MY SISTER’S SUSPICIONS—HEROES OF _THE ARGO_—MY SISTER DETERMINES
TO COME WITH US AS CHAPERON TO MISS RYBOT
FROM now right on to Christmas I lived in a constant hurry and ferment
of excitement; for not only was I full of every sort of preparation for
our adventure, but every day brought me nearer “The French Horn” and my
seeing dear Lucy once more. By the second week in December I had at last
got our party of six together; to which number, for the present, at any
rate, by Mr. Brentin’s advice, it was determined to limit it. If it were
to be done at all, he said, six could easily do it, and by adding more
we were only increasing the danger of the affair leaking out and the
people at the tables being forewarned and forearmed; neither of which,
though more particularly the latter, did we at all desire.
Directly the party was complete, I informed Mr. Brentin, and by his
directions gave them all a rendezvous at “The French Horn” for
Christmas. He wished to see us all together he said, and take our
measure; not that he doubted I had chosen the right sort, but rather
that he might consider what post should be assigned to each—who should
lead the van and who should guard the rear, and who, if necessary,
should form the reserve and direct the shell-throwing on the Casino in
case of our capture.
Meantime I had been so busy running over the country, interviewing and
persuading, and by many being point-blank refused, that I had quite
neglected my sister, Mrs Rivers, and Medworth Square; and whether it was
she suspected something from my continued absence, or something had
leaked out through Parker White, I never could quite discover; but, at
any rate, she one day sent for me to come to tea, and attacked me at
once to know what I was doing and why I never came to the house.
From very early days my sister Muriel has been my confidante in
everything. My father I scarcely remember, beyond the fact that he
always wore a white waistcoat and smelt of sherry when he kissed me, and
my dear mother died in Jubilee year—a very sad year, notwithstanding
the universal illuminations and rejoicings, for me; so to Muriel I have
always carried all my troubles and griefs, and no better sister for that
sort of work could any man wish for.
Particularly has she always been the sympathetic recipient of my
love-affairs, with the single exception of my affair with Lucy; for
though Muriel isn’t in the least a snob, yet I don’t suppose she would
have been best pleased to learn of her only brother’s attachment to an
innkeeper’s daughter, of however old a family. So all she knew was that
the Mabel Harker business was at an end, and was naturally wondering how
my vagrant heart was being employed meantime; questions on which
subject, however, I had always managed to shirk.
Directly we were alone in the Medworth Square morning-room, she opened
fire on me.
“Frank has been asking what has become of you lately, Vincent,” she
said—“what have you been doing with yourself?”
“I’ve been seeing a good deal of some Americans at the ‘Victoria,’ and a
good deal in and out of town.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing of any importance. How’s Mollie?”
“You can go and see Mollie afterwards. Now, look here, Vincent, you’re
up to something, and I mean to know what it is. I can’t have my only
brother drifting into a scrape, without doing my best to keep him out of
it. You’d better make a clean breast. I shall be sure to find out.”
I’d half a mind to tell her a downright fib and stop her importunities
that way; but I’d the instinct she knew something of the fact, and was
well aware that, if she weren’t told all, would set her prig of a
husband to work; and then our enterprise would as likely as not be
nipped in the bud by being made public property.
So, on the whole, I judged it best to tell her exactly what we were
doing and were going to do, taking care only to bind her over to the
completest secrecy, which, once she had given her word, I knew she would
die sooner than break.
She was half amused, half frightened, and at first wholly incredulous.
“But who on earth have you found to join you in such a cracked scheme?”
she asked. “I didn’t know you’d so many desperate lunatics among your
acquaintances.”
“Well, there’s Arthur Masters and Bob Hines, to begin with; you know
them.”
“I don’t think I know Mr. Hines, do I? Who is he?”
“Oh, he was at Marlborough with me, and now keeps a boys’ school at
Folkestone.”
“A nice instructor of youth, to go on an expedition of this kind,”
laughed my sister.
“That’s exactly what he’s afraid of; he says if he’s caught, it’ll be
the end of his business and he’ll have to break stones.”
“Then why does he go?”
“Well, you see, he’s very much in want of a gymnasium for his boys, and
I’ve promised to build him one out of the swag, if he’ll join us.”
“Tempted and fallen!” said my sister. “Really, Vincent, you’re a
Mephistopheles. And who else?”
“Harold Forsyth, of the Devon Borderers.”
“Is that the little man who always looks as if he was bursting out of
his clothes with overeating?”
“I dare say.”
“But I thought he was engaged to be married. What’s the young lady
about, to let him go?”
“Well, the fact is,” said I, “the young lady turns out to be a wrong un,
and is now chasing him about with a writ for breach of promise in her
glove, like a cab-fare.”
“So he’s off to escape that?” said my sister. “You’re a nice lot. Any
one else?”
“Teddy Parsons, in my militia.”
“He’s a poor creature,” my sister observed. “I shouldn’t take him; why,
all he can do is play the banjo and walk about Southport in breeches and
gaiters!”
“Yes, but he’s an old friend, and I want to do him a good turn.”
“You’ve odd notions of doing people a good turn,” Muriel laughed.
“The fact is,” I said, “he’s rather in a hole about a bill of his that’s
coming due. He’s gone shares with one of our fellows in the regiment in
a steeple-chaser and given him a bill to meet the expenses of training
and the purchase; and as the bill’s coming due and he’s mortally afraid
of his father—”
“You undertake to meet the bill, on the condition he joins you. I see.
And has that been the best you can do? Who’s the sixth?”
“Mr. Brentin, who’s bought the yacht; the American at the ‘Victoria.’”
“Well, all I can say is,” said my sister, after a pause, “you’re rather
a lame crew. Why, Teddy Parsons alone is enough to ruin anything!”
“Yes, I know,” I groaned, “but what is one to do? I’ve been all over the
country seeing men, but they’re all much too frightened. We’re an
utterly scratch lot, I know, but Brentin and I must do the best we can
with the material and trust to luck.”
“That you most certainly will have to do,” said my sister, with
conviction.
“Why can’t you come with us,” I urged, “and be the mascot of the party?
We must have some one of the kind, if only to chaperon Miss Rybot.”
“Dear me, who’s Miss Rybot?”
“Arthur Masters’s young woman, without whom he won’t stir.”
Now my sister Muriel is like a good many other highly respectable
Englishwomen: she is a most faithful wife and devoted mother, but she
doesn’t care in any particular degree about her husband, and is only too
glad to welcome anything in the way of honest excitement, if only to
break the monotony of home life. And here was excitement for her,
indeed, and, properly regarded, of the most irreproachably honest
description.
It flattered, too, her love of adventure, for which she had never had
much outlet in Medworth Square. Where we Blackers get our love of
adventure from, by-the-way, I don’t quite know, unless it be from my
mother’s father, who fought at Waterloo, and died a very old gentleman,
a Knight of Windsor; but we certainly both of us have it very strongly,
as all good English people should.
To cut a long story short, for I must really be getting on, my sister
finally agreed to come, if only as chaperon to Miss Rybot. Like the rest
of us, she had never been to Monte Carlo, having been hitherto forbidden
by her husband; but now she said she would insist, and allege as a
reason the necessity of her presence for keeping her only brother from
ruining himself at the tables.
So I was delighted to hear of her plucky resolve, particularly as it at
once got rid of the difficulty of Miss Rybot’s chaperon—since Brentin
had made up his mind not to take his wife, but send her down to
Rochester while he was away, and keep her fully employed there, in
Charles Dickens’s country.
I kissed my sister, promising to come back to dinner, and meantime went
up in the nursery, where I found my niece Mollie seated by the fire,
wrapped in a grimy little shawl, reading Grimm’s _Fairy Tales_.