thoughtful earnestness, "that you must be what people call a connection
by marriage; not quite one of the family."
The thoughtfulness cleared from Tinker's brow, and he said with a
pleasant smile, "But that's got nothing to do with what you came to
talk about. You said it was important. What did you want to say?"
Lady Beauleigh remembered suddenly that she had come on an errand
connected with her promotion of the glory of the Beauleighs. She
swallowed down her fury, wiped her face with her handkerchief, and said
in a hoarse and somewhat shaky voice, "I came to make you an offer."
Tinker beamed on her.
"You must be tired of this beggarly life, going about from pillar to
post, living in wretched Continental hotels, with no pocket money."
Tinker raised his eyebrows.
"I know what your father's life is, just a mere penniless adventurer's."
Tinker beamed no more.
"And I came to offer to take you to live with me at Beauleigh Court.
It's a beautiful big house in the country with woods all around it, and
hunting and fishing and shooting and tennis-courts and fruit-gardens,
and a cricket-ground, everything that a boy could want."
"And you," said Tinker in the expressionless tone of one adding an item
to a catalogue.
"Yes; and me to look after you. You should have a bicycle." And she
paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.
[Illustration: And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.]
"I have a bicycle," said Tinker.
"Well--two bicycles--and a pony----"
"I don't like ponies--they're too slow," said Tinker in a weary voice.
"I always ride a horse."
"Well, you should have a horse--a horse of your own."
"What's the hunting like? But, there, I know; it can't be up to much;
it never is in those southern counties. I always hunt in
Leicestershire. I've got used to it."
"You hunt in Leicestershire?" said Lady Beauleigh with some surprise.
"Oh course. Where does one hunt?" said Tinker, echoing her surprise.
"But--but--where does your horse come from? I know your father can't
afford to keep horses!"
"Sometimes he can," said Tinker. "And if he has had to sell them, a
dozen people will always mount us."
Lady Beauleigh paused; and then she made the last, lavish bid. "And I
would allow you a hundred a year pocket-money. Why--why, you would be
a little Prince!"
"A little Prince! And learn geography! No, thank you!" said Tinker,
startled out of his calm. "Besides," he added carelessly, "I've made
five thousand in the last year."
"Five thousand what?"
"Pounds."
"Come, come," said Lady Beauleigh, shaking her head, "you mustn't tell
me lies."
"It isn't a lie! Tinker never tells lies," broke in Elsie hotly.
"Hold your tongue, you impertinent little minx!" said Lady Beauleigh
sharply. "Who asked you to speak?"
"I think you're a horrid----" said Elsie, and was checked by Tinker's
upraised hand.
"And when I died," Lady Beauleigh went on, turning again to Tinker, "I
should leave you thirty thousand a year--think of it--thirty thousand a
year!"
"It all sounds very nice," said Tinker in a painfully indifferent tone.
"But I'm afraid it wouldn't do."
"Wouldn't do? Why wouldn't it do? To live in a beautiful big house in
the country, and have everything a boy could want! Why wouldn't it
do?" cried Lady Beauleigh, excited by opposition to a feverish desire
to compass the end on which her heart had been set for many months.
"Do you really want to know," said Tinker very gently, but with a
dangerous gleam in his eyes.
"Yes; I insist on knowing!" cried Lady Beauleigh.
"Well," said Tinker slowly, pronouncing every word with a very
deliberate distinctness, "we shouldn't get on, you and I. I don't know
how it is; but I never get on with people who keep shops or banks. I'm
afraid you're not quite--well-bred."
Stout Lady Beauleigh sprang to her feet.
"Ah, well," said Tinker quietly, "you treated my father and mother very
cruelly, you've just said rude things about both of them, and you've
been rude to Elsie. The fact is, I don't see that I want a
step-grandmother at all; and I can't be expected to want an ill-bred
one anyway. So--so--I disown you."
Lady Beauleigh's face quivered with rage; she gathered herself together
as if to box Tinker's ears; thought better of it, and hurried away.
Tinker and Elsie looked at one another, and laughed softly.
"Horrid old woman," said Elsie.
"A dreadful person," said Tinker.
As Lady Beauleigh strode out of the gardens, she came full upon Sir
Tancred and Dorothy. He raised his hat, she tried to glare through
him, and glared at him.
"That's my step-mother," said Sir Tancred. "I wonder what's the matter
with her. She looks upset."
"Upset! Why, she looked furious--malignant!" said Dorothy.
Then they saw Tinker and Elsie coming towards them.
"I see," said Sir Tancred softly.
"Oh, if she's met my young charges!" said Dorothy, and she threw out
her hands.
"Have you been doing anything to your grandmother, Tinker?" cried Sir
Tancred.
"Well--I disowned her," said Tinker.
"Disowned her!"
"Yes; I had to," said Tinker with a faint regret. "She was rude, and
she was wearing a gown which would have stood up by itself if she had
got out of it--at Monte Carlo--in April--it's impossible!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TINKER AND THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
Dorothy sat gazing over that charming gulf, charming alike for its
scenery and its oysters, the Gulf of Arcachon. She gazed on it without
seeing it; her beautiful face was clouded, and her brow was puckered in
a wondering perplexity.
Tinker sat on the ground near her, his chin on his knees, observing her
with a sympathetic understanding which would have disquieted her not a
little, had she not been too busy with her thoughts to notice it.
They were still and silent for a long while, until she sighed; then he
said, with unfeigned sadness, "I'm beginning to think he never will."
"Who never will what?" said Dorothy, awaking from her reflections, and
extremely disconcerted by the exactness with which Tinker's remark
echoed them.
"My father--ask you to marry him," said Tinker succinctly.
"Tinker!" cried Dorothy faintly, and she flushed a very fine red.
"It's all very well to say 'Tinker!' like that," he said, shaking his
head very wisely. "But it's much better to look at things straight,
don't you know? You often get a little forrarder that way."
"You are a dreadful little boy," said Dorothy with conviction.
"Yes, yes; I'm not blind," said Tinker patiently. "But the point is,
that my father is ever so much in love with you, and he'll never ask
you to marry him, because you're too rich. I'm sure I've given you
every chance," he added with a sigh.
"You have?" said Dorothy, gasping.
"Yes; I'm always seeing that no one makes a third when you and he are
together--on moonlit nights and picnics, and so on, don't you know?"
Dorothy laughed, in spite of her discomfort, at this frank discussion
of her secret. "But this is inveterate match-making," she said. "Why
do you do it?"
"Oh, I think it would be a good thing. You both want it badly, and
you'd get on awfully well together. Besides, you're neither of you as
cheerful as you used to be, and I don't like it; it bothers me."
"It's very good of you to let it," said Dorothy, smiling.
"Not at all. And Elsie and I would have a settled home, too. It's
very funny; but sometimes I get tired of living in hotels."
"I'm sure you do," said Dorothy with sympathy.
"Well, have you got any idea how it can be worked?"
"No!" cried Dorothy, shocked, and flushing again; "I haven't! I
wouldn't have!"
"That's silly, when it would be such a good thing," said Tinker with a
disapproving air. "However, I suppose I can work it myself. I
generally have to when I want anything done."
"What are you going to do?" cried Dorothy in great alarm. "Oh, I do
wish I hadn't said anything, or listened to you!"
"I don't know what I'm going to do. These affairs of the heart are
always difficult," said Tinker with the air of a sage who has observed
many generations of unfortunate lovers.
"I won't have you do anything; I forbid it!" cried Dorothy.
"You shouldn't order your employer about," said Tinker with a smile
which, on any face less angelic, would have been a grin. "Besides, I'm
responsible, and I must do what's good for you. And, after all, I
shan't give you away, don't you know?"
"Oh, do be careful!" said Dorothy plaintively.
"I will," said Tinker; and he rose and sauntered off along the
promenade.
Dorothy looked after him with mingled feelings, dread of what he might
do, vexation, and a little shame that he should have so easily
surprised her secret; though, indeed, she preferred that Tinker should
have discovered it rather than anyone else in the world. Then her sure
knowledge of his discretion eased her anxiety, and the consideration of
his able imagination and versatile ingenuity set a new and strong hope
springing up in her.
Tinker strolled along to the Café du Printemps, and found his father
sitting before it on the usual uncomfortable little chair before the
usual white-topped table. He saw that his father's face wore the same
expression as Dorothy's had worn before he had insisted on coming to
her aid. Then he saw, with something of a shock, that a glass of
absinthe stood on the table. Things must, indeed, be in a bad way if
his father drank absinthe at half-past ten in the morning.
However, he hid his disapproval, and sitting down on another
uncomfortable chair, he said gently, "What does it mean when a lady is
compromised, sir?"
"It means that some accident or other has given malignant fools a
chance of gossipping about her," said Sir Tancred in an unamiable tone.
"And the man has to marry her?"
"Of course he has," snapped Sir Tancred.
"Ah!" said Tinker with supreme thoughtful satisfaction.
His father looked at him for a good minute with considerable suspicion,
wondering what new mischief he was hatching. But Tinker looked like a
guileless seraph pondering the innocent joys of the Islands of the
Blessed, to a degree which made such a suspicion a very shameful thing
indeed. Partly reassured, Sir Tancred returned to his brooding: he was
angry with himself because he felt helpless in an _impasse_. On the
one hand, he could not bring himself to fly from Dorothy; on the other,
he could not bring himself to abate his pride, and ask her to marry
him. She was so rich; Septimus Rainer had talked of settling five
million dollars on her. He looked again at the pondering Tinker; and
his helpless irritation found the natural English vent in grumbling.
"Look here," he said, half querulously, half whimsically, "I told you
that if you went on adding to our household, I should be travelling
about Europe with a caravan. You began by adopting Elsie as a sister,
and I said nothing. Then you added Miss Rainer as her governess, and I
warned you. Miss Rainer added her father, a millionaire, and he added
a maid, a valet, two secretaries, a courier, and a private detective.
All these people, I know them well, will marry; and I shall be a
patriarch travelling with my tribe. It must stop."
Tinker sighed. "We are a large household--twelve of us, with Selina,"
he said thoughtfully. "But you might make it more compact, sir."
"More compact--how?"
"You might marry Dorothy; and then you and she could count as one."
A sudden light of exasperation brightened Sir Tancred's eyes, and he
made a grab at Tinker's arm. His hand closed on empty air; Tinker was
flying like the wind along the promenade.
"Tinker!" roared Sir Tancred; but Tinker went round a corner at the
moment at which only the T of his name could fairly be expected to have
reached him. Sir Tancred ground his teeth, and then he laughed.
Tinker made a circuit, and came down to the sea, where he found Elsie
playing with two little English girls staying at Arcachon with their
mother. At once she deserted them for him, and when he had withdrawn
her to a distance, he said, "I've hit on a way of getting them married."
"No! Have you? You are clever!" she cried with the ungrudging
admiration she always accorded him.
"Clever? It only wants a little common-sense," said Tinker with some
disdain.
"I shall be glad."
"So shall I. It'll be a weight off my mind, don't you know?" said
Tinker with a sigh.
"I'm sure it will," said the sympathetic Elsie.
"It must be awfully nice to be in love," she added with conviction.
"Now, look here," said Tinker in a terrible voice, "if I catch you
falling in love, I'll--I'll shake you!"
"But--but, I may be in love--ever so much, for anything you know," said
Elsie somewhat haughtily.
"You are not," said Tinker sternly. "Your appetite is all right.
Don't talk any more nonsense, but come along, we've got to get ready
for the picnic."
At half-past eleven the two children went on board the _Petrel_, a
little steam yacht of a shallow draught adapted to the shoals of the
Gulf, which Septimus Rainer had hired from a member of the Bordeaux
Yacht Club. They found Dorothy and Sir Tancred already on board, and
were told that a cablegram from New York had given her father, his
secretaries, and the telegraph office of Arcachon a day's work, and
prevented him from coming with them. Tinker had known this fact all
the morning, but he did not say so. His manner to his father showed a
serene unconsciousness of any cloud upon their relations.
The _Petrel_ was soon crossing the Gulf in an immensely important way,
at her full speed of eight knots an hour. In pursuance of his policy
Tinker took Elsie forward, and left Dorothy and his father to entertain
one another on the quarter-deck. The two children amused themselves
very well talking to Alphonse, the steersman, and Adolphe, the
engineer, thick-set, thick-witted men, who combined the picturesqueness
of organ-grinders with the stolidity of agriculturalists; Nature had
plainly intended them for the plough, and Circumstance had pitched them
into seafaring.
An hour's steering brought them across the Gulf. They landed, and made
their déjeuner at a little auberge, or rather cabaret, affected by
fishermen, and the folk of the _Landes_, off grey mullet, fresh from
the Bay of Biscay, grilled over a fire of pine-cones, with a second
course of ring-doves roasted before it.
After their coffee Tinker suggested that they should cross over to the
strip of sand which at that point separates the Gulf from the Bay, and
the others fell in with his humour. They crossed over and landed in
the yacht's dinghy. Tinker insisted on taking two rugs, though both
Dorothy and his father objected that the sand was quite dry enough to
sit on. However, when they came to the beach of the Bay, Sir Tancred
spread them out, and he and Dorothy sat on them. The two children
wandered away, and presently Elsie found herself holding Tinker's hand,
and running hard through the pines towards the landing-place.
In answer to Tinker's hail, Alphonse fetched them aboard in the dingey,
and the honest, unsuspecting mariners accepted his instructions to take
them for a cruise, and come back later for his father and the lady,
without a murmur. But no sooner was the _Petrel_ under weigh, than he
strode to the middle of the quarter-deck, folded his arms, scowled
darkly in the direction of his father and Dorothy, so heedless of their
plight, and growled in his hoarsest, most piratical voice:
"Marooned! Marooned!"
Slowly he paced the deck, with arms still folded, casting the piercing
glances of a bird of prey across the waters; then of a sudden he roared
once more with the true piratical hoarseness, "All hands on deck to
splice the main brace!"
Alphonse and Adolphe did not understand his nautical English; but when
Elsie came from the cabin with a bottle of cognac and two glasses,
their slow, wide grins showed a perfect comprehension. Tinker gave
them the cognac, and took the wheel. Then he became absorbed in
steering, and sternly rejected all further consideration of his gift;
he would have neither hand nor part in hocussing French
agriculturalists posing as mariners.
But for all his absorption in his steering, and his care to look past
them as they sat in more than fraternal affection on the deck, with the
bottle between them, it was somehow forced on him, probably by the
noise they made, that they proceeded from a gentle cheerfulness through
a wild and songful hilarity, broken by interludes in which either
described to the other with eloquent enthusiasm the charms of the lass
who loved him best, to a tearful melancholy, from which they were rapt
away into a sodden and stertorous slumber.
At the third snore Tinker turned to Elsie, who sat by him looking
rather scared by the changing humours of the agricultural mariners, and
said with a sardonic and ferocious smile, "The ship is ours."
At once they divested themselves of the hats of civilisation, and tied
round their heads the red handkerchiefs proper to their profession;
then he gave her the wheel, and going to the cabin, came back with a
black flag neatly embroidered in white with a skull and crossbones,
Dorothy's work, and sternly bade an imaginary quartermaster run up the
Jolly Roger. Then, as quartermaster, he ran up that emblem of his
dreadful trade himself; became captain once more, and, with folded arms
and corrugated brow surveyed it gloomily. Then he went down to the
engine-room, put the yacht on half-speed, and, as well as he could,
stoked the fires.
For the next three hours the _Petrel_ forgot all the innocent
traditions of her youth as a pleasure boat, and traversed the Gulf of
Arcachon a shameless, ravening pirate, while Captain Hildebrand, the
Scourge of the Spanish Main, issued curt, sanguinary orders to an
imaginary but as blood-dyed a gang of villains as ever scuttled an
Indiaman. The Jolly Roger and three or four blank shots from the
little signal gun drove three panic-stricken fishing boats from their
fishing-ground as fast as oars and sails could carry them, to spread
abroad a legend of piracy in the Gulf which would last a generation.
It was nearly sunset before Captain Hildebrand returned to the serious
consideration of his business as Cupid's ally. Then he set the
_Petrel_ going dead slow, ran her gently on to a sandbank, and let fall
the anchor, which was hanging from her bows. This done, again a
pirate, he looked at the recumbent and still stertorous Alphonse and
Adolphe with cold, cruel eyes, and said, "It's time these lubbers
walked the plank."
[Illustration: It's time these lubbers walked the plank.]
"Ay, ay, sir!" said Elsie cheerfully; and then she added, in a doubtful
voice, "But won't the poor men get drowned?"
"Not in four feet of water," said Captain Hildebrand; and he set
briskly about the preparations for the fell deed. With Elsie's help he
brought a plank to the gangway; and then, either taking him by an arm,
they dragged the grunting Adolphe slowly down the deck, and arranged
him on the plank. With a capstan bar, and many a hearty "Yo, heave
ho!" they levered the plank out over the side till Adolphe's weight
tilted it up, and he soused into the water.
For a moment he disappeared, then he rose spluttering and choking, sank
again, found his footing, and stood up, roaring like a flabbergasted
bull. Captain Hildebrand lay quietly down on the deck, and writhed and
kicked in spasms of racking mirth; but his trusty lieutenant, after
laughing a while, looked grave, and said, "The poor man will take cold."
"I have no sympathy with drunkards," said Captain Hildebrand with cold
severity; but he rose, and, going forward, by kicking Alphonse hard and
freely in the ribs, roused him from his dream of the lass who loved a
sailor, and said, "Adolphe has fallen overboard."
It took some time for the information to penetrate Alphonse's skull.
When it did, he was all vivid alertness, staggered swiftly aft to the
gangway, and in rather less than five seconds, with no conspicuous
agility, had precipitated himself into Adolphe's arms. They rose,
clinging to one another, and both roared like bulls, while the
shrieking Tinker danced lightly round the deck.
Presently he recovered enough to throw them a rope, and they climbed on
board: no difficult feat, seeing that the deck was not two feet above
their heads. Before they thought of the yacht they went to the
forecastle and changed their wet clothes, while the dusk deepened.
Tinker went to the galley, and made tea. He had brought it to the
cabin, and he and Elsie were making a well-earned and hearty meal, and
discoursing with gusto of their blood-dyed career during the afternoon,
when Alphonse, very sad and glum, came and told them that the yacht was
aground, and Adolphe was getting up full steam to get her off. Tinker
with great readiness said he would come up and help.
In half an hour he heard the rattle of the propeller, and, coming on
deck, said he would go to the bows while Alphonse took the wheel, and
Adolphe worked the engines.
He went right forward, and peered into the darkness. Adolphe set the
engines going full speed, reversed, and Tinker cried, "She's moving!"
He saw the anchor chain slowly tauten, then the _Petrel_ moved no more.
The propeller thrashed away, but to no purpose, and to his great joy he
was sure that the anchor held her. However, he cheered them on to
persevere, and for nearly half an hour the propeller thrashed away.
Then they gave it up, sat down gloomily on the hatch of the engine
room, and lighted their pipes. Tinker and Elsie went back to the
cabin, rolled themselves in rugs, and were soon enjoying the innocent
sleep of childhood.
It was twelve o'clock when Tinker awoke, and at once he went on deck
and found that Alphonse, by way of keeping watch, had gone comfortably
asleep in the bows, while Adolphe snored from the forecastle. He
kicked Alphonse awake, and said, "Don't you think you could get her off
if you hauled up the anchor?"
For a minute or two Alphonse turned the idea hazily over in his apology
for a mind; then, with a hasty exclamation, he ran to the side, and saw
dimly the taut anchor chain. He blundered below, lugged Adolphe out of
his berth and on deck, and for five excited minutes they explained to
one another that the anchor was embedded in the sandbank, and that it
held the _Petrel_ on it. Then soberly and slowly they got to work on
the capstan, and hauled up the anchor. A dozen turns of the propeller
drew the _Petrel_ off the bank and into deep water. In three minutes
they had her about and steamed off towards the marooned, while Tinker
in the galley was heating water for coffee and making soup.
In the meanwhile Dorothy and Sir Tancred, ignorant of their plight, had
spent a delightful afternoon exploring with a never-tiring interest one
another's souls. For a long time she chided him gently for his aimless
manner of living; and he defended himself with a half-mocking sadness.
At about sunset they rose reluctantly, sighed with one accord that the
pleasant hours were over, looked at one another with sudden questioning
eyes at the sound of the sighs, and looked quickly away. They walked
slowly, on feet reluctant to leave pleasant places, through the pines,
silent, save that twice Sir Tancred sent his voice ringing among the
trees in a call to Tinker. They came to the landing-place, to find an
empty sea, and looked at one another blankly.
"The children must have persuaded the men to take them for a cruise,"
said Sir Tancred.
"But they're late coming back," said Dorothy.
For a while their eyes explored the corners and recesses of the Gulf
within sight, but found no _Petrel_. Then Sir Tancred said, "Well, we
must wait"; and spread a rug for her at the foot of a tree. He paced
up and down before her, keeping an eye over the water and talking to
her.
The dusk deepened and deepened, and at last it was quite dark.
"We're in a fix," said Sir Tancred uneasily. "Of course, if we stay
here they will come for us sooner or later, but goodness knows when.
If we set out to walk to civilisation we shall doubtless in time strike
it somewhere, but goodness knows where."
"If we went along this strip and turned eastward at the end of it
shouldn't we come to the railway?" said Dorothy.