in the early afternoon of thursday, david mosscrop walked apart on shaded gravel-paths, beneath arches of roses and the feathered canopy of cedars high above, with adele by his side.
“oh, it’s all right. the waiter will come out and tell us when it is ready,” he said reassuringly, in comment upon her backward glance. “i want to speak with you. there was no such thing as a word with you by yourself on the road.”
“why, we talked every mortal minute,” she protested.
“ah yes, we talked, but i don’t recall that anything was said.”
“i daresay my conversation is empty to the last degree,” she observed; “but i am usually spared such frank statements of the fact.”
“ah, but i want to be thought of as something a little different from the usual,” urged david.
“your efforts in that direction have been extraordinarily successful. pray, do not imagine that they are unappreciated. i admit freely that you seem to have quite exhausted the unusual, my lord.”
“no; i’ve still got something up my sleeve,” said david, lightly enough. but the tone in which she had uttered those final two words caught his attention. they carried a suggestion of emphasis which fell outside the bounds of genial banter. meditating upon it he stole a covert glance at her, and encountered two wide-awake black eyes intently scrutinising him in turn. “it was about that i wished to consult you,” he added, conscious of an embarrassed tongue.
“won’t it be better to stick to scenery?” she asked. yes, there was undoubtedly a mocking touch in her voice. “that is so safe a subject. this dear old hotel here, now, how perfectly satisfying it is! those wonderful trees out in front, and the white chalk hill behind, and this garden, and then the comfort and charm of everything inside, and the thought that people have been coming here for hundreds of years, or is it thousands?—it is so different from anything we have in america—even in kentucky. and then the whole drive from london—through such delicious country, all so rich and smooth and neatly packed together, and so full of the notion that people are all the while planting and pruning and admiring every inch of it that you can’t help feeling affectionately toward it yourself! perhaps there is a certain hint of the artificial about it, but somehow that seems rather in keeping with the day than otherwise, doesn’t it, my lord?”
while he hesitated about an answer, she touched him on the arm. “here are papa and mr. linkhaw coming along after us—probably to tell us luncheon is ready. shan’t we wait for them?”
“heavens, no!” cried david, starting forward. “we’ve been chained to them on the top of the coach for two whole hours,” he went on, in defensive explanation of his warmth. “really, we have earned the right to a few quiet words by ourselves.”
“oh, i don’t mind,” said adele, quickening her pace to suit his. “only it’s fair to warn you, though, that my temper has its limitations. i am a variable person. sometimes it happens that all at once i weary of a joke, after it has been carried to a certain length, and then i can be as unpleasant as they make ’em.”
“i find that my own sense of humour has a tendency to flag under sustained effort, as i get older,” said david. “but there are so many pleasantries afloat—perhaps you wouldn’t mind indicating the one which particularly fatigues you, and i will put my foot on it at once.”
“oh, by no means! that would be far too crude. we are all your guests, and you are in charge of the entertainment, and i couldn’t dream of suggesting anything.”
“except that you find yourself no longer amused,” ventured david, cautiously.
“oh. not at all.” she spoke with perfunctory languor, and simulated a little yawn. “i daresay it is all immensely funny, only i got up earlier than usual this morning, and no doubt that has dulled my wits somewhat.”
david perceived on the instant how matters stood. “i also rose at an extravagantly early hour,55 he said, and it is about my reasons for doing so that i want to tell you. but, first of all, let us be frank with each other. i have done nothing but accede to a situation created for me by archie and yourself. it has been within your power to end it at any moment you choose. it has been all along much more your joke than mine. it isn’t fair to round on me for merely humouring your own conception of sport.”
adele halted momentarily, and surveyed his composed, swarthy countenance with lifted brows. “so you saw all along that i knew!” she exclaimed, in honest surprise.
“how could i have imagined that so clumsy a performance as mine would deceive so clever a young woman?” he rejoined, with a sprightly bow.
“oh, you did it awfully well,” she assured him, complacently. “but tell me, did archie suspect that i knew?”
“i have been intimate with archie from the cradle,” said david, “but i am still very shy about forming opinions as to his mental processes. in this case, however, i think it is safe to say he didn’t suspect—and still doesn’t suspect.”
“poor old archie,” mused adele, with a ripening smile. “i knew who he was before i’d even laid eyes on him. a school-friend of mine in galveston wrote to me that she had met a real earl, who insisted on being known as mr. linkhaw, and that he was returning to england by way of kentucky. i’ve had three months of the rarest fun in never letting on that i had the remotest suspicion. you can’t imagine how comical it was. he used to get, quite tearful sometimes, i abused the aristocracy so fiercely. and then, the joke was, papa began—his whole idea of conversation is to take up to-day what i’ve said yesterday, and multiply my words by a hundred and twelve, and produce the result as his own; and he worked up the anti-earl agitation till archie very nearly went off into chronic melancholia. it was better than any comedy that ever was written—but then you stumbled your way into the middle of it, and got it all twisted and tangled up—and it hasn’t been so amusing since then.”
“my dear miss skinner,” protested david, “i think my entrance upon the scene deserves a gentler verb. if you will search your memory, you will find that i came in by express invitation. it was you who deliberately thrust my mock honours upon me.”
“oh, i know that,” she responded, readily enough. “i thought that would only make the thing funnier still—but somehow it hasn’t. it isn’t anything about archie and me, you know. but there is another element in the case that i feel very keenly about. it has been puzzling me for days, but i only learned the truth last night. i simply made papa tell me. i refused flat-footed to come here to-day, or to do anything else that was reasonable, unless he did tell me. i have a cousin here in england, mr. mosscrop, a daughter of my father’s own brother, and she is one of the dearest girls that ever lived.”
“i can readily credit that,” declared david, pointing his meaning with a little inclination of the head.
“oh, she is far nicer than i am,” cried adele. “she wouldn’t trifle with the feelings of the man she loved, or play tricks with him just for the sake of fun. in fact, i almost blame her for taking such things too seriously. she hasn’t had too easy a time of it, poor girl, and it has made her, i think, altogether too humble. she met a young man in the midst of her troubles who, it seems, was civil to her, and even kind as men go, and what does she do but just sit down and worship the very memory of him, and cry out her pretty blue eyes over it—and he—he walks off and never gives her another thought. that’s the man of it!”
a gleam of indignation flashed through the moisture in her own eyes as she bent them upon her companion. her bosom heaved the more as she discerned a broad smile extending itself upon his face.
“although i might demur to details,” he said, restraining the gaiety which struggled for expression in his voice, “i must not pretend to fail to recognise the portrait you have drawn. i am the guilty man!”
“you laugh at it!” she exclaimed. “to you it seems a joke!”
“are you so certain that there isn’t a joke concealed somewhere about it?” he suggested, calmly.
“i lose patience with you! you make a jest of everything. tell me this much: do you or do you not know her present address?”
“i know precisely where she is to be found at the present moment,” said david, speaking now with gravity.
“well, and have you been there to see her? have you written to her there? have you given her the slightest sign since she has been there of any desire on your part to ever see her again?”
“i must answer ‘no’ to each question, i am afraid,” he responded, and had the grace to hang his head.
his evident humility only momentarily impressed her. “i am disappointed in you,” she said. “where will you find a sweeter or truer woman? don’t think i am throwing her at your head! quite the contrary. if you were to ask for her now, i should advise with all my might against you. but you have behaved like a simpleton. i am going to have her always live with me, or near me. she is my own flesh and blood, and i love her as if she were my sister. she doesn’t know, as yet, that i am aware of the relationship; but i have written to her this very morning, telling her to come and see me to-night, when i get back. i am going to spend some money in scotland.”
“it will be profoundly appreciated, believe me.”
she sniffed at his interjection. “i intend to buy land right and left in elgin, and if skirl castle isn’t good enough—i don’t think much of it from the photographs—we’ll build a bigger one, and we’ll make that whole section hum; and vestalia shall be as big an heiress as it contains, and the lucky man who marries her shall be treated like a brother of mine and archie’s. and that is what you have thrown away. i say it to you frankly, because it is all over so far as you are concerned. she will listen to me, and my mind is quite made up—and papa can tell you what that means!”
“even if your decision were not irrevocable,” said david, solemnly, “my answer would of necessity be the same. i would do much to please you, but i do not see my way to marrying your cousin.”
they had paused to exchange these last sentences, and now upon the instant the earl and his elderly companion came up. david essayed a revelatory wink to the nobleman, but it fell upon the stony places in lord drum-pipes wondering stare.
mr. skinner wiped his brow decorously, and breathed appreciation of the halt. “sir,” he began, addressing david, “i must assume that i am enjoying the opportunity of studying a district of england peculiarly favoured by nature, and exceptionally embellished as well by the hand of man; but i wish to give expression to emotions of unmixed delight at all that i observe about me. we have inspected the internal appointments of the ancient hostelry, and have revelled, sir, in the luxurious yet studiously regulated beauties of this garden, and i confess that the novelty of the one and the charm of the other far surpass anything——”
“papa,” interposed his daughter, with cold severity, “we will leave these gentlemen to enjoy the novelties and charms by themselves for a few minutes, if you please. i have an explanation to make to you, since no one else offers it, and i think it should be no longer deferred.”
she took her father’s arm as she spoke, and led him in a direct line across the sward toward the broad, low-lying, ivy-clad rear of the hotel. “oh, it’s all right; they don’t mind your walking on the grass in england,” the two young men heard her say as she departed.
these partners in deception gazed after her for a space. then they looked at each other.
“davie, i don’t like it,” said the earl.
“don’t like what?”
“i’m afraid she’s got some kind of an inkling. it looks as if a suspicion were dawning in her mind. i warned you she was keen of scent.”
mosscrop burst forth with a peremptory guffaw of laughter. “you duffer of the earth,” he cried, “she knew all about you before ever she laid eyes on you!” he unfolded the chuckling narrative forthwith, to the earl’s profound astonishment and concern.
“why then, man,” drumpipes ejaculated at last, staring hard at the close-cropped lawn, “i can’t tell in the least if she loves me for myself alone.”
“oh, you read that in some novel,” objected david. “it’s a mere phrase; it has no significance in real life.”
“yes; but,” the other pursued, dejectedly, “i don’t see how i can make sure that she loves me in any kind of way.”
“at all events, she’s going to marry you,” david re-assured him. “she mentioned the fact to me, casually. and she’s going to buy up elgin right and left, and build a new skirl castle as big as olympia, and generally make everything else north of the grampians ‘sing small’—i believe that’s the phrase.”
the earl assimilated this intelligence with a kindling eye. “man, it’s fine!” he cried, as the prospect spread itself out before his mental vision. “ah, poor davie, you dinna ken what it is to be in love!”
mosscrop sighed. “when you talk scots, archie,” he said, “i know it’s going to cost me money. i foresee that you’ll kick about the bill. but, hurry, man, and catch up with them. she’s quite capable of flouncing out of the house, and dragging her father along, too, while the fit is on her; and that would only mean more bother to coax them back. come on!”
he started at a brisk pace in pursuit, and drumpipes strode eagerly beside him. they overtook their guests on the very threshold of the door, and the earl called out a breathless, entreating “adele!” the girl, upon reflection, turned, and surveyed the pair with an austere eye.
“wait a moment, papa,” she said in her coldest tone; “one of these two gentlemen seems to feel authorised to address me by my christian name, and apparently has also some communication to make to us.”
“well,” stammered drumpipes, hesitatingly, “there’s an awfully good luncheon been ordered, you know.”
mosscrop emitted an abrupt, resonant note of laughter, and in the silence which ensued displayed violent muscular efforts to keep a grin from convulsing his face.
adele preserved the severity of her aspect for a little. “i think it might occur to you, lord drumpipes,” she began, markedly addressing her remarks to the rightful bearer of the title, “that after what has happened—and on this point, i can assure you my father feels exactly as i do——”
she stopped here, with the effect of appealing to her father for immediate confirmation of their inflexible joint attitude.
“i need scarcely observe,” began mr. skinner, putting up his pince-nez and looking down upon the two young men with sternness from the vantage of the door-step, “that whatever course my daughter deems it consistent with her dignity to pursue, in the face of the extraordinary, and, i may confidently add, unprecedented circumstances which we are called upon to—to confront, has my most unswerving adhesion.”
a waiter opened the door inward at this instant, and overlaid mr. skinner’s peroration with a clear-cut message, germanic in its nonessentials, but broadly human in import.
the old gentleman gasped, twiddled the string of his glasses in his fingers, and leant his head sidewise toward his daughter. “yes, but what is it we’re going to do?” he inquired in a nervous whisper.
“do?” cried mosscrop, who had caught her glance in his own, and convicted it of latent merriment, “do? why we’re going to laugh at a harmless pleasantry happily ended, and pass in to luncheon.”
“yes, papa,” said adele, upon consideration, and with a dawning smile upon her lips, “i think that is what we’re going to do.” when they found themselves standing about the table in the private room, overlooking through open french windows the delightful sunlit garden from which they had come, mosscrop seized the moment of hesitation about seats to hold up his hand. though he had been bereft of his borrowed dignities, the air of natural command sat easily upon him.
“i have to ask you for a minute or two of delay,” he said. “it will explain itself.”
he wrote something on a card as he spoke, and gave it to the waiter with a closely-guarded whisper of injunction. as the servant left the room, david turned to the others with a radiant face.
“mr. skinner,” he began, “and my younger friends, there is a toast which in england is always drunk standing. it occurs to me to propose it to you, on this single occasion, before we have taken our seats at all. as has been remarked with characteristic perspicacity, the circumstances which we find ourselves called upon to confront are extraordinary in character, and altogether unprecedented. through the courtesy of my friends, i have for a brief period had devolved upon me the responsibility of behaving, at stated intervals, as a member of the scotch peerage should behave. i view my deportment throughout this ordeal, in retrospect, with a considerable degree of satisfaction. i have spared no pains to realise my conception of the part. the essential thing about a successful peerage, i take it, is that it should be invested, for ordinary eyes, with a glamour of unreality. a baron should be perceptibly romantic. a viscount, if he respects his station should quite envelope himself in the mists of the improbable. as for an earl, he should live frankly in fairyland. my imagination does not run to marquises and dukes, but i think i may say i have grasped the ideal of an earl.”
“the true ideal of an earl,” interposed drumpipes, with inspiration, “is never to let victuals get cold.”
mosscrop smiled and nodded. “only a minute more,” he said. “i spoke about fairyland. i have been under its spell all this week. i have committed myself to its charm for the rest of my days. when you return to london this evening, northward, it is archie who will drive you. i go southward to the loire country instead, under the magic of the enchantment which beckons and guides and propels me, all in one. to quit riddles, good people, you will notice that there is a fifth place laid here before us. to connect this fact with the toast, the seat is waiting for my queen. this is sherry, decanted from the ‘anchor’s’ oldest bin. i suggest to you the filling of your glasses.”
he moved toward the door as he spoke, opened it, and turned to the others, with ves-talia on his arm.
“mr. skinner,” he said gently. “we crave your approbation for what we have done. we were married by the registrar of st. dunstan’s at ten o’clock this morning, and your niece came on here direct by train, bringing her luggage and my own, which i thank god devoutly will always travel together in future. we love each other very, very much.”
there fell here upon the masculine vision the spectacle of two women entwined in each other’s arms, and of two beautiful heads, one raven-black, one glowing like light through clouded amber, bent tenderly together. the sound of little moans proceeded from this swaying, interlocked group, and then of kisses and of subdued ecstatic sobbing laughter.
lord drumpipes, staring vacantly from these women to his boyhood friend, gulped his sherry in an absent-minded way. david, in rapid whispers, outlined meanwhile the situation to his bewildered ear.
“eh!” he called out at last. “it is the same lassie? the yellow-haired one? the one who smashed my moosie?”
“shut up, you loon!” growled david fiercely, under his breath. “is this the time to blab about such things? i kicked your your old cow into splinters, and i’ll serve the rest of the idiotic show the same way if you mention the word ‘moose.’ chuck it, man! that’s a thing for the girls to tell each other a year hence, perhaps. have some delicacy about you!” he turned to mr. skinner, who stood as one petrified, his gaze riveted upon the young women.
“i’ve been explaining to my friend, lord drumpipes,” david said, lifting his voice, “the romantic nature of my acquaintance with your niece, my wife. i think you have been told about it.”
mr. skinner shifted his glance to the speaker. “to some extent—to some extent,” he murmured weakly. “it has taken me greatly by surprise. i scarcely know——-”
david had advanced, and was holding out his hand, with a confident, masterful sort of smile.
“i suppose it’s all right,” the old gentleman said, sending confused, appealing glances toward his inattentive daughter. “adele seems not to object—i take it for granted that——”
adele lifted her head, and drew a protecting arm round vestalia. “hold up your chin,” she whispered, audibly. “they’re nothing to be frightened of. you know everybody except your cousin archie, and he’s only to be feared by creatures who can’t shoot back.”
the bride, nestling against the other’s shoulder, raised a luminous face, and looked about her with a smile of frank happiness.
“frightened?” she queried, and then shook her fair head joyously in answer.
the waiter came in with the tureen.
