Chapter 8

(Well, you know, dear, I _had_ wanted to; but suddenly I felt as if Dick didn't matter more than a fly, nor did any one else except the person I was talking to. You _do_ feel like that with these quiet, masterful sort of people, whether you care for them or not. It's just a kind of momentary hypnotism; or, at least, that's the definition I've been giving myself.)

"I don't want to hear what he's got to say," my hypnotized Me answered, in the queer, abrupt way in which we had begun snapping out little short sentences to each other. "I'm sure he couldn't say anything really interesting."

"Don't you like Dick Burden?"

"Not much."

"Then the dance is mine. Which is it?"

"The next. Here he comes now. I see the top of his head, over the shoulder of that youth with the collar of a curate and the face of a convict."

The Dragon smiled benevolently at my wicked description of a comparatively inoffensive person, and whisked me off.

"Are you offended with me?" I asked, as we waltzed a weird but heavenly Hungarian waltz (made in Germany).

"Why do you ask that?" he wanted to know.

"Because you looked offended at dinner. What had I done? Eaten something with the wrong fork?"

"You had done nothing I oughtn't to have been prepared to see you do."

"What ought you to be prepared to see me do?"

"It doesn't matter now."

"It does. If you don't tell me, I shall scream 'Murder' at the top of my lungs, and then you'll have to speak."

"I certainly wouldn't. I'd bundle you home at once."

"I haven't got any home."

"My home is yours, till you marry."

"Or you do."

"Don't talk nonsense." (He was probably going to say "Tommy-rot" but considered such striking words unfit for the ear of a débutante. This _was_ my début, I suppose? My very first ball.)

"Then tell me what you were unprepared for in me."

"I was prepared for it at first, before I saw you. But----"

"What?"

"Well, if you will have it, for your flirting."

Suddenly I felt impish, and said, innocently, that I supposed it was what girls came on board men-o'-war to do, so I had only done my best to please. By this time we'd stopped dancing, and were sitting down. I'd forgotten Dick Burden.

"It all depends upon the point of view," he answered, with rather a disgusted air.

"My point of view is," said I, gravely, "that soldiers as _well_ as sailors should approve of flirting, because flirtation is a warlike act; a short incursion into the enemy's country, with the full intention of getting back untouched."

"Ah, but what of the enemy?" suggested the Dragon.

"He can always take care of himself on such incursions."

"So that's the theory? And at nineteen you have enlisted in that army?"

"What army?"

"The great army of flirts."

I couldn't keep it up any longer, for I had really started in to explain, not to joke. And you know, dear, that flirting as a profession wouldn't be in my line at all.

"Do I look like a flirt?" I asked.

"No. You don't," said he. "And I was beginning to hope----"

"Please go on hoping, then," I said. "Because I didn't want to behave badly. If I did, it was because I don't quite know the game yet. And I wanted to tell you that I didn't really mean to be silly and schoolgirlish, and disgrace you and Mrs. Norton."

Then it was his turn to apologize, and he did it thoroughly. He said that I hadn't been silly, and so far from disgracing him, he was proud of me--"proud of his ward." It was only that I seemed so much more womanly and companionable than he'd expected, that he couldn't bear to see in me, or think he saw, any likeness whatever to inferior types of woman. Whereupon I had the impertinence to ask _why_ he'd expected me to be inferior; but the only explanation I could get him to make was that he didn't know much about girls. Which he had remarked before.

We'd sat out two dances before we--I mean I--knew it; and nobody had dared to come near us, because a middy can't very well snatch a partner out of a celebrity's pocket. And Dick, too, though he seems to have the courage of most of his convictions, drew the line at that. But suddenly I did remember. I smiled at a hovering laddie with the most smoothly polished hair you ever saw, just like a black helmet; and when the laddie had swung me away in the Merry Widow waltz Sir Lionel went back to Mrs. Senter. Rather an appropriate air for her to dance to, I thought. I do pray I'm not getting kitten-catty? Anyhow, I'm not in my _second_ kittenhood!

You will be wondering by this time why I'm sorry we stayed at Southsea, when it was all for me, and I seem to have been having the "time of my life." But I'm coming to the part you want to know about.

I thought perhaps Dick Burden would be vexed at my going off with Sir Lionel, under his nose, just as he was ready to say "my dance." However, he walked up to me as if nothing had happened, when it was time for the second, so I didn't apologize. I thought it best to let sleeping partners lie.

We danced a little, but Dick, who is one-and-twenty, doesn't waltz half as well as Sir Lionel, who is forty; and he saw that I thought so. Presently he asked if I'd rather sit out the rest, and I answered, yes; so he said he would tell me the things he had to say. He found a quiet place, which must have looked as if deliberately selected for a desperate flirtation; and then he didn't do much beating about the bush. He just told me that he _knew everything_. He'd partly "detected" it, and partly found out by chance; but of course he made the most of the detecting bit.

Don't be frightened and get a palpitation at the news, dearest; it isn't worth it. There's going to be no flare-up. Of course, if I were the heroine of a really nice melodrama, in such a scene as Dick and I went through, I should have been accompanied by slow music, with lime-light every time I turned my head, which would have heartened me up very much; while Dick would have had villain music--plink, plink, plunk! But I did as well as I could without an accompaniment, and I think, on the whole, managed the business very well.

You see, I had to think of Ellaline. I dared not let her out of my mind for a single instant, for if I should fail her now, at the crucial time, it would be my fault if her love story burst and went up the spout. If I'd stopped thinking of her, and saying in my mind while Dick talked, "I must save Ellaline, no matter what happens to me!" I should certainly have boxed his ears and told him to go to limbo.

He began by telling me that he'd met a friend of mine, a Miss Bennett--Kathy Bennett. Oh, mother, just for a minute my heart beat under my pretty frock like a bird caught in a child's hand! You remember my writing you what a friendship Ellaline and Kathy struck up, before Kathy left school to go back to England, and how she sent Ellaline cuttings from the London Radical papers about Sir Lionel Pendragon in Bengal? I do think it's almost ungentlemanly of so many coincidences to happen in connection with what I'm trying to do for Ellaline. But Kathy's such a lump, it's too great a compliment to call her a coincidence. Anyhow, Dick met her in town, at a tea party (a "bun worry," he called it) where he went with his dear Aunt Gwen; and when Kathy mentioned being at school at Madame de Maluet's, he asked if she knew Miss Lethbridge. She said of course she did, and she thought Ellaline was a "very naughty little thing" not to write or come and see her. She had read in the papers about the arrival of Sir Lionel with his sister and ward, you see.

Dick remarked that he'd hardly call Miss Lethbridge a "little thing," whereupon Kathy defended her adjective by saying Ellaline was only about up to her ear.

Of course that set Mr. Dick's detective bump to throbbing furiously. He reassured me by announcing that he hadn't said any more to Kathy, but that he'd thought a lot. In fact, he thought so much that he asked if she'd give him a line of introduction to Madame, as he had a cousin who wanted to go to a French school, and next time he "ran across to Paris," he might have a look at Versailles. Kathy gave the note, and that same night, if you'll believe it, the horrid little boy did "run across." At the earliest hour possible in the morning he called at the school, only to find Madame already away for her holidays. But you know she always leaves her sister, Mademoiselle Prado, to look after things, and when Mademoiselle heard what Dick wanted, she showed him all over the place. He said he would like to see photographs of the young ladies in groups, if any such existed, because he could write his Australian cousin what nice, happy-looking girls they were. Promptly that poor, unsuspecting female produced the big picture Madame had done of the tea-party on the lawn, a year ago in June, and there was I in it. But Dick was too foxy to begin by asking questions about me. Kathy adorned the photograph also, with Ellaline on her right and me in the perspective of her left ear, which must have seemed to point at me accusingly. Dick could claim Kathy quite naturally, as he'd come with her letter, and presently he led up to me, saying he seemed to have seen me somewhere. Was I a great friend of Miss Bennett's, and was it probable that she had my portrait?

Mademoiselle innocently said no, Miss Bennett was much more likely to have Mees Lethbridge's portrait than Mees Brendon's, as Mees Brendon was not a pupil of the school, only a teacher of singing, and Mees Kathy was not musical. But Mees Lethbridge, _la petite jeune fille_ on the right, was a friend of Mees Bennett.

Now you'll admit that Dick was rather smart to have chopped all these branches off the tree of knowledge with his little hatchet. I think his cleverness worthy of a better cause.

The next thing he did was to ask, naïvely, if _that_ Miss Lethbridge was _the_ Miss Lethbridge--the ward of Sir Lionel Pendragon, so much talked of in the papers just now? Proud that her sister's school had moulded a celebrity, Mademoiselle chatted away about Ellaline, saying what a dear child she was, how sorry Madame was to part from her, and how Madame de Blanchemain, Ellaline's _chère marraine_, at St. Cloud, must be missing her _mignonne_ at this very moment.

It goes without saying that Mr. Dick's next step took him at a single stride to St. Cloud. He didn't call on Madame de Blanchemain, not wishing to stir up a tempest in a teapot, but simply pryed and peered, and did all sorts of sneaky things, only excusable in a professional detective, who must (or thinks he must) live.

He found out about Madame de Blanchemain's nephew, Ellaline's Honoré, and put this and that together, until he'd patched up the theory of a love affair. But further he dared not go, on that track, so he pranced back to Versailles, and found out things about Audrie Brendon.

The way he did that was through noticing the name of the Versailles photographer who took the group in the garden. Dick called on him, and said he wanted a copy of the picture, because his "cousin" was in it. The man had several on hand, as parents occasionally wrote for them, and when Dick got his he inquired who I was. The obliging photographer, perhaps scenting a romance, told him I lived in the Rue Chapeau de Marie Antoinette with my mother. Then the wretch actually had the impudence to describe to me a visit he paid our apartment, ringing at the door, and asking dear Philomene for Madame Brendon!

In five minutes, he had heard all our family affairs, as far as that dear, simple, talkative soul could tell him. That you were in Switzerland, and I had gone to England to visit a friend.

I sat and listened to the end of the story, saying never a word, though I was in one of the moods which make me a person that nobody but myself could stand for a moment. I should simply have smiled if wild horses had come along to tear him in two.

"So you see," said he, at last, when I didn't speak, "I'm in the game with you."

"It isn't my game," said I.

"You're playing it," said he.

"Because I have to," said I.

"Is it Sir Lionel who's making you play it?" he asked.

"Oh, dear, no," I broke out, before I stopped to think.

"Then, he isn't in it?"

I thought it looked more respectable to admit that, whatever the "game" was, Sir Lionel and I were not playing it together.

"You're doing it for your friend," deduced our young detective.

I gently intimated that that was _my_ business. But Mr. Burden advised me that I would be wise to accept him as my partner if I didn't want the business to fail.

"What have I done to you, that you should interfere?" I wanted to know, only I didn't dare--actually didn't _dare_, for Ellaline's sake, to speak angrily. Oh, I did feel like a worm's paper doll!

"You've made me like you, awfully," he said.

"Then you shouldn't want to do me any harm," I suggested.

"I don't want to do you harm," he defended himself. "What I want is to see as much of you as possible, and also I'd like to give Aunt Gwen a little pleasure, thrown in with mine. I want you to ask Sir Lionel to invite us to join your party. There's plenty of room for us in that big motor-car of his. I went to see it in the garage to-day."

"You _would_!" I couldn't resist sputtering. But he took no notice.

"You needn't be afraid that Aunt Gwen's in this," he went on to assure me. "I've kept mum as an oyster. All she knows is that I saw you--Miss Lethbridge--in Paris, and haven't been the same man since. She helped me get to know you, of course. She's a great chum of mine, and her being an old pal of Sir Lionel's too, meant a lot for me in the beginning. She's a ripper, and stanch as they make 'em--but they _don't_ make 'em perfectly stanch where other women are concerned. And as long as you and I hunt in couples she shan't have a suspicion."

"You'd tell her, if I refused to hunt in that way?" I asked.

"I might think it my duty to let Sir Lionel know how he's being humbugged. At present I'm shuttin' my eyes to duty, and lookin' at you. What?"

"Why does Mrs. Senter want to come with us?" I ventured to inquire.

"Because," explained her loyal nephew, "she's fed up with visiting, and she loves motoring. So do I, with the right people. I'm sure it's not much to ask. We won't sponge on Sir Lionel. We'll pay our own hotel bills; and I'm sure, even though you are in a wax with me just now, you must admit Aunt Gwen and I would wake things up a bit--what? All's fair in love and war, so you oughtn't to blame me for anything I've done. You'd think it jolly well romantic if you read it in a book."

I denied this, but said I would consider. He must give me till to-morrow morning to make up my mind; which he flatly refused to do. To-morrow would be too late. He saw in my eye that I hoped to slip off, but it was "no good my being foxy." Things must be fixed up, or _blown_ up, on board this ship to-night.

Whether or not he really meant to do his worst, if I wouldn't give in, I can't be sure, but he looked as obstinate as six pigs, and I didn't dare risk Ellaline's future. My _own_ impression is that there's a _big_ mistake somewhere, and that she would be perfectly safe in Sir Lionel's hands if she would tell him frankly all about Honoré du Guesclin--I, meanwhile, vanishing through a stage trap or something. But she may be right. And I _may_ be wrong. That's why I was forced to promise Dick. And I kept my promise, as soon as we got home to our hotel--Sir Lionel, Mrs. Norton, and I.

I knew it would be a most horrid thing to do, but it was even horrider than I thought.

All the way going back I was planning what to say, and feeling damp on the forehead, thinking how impudent it would seem in _me_, a young girl and a guest, to make such a suggestion. But it had to be done, so I screwed up my courage, swallowed half of it again, with a lump in my throat, and exclaimed in a gay, spontaneous way, like the sweet, innocent angel I am: "Oh, Sir Lionel, _wouldn't_ it be fun if Mrs. Senter and--and her nephew were going with us for a little way? They both love motoring."

He looked surprised and Emily pursed her lips.

"Do you want them to come?" he asked.

"Well, I just thought of it," I stammered.

"I thought you didn't like Burden," he said. No wonder, as I'd unfortunately unbosomed myself of my real sentiments not three hours before!

"I think he's amusing enough," I tried to slide out of the difficulty. "And Mrs. Senter probably wouldn't go without him."

"I somehow gathered an impression that you didn't admire her particularly," went on Sir Lionel, looking at me with a very straight look.

"Oh, I never said so!" I cried. "I admire her immensely."

"In that case, I'll ask them, with pleasure," said Sir Lionel. "The idea did cross my mind in London, but I didn't think you'd care for it, somehow. Emily will be pleased, I know. Won't you, Emily? And if Mrs. Senter will be as reasonable as you two in the matter of luggage we shall have plenty of room."

"It is your car, and the idea of the tour is yours," said Mrs. Norton, very feminine and resigned, also feeling that my "cheek" deserved a tiny scratch. "I am pleased with whatever pleases _you_."

Next morning (or rather the _same_ morning, and _this_ morning) Sir Lionel got his sister to write a note to Mrs. Senter, and he wrote one too, or added a P. S. "Aunt Gwen's" reply was a ladylike warwhoop of joy; and we are now waiting till the latest additions to our party have broken the news to their hostess at Hayling Island, packed a few things to take, and sent the rest "home" (wherever that may be) with Mrs. Senter's maid.

Good-bye, my Parisienne Angel.

Your broken and badly repaired

Audrie-Ellaline.

I long to hear whether you think I ought to have braved Dick.

X

SIR LIONEL PENDRAGON TO COLONEL PATRICK O'HAGAN

_Royal Hotel, Winchester_, _July 21st. Night_

My dear Pat: I thought of you on the Portsmouth Downs yesterday, remembering a tramp you and I had together, "exploring wild England," as we called it. We then had a pose that all England, except "town," was wild--save only and always when there was any shooting of poor silly pheasants or hunting of "that pleasant little gentleman," the fox.

After running out through Portsmouth, I suggested stopping the car and mounting the downs above, on foot, for a look at the view. There are now five in our party, instead of three--not counting Young Nick, who has no stomach for views. At Ellaline's expressed wish, Mrs. Senter and Dick Burden have come on with us from Hayling Island, where they were staying. We met them at a dance on the _Thunderer_, which Starlin captains. They have been invited to be of the party for a fortnight or so.

I should rather have liked to watch Ellaline's face as she climbed the hill, her feet light on yielding grass, where the gold of buttercups and turquoise of harebells lay scattered--as she climbed, and as she reached the top, to see England spread under her eyes like a great ring. But that privilege was Burden's. I hope he appreciated it. Mine was to escort Mrs. Senter. I was glad she didn't chat. I hate women who chat, or spray adjectives over a view.

You remember it all, don't you? On one side, looking landward, we had a Constable picture: a sky with tumbled clouds, shadowed downs, and forests cleft by a golden mosaic of meadows. Seaward, an impressionist sketch of Whistler's: Southampton Water and historic Portsmouth Harbour; stretches of glittering sand with the sea lying in ragged patches on it here and there like great pieces of broken glass. Over all, the English sunshine pale as an alloy of gold and silver; not too dazzling, yet discreetly cheerful, like a Puritan maiden's smile; but not like Ellaline's. Hers can be dazzling when she is surprised and pleased.

I think I recall your talk with me on a height overlooking the harbour--perhaps the same height. We painted a lurid picture, to harrow our young minds, of the wreck of the _Royal George_. And we said, gazing across the Downs, that England looked almost uninhabited. Well, it appears no more populous now, luckily for the picture. I heard Ellaline saying to Dick Burden that the towns and villages might be playing at hide and seek, they concealed themselves so successfully. Also I heard her advise him to read "Puck of Pook's Hill," and was somewhat disappointed that she'd already had it, as I bought it for her in Southsea yesterday. Probably she won't care to read it again. Perhaps I had better give the book to Mrs. Senter, who is a more intellectual woman than you and I supposed when she was playing with us all in India. But one doesn't talk books with pretty women in the East.

You remember the day you and I walked to Winchester from Portsmouth, starting early in the morning, with our lunch in our pockets? Well, we came along the same way, past old William of Wykeham's Wickham, the queer mill built of the _Chesapeake's_ timbers, and Bishops' Waltham, where the ruins of the Episcopal palace struck me as being grander than I had realized. Ellaline was astonished at coming upon such a splendid monument of the past by the roadside, and was delighted to hear of the entertainment Coeur de Lion was given in the palace after his return from the German captivity. Of course the story of the famous "Waltham Blacks" pleased her too. Women can always forgive thieves, provided they're young, gay, and well born.

When Mrs. Senter found that Ellaline and my sister were in the habit of sitting in the tonneau, Young Nick beside me, she asked, after a little hesitation, if she might take his place, leaving the chauffeur to curl himself up on the emergency seat at my feet. She said that half the fun of motoring was to sit by the man at the wheel and share his impressions, like being in the forefront of battle, or going to the first performance of a play, or being in at the death with a hunt. So now you can imagine me with an amusing neighbour, for naturally I consented to the change. Neither Ellaline nor Emily had suggested companioning me, and though I must say I had thought of proposing it to Ellaline, I hadn't found the courage. She would no doubt have been too polite to refuse, while perhaps disliking the plan heartily. Now, Burden has been allotted a place with her and my sister, which is probably agreeable to Ellaline.

Curious! Even the frankest of girls--and I believe Ellaline to be as frank as her sex allows--can be secretive in an apparently motiveless way. Why should she tell me one moment that she didn't like Burden, and the next (practically) ask me to invite him and his aunt to travel with us, because she "admires Mrs. Senter immensely"? Or perhaps it is that the child doesn't know her own mind. I am studying her with deepening interest, but am not likely to have as many opportunities now there are more of us. She and Burden, being the young girl and the young man of the party, will, of course, be much together, and Mrs. Senter will fall to my lot for any excursions which may not interest, or be too tiring for, Emily. This boy's presence makes me realize, as I didn't until I had a young man of twenty-one constantly under my eyes, that the knocking of the "younger generation" has already begun to sound on my door. I had better hearken, I suppose, or some one else will kindly direct my attention to the noise. I confess I don't like it, but it's best to know the worst, and keep the knowledge in the heart, rather than read it in the mockery of some pretty girl's eyes--a pretty girl to whom one is an "old boy," perhaps.

Jove, Pat, that sticks in my gorge! It's not a thought to take to bed and go to sleep with if one wants pleasant dreams. I'm stronger than I ever was, my health is perfect, I have few gray hairs, my back is straight. I feel as if the elixir of youth ran hot in my veins. Yet one sees headlines in the papers, "Too Old at Forty." And--one is forty. It didn't matter--that is, I didn't think of it, until the coming of this boy.