Читать книгу Prince or Chauffeur? A Story of Newport - Lawrence Perry - Страница 12

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When Miss Wellington entered the cabin she found her mother in the same position in which she had left her, but her eyes were open, looking straight at the girl.

"Mother, I never knew you to do anything quite so bourgeois before." There was a gleam of mischief in her eyes. "Sleeping in a public place! You weren't sleeping, were you?"

"No, I was not," said her mother. "I have been thinking, planning."

"Oh, Prince Koltsoff!"

"Yes." Mrs. Wellington raised her hand languidly to her face. "He wrote he was coming to us this afternoon, direct from the Russian ambassador's at Bar Harbor. Did he not?"

"Yes, unless Miss Hatch was mistaken in what she said the other day."

"Miss Hatch," said the elder woman, "is one of the few secretaries I ever had who does not make mistakes. However, that is neither here nor there. Prince Koltsoff has been in Newport for a week."

"A week! The idea! Where? Not with the Van Antwerps?" Miss Wellington's eyes blazed with interest.

"No, not with any one that I was able to discover. But Clarie Pembroke, of the British legation, was driving from the Reading Room to the yacht club with your father the other day. He told me he was certain he saw Koltsoff standing on a side street near the Aquidneck."

"Why on earth did n't you tell me before?" cried the daughter. "What a delightful mystery!" She smiled with mischief. "Do you suppose after all he is some no-account? You know Russian princes are as numerous as Russian bears; they can be as great bounders and as indigent as Italian counts—"

"All of which you have heard me say quite frequently," interrupted Mrs. Wellington placidly. "Koltsoff is not pinchbeck. The Koltsoffs are an illustrious Russian family, and have been for years. I think I know my Almanach de Gotha. Why, Koltsoff is aide-de-camp to the Czar and has, I believe, estates in southern Russia. His father fought brilliantly in the Russo-Turkish War and gained the Cross of St. Anne; his great, or great-great-grandfather, I don't recall which, was a general of note of Catherine the Great's, and if certain intimate histories of that time are not wholly false, her rewards for his services were scandalously bestowed."

"No doubt," said the girl carelessly. "And Koltsoff?"

"A genuinely distinguished fellow. He was educated, of course, at the cadet school in St. Petersburg and during the Japanese War was with the Czar. I met him in London, last May, at Lord McEncroe's, as I have already told you, I think, and when he spoke of coming to America this summer I engaged him for August."

"It was rather farsighted of you," said the girl admiringly. "Newport needs some excitement this season. If he 's anything like that last Russian who came here on a warship two years ago, you will shine as a benefactor, especially in the eyes of reporters."

Mrs. Wellington smiled grimly.

"The Grand Duke Ivan?"

"Yes; what a great bearded beast he was! I remember father bemoaning, when Ivan the Terrible departed, that there was no more of his favorite Planet brandy left in the Reading Room cellars."

Mrs. Wellington did not smile. She was eying her daughter curiously. "I want you and the Prince to become good friends," she said.

"That will depend upon whether he can gracefully explain his mysterious presence in Newport the past week," replied the girl laughingly. Suddenly her face grew grave. "What do you mean, mother?"

"Merely that I expect—that Prince Koltsoff hopes"—and under her daughter's steady gaze, she did something she had done but once or twice in her life—floundered and then paused.

The girl's lip curled, not mirthfully.

"Ah, I begin to understand," she said. "Prince Koltsoff's visit was conceived hardly in the nature of ordinary social emprise."

"Now, please don't go on, Anne," said the mother. "I have expressed nothing but a wish, have I? Wait until you know him."

"But you said Koltsoff had expressed a—a—"

"A hope, naturally. He saw Sargent's portrait of you in London."

"How romantic! I do not wonder you couldn't sleep, mother."

"Perhaps there were other reasons. Who was the man you ensnared outside?"

Miss Wellington laughed.

"Trust you, mother. He was very decent. He took me below and fed me hot biscuits and coffee. He said he was a prize fighter."

"A prize fighter!"

"He said so. But he was not telling the truth. He was awfully good looking and had a manner that one does not acquire. I am rather curious concerning him. You don't imagine he was Koltsoff, incog?"

Mrs. Wellington glanced witheringly at her.

"I imagine he may have been a reporter, Anne. Why are n't you more careful! There may come a time when your efforts to uphold your reputation for eccentricity and for doing the cleverly unexpected will react disagreeably."

It was the first time her mother had given her reason to believe that she shared in any way in the views concerning her which were prevalent among the younger set at least. The girl was not flattered.

"Mother, don't be so absurd," she said. "The only efforts I have ever made have been to lead a normal, human life and not a snobbish, affected one. Eccentric! The conditions under which we live are eccentric. My only desire is to be normal."

"Life is relative, you know," said Mrs. Wellington. "If you—" she glanced out the window and saw the Torpedo Station slipping past. "Why, we are almost in," she said. "Morgan, go out, please, and see if they have sent a motor for us."

The handful of passengers were filing down to the main deck and Mrs. Wellington, her daughter, and Emilia followed, where Morgan presently joined them with the announcement that she had not seen a Wellington car.

"Peste!" murmured Mrs. Wellington. "This is the last of Dawson if he has n't sent a car. I telegraphed last night."

"Telegrams have been known to go astray," suggested her daughter.

"Rot! So has Dawson," observed Mrs. Wellington.

It was only too plain when they crossed the gang plank that something or somebody had gone wrong. No automobile or horse-drawn vehicle bearing the Wellington insignia was at the landing. Having adjusted herself to the situation upon receiving her maid's report, Mrs. Wellington immediately signalled two of the less dingy hacks, entered one with her daughter, leaving the other for the maids.

"The Crags," she said, designating her villa to the hackman, who, touching his hat with the first sign of respect shown, picked up the reins. The driver, half turned in his seat to catch any conversation of an interesting nature, guided his horse to Thames Street and thence along that quaint, narrow thoroughfare toward Harbor Road.

Miss Wellington glanced at the driver and then looked at her mother solemnly.

"Do you suppose they will be up yet, mamma?" she said, with a sort of twanging nasal cadence.

Mrs. Wellington turned her head composedly toward the show windows of a store.

"I don't see why you won't say what you think, mamma," resumed the girl. "You know some of these Newporters, so the papers say, do not breakfast before eight o'clock."

"Eight o'clock!" There was an explosion of derisive mirth on the seat above them. "Ladies," the driver looked down with red cheeks and watery eyes, "if you expect to see 'Rome' Wellington's people, you 'd better drive round 'till eleven o'clock. And at that they won't have the sleep out of their eyes."

"Do these society people really sleep as late as that?" asked the girl.

The driver glanced at her a second.

"Aw, stop yer kiddin'," he said. "All I can say now is that if you try to wake 'em up now they 'll set the dogs on you."

"Very well, let them," interposed Mrs. Wellington. "Now drive on as quickly as possible—and no more talking, please."

The driver had a good look at her as she spoke. His round face became red and pale in turn and he clucked asthmatically to his horse.

"Good Lord," he muttered, "it's herself!"

But he had not much farther to go. Just as they turned into the Harbor Road, a Wellington car came up. The mécanicien had been losing no time, but when he caught sight of the Wellingtons he stopped within a distance which he prided himself was five feet less than any other living driver could have made it in, without breaking the car.

The footman was at the side of the hack in an instant and assisted the mother and daughter into the tonneau, which they entered in silence. Mrs. Wellington, in fact, did not speak until the car was tearing past the golf grounds. Here she turned to her daughter with a grim face.

"Anne," she said, "I 've about made up my mind that you escaped being really funny with that impossible hackman."

"Yes, mother," said the girl, absently viewing the steadily rising roof of her home. "Our ideas of humor were ever alien. I wonder if Prince Koltsoff has arrived."

The Crags was one of the few Newport villas bordering on the sea, whose owners and architects had been sufficiently temperamental to take advantage of the natural beauties of its site. Upon huge black rocks, rising twenty-five or thirty feet, the house had been built. Windows on either side looked down upon the waters, ever shattering into white foam on half-hidden reefs, or rushing relentlessly into rocky, weed-hung fissures or black caverns. Sometimes in the autumn storms when the inrushing waves would bury deep the grim reefs off Bateman's Point and pile themselves on the very bulwarks of the island, the spray rattled against the windows of The Crags and made the place seem a part of the elemental fury.

In front of the house was an immense stretch of sward, bordered with box and relieved by a wonderful parterre and by walks and drives lined with blue hydrangeas. The stable, garage, and gardener's cottage were far to one side, all but their roofs concealed from the house and the roadway by a small grove of poplars.

Supplementing the processes of Nature by artificial means, Ronald Wellington had had a sort of fjord blasted out of the solid rock on the seaward side, as a passage for his big steam yacht, with steps leading from the house to the little wharf. Here lay the Mayfair when not in service; from the road you could see her mast tops, as though protruding from the ground. But now the Mayfair was down in a South Brooklyn shipyard; this thought, recurring to Mrs. Wellington, framed in her mind a mental picture of all that she had undergone as a result of that stupid blowing out of steam valves, which, by the way, had seriously scalded several of the engine-room staff and placed the keenest of edges upon her home-coming mood. No subject of nervous irritability, she. Incidents, affairs, persons, or things qualified to set the fibres of the average woman of her age tingling, were, with her, as the heat to steel; they tempered her, made her hard, keen, cold, resilient.

The butler, flanked by two or three men servants, met them at the door. Breakfast was served, he said. Prince Koltsoff, indeed, had already arrived, and had breakfasted.

"The Prince—" Mrs. Wellington checked herself and hurried into the breakfast room with inscrutable face. Her daughter followed, smiling broadly.

"The Prince seems to have anticipated us," she said.

Mrs. Wellington glanced at the alert-faced second man, who had just brought in the coffee, and compressed her lips into a straight line.

There was no conversation in the course of the short light breakfast. Anne went to her apartments, while Mrs. Wellington, after arising from the table, stood for a minute gazing from the window toward the polo grounds. Then slowly she mounted the stairs and, entering her boudoir, rang for her maid.

An hour and a half later, massaged, bathed, and robed in a dainty morning gown, Mrs. Wellington stepped into her "office," than which no one of her husband's many offices was more business-like, and seated herself at a large mahogany desk. Miss Hatch, her secretary, arose from a smaller desk with typewriter attachment and laid before her a number of checks for signing, bills rendered, invitations, and two bank books. Then she resumed her seat in silence.

Mrs. Wellington did not glance at the mass of matter. With a muttered "Thank you," she gazed thoughtfully at the row of white push buttons inlaid at her elbow. There were more than a dozen of them and they ranged from the pantry to the kitchen, from the garage to the stable. By means of them the mistress of The Crags kept in touch with nearly fifty servants. Here at her desk she could plan her campaigns, lay counter mine against mine, plan stratagems, and devise ideas. Her superiority over those who sought, or had sought in the past, to rival her lay in the fact that she could devise, outline, and execute her projects without assistance. A former secretary with some degree of literary talent had, upon dismissal, written up that office and its genius for a Sunday newspaper, and several hundred thousand good people, upon reading it, had marvelled at the tremendous means employed to such trivial ends.

But after all, who shall say what is trivial in this world and what is not? Let it rest with the assertion that in any other sphere, business, sociology, charity, Belle Wellington's genius would have carried her as far as in that domain wherein she had set her endeavors. As to charity, for that matter, she had given a mountain recluse, a physician, five hundred thousand dollars with which to found a tuberculosis sanitarium, and—but those were things which not even her friends knew and concerning which, therefore, we should remain silent.

Slowly she leaned forward and pressed a button. Mrs. Stetson, the housekeeper, soon appeared.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Stetson," she said. "Prince Koltsoff seems to have anticipated us." She suddenly remembered she had utilized her daughter's expression, and bit her lips. "When did he arrive?"

"He came last night in the French ambassador's carriage."

"Last night!" Mrs. Wellington glanced at her secretary. "Will you bring my engagement book, please." This in hand, she turned the pages hastily, then put it down.

"There has been some mistake. He was not to come to us until luncheon to-day. Was M. Renaud with him?"

"Yes, Mrs. Wellington, but he did not stay. The Prince seemed to know he was not expected. He apologized profusely, but said that events had brought him here a day early and trusted there was no inconvenience. He did not dine, but spent the evening in the smoking-room, writing. He sent two cable despatches by Parker."

"Um-m, dégagé, even for a Russian," said Mrs. Wellington. "And he arose early?"

"Very early. He asked Mr. Dawson for a car to go to the village at half after six."

Mrs. Wellington almost revealed her intense interest.

"Ah, to the village," she said. "Did he say—did he explain the reasons for his early trip?"

"No, but Parker told Mr. Dawson he stopped at the telegraph office."

"Where is the Prince now?"

"He is in the morning-room, writing."

"Thank you, Mrs. Stetson."

As the housekeeper left, Mrs. Wellington pressed another button, summoning the superintendent.

"Mr. Dawson," she said, "you received my wire last night that the Mayfair had broken down and that we were taking the midnight train from New York?"

"Yes, Mrs. Wellington."

"And you thought the Prince was going to meet us with that car? That was the reason for your failure to follow my instructions?"

"Yes, madame, thank you. I supposed Prince Koltsoff knew you were coming and that he had ordered the car to meet you. When this proved wrong I sent Rimini. I am glad he was not late."

"He was late. He met us, packed in a miserable hack. Hereafter I must insist upon strict compliance with my wishes. Do not assume things, please. Am I quite clear? Thank you." Mrs. Wellington turned from him and pressed still another button. In a moment the tutor of her two sons, Ronald, sixteen years old, and Royal, twelve, stood before her. He was a Frenchman, whose facial expression did not indicate that his duties had fallen in the pleasantest of places.

"Good-morning, M. Dumois. Where are my sons?" She spoke in French.

"They attended a party at Bailey's Beach and remained the night with Master Van Antwerp."

"How have they been?"

"Very well, thank you, except—"

"Except?"

"I found Master Ronald smoking a cigarette in the smoking-room yesterday."

Mrs. Wellington dashed a note on her pad.

"Thank you," she said in her soft tone of dismissal.

"Lest Miss Wellington forget, you might, on your way, remind her, in my name, not to meet Prince Koltsoff until I receive him at luncheon."

She turned to the mass of correspondence on her desk and selected for first reading a long telegram from her husband, who, when he sent it, was speeding eastward through the Middle West in his special car. She laid it down with a faraway smile in her eyes. She loved and admired her big husband, who did things, knocked men's heads together, juggled railroads and steamships in either hand. And this love and admiration, in whatever she had done or wherever placed, had always been as twin flaming angels guarding her with naked swords.

Presently she turned to her secretary and dictated a statement concerning the arrival of Prince Koltsoff, who he was, and a list of several of the entertainments given in his honor.

"You might call Mr. Craft at the Newport Herald office and give him this," she said.

Half an hour was spent in going over accounts, signing checks, auditing bills, and the like, and then with a sigh she arose and passed into her dressing-room. Ordinarily she would have dressed for the beach or the Casino. But to-day she threw herself on a couch in her boudoir and closed her eyes. But she did not sleep.

M. Dumois, hastening to comply with his mistress' command, failed to find the girl in her apartments. At the moment, indeed, that Emilia was informing the tutor that the girl had left for the stables, Miss Wellington from a corner of the hall was gazing interestedly at the Prince, who sat with his profile toward her. He was bending over a table upon which was spread a parchment drawing. The sunlight fell full upon him. He was not at all unprepossessing. Tall and slim, with waist in and well-padded shoulders, his blonde hair and Van Dyck bead, long white eyelashes, darker brows, and glittering blue eyes, he was the very type of the aristocratic Muscovite.

As the girl looked she saw his lips part and his teeth glisten. He half arose, leaned forward, and smote the chart.

Miss Wellington hurried down the hall and out of the house.

"Prince Koltsoff," she murmured, as she swung down the path to the stable, "I would give worlds to know what you 're up to. I definitely place you as a rascal. But oh, such a romantically picturesque one!"