on the eve of their departure for arcachon, tinker and elsie were sitting in the gardens of the temple of fortune, taking a well-earned rest after a farewell bolt into the salles de jeu, in which elsie also had played a gallant and successful part, for the somewhat obscure reason that it was the last bolt: so strengthening to her character had been companionship with tinker. she was receiving, with modest pride, his congratulations on having penetrated deeper than himself, to the innermost shrine, the trente et quarante table, in fact, when they saw coming towards them a large, majestic, white-haired lady, a small, subdued, mouse-haired lady, and a man of doubtful appearance.
without causing him to pause in his congratulations, tinker's active mind had placed the two women as a wealthy englishwoman and her companion, and was hesitating whether to place the man in the class of continental guides or private detectives, when he pointed to the two children, and said something to the majestic lady.
"that's the little boy, is it? then you two go and sit on the next seat while i talk to him," said the majestic lady in a voice which lost in pleasantness what it gained in loudness; and she came to the seat on which tinker and elsie sat, while her attendants walked on.
now to call him a little boy was by no means the quickest way to tinker's heart, and he watched her draw near with a cold eye. but all the same when she made as if to sit down, he rose and raised his hat with a charming smile. she sat down and looked him over with a cool consideration which provoked his fastidiousness to no admiration of her breeding. then she said:
"are you sir tancred beauleigh's little boy?"
"i am hildebrand anne beauleigh," said tinker in a faintly corrective tone quite lost on her complacent mind.
"hildebrand anne! hildebrand anne! she called you hildebrand anne, did she? the impudence of these minxes!" said the majestic lady, and she sniffed like a lady of the lower-middle classes.
at once tinker knew that she was lady beauleigh, and that she was speaking of his mother. but his face never changed; only the pupils of his eyes contracted a little; and he drew a quiet, deep breath of satisfaction. he had always hoped for an interview with her, his father's step-mother, and he knew that he had the advantage; for he was armed with a very fair knowledge of her, imparted to him by his father, who thought it well to put him on his guard; and of him she knew nothing.
"who's this little girl?" said lady beauleigh, surveying elsie with her insolent stare. "send her away. i want to talk to you alone."
"this is my adopted sister, elsie. you may talk before her; it doesn't matter how confidential it is. i always tell her everything," said tinker in a tone of kindly but exasperating patronage.
"i don't care! go away, little girl!" said lady beauleigh, and tinker was pleased to see the colour rise in her cheeks.
he stayed elsie, who was rising to go, with a wave of his hand and said gently, "is it important talk?"
"yes; it is!" snapped lady beauleigh.
"then i'd rather she stopped. my father says you should always have a witness to important talk," said tinker, and he smiled at her.
"stuff and nonsense! i'm your grandmother!" cried lady beauleigh angrily.
"ah, then your name is vane," said tinker sweetly.
"vane! vane!" lady beauleigh gasped rather than spoke the hated name. "it's nothing of the kind! it's beauleigh! i'm lady beauleigh!"
"i'm afraid there must be some mistake. you can't be my grandmother on my father's side. my father's mother is dead," said tinker in a tone which almost seemed to apologise for her error.
"you must be very stupid, or very ignorant!" cried lady beauleigh. "i'm your grandfather's second wife, as you ought to know!"
"oh, i know, now," said tinker; and his face shone with his sudden enlightenment. "you keep a bank."
"i—keep—a—bank?" said lady beauleigh in a dreadful voice.
"oh, not a roulette bank or baccarat bank," said tinker with well-affected hastiness. "one of the shop kind—where they sell money—with glass doors."
"my father was a banker, if that's what you mean," said lady beauleigh. "but a bank isn't a shop."
"oh, i always think it a kind of shop," said tinker with the dispassionate air of a professor discussing a problem in the higher mathematics. "it's as well to lump all these—these commercial things together, isn't it?" and he was very pleased with the word commercial.
"no: it isn't! a bank isn't a shop, you stupid little boy!" cried lady beauleigh hotly.
"well, just as you like," said tinker with graceful surrender. "i only call it a shop because it's convenient."
"a boy of your age ought not to think about convenience. you ought to have been taught to keep things clear and distinct," said lady beauleigh in a heavy, didactic voice.
"oh, it's quite clear to me, really, that a bank's a shop; but we won't talk about it, if you're ashamed of it. after all, one doesn't talk about trade, does one?" said tinker with a return to his kindly but exasperating patronage.
"ashamed of it? i'm not ashamed of it!" said lady beauleigh in the roar of a wounded lioness.
"no, no; of course not! i only thought you were! i made a mistake!" said tinker quickly, with an infuriating show of humouring her.
"i'm proud of it! proud of it!" said lady beauleigh thickly. "and when you grow up and understand things, you'll wish your father had been a banker, too!"
"i don't think so," said tinker; and he smiled at her very pleasantly. "i'm quite satisfied with my father as he is. i'd really rather that he was a gentleman."
"a banker is a gentleman!" cried lady beauleigh.
"yes, yes, of course," said tinker, humouring her again. "he's—he's a commercial gentleman."
lady beauleigh could find no words. never in the course of her domineering life had she been raised to such an exaltation of whole-souled exasperation. she could only glare at the suave disposer of her long-cherished, long-asserted pretensions; and she glared with a fury which made elsie, who had edged little by little to the extreme edge of the seat, rise softly and take up a safer position, standing three yards away.
tinker took advantage of lady beauleigh's helpless speechlessness to say thoughtfully, "but about your being my grandmother? if you're not my father's mother or my mother's mother, you can't really be my grandmother. you must be my step-grandmother.
"i should think," tinker went on, and his thoughtfulness became a 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.
"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.
