Читать книгу Lancaster's Choice - Alex. McVeigh Miller - Страница 8

"If only the earth would open and swallow me up!" sighed Lancaster to himself, miserably. It is not pleasant to be made fun of, and the most of people are too thin-skinned to relish a joke directed against themselves. Lancaster did not. His ridiculous mistake flashed over him instantly at the deprecatory words of the girl, and he scarcely knew whom to be most angry with—himself or Leonora West.

He stole a furtive glance at her, wishing in his heart that he could subdue the crimson flush that glowed on his face. He was glad that she was not looking at him. She had sunk into a chair and buried her face in her hands. Evidently she was not enjoying her saucy triumph much. Those last impatient words of his had cleverly turned the tables.

He glanced at the drooping figure in the arm-chair, and it flashed over him that De Vere would never be done laughing if he knew that he, Lord Lancaster, a cavalry officer, and a "swell party" altogether, had been made a target for the amusement of this lowly born girl. How dared she do it? and could he keep De Vere from finding out? he asked himself in the same breath.

And just then Leonora West lifted her wet eyes to his face, and said, with a sob in her throat:

"I am glad now that I didn't tell you the truth at first. If I had, I mightn't have found out, perhaps, that you thought me a bore and a nuisance, and that you didn't want me to go to Europe with you."

Captain Lancaster winced. All she had said was quite true, yet he had not cared to have her know it. It is but seldom one cares to have people know one's real opinion of them.

"And—and"—she went on, resentfully, "you may be quite, quite sure, after this, that I will not go with you. You will have no trouble with me. My aunt might have come after me herself, I think. I was afraid, when I got her letter saying that you would come for me, that something would go wrong. Now I know it. To think that you should call me a baby!"

While she poured forth her grievances dolorously, Lancaster had been collecting his wool-gathering wits. What upon earth was he to do if she really refused to go with him? He pictured to himself old Lady Lancaster's fury. It was quite likely that, after such a contretemps, she would cut him off with a shilling.

"It will never do for her to stay in this mood. She shall go to England, nolens volens," he resolved.

"Richard" began to be "himself again." The ludicrous side of the case dawned upon him.

"I have made a tremendous faux pas, certainly, and now I must get out of it the best way I can," he thought, grimly.

Leonora's sharp little tongue had grown still now, and her face was again hidden in her hands. He went up to her and touched her black sleeve lightly.

"Oh, come now," he said; "if you go on like this I shall think I made a very apposite mistake. Who but a baby would make such a declaration as yours in the face of the circumstances? Of course you are going to Europe with me!"

"I am not," she cried, with a mutinous pout of the rich red lips.

"Yes, you are," he replied, coolly. "You have no business to get angry with me because I made a slight mistake about your age. And after all, I remember now that it was really De Vere's mistake, and not mine."

"Who is De Vere?" inquired Leonora, curiously, as she glanced up at him through her wet lashes, and showing the rims of her eyes very pink indeed from the resentful tears she had shed.

"De Vere is my friend and traveling-companion," he replied.

"And does he, too, consider me a bore and a nuisance?"

"Well," confidingly, "to tell you the truth, we both did—that is, you know, while we were laboring under the very natural mistake that you were a very small baby instead of—a grown-up one. But all that is altered now, of course, since I have met you, Miss West. We shall be only too happy to have you for our compagnon du voyage."

He was speaking to her quite as if she were his equal, and not the lowly born niece of the housekeeper at his ancestral home. It was impossible to keep that fact in his head. She was so fair, so refined, so well-bred, in spite of the little flashes of spirit indicative of a spoiled child.

She did not answer, and he continued, pleasantly:

"I am very sorry for the mistake on my part that caused you so much annoyance. I desire to offer you every possible apology for it."

She looked up at him quickly. "Oh, I wasn't mad because you thought Leonora West was a baby," she said.

"Then why—because I thought you were a nurse?"

"Not that either. I was only amused at those mistakes of yours."

She paused a moment, then added, with a rising flush:

"It was for those other words you said."

"I do not blame you at all. I was a regular brute," said Lancaster, penitently. "Do say that you forgive me, I never should have said it if only I had known."

"Known what?" she inquired.

"That you were the baby I had to carry to England. I should have been only too happy to be of service to you. De Vere will be distracted with envy at my privilege. There, I have said several pretty things to you. Will you not forgive me now?"

"Yes, I will forgive you, but you do not deserve it," answered Leonora. "It was not kind to talk about me so, even if I had been an unconscious baby."

"It was not," he admitted. "But think a moment, Miss West. I am a bachelor, and I know nothing at all of babies. I have forgotten all the experiences of my own babyhood. I was wretched at the idea of having to convey one of those troublesome little problems across the ocean. I would as soon have been presented with a white elephant. I should have known quite as much of one as the other. Can you find it in your heart to chide me for my reluctance?"

Leonora reflected, with her pretty brows drawn together.

"Well, perhaps you are right," she acknowledged, after a moment. "They are troublesome—babies, I mean—I think you called them problems. You were right there, too, for one does not know what to make of them, nor what they will do next, nor what they will become in the future."

"Then you can not blame me, can not be angry with me. And you will be ready to go with me to-morrow?"

"No, I think not. I am afraid, after all you have said, Captain Lancaster, that you really are vexed in your mind at the thought of taking me. I do not believe I ought to take advantage of your pretended readiness," she replied, sensitively, and with that perfect frankness that seemed to be one of her characteristics.

"And you refuse to go with me?" He gazed at her despairingly.

"I would rather not," decidedly.

He looked at the pretty face in some alarm. It had a very resolute air. Would she really carry out her threat of staying behind? He did not know much about American girls, but he had heard that they managed their own affairs rather more than their English sisters. This one looked exceedingly like the heroine of that familiar ballad:

She glanced up and saw him pulling at the ends of his mustache with an injured air, and a dark frown on his brow.

"Why do you look so mad? I should think you would be glad I'm not going."

"I am vexed. I wasn't aware that I looked mad. In England we put mad people into insane asylums," he replied, rather stiffly.

"Thank you. I understand. Old England is giving Young America a rhetorical hint. Why do you look so vexed, then, Captain Lancaster?"

"Because there will be no end of a row in Lancaster Park when I go there, because you have not come with me."

"Will there, really?"

"Yes; and my aunt, Lady Lancaster, who has promised to give me all her money when she dies, will cut me off with a shilling because I have disobeyed her orders and disappointed Mrs. West."

The blue-gray eyes opened to their widest extent.

"No!" she said.

"Yes, indeed," he replied.

"Then she must be a very hard woman," said Miss West, in a decided tone.

"She is," he replied, laconically.

"You are certain that she would not give you the money?" anxiously.

"Quite certain," he answered.

"And—have you none of your own?"

"Only my pay in the army," he admitted, laughing within himself at her naïve curiosity.

"Is that much?" she went on, gravely.

"Enough to keep me in boots and hats," he answered, with an owl-like gravity.

"And this Lady Lancaster—your aunt—does she give you the rest?" persevered Leonora.

He did not want to be rude, but he burst out laughing. She looked up into the bright blue eyes and reddened warmly.

"I dare say you think me curious and ill-bred," she said.

"Oh, no, no, not at all. I am intensely flattered by the interest you take in my affairs."

"It is only because I do not want to be the means of your losing that money, if you want it. Do you?"

"Indeed I do. Anybody would be glad to have twenty thousand a year," he replied.

"So much as that? Then, of course, I must not be the cause of your losing it," said Leonora, gravely.

"Then you will go with me?" he cried, with quite a load lifted from his mind by her unexpected concession.

"Ye-es. I suppose I shall have to go," she answered.

"A thousand thanks. I thought you would relent," he said. "And will you be ready to sail with me to-morrow?"

"Oh, yes, quite ready. My trunks have been packed several weeks, and I have been only waiting for you to come," she answered, promptly.

And then she slipped her small hand into the folds of her dress and drew out a netted silk purse, through whose meshes he caught the glitter of gold pieces. She counted out a number of shining coins into his hand with quite a business-like air.

"That is the price of my ticket. Will you please buy it for me? I will have my luggage sent down all right," she said.

He took the money mechanically and rose, thinking this a dismissal. Then something that had been on his mind all the time rose to his lips.

"I want to ask a great favor of you, Miss West."

She looked at him with a slight air of wonder, and answered: "Yes."

"You will meet with my friend, Lieutenant De Vere, on board the steamer. He is a very nice youth indeed. He will be good friends with you directly."

"In-deed?" said Leonora, in a slow, inquiring voice that implied a distinct doubt on the subject.

"Yes, indeed. You need not look so incredulous. You will be sure to like him. The ladies all adore him."

She looked up at him with the dimples coming into roguish play around her mouth.

"And you wish to warn me not to fall a victim to his manifold perfections?" she said.

"Oh, dear, no, not at all. I never thought of such a thing. You see, Miss West, my friend intensely enjoys a joke."

"Yes?" she gazed at him with an air of thorough mystification.

"He intensely enjoys a joke," repeated Lancaster. "I want you to promise me now, upon your honor, that you will not tell him how unmercifully you quizzed me awhile ago. He would never have done chaffing me if he knew, and he would tell the whole regiment once we landed in England."

"Would they tease you much?" inquired Leonora, highly interested.

"Unbearably," he replied.

"They shall not know, then," she answered, promptly. "I will not tell your friend about it."

"Nor any one?" he entreated.

"Certainly not," she answered, soothingly, and involuntarily he caught her hand and pressed it a moment in his own, not displeased to see that she blushed as she drew it hastily away.

He went away, and when he looked at his watch outside the door he was honestly surprised.

"Two hours! I really do not know how the time went," he said to himself.

When he went back to his hotel he found De Vere in a state of surprise, too.

"You have been gone almost three hours," he said. "Did you find the baby?"

"Yes, I found it," he replied, carelessly.

"Was it well? Shall we have the pleasure of its company to-morrow?" pursued the lieutenant.

"Yes, it was well, but it is a spoiled child. I am afraid we shall find it a source of trouble to us," replied Captain Lancaster, smiling to himself at the surprise and delight in store for De Vere to-morrow, when he should find that it was a beautiful young girl instead of a cross baby who was to be their compagnon du voyage to England.