Читать книгу The Messenger - Elizabeth Robins - Страница 4

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When the young men reached Kirklamont, the McIntyres were already gathered about the tea-table in the hall of the big, ugly, Scotch country house. "The family" consisted at the moment only of three, the fourth person present being Miss von Schwarzenberg, for it was mid-July. In another month the absent sons (two soldiers and a sailor) would come up for the shooting and bring their friends.

All this presupposed—as nobody found the least difficulty in doing—that Sir William's recent "little heart attack" would leave no legacy more destructive of the usual routine than abandonment of London a fortnight or so earlier than had been planned. A more acute anxiety might have touched Lady McIntyre had her husband not deliberately thrown her off the track. He dubbed the great specialist "a verra reasonable fella," who didn't make a mountain out of a molehill. The patient did not add the means by which he had been coerced into turning his back on public affairs at a moment made so critical for the Government by Irish affairs.

"A break in the London strain, at once and often, or else smash."

That was the dour deliverance which had installed the McIntyres in their beloved Kirklamont two weeks earlier than they could have hoped. It was a party which, with a single exception (again Miss von Schwarzenberg), had shaken off London by every token of tweed garment, stout boots, of golf stockings, and of gaiters.

Cup in hand, Sir William, as became the head of the house, stood planted on wide-apart legs in front of the fireplace—a sanguine-colored, plump, little partridge of a man with a kind, rather rusé face.

Lady McIntyre, behind the urn—fair, fluffy-haired, blue-eyed—looked, as such women will, far older in the country than she did in her "London clothes." But she was far too correct not to make any sacrifice called for by the unwritten law of her kind. Behold her, therefore, bereft of all fripperies save the dangling diamond ear-rings, which emphasized painfully an excuse for frivolity which had been outlived. To tell the blunt truth, Lady McIntyre looked like some shrunken little duenna, attendant on the opulent majesty of the heavy-braided, ox-eyed Juno at her side. For Miss von Schwarzenberg shared the High Seat—otherwise Lady McIntyre's carved settle. At her feet sat Madge, her pupil, and an Aberdeen terrier.

"You really!"—the high-pitched excitement in the girl's voice reached the young men depositing their golf clubs and caps in the lobby—"you really and truly want to learn golf—after all?"

"If nobody has any objection," a voice answered, in an accent very slightly foreign, and to the English ear suggesting, as much as anything, Western American.

"Objection! Quite the contrary. Capital idea!" Sir William spoke heartily.

Bobby, fourteen but looking nearer eighteen, spilled over and sprawled out of an arm-chair as he beat the arm, and cried out with animation and a mouth full of griddle cake, "Bags I teach you, Fräulein!"

"I hope you've been taking it out of Gavan," Sir William had called out by way of greeting to Julian. Julian played up by proceeding to describe with mock braggadoccio how he'd completely taken the shine out of the champion. That person, handing tea, contented himself with privately observing yet again how his friend, long and lithe and dark, offered to the rotund little figure of the eminent official a contrast that ministered pleasantly to a sense of the ludicrous. Sir William's bald bullet head barely reached the height of Julian's chest. But it was notorious—and Napier had not worked for two years with Sir William without finding good reason to share the prevalent opinion—that inside the aforesaid bullet was an uncommon amount of shrewd sense and a highly developed skill in organizing power.

Sir William ran his department as he ran his vast commercial enterprises, with an ease that was own child of intelligence of a high degree. But now, as though it were the main factor in life, he talked golf.

The governess, after a perfunctory "how do you do" to the visitor, had leaned over to stroke the Aberdeen. The lady's full-moon face—with its heavy, shapely nose, its smooth apple cheeks, its quiet, beautiful mouth—was bent down till her chin rested on her generous bust. It occurred to Napier that she often adopted this pose. It gave her an air of pensiveness, of submission, the more striking in a person of so much character.

Also, the little tendrils of yellow hair that escaped from under the Gretchen-like banded braids cast delicate shadows on the whitest neck Napier had ever seen. Oh, she had her points.

"Did you hear, Mr. Grant?" Madge called out. "Miss von Schwarzenberg says now she wants to learn our foolish national game."

"Never!" Julian turned back to the tea-table. His tone was faintly ironic—as though the sensation created by this lady's conversion to golf seemed disproportionate to its importance.

Lady McIntyre lifted her appealing eyes. "I wonder if you'd be very kind, Mr. Grant, and help the children to teach Miss von Schwarzenberg?"

The almost infinitesimal pause was cancelled, obliterated, by Miss von Schwarzenberg's promptitude. "Oh, I couldn't think of being such a trouble." She had risen. "Sit here, Mr. Grant," she said. "Yes, please. I've finished." In spite of his protest, she retired to a chair on the far side of the fireplace—Napier's side—and picked up her knitting.

Madge followed, dog-like, and so did the Aberdeen.

"It is a comfort," Lady McIntyre went on, "to find such a terribly clever person"—she nodded significantly in the direction of Miss von Schwarzenberg—"taking an interest in the things ordinary mortals care about. It's been the one fault I've had to find with Greta. She doesn't play games. They don't, you know. But the Germans are a wonderful people! Take this young girl"—she lowered her voice. But, however, little of the conversation was lost on Miss von Schwarzenberg. She knitted steadily. Madge played with the dog.

"Greta's only twenty-five or six," Lady McIntyre went on. "Her father was an officer of Uhlans. An invalid now. And somehow they lost their money. An uncle in America is tremendously rich, and he's had Greta at one of the great women's colleges over there. She insisted on going home every summer … so domestic, the Germans! I always think it's extremely nice of them to feel affectionate toward such a horrid country as Germany—don't you, Mr. Grant? And such a language to wrestle with, poor things! Do you know, they call a thimble a finger hat? Yes, and a pin a stick needle!"

"Well, well!"—Sir William broke off in the middle of the golf discussion, and rattled his seals with great vigor, as though they were a summons to industry—a simulacrum of factory bell or works whistle. "I must write one more letter. No, I don't need you, Gavan."

"But that translation?"

"It's done."

"Done!" said the astonished Napier.

"And couldn't be better," said Sir William, as he disappeared into the library.

"Miss Greta did it!" triumphed Bobby.

"I wonder," said the lady, smiling, "which of you two would go and get me the rest of my wool?"

Bobby was on his feet, staring helplessly round.

"In your work bag?" asked Madge.

Greta nodded, and the two raced each other upstairs. Miss Greta lifted her candid eyes. "Does it require a great deal of practice, Mr. Napier, to play golf passably?" She blushed slightly as she went on: "I suppose I've hoped that if I watched you, I'd stand a better chance of playing a fair game myself some day. Fair, that is," she added, with her meek droop of the braid-crowned head, "fair for a woman."

"I'm sure you know," Napier returned a little impatiently, "that plenty of women play very well."

"Do you mean," she inquired with her soft persistence, "you'd ever be so kind as to give me a tip or two?"

He didn't answer at once, and she turned in her chair to look at him. Out from her disarranged cushion rolled a large ball of field gray. It bumped against Napier's ankle and rebounded to the wall.

"Isn't this the wool you were looking for?" He took it up by the loose end, and rapidly unrolled several yards of it.

"Thank you so much! I can't think how it got down here." She took the ball from him, and remained standing while she rewound. "After all, I sha'n't much more than have time to get on my things." She glanced at the clock.

"Where are you going?" Lady McIntyre asked the question from habit. Seldom was Greta allowed to leave the room without that question.

"You were so kind as to say I might have the cart."

"Oh, yes," Lady McIntyre remembered.

"What for?" asked Bobby, tumbling downstairs. "Want to be driven somewhere? Bags I—"

"Certainly not!" Madge called out to him. And then in a markedly different tone, "I've turned everything out of. … Oh, you've got it!"

It was all right, Miss Greta said comprehensively. She would go to the station alone.

"Oh, please let me come!" Madge begged.

Miss von Schwarzenberg shook her head. Madge looked at her wistfully. "I wish she wasn't coming!"

Then with a gleam, "I believe you do too!"

Miss von Schwarzenberg smiled.

"Who is it?" demanded Bobby.

"Oh, a little American friend of mine. A girl I went to school with."

"Her name's Nan Ellis," Madge informed the company gloomily, "and she's not much to look at, and not at all rich, and not much of anything that I can discover. Just a millstone round Miss Greta's neck."

"We mustn't say that." Miss Greta was winding the last couple of yards. "You see, she's an orphan, and I rather took her under my wing at school—poor child!"

Bobby asked if the American was going to stay with us.

"Oh, no," said the wool winder, now at the end of her task. "At the inn, of course." Miss Greta glanced again at the clock as she gathered up her knitting.

"Cart wasn't ordered till six," Madge threw in. "Don't you mean to bring her here at all?"

"I should be delighted. But—I can't flatter myself that my little friend would interest you." She swept the circle. "Quite a nice girl, but … " (a deprecatory wave of one hand), "well, crude. Western, you know. She has grown used to looking to me for the summer. I tried to explain that—" the pause was eloquent of a delicate desire to spare feelings—"that I wasn't taking a holiday myself this year. But,"—on her way out of the hall Miss Greta laughed over her shoulder—"she's not perhaps so very quick at—how do you say it?—not so quick at the uptake." She turned at the sound of a motor car rushing up the drive.

Through the open lobby doors a girl was seen rising from her seat and scanning Kirklamont Hall with a slight frown. As the car swerved round to the entrance she called out to the chauffeur in a voice of appalling distinctness, and most unmistakably transatlantic: "Are you sure this is the place? It isn't my idea of a. … Oh!" She had given one glance through the lobby and was out of the car as a bird goes over a hedge. "It is! It is!"—The girl stood in the hall, holding out her hands, "Greta!"

"My dear Nan!" Miss von Schwarzenberg had hastened forward, more flurried than anybody there had ever seen her.

"Oh, my!" said the newcomer with a face of rapture. "Oh, my!" and she fell to hugging Miss von Schwarzenberg.

Bobby sat contorting his long legs and arms with unregenerate glee at Fräulein's struggle to be cordial and at the same time to disengage herself as rapidly as possible.

Lady McIntyre left her settle and pattered forward with hospitable intent. An instant of indecision on Miss von Schwarzenberg's part, and then Miss Ellis was duly presented.

She wasn't nearly so tall as Napier had thought her when she stood up in the car. This was because the figure was slight and extremely erect. For the rest, a small head, overweighted with a profusion of bright, brown hair; a rather childish face under a little golden-brown hat, guiltless of trimming but for the two brown wings set one on each side, rather far back. "The kind of hat," Napier pointed out afterward, "that Pheidias gave to Mercury. Cheek for a girl to wear a hat like that!"

Even under her manifest excitement, the delicate oval of the girl's face showed only a faint tinge of color. Miss von Schwarzenberg's round cheeks were richest carmine. "Oh, you've kept the car! That's right. I won't stop for a hat. Your scarf, Madge. Then I won't have to keep her waiting."

"But why must you—" Lady McIntyre began.

"She has rooms at the inn," said Miss von Schwarzenberg, with decision, as she wrapped Madge's scarf round her braids.

Yes, Lady McIntyre understood that. "But why should you be in such a hurry?"

"Oh, I'm not in any hurry," said the girl. "Not now. I have been in a hurry—a terrible hurry for sixteen days. But now—" she smiled a bright contentment at her goal.

The instant application of Miss von Schwarzenberg's arm to her friend's waist was less for love, Napier felt sure, than as a means of propulsion. "You'd like to get unpacked, I'm certain."

Lady McIntyre, nervously anxious not to be inhospitable to Greta's visitor, declared she was not going to allow them to go till Miss Ellis had had some tea. Miss Ellis still stood looking at her friend with adoring affection. Plainly she was ready to do anything Greta liked—anything that didn't involve her losing sight of this face she'd traveled five thousand miles to see. Greta unwound her scarf.

"This is my daughter," said Lady McIntyre.

"Oh, are you 'Madge'? Of course, I've heard about you." Miss Ellis put out a hand.

Madge gave it a muscular shake and let go quickly. "How do?"

The stranger seemed not to notice. She accepted a double wedge of buttered scone from Bobby, and with great cheerfulness she deposited three lumps of sugar in her tea.

Miss von Schwarzenberg raised her eyes to Napier's face. He and Julian, several yards away, were leaning against the mantel-piece, pretending to discuss the Ulster situation.

As Miss von Schwarzenberg, across her friend, met Napier's look, she smiled ever so faintly, but with enormous meaning. "Behold a child of nature," the look said. Then, "Did you have a good passage, Nanchen?" she asked.

"Well, they said it was a bad passage. I thought it perfectly glorious." Miss Ellis had taken a large slab of shortbread. Rapid disposal of it did not at all interfere with a description of the amenities of an unchaperoned sea voyage. Miss Ellis did not pause till, to the accompaniment of a crunch of gravel and voices outside, two young men could be descried coming up the middle of the drive. They were leading a couple of great, long-bodied, white dogs.

The hall was instantly a hive of excitement. Bobby and Madge bolted out as one, with cries of rapture. Lady McIntyre, hardly less pleased, prepared to follow, with Julian. Napier sauntered slowly after them.

The elder Pforzheim entered with his brisk ceremoniousness, and bowed low over Lady McIntyre's hand: "My father has sent you those Russian boarhounds he promised. Ernst has got them outside"—he stood back in that empressé way of his that seemed to say, "My manners are far too perfect not to suffer others to precede." And the others, in the careless English way, did precede. They even blocked up the entrance, leaving Mr. Carl and his politeness in the rear. This manœuver so obstructed the view that Miss Ellis rose and came a few paces nearer, hoping for a better sight of those exciting animals. Napier, glancing back, saw that Miss von Schwarzenberg sat perfectly still.

"Did you ever see boarhounds before, Greta? I never did."

What Greta answered, Napier didn't hear; but the moment was not lost upon him when, all view of the spectacle being quite shut out by the crowding at the door, Miss Ellis' attention—about to return to the tea-table—"caught," as it were, on Carl Pforzheim's profile.

"Why, how do you do?" she said with a quick turn. "I'm very glad to meet you."

Carl Pforzheim stared. Miss von Schwarzenberg shot forward and took Nan by the arm.

"In the midst of all the masses of strangers I've been seeing, you seem like an old friend. Tell him, Greta—" At sight of Miss von Schwarzenberg's face, she stopped short.

"I think you are making some mistake," said Mr. Carl.

"Oh, no, I'm not!" that terribly "carrying" voice went on. "It's because Greta has told me such a great deal about you. And you're exactly like your picture, down to the cleft in your chin—" The girl hesitated again as Greta mumbled, and Pforzheim, with a desperate, "I must help my brother," forgot all his fine manners and pushed his way out.

"What's the matter, dearest? Oughtn't I to have said that?" Then in a half whisper: "I never mentioned Ernst. And, after all, it was only Ernst that you—"

"Will you be quiet?"

In another ten seconds they were whirling away in the car.

Napier walked half-way home with Grant as usual. He was amused at Julian's indignation over the von Schwarzenberg's patronage of her "little friend." And then they quarreled a little over Napier's decision that it was cheek for a girl to come "winged like Mercury." Julian defended her. He'd never seen a hat he liked better. It just suited that face of hers.

"'That face!'" Napier mocked. "I suppose, out of pure contentiousness, you'll be saying it's pretty."

"'Pretty!' Pretty faces are cheap. That one has got the fineness of a wood anemone. And the faith of a St. Francis. Did you ever see such faith in any pair of eyes? Ye gods! If I could believe in life as that child does, if I were as serenely sure of everybody's good will,"—he threw out his walking-stick at the prison wall between him and such freedoms, such innocent securities. "It's pathetic—a person like that. Think of the knocks she'll get. Think—"

"What I'm thinking of—I can't get it out of my mind! Every time I go back to it, it seems to me stranger—the expression on the von Schwarzenberg's face when the girl recognized Pforzheim."

"What sort of expression?" said Julian, absently.

"I wish you'd seen it! And the way she looked after Carl with a sort of cowering apology, before she plunged into the car. Now leave off quarreling with me about the Mercury cap, and just tell me: Why the devil should that woman have pretended she'd never seen the Pforzheims before she met them at Kirklamont? I wake up in the middle of the night and ask myself that question."

"How do you know she pretended—?"

"I was there. I saw them introduced."