Читать книгу The Messenger - Elizabeth Robins - Страница 6

"Is your friend given to these sudden—a—these flirtations?" Napier asked in his lightest tone.

Miss von Schwarzenberg spoke of "several little affairs." She couldn't say how far they had gone. "You know the American standard in these things isn't ours." She spoke of the sanctity, the binding character, of the German betrothal.

While this recital was going on, Napier's thoughts were nearer the Scots' Inn than the scene of the German Polterabend.

Should he or shouldn't he?

He knew quite well he could prevent this American girl's being shunted on to the London line. Suppose he didn't prevent it? Julian would never know how easily Napier could have kept Nan Ellis in Scotland.

Should he or shouldn't he?

Suddenly it occurred to him how extraordinarily serious he was being about this trifle. What could it matter whether this little American tourist spent a few weeks in Scotland or went to London to-morrow? Napier knew, looking back, that he had no faintest prevision of the difference that the girl's going or her staying would make, even to Julian. And all the same he stood there in the middle of Kirklamont Hall with the oddest sense of compulsion upon him.

He must see to it that the girl didn't go.

"I'm far from being unsympathetic to,"—he moved his head in the general direction of the "Queen of Scots." "But, speaking of flirtation, I can't help hoping your friend won't carry my friend off to London."

Miss von Schwarzenberg's air of dreamy sentimentality dropped from her as the petals of an overblown rose at some rude touch. She stood bare of all but the essential woman with never a grace to clothe her. "What on earth are you talking about? Does she mean to carry him off … ?"

Napier shrugged. "I can only say that it's highly probable if Miss Ellis goes to London that Mr. Grant will find an excuse for going too."

"You'd have to prevent that. What would his father, what would Lady Grant think of. … " She stopped there, as having indicated some unsuitableness even greater than might appear.

"All the more, then," said Napier, as though she had given out of those close-shut lips some damning fact, "all the more we ought to keep an eye on them. But if they are in London—there'll be only one of us 'to keep an eye'—" She kept both of hers on Napier. "You'd be here," he added, "and I'd be sweltering in London."

"You, too, in Nan's train!"

"Oh, dear, no!" he laughed. "In Julian's, catching up what Miss Ellis designs to let fall."

"You, too!" she repeated, as though the calamity were greater than she could grasp.

He nodded. "I'd have to. Especially after what you … didn't say. And to go to London now would be an awful sell for both of us."

"For both of us?" she inquired with a little catch.

"For Julian and me. My holiday begins in ten days, and we were counting on having it in Scotland. You see," he explained, "we've looked forward to these next weeks for over a year. We've spent our summers together ever since Eton days. If Julian goes, I've got to go too. And I should look on such a necessity,"—he gazed upon the lady as he spoke, with eyes well practised in conveying tender regretfulness—"I should look on it as a personal misfortune."

The stricture about her mouth relaxed. The lips even trembled a little.

Napier couldn't imagine himself actually making love to Miss von Schwarzenberg. But he could easily imagine himself kissing that beautiful mouth of hers. So easily, indeed, that with some abruptness he turned away.

It was lucky he had.

"There she is!" Out of a fiery cloud, Madge McIntyre, on tiptoe, looked in at the window. Her schoolboy brother, behind her, was grinning. "Bobby's won his bet!" she called out derisively to the world in general. The wind of her scorn stirred in her flaming hair. Wildfire tossed it back to say to her companion, "She has been able to tear herself away from her American!"

"I've been looking for you," said Miss Greta, calmly. "Come round."

"Looking for me! Oh, my!" A final shake of the flaming mane, and as if Wildfire's fury had shriveled her; had burnt both of them up, she and Bobby vanished.

Napier made for the library, thanking his stars for the interruption. What in the name of common sense had he been about to do? To saddle himself with a flirtation—or a relation of some sort—with this foreign young woman from whom, with considerable expenditure of skill, he had kept clear for over a year!

"Mr. Napier,"—she overtook him on the library threshold—"I can't have you thinking me ungrateful. I appreciate—do believe me, how particularly kind and thoughtful—yes, chivalrous, you've shown yourself—"

With genuine amazement Napier faced her again. "What—a—I don't understand. … "

"Oh, I can well believe you do these things—these generous, delicate things almost without thinking." Before he knew what she was about, she had found his hand. She was pressing it in both of hers. She held up her face—or, as it seemed, her lips. He backed away. "I shall never forget," she said in her intense whisper, "your putting me on my guard like this. And I may be able to be of use to you before we've done. Meggie, where are you, child?"