat and
scanning Kirklamont Hall with a slight frown. As the car swerved round
to the entrance she called out to the chauffeur in a voice of appalling
distinctness, and most unmistakably transatlantic: "Are you sure this is
the place? It isn't _my_ idea of a.... _Oh!_" She had given one glance
through the lobby and was out of the car as a bird goes over a hedge.
"It is! It is!"--The girl stood in the hall, holding out her hands,
"_Greta!_"
"My _dear_ Nan!" Miss von Schwarzenberg had hastened forward, more
flurried than anybody there had ever seen her.
"Oh, my!" said the newcomer with a face of rapture. "Oh, _my_!" and she
fell to hugging Miss von Schwarzenberg.
Bobby sat contorting his long legs and arms with unregenerate glee at
Fraeulein's struggle to be cordial and at the same time to disengage
herself as rapidly as possible.
Lady McIntyre left her settle and pattered forward with hospitable
intent. An instant of indecision on Miss von Schwarzenberg's part, and
then Miss Ellis was duly presented.
She wasn't nearly so tall as Napier had thought her when she stood up in
the car. This was because the figure was slight and extremely erect. For
the rest, a small head, overweighted with a profusion of bright, brown
hair; a rather childish face under a little golden-brown hat, guiltless
of trimming but for the two brown wings set one on each side, rather
far back. "The kind of hat," Napier pointed out afterward, "that
Pheidias gave to Mercury. Cheek for a girl to wear a hat like that!"
Even under her manifest excitement, the delicate oval of the girl's face
showed only a faint tinge of color. Miss von Schwarzenberg's round
cheeks were richest carmine. "Oh, you've kept the car! That's right. I
won't stop for a hat. Your scarf, Madge. Then I won't have to keep her
waiting."
"But why must you--" Lady McIntyre began.
"She has rooms at the inn," said Miss von Schwarzenberg, with decision,
as she wrapped Madge's scarf round her braids.
Yes, Lady McIntyre understood that. "But why should you be in such a
hurry?"
"Oh, _I'm_ not in any hurry," said the girl. "Not now. I have been in a
hurry--a terrible hurry for sixteen days. But now--" she smiled a bright
contentment at her goal.
The instant application of Miss von Schwarzenberg's arm to her friend's
waist was less for love, Napier felt sure, than as a means of
propulsion. "You'd like to get unpacked, I'm certain."
Lady McIntyre, nervously anxious not to be inhospitable to Greta's
visitor, declared she was not going to allow them to go till Miss Ellis
had had some tea. Miss Ellis still stood looking at her friend with
adoring affection. Plainly she was ready to do anything Greta
liked--anything that didn't involve her losing sight of this face she'd
traveled five thousand miles to see. Greta unwound her scarf.
"This is my daughter," said Lady McIntyre.
"Oh, are you 'Madge'? Of course, I've heard about you." Miss Ellis put
out a hand.
Madge gave it a muscular shake and let go quickly. "How do?"
The stranger seemed not to notice. She accepted a double wedge of
buttered scone from Bobby, and with great cheerfulness she deposited
three lumps of sugar in her tea.
Miss von Schwarzenberg raised her eyes to Napier's face. He and Julian,
several yards away, were leaning against the mantel-piece, pretending to
discuss the Ulster situation.
As Miss von Schwarzenberg, across her friend, met Napier's look, she
smiled ever so faintly, but with enormous meaning. "Behold a child of
nature," the look said. Then, "Did you have a good passage, Nanchen?"
she asked.
"Well, they _said_ it was a bad passage. I thought it perfectly
glorious." Miss Ellis had taken a large slab of shortbread. Rapid
disposal of it did not at all interfere with a description of the
amenities of an unchaperoned sea voyage. Miss Ellis did not pause till,
to the accompaniment of a crunch of gravel and voices outside, two young
men could be descried coming up the middle of the drive. They were
leading a couple of great, long-bodied, white dogs.
The hall was instantly a hive of excitement. Bobby and Madge bolted out
as one, with cries of rapture. Lady McIntyre, hardly less pleased,
prepared to follow, with Julian. Napier sauntered slowly after them.
The elder Pforzheim entered with his brisk ceremoniousness, and bowed
low over Lady McIntyre's hand: "My father has sent you those Russian
boarhounds he promised. Ernst has got them outside"--he stood back in
that _empresse_ way of his that seemed to say, "My manners are far too
perfect not to suffer others to precede." And the others, in the
careless English way, _did_ precede. They even blocked up the entrance,
leaving Mr. Carl and his politeness in the rear. This manoeuver so
obstructed the view that Miss Ellis rose and came a few paces nearer,
hoping for a better sight of those exciting animals. Napier, glancing
back, saw that Miss von Schwarzenberg sat perfectly still.
"Did you ever see boarhounds before, Greta? I never did."
What Greta answered, Napier didn't hear; but the moment was not lost
upon him when, all view of the spectacle being quite shut out by the
crowding at the door, Miss Ellis' attention--about to return to the
tea-table--"caught," as it were, on Carl Pforzheim's profile.
"Why, how do you do?" she said with a quick turn. "I'm very glad to meet
you."
Carl Pforzheim stared. Miss von Schwarzenberg shot forward and took Nan
by the arm.
"In the midst of all the masses of strangers I've been seeing, you seem
like an old friend. Tell him, Greta--" At sight of Miss von
Schwarzenberg's face, she stopped short.
"I think you are making some mistake," said Mr. Carl.
"Oh, no, I'm not!" that terribly "carrying" voice went on. "It's because
Greta has told me such a great deal about you. And you're exactly like
your picture, down to the cleft in your chin--" The girl hesitated
again as Greta mumbled, and Pforzheim, with a desperate, "I must help my
brother," forgot all his fine manners and pushed his way out.
"What's the matter, dearest? Oughtn't I to have said that?" Then in a
half whisper: "I never mentioned Ernst. And, after all, it was only
Ernst that you--"
"_Will_ you be quiet?"
In another ten seconds they were whirling away in the car.
* * * * *
Napier walked half-way home with Grant as usual. He was amused at
Julian's indignation over the von Schwarzenberg's patronage of her
"little friend." And then they quarreled a little over Napier's decision
that it was cheek for a girl to come "winged like Mercury." Julian
defended her. He'd never seen a hat he liked better. It just suited that
face of hers.
"'That face!'" Napier mocked. "I suppose, out of pure contentiousness,
you'll be saying it's pretty."
"'Pretty!' Pretty faces are cheap. That one has got the fineness of a
wood anemone. And the faith of a St. Francis. Did you ever _see_ such
faith in any pair of eyes? Ye gods! If I could believe in life as that
child does, if I were as serenely sure of everybody's good will,"--he
threw out his walking-stick at the prison wall between him and such
freedoms, such innocent securities. "It's pathetic--a person like that.
Think of the knocks she'll get. Think--"
"What I'm thinking of--I can't get it out of my mind! Every time I go
back to it, it seems to me stranger--the expression on the von
Schwarzenberg's face when the girl recognized Pforzheim."
"What sort of expression?" said Julian, absently.
"I wish you'd seen it! And the way she looked after Carl with a sort of
cowering apology, before she plunged into the car. Now leave off
quarreling with me about the Mercury cap, and just tell me: Why the
devil should that woman have pretended she'd never seen the Pforzheims
before she met them at Kirklamont? I wake up in the middle of the night
and ask myself that question."
"How do you know she pretended--?"
"I was there. I saw them introduced."