Читать книгу The Messenger - Elizabeth Robins - Страница 3

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"After all, we aren't yet living in the millennium, Julian. What I'm afraid of is that some day you'll be wanting to carry these notions of yours beyond the bounds of what's reasonable."

"You mean," said the other young man, with a flash in his dark eyes, "you mean you're afraid I may just chance to be honest in my 'notions,' as you call them, of a scheme of social justice."

As far off as you saw Gavan Napier, you knew him as a scion not only of the governing class, but in all likelihood of one of the governing families. Exactly the sort of man, you would say, to have Eton and Balliol in the past, a present as unpaid, private secretary to a member of his Majesty's Government, and a future in which the private secretary himself would belong to officialdom and employ pleasant, more or less accomplished, and more rather than less idle, young gentlemen to take down occasional notes, write an occasional letter, and see a boring constituent.

It was no boring constituent he was seeing now, out of those cool blue eyes of his, yet he followed with evident dissatisfaction the figure of a woman who had appeared an instant over the sand-dunes and who, as Napier turned to look at her instead of at his ball, changed her tack and sauntered inland.

"What do you suppose she's always hanging about for?" Napier asked his companion.

"As if you didn't know!"

"Well, if you do," retorted Napier, "I wish you'd tell me."

"I shall do nothing of the kind. You're quite conceited enough." Julian shouldered his golf clubs (it was against his principles to employ a caddie) and trudged on at the side of his unencumbered friend. The eyes of both followed the lady disappearing among the dunes.

"I've seen her only two or three times," Julian said, "but I've seen she hasn't eyes for anybody except you."

"That's far from being so," Napier retorted. "But if it were, I should know the reason."

"Of course you do."

"But you don't," Napier still insisted. "The reason is I'm the only person in the house who isn't Miss von Schwarzenberg's slave."

"Oh! I took her at first for just a governess."

"She's a lot besides that!" Napier wagged his head in a curiosity-provoking way.

"There's been so much to talk about since I got back," Julian went on, "or else I've been meaning to ask about her."

"She interests you?" Napier asked a little sharply.

"I confess," said Julian, "I haven't understood her position at the McIntyres."

"If I haven't—it isn't from lack of data. Only,"—Napier wrinkled his fine brows—"did you ever know a person that nothing you know about them seems to fit? That isn't grammar, but it's my feeling about that young woman."

The two played a very evenly matched game. As they walked side by side after their balls, Julian wondered from time to time whether the subject of Miss von Schwarzenberg had been introduced to prevent his reverting to that vision of his—all the clearer since his tour round the world—of a reconstituted society in which vested privilege should no longer have a leg to stand on. Or could it be that Gavan was seriously intrigued by the Rhine maiden who, more or less as a special favor, had consented to superintend the studies and to share the recreations of "that handful," Madge McIntyre, aged sixteen? This girl, with the boyish face and boyish tastes and boyish clothes (whose mane of flaming hair had helped to fasten on her the nickname of Wildfire McIntyre), Julian already knew slightly as the only and much-spoiled daughter of Napier's chief. Sir William McIntyre, K. C. B., adviser to the Admiralty and laird of Kirklamont, had been the notable chairman of endless shipping companies and prime promoter of numberless commercial enterprises, until he accepted a seat in the cabinet, a man of vigor and some originality of mind, in contrast to his wife—a brainless butterfly of a woman who complained bitterly that she had less trouble with her four sons than with her one daughter. The one daughter, by ill luck, had an inconvenient share of her father's force of character. She had ruled the house of McIntyre till the advent of the lady in question.

That lady's predecessor had been a Miss Gayne. Miss Gayne had been in possession till a fateful morning last summer when Madge, driving along the coast road, came in sight of Glenfallon Castle, and pulled up her pony with a jerk that nearly precipitated poor Miss Gayne out of the cart. "My goodness gracious, the Duke is back!"

Glenfallon, on its cliff above the Firth, commanded a view north and south over the many-bayed and channeled mainland, out over rocky islets—shining jewels of jacinth and jasper and azurite, spilled haphazard into the sea—clear away to that great gray expanse miscalled by the new governess the German Ocean. Nobody had lived at Glenfallon as long as Madge could remember, so that she might perhaps be pardoned for emitting that excited scream at sight of two young men in tennis flannels busying themselves about the net.

"We mustn't sit here staring at them," Miss Gayne remonstrated.

Miss Gayne picked up the reins which Madge had let fall. Madge seized them with an impatient "Don't!" and flung them round the whip.

"It isn't proper to sit like this, staring into a stranger's tennis court. At two strange young men, too!"

"I'm only staring at one. You can have the other."

Presently a tennis ball came over the wall and bounced into the road. Before Miss Gayne could remonstrate, Madge was out of the cart and had sent the ball hurtling back.

The younger man caught it, and the elder advanced to the wall to thank the young lady. He was a very good specimen of fair, broad-shouldered, blunt-featured manhood, but when he opened his mouth he spoke with a foreign accent.

"When are you expecting him?" demanded Madge.

"Expecting whom? We are not expecting anybody, I'm afraid, and the more pleased to see you." He made his quick little bow and turned, to present his brother. "This is Ernst Pforzheim and I am Carl."

Madge nodded, deliberately ignoring Miss Gayne's hurried approach and disapproving presence.

"How do you do? Have you bought Glenfallon?"

No, they had only leased it. They hoped the change and quiet might do their father some good. He hadn't been well ever since … ever since they lost their mother.

"We have great hopes of this fine air and perfect quiet," said the elder. "The quiet is the very thing for our father—but for us it may become a little triste. So we play tennis. Do you play tennis, Miss … a … Miss … ?"

"Do I play tennis?" Madge did not long leave any doubt on that score.

The adventure was not smiled on at home, but poor Miss Gayne got all the blame.

There was a touch of irony in the lady's being succeeded by some one recommended by, or at least through, these very undesirable and undoubtedly foreign acquaintances.

The same success which the Pforzheim young men had with their country neighbors generally, they had with Madge. Everybody seemed to like them. Lady McIntyre liked them from the first. "Such charming manners! And so devoted to their poor father!"

With his pleasant malice Napier described the Pforzheims at Kirklamont, and Lady McIntyre's graciousness that "'so hoped to make your father's acquaintance.'" The Pforzheims shook their heads over the poor gentleman's condition, "'confined to a darkened room.'"

"'But we heard that he was out yesterday evening, in your new steam launch.'

"'Ah! that … yes … that is because his eyes are very painful. He can't bear the least light. So he gets no exercise and no change of air during the day.'

"'Well, in that case of course he couldn't expect to sleep!' And then Lady McIntyre had an inspiration. 'Doesn't it sound,' she appealed to Sir William, 'extremely like the kind of insomnia Lord Grantbury suffers from? I believe it's the very identical same. And Lord Grantbury has found a cure.'

"Great sensation on the part of the Pforzheims. Oh, would Lady McIntyre tell them. … They'd be eternally grateful if she would only get Lord Grantbury's prescription. But Lady McIntyre could produce it at once. She did produce it. And what did Julian think it was?"

Julian shook his head. He knew quite well now that Arthur was telling him this yarn in order to avoid reopening the subject of their disagreement—the only one in their lives. So he bore with hearing that Lord Grantbury's remedy for insomnia was a combination of motion and absence of daylight. Lord Grantbury had contended that light was a strong excitant. That the consciousness of being seen, of having to acknowledge recognition, or even of knowing your label was being clapped on your back—all that was disturbing in certain states of health. "'So he has himself driven out, they say, about eleven o'clock at night in a sixty-horsepower car, and goes whizzing along lonely roads where there's no fear of police traps, as hard as he can lick. When he comes back, he finds that all that ozone, and whatever it is, has quieted him. He sleeps like a top.' The sons were advised to put Father Pforzheim in a Rolls-Royce car and see what would happen. 'You haven't got a high power car? Till they can send for one,'—Lady McIntyre appealed to her husband—'don't you think, William, we might—?'

"But Carl, profuse in thanks, said that unfortunately his father had a nervous abhorrence of motor cars.

"'How very strange!' said Lady McIntyre.

"'No, it wasn't at all strange. My mother,'—Carl dropped his eyes and compressed his full lips—'our dear mother was killed in a motor accident.'

"'But our father,'—Ernst looked up as he brushed a white, triple-ringed hand across his eyes—'our father finds the water soothing. After all, Carl, swift motion on the water, why shouldn't that do as well as racing along a road?'

"'And darkness,' said Lady McIntyre.

"'And darkness!' the brothers echoed her together. 'We can never thank you enough, Lady McIntyre. We will persevere with your friend Lord Grantbury's remedy.'" The brothers clicked their heels and pressed their lips to her hand and left her in a flutter. The poor young men's anxiety was most touching! Especially Carl's. Lady McIntyre, according to Napier, doted on Carl. He wasn't so taken up by his filial preoccupations either, that he couldn't sympathize with the anxiety of a mother. Lady McIntyre's about Madge. Mr. Carl agreed that Miss Gayne was not the person. He had seen that at once. No influence whatever. Miss McIntyre was a very charming young lady. Full of character. Fire, too. She required special handling.

"'Ah! how well you understand! Now, what do you advise me to do? Seeing you reminds me,' Lady McIntyre said with her infantile candor, 'that we've never tried a German governess. We've had so many French ones. And quite an army of English and Scotch—'

"'Ah! a German governess!'"—he pulled at his mustache. Mr. Pforzheim promised to consult his aunt. The widow of a Heidelberg professor.

By a special providence Frau Lenz knew of a young lady who was at that moment in London, on her way home from America. She would be the very person to consult.

"She was the very person to get," Lady McIntyre said, when she came back from interviewing the paragon. "And, Heaven be praised, I've got her!"

They had gone back to London on account of that commission Sir William had insisted on having appointed. There were a lot of people in London that July, and things going on. Madge in the thick of everything, as though she'd been twenty-five instead of fifteen. That's how the von Schwarzenberg found her, neglecting lessons, ignoring laws, living at the theater, figuring at her father's official parties, sitting up till all hours of the night, smoking cigarettes till her fingers looked as if she'd been shelling green walnuts, gossiping, arguing, on every subject under the sun. That's the situation to which Miss von Schwarzenberg was introduced as the latest in a long and sorry line.

Napier had watched the transformation.

"They've raised the Schwarzenberg's salary twice." She had subdued every member of the minister's household.

"Not you, I hope?" Julian said quickly.

Napier laughed. "She would set your mind at rest on that score. Only the other day she got me into a corner. 'What have you got against me, Mr. Napier?' she said. 'You don't like me.' It took me so by surprise, I stammered: 'I? … What an idea!' 'Why don't you like me, Mr. Napier?' Mercifully just then Wildfire McIntyre flamed across our path."