judicial impartiality.
When they came into the restaurant there was a faint murmur of
delighted surprise from the tables they passed; and one stout, but
sentimental baroness cried, "Violà des séraphin!"
And truly, if you can conceive of a seraph in an Eton suit, a low-cut
white waistcoat, and a white tie, there was something in what she said.
At the sight of them Sir Tancred smiled, and Lord Crosland said, "I
congratulate you on your taste, young people."
"It was Tinker's," said Elsie; and she looked at him with a world of
thankfulness and devotion in her eyes.
After dinner Tinker was uncomfortable. He felt bound to break to Elsie
her uncle's desertion, and he was afraid of tears. With a vague notion
of emphasising the difference between her uncle's _régime_ and his own,
he led the way to the corner of the gardens where they had first met
and, standing before the seat on which she had waited so long and
hungrily, he said, "I say, don't you think we could do without your
uncle?"
"Do without uncle?" said Elsie surprised.
"Yes; suppose, instead of living with your uncle and his looking after
you, you lived with us, and I looked after you? Suppose you were to be
my adopted sister?"
"For good and all?" said Elsie in a hushed voice.
"Yes."
For answer she threw her arms round his neck, kissed him, and cried,
"Oh, I do love you so."
By a splendid effort Tinker repressed a wriggle.
"We'll consider it settled, then," he said.
Elsie loosed him. With a little deprecating cough, and a delicate
tentativeness, he said, "About kissing, of course, now that you're my
sister you have a right to kiss me sometimes; and--and--of course it's
all right. But don't you think you could manage with once a day--when
we say good-night?"
"In the morning, too," said Elsie greedily.
"Well, twice a day," said Tinker with a sigh.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TINKER FROM THE MACHINE
By Elsie's coming into it, Tinker's life was changed. At first she was
not only a companion, she was an occupation. A score of little
arrangements to secure her greater comfort had to be made, each of them
after careful consideration. He was no longer dull: they were together
from morning till night; and he found in her a considerable aptitude
for the post of lieutenant--to a Pirate Captain, a Smuggler, a Brigand
Chief, or a South African Scout. She kept him out of mischief as far
as he could be kept out of mischief: the demands her welfare made upon
his intelligence prevented his devoting it to the elaboration of
ingenious schemes for the discomfiture of his fellow-creatures; and he
had to think twice before he flung himself into any casual piece of
mischief which presented itself, lest he should involve her in
disastrous consequences. On second thoughts he generally refrained
with regret. The one practice he did not suffer to fall into desuetude
was his daily bolt into the Salles de Jeu; of that she could always be
a secure and interested spectator.
For her part, she was entirely happy; she had been so long starved of
care and affection that, now she had them, she wanted nothing more;
they filled her life.
Taking his responsibility thus seriously, Tinker was greatly exercised
in mind whether he should get her a maid or a governess; he could not
afford both. Elsie, with absolute conviction, declared that she needed
neither; that all she wanted was someone to brush her hair, and she was
sure that he did that far better than anyone else would.
Tinker shook his head. "One has to be educated, don't you know?" he
said. "Look at me."
It was one of his weaknesses to cherish the conviction that in the
matter of learning he lacked nothing, though had he been confronted by
even the vulgarest fraction, he would have been quite helpless.
Having at last made up his mind, he sought out Sir Tancred, and said
with a very serious air, "I've been thinking it over, sir, and I've
come to the conclusion that I ought to get Elsie a governess."
"My dear Tinker," said his father, "if you add to our household at your
present rate, I foresee myself buying a caravan, and traversing Europe
in state."
"Like a circus," said Tinker, brightening. "It would be great fun--for
a while. I think," he added thoughtfully, "that I could brighten
Europe up a bit."
"I do not doubt it," said Sir Tancred politely.
"Well, you see, sir, it's like this," said Tinker. "When I adopted
Elsie you said that I was to take all responsibility; and I think I
ought to look after her education; it's no good adopting sisters by
halves."
"You are right, of course," said Sir Tancred. "But I'm sorry for you.
For a boy of nearly twelve, your knowledge of the things taught by
governesses is small. Your spelling, now, it is--shall we say
phonetic?"
"I don't think a gentleman ought to spell too well any more than he
ought to speak French with too good an accent," said Tinker firmly.
"There's a good deal in what you say," said Sir Tancred. "But I'm
afraid that when Elsie has learnt geography, say, the position of
Schleswig-Holstein and Roumania and Leeds, and other such places to
which we should never dream of going, she might look down on you for
only knowing the towns on the great railways of Europe and America, and
the steamer routes of the world."
"She might. But I don't think she's like that, though, of course, with
a girl you never can tell. I think it's more likely she would want to
teach me where they are. But she ought to be educated, and I must
chance it."
"Well, if you ought, you must," said Sir Tancred. "But one thing I do
beg of you; do not have her taught the piano--the barrel-organ if you
like, but not the piano."
"No; I won't. A piano would be so awkward to move about--it would want
a van to itself."
"I was thinking, rather, of the peculiar noises it makes in the hands
of the inexperienced," said Sir Tancred.
"I know," said Tinker in a tone of genuine sympathy.
Tinker went to Elsie, whom he had left in the gardens of the Casino,
and told her that his father had given him leave to get her a
governess. On hearing that the matter was so near accomplishment, her
face fell, and she said, "Don't--don't you think I ought to help choose
her?"
"It wouldn't be regular," said Tinker firmly.
After déjeuner he caught a train to Nice, and went straight to Madame
Butler, that stay of those who seek maids, companions, nurses, or
governesses on the Riviera. He sent in his card, and was straightway
ushered into the office where she received her clients. She was
sitting at a desk, and by one of the windows sat a very pretty young
lady, who looked as if she were waiting to interview a possible
employee. A certain surprise showed itself on the face of Madame
Butler at the sight of Tinker; she had plainly expected a client of
more mature years.
Tinker bowed, and sat down in the chair by the desk in which clients
sat and set forth their needs.
"You wished to see me--on business?" said Madame Butler with some
hesitation.
"Yes," said Tinker. "I want a governess for my sister--my adopted
sister. I'm responsible for her, and I've decided that she must be
educated. I told my father, Sir Tancred Beauleigh, and he gave me
leave to get her a governess. So I came to you."
"Yes," said Madame Butler, smiling, "and what kind of a governess do
you want?"
The pretty young lady, who had been regarding Tinker with smiling
interest, turned away with the proper delicacy, and looked out of the
window.
Tinker's face wore a very serious, almost anxious, air. "I've worked
it out carefully," he said. "Elsie's ten years old, two years younger
than I am, and there is no need for her governess to have degrees or
certificates or that kind of thing. She will only have to teach her to
write nicely and do sums--not fractions, of course--useful sums, and
some needlework, and look after her when I'm not about. So I want a
lady, young, and English; and I should like her to be a bit of a
sportswoman, don't you know. I mean," he added in careful explanation,
"I should like her to be cheerful and good-natured, and not fussy about
the things that really don't matter."
"I think I know the kind of governess you want," said Madame Butler.
She ran her eye over two or three pages of her ledger and added, "But
I'm very much afraid that I haven't one of that kind on my books at
present."
"That's a pity," said Tinker. "Should I have long to wait?"
"I'm afraid you might. People chiefly want ladles with certificates
and degrees, so the others don't offer themselves."
The pretty young lady turned from the window with the quickness of one
suddenly making up her mind.
"How should I do?" she said in a charming voice.
Madame Butler turned towards her quickly with raised eyebrows, but said
nothing. Tinker turned, too, and his face lighted up with an angelic
smile. He looked at the pretty young lady carefully, and then at the
pretty young lady's tailor-made gown, and the smile faded out of his
face.
"I'm afraid," he said sorrowfully, "you would be too expensive."
"What salary were you thinking of giving?" she said with a brisk,
businesslike directness.
"Thirty pounds a year," said Tinker; and then he added hastily, "Of
course it's very little; but really the work would be quite light, and
we should try and make things pleasant for her."
"But surely, for a governess without certificates, that is a very good
salary; isn't it, Madame Butler?"
"It is, indeed," said Madame Butler.
"It can't be, really," said Tinker. "But I suppose people are mean."
"Well, it would satisfy me," said the pretty young lady. "But
unfortunately I am an American, and you want an Englishwoman."
"I only don't want a foreigner," said Tinker. "I should be awfully
pleased if you would take the post."
"The pleasure will be mine," said the pretty young lady. "And about
references? I'm afraid I cannot get them in less than ten days."
"Pardon," said Tinker. "Your face, if you will excuse my saying so, is
reference enough."
The pretty young lady flushed with pleasure, and said, "That is very
nice of you, but your father might think them necessary."
"This is my show--I mean, this matter is entirely in my hands; I look
after Elsie altogether. And I think we might consider it settled. My
name is Hildebrand Anne Beauleigh."
"Oh, you are the boy who borrowed the flying-machine!"
Tinker was charmed that she should take the right view of the matter;
he found that so many people, including the bulk of the English,
American, and Continental Press, were disposed, in an unintelligent
way, to regard him as having stolen it.
"Yes," he said.
"My name is Dorothy Rayner."
"Rayner," said Tinker with sudden alertness. "There is an American
millionaire called Rainer."
"I spell my name with a _y_," said Dorothy quickly.
Madame Butler once more raised her eyebrows.
"Well, when will you come to us? We are staying at the Hôtel des
Princes at Monte Carlo."
"To-day is Wednesday. Shall we say Saturday morning?"
"Yes, that will do very well. Oh, by the way, I was quite
forgetting--about music."
"I'm afraid," said Dorothy, and her face fell, "I can't teach music."
"That's all right," said Tinker cheerfully. "My father was terribly
afraid that anyone I got would want to."
He explained to Dorothy their nomadic fashion of life, paid Madame
Butler her fee, bade them good-bye, and went his way.
On his return he found Elsie full of anxious curiosity, but his account
of his find set her mind at rest. He ended by saying, "It will be
awfully nice for you, don't you know? She looked as though she would
let you kiss her as often as you wanted to."
"But I shall kiss you just the same, night and morning," said Elsie
firmly.
"Of course, of course," said Tinker quickly, and by a manful effort he
kept the brightness in his face.
He told his father that he had found a governess.
"References all right?" said Sir Tancred.
"Yes, she carries them about with her," said Tinker diplomatically.
"I suppose I ought to see them, don't you think?"
"You will," said Tinker.
On her arrival on Saturday morning Dorothy found the children awaiting
her on the steps of the hotel; and to Tinker's extreme satisfaction,
she at once kissed Elsie. When she had been taken to her room, which
was next to Elsie's, and her trunks had been brought up, it was time to
go to déjeuner, and Tinker conducted her to the restaurant. They found
Sir Tancred and Lord Crosland already at table; they rose at the sight
of Dorothy, and Tinker introduced them to her gravely. Sir Tancred was
naturally surprised at being suddenly confronted by a startling vision
of beauty, when he had expected an ordinary young fresh-coloured,
good-natured Englishwoman. But for all the change worked in his face
by that surprise he might have been confronted by a vision of corkscrew
curls. Lord Crosland, however, so far forgot the proper dignity of a
peer as to kick Tinker gently under the table. Tinker looked at him
with a pained and disapproving air.
Dorothy was even more surprised by the sight of Sir Tancred. She had
given the matter little thought, but had supposed that she would find
Tinker's father a sedate man of some fifty summers. When she found him
a young man of thirty, and exceedingly handsome and distinguished at
that, she was invaded by no slight doubt as to the wisdom of indulging
the spirit of whim which had led her to take the post of Tinker's
governess, without going a little more into the matter. This
uneasiness made her at first somewhat constrained; but Sir Tancred and
Lord Crosland contrived soon to put her at her ease, and presently she
was taking her part in the talk without an effort.
When she went away with the children, Lord Crosland lighted a
cigarette, and said thoughtfully, "Well, Tinker has made a find. She
is a lady."
"I should be inclined to say gentlewoman," said Sir Tancred. "Lady is
a word a trifle in disrepute; there are so many of them, and so
various, don't you know."
"Gentlewoman be it," said Lord Crosland. "But he's a wonderful young
beggar for getting hold of the right thing. What a beautiful creature
she is!"
"She is beautiful," said Sir Tancred grudgingly.
"Woman-hater! Va!" said Lord Crosland.
Dorothy found herself admitted to a frank intimacy in this little
circle into which whim had led her. She spent most of her time with
the children. She gave Elsie two hours' lessons a day, and, since she
had a knack of making them interesting, Tinker often enjoyed the
benefit of her teaching. After lessons she shared most of their
amusements, and learned to be a pirate, a brigand, an English sailor, a
Boer, and every kind of captive and conspirator. Since she occupied
some of Elsie's time, Tinker had once more leisure for mischief; and
Dorothy rarely tried to restrain his fondness for pulling the legs of
his fellow-creatures, for she found that he had the happiest knack of
choosing such fellow-creatures as would be benefited, morally, by the
operation. But she was a check upon his more reckless moods, and kept
him from one or two outrageous pranks.
For his part, he found the responsibility of looking after her and
Elsie not a little sobering; and he was quite alive to the fact that at
Monte Carlo, that place of call of the adventurers of the world, one's
womankind need a protecting male presence. Quietly and unobtrusively
Sir Tancred seconded him in this matter; if Dorothy had the fancy to
take the air in the gardens after dinner, she found that he or Lord
Crosland, or both of them, deserted the tables till she went back to
the hotel, and strolled with her and the children. She was growing
very friendly with the two men, and beginning to take a far deeper
interest in Sir Tancred than she would have cared to admit even to
herself. His face of Lucifer, Son of the Morning, his perfect
thoughtfulness, his unfailing gentle politeness, his melancholy and his
very coldness, attracted her; and always watching him, she had now and
again a glimpse of the possibilities of energy and passion which
underlay the mask of his languor. At times, too, her woman's intuition
assured her that, for all his dislike, or rather distaste, of women,
she attracted him.
Unfortunately, but naturally, Sir Tancred and Lord Crosland were not
the only men who found her beautiful. Monsieur le Comte Sigismond de
Puy-de-Dôme, hero of many duels and more scandals, and darling of the
Nationalist Press, also saw her beauty. With him to see was to act,
and he never passed her without a conquering twirl of his waxed
moustache, and a staring leer which he fondly believed to be a glance
teeming with passion. Since even he, conscious as he was of his
extraordinary fascination, could hardly mistake her look of annoyance
for the glow of responsive passion, he resolved on more masterly
action. He kept a careful watch, and one afternoon followed her and
Tinker and Elsie on one of their walks. They went briskly, and at the
end of a mile he was maintaining a continuous, passionate monologue in
tones charged with heartfelt emotion on the subject of his tight but
patent-leather boots.
A mile and a half on the way to Mentone they turned aside down a road
into the hills. He followed them for a while over the loose stones and
along the ruts of the roadway with considerable pain, and was on the
very point of abandoning the pursuit when he came on Dorothy and Elsie
sitting in a shady dell by the roadside, from which the wooded slopes
of the hills rose steeply. Careless of his boots and of the fact that
they had suffused his face with an unbecoming purple, he strode
gallantly up to them, and set about making Dorothy's acquaintance. He
began by talking, with an airy graciousness, of the charm of the spot
in which he had found her, and of how greatly that charm was enhanced
by her presence. But soon, seeing that she took not the slightest
notice of him, that her eyes, to all seeming, looked through him at the
trees on the further side of the dell, he lost his gracious air, and
began to halt and stumble in his speech. Then he lost his head and
plunged into a detailed account of the passion with which Dorothy's
beauty had inflamed his heart, wearing the while his finest air of a
conqueror dictating terms.
Dorothy surveyed him with a contemptuous wonder, over which her sense
of the ludicrous was slowly gaining the mastery; Elsie stared at him.
At last he ended the impassioned description of his emotions with a yet
more impassioned appeal to Dorothy to fly with him to a far-off shore
forever shining with the golden light of love; and Dorothy laughed a
gentle laugh of pure amusement.
Count Sigismond flushed purpler; his eyes stood well out of his head;
he drew himself up with a superb air--a little spoiled by a wince as
his left boot deftly reminded him that he was wearing it, and cried,
"Ha! You laugh! You laugh at Sigismond de Puy-de-Dôme! Mon Dieu!
You shall learn!" And with a sudden spring he grabbed at her.
She jerked aside, sprang up, and away from him. But he was between her
and the exit from the dell; he crouched with the impressive
deliberation of a villain in a melodrama for another spring, and Elsie
screamed, "Tinker! Tinker!"
Count Sigismond heard a rustling in the bushes above, and looked up to
see them parted by an angel child, in white ducks, bearing a bunch of
lilies in his hand, who gazed at him with a serious, almost pained
face, and leapt lightly down.
With a "Pah! Imbecile!" addressed to himself for delaying, the Count
sprang towards Dorothy, was conscious of a swift white streak, and the
head of the angel child, impelled by wiry muscles and a weight of
seventy-six pounds, smote as a battering ram upon the first and second
buttons of his waistcoat. He doubled up and sat down hard in one
movement; then turned on his side, and gasped and gasped.
[Illustration: As a battering ram upon the first and second buttons of
his waistcoat.]
"Come along!" cried Tinker in a most imperative tone. "A row is a
horrid nuisance when there are women in it!" And he caught his
charges, either by an arm, and bustled them out of the dell and down
the road.
Dorothy laughed as she ran; never before had she seen vaunting
arrogance brought low in so sudden and signal a fashion. At last she
stopped, dabbed away the tears of mirth, and said, "Oh, Tinker, I am so
much obliged to you! It's all very well to laugh now; but it might
have been horrid!"
"It was the simplest thing in the world," said Tinker. Then, rubbing
his head ruefully, he added, "I wish those foreigners would not wear
gold buttons on their white waistcoats in the daytime. They have no
more notion of how to dress than a cat--the men haven't."
They hurried along, looking back now and again to see if they were
followed. They were not, for Count Sigismond was now sitting up in the
shady dell, staring round it with fishy eyes, and wondering dully
whether he owed his disaster entirely to an angel child, or whether
Mont Pelée had affected the neighbourhood. He gasped still.
As they drew near the town, Tinker grew thoughtful. Suddenly he
stopped, and said seriously, "Now, look here, both of you, we mustn't
let my father know about this, or he'll certainly thrash that bounding
Frenchman; and that wouldn't be good enough, don't you know."
"It would be very good for him," said Dorothy with some vindictiveness.
"Yes, but not for my father," said Tinker very earnestly, indeed. "For
all that he looks like a swollen frog, Le Comte de Puy-de-Dôme is
awfully dangerous with the pistol. He's hurt two men badly in duels
already."
"Has he?" said Dorothy quickly, and the colour faded in her cheeks.
"Then we must, indeed, say nothing about it."
"Swear," said Tinker, raising his right hand.
"We swear," said Dorothy and Elsie in one voice, raising their right
hands. It was a formality which had to be gone through many times when
they played at being conspirators; their words and action were
mechanical.
"That's all right," said Tinker with a sigh of relief.
Count Sigismond returned to his hotel in a very hot fury. His outraged
pride clamoured for vengeance, and he sought for someone on whom to be
revenged. He was surprised at the end of two days to hear nothing of
his discomfiture; but his fury lost nothing by growing cool, and on the
third night he picked a quarrel with Sir Tancred.
Next morning Sir Tancred asked Dorothy to take the children to Nice for
a few days, since he had heard that there was some fever at one of the
smaller hotels. He watched over their departure himself, and Tinker
was aware of an indefinable something in his manner which puzzled him.
It was, perhaps, that something which gave him a curious, unsettled
feeling, as if they were going on a much longer journey. As they left
the hotel, Lord Crosland came up from the Condamine carrying a square
case under his arm; it did not escape Tinker's observant eye; but in
the bustle of their removal he gave it but scant attention. In the
evening Dorothy noticed that he was restless and absent-minded, and
asked him what was the matter.
"I don't know," he said; "I have a funny feeling as though something
was going to happen, and I can't think of anything. It's just as if
I'd missed something I ought to have noticed. It always makes me
uncomfortable. Yet I can't think what it can be."
She made many suggestions, but to no purpose, and he went to bed
dissatisfied. He awoke once or twice in the night--a very rare thing
with him; possibly, so close was their kinship, his father's disturbed
spirit in some obscure and mysterious fashion was striving to warn him,
or prepare him for calamitous tidings. In the early morning he slept
soundly, and awoke rather later than was his wont; and, even as he
awoke, the square case which Lord Crosland had carried sprang into his
mind, and he knew it to be a case of pistols. In a flash everything
was clear to him; his father was going to fight Count Sigismond, and
had sent him to Nice to be out of the way.
He sprang out of bed, and dashed for his watch; it was two minutes past
seven. They would fight at eight; he had nearly an hour. In three
minutes he was dressed, and racing down the stairs. He met Dorothy
coming up.
"What's the matter?" she cried at the sight of his white face.
"My father--he's fighting Le Comte de Puy-de-Dôme, and he's got us out
of the way!"