As the balcony was too small for another chair, and Mr. Skinner did not come to the window, his daughter led her guest into the sitting-room.
“Papa,” she said, “you will recall the gentleman whom we met yesterday at the British Museum.”
Mr. Skinner lifted to its place the pince-nez which depended on a gold thread from the lapel of his carefully-buttoned frock-coat, and scrutinised the person indicated in a painstaking manner.
“Ah, yes, indeed,” he said, continuing his gaze, but with no salutation, and no offer of the hand.
“It’s so dark in here, I don’t believe you do,” she remarked, to cover the awkwardness of the moment. “The sun has gone now, any way,” and she moved back and put a hand upon the awning-cord.
“Permit me,” said David, hurrying to her side, and pulling at the shade.
“He’s out of sorts about something,” the girl murmured furtively. “Don’t mind it; just leave him to me.”
In the brightened light, Mr. Skinner’s demeanour seemed no more cordial. He regarded his visitor with a doubtful glance, and gave indications of a sense of embarrassment in his presence. The daughter, however, was in no respect dismayed by her responsibility.
“Papa,” she said with brisk decision, “it was all a joke yesterday. Our friend was so amused by your offer yesterday——”
“I beg your pardon, Adele,” the father interposed ceremoniously, “but it becomes immediately incumbent upon me to express my dissent. To obviate any possible misconception, it should be explicitly stated that, although it is true that the task of formulating the proposal to which you allude did undoubtedly devolve upon me, the proposition itself, both in spirit and suggestion, originated in your own consciousness.”
“All right,” she hurriedly went on, “have it anyway you like. The point is that this gentleman thought it was funny, and so he capped it with his own little joke by pretending to be some one else. He made up that name he gave you on the spur of the moment, just for sport. He came here this morning, just to explain. He was nervous about the deception, innocent though it was. Papa, let me introduce to you Mr. Linkhaw’s relation, of whom he spoke so often, you know—the Earl of Drumpipes.”
Mr. Skinner took in this intelligence with respectful deliberation. He bowed meanwhile, and, after a moment’s deferential hesitation, shook hands in a formal way with David, and motioned him to a seat.
“Sir,” he began, picking his phrases with even greater care, “you will excuse me if I do not address you as ‘My Lord,’ since it is a form of words which I cannot bring myself to regard as seemly when employed by one human being toward another; but I gather from my daughter’s explanation that your statements yesterday concerning your identity were conceived in a spirit of pleasantry. Under ordinary circumstances, sir, the revelation that an entirely serious and decorous suggestion of mine had been received with hilarity might not convey to my mind an exclusively flattering impression. But I do not, sir, close my eyes to the fact that a wide gulf of usage and custom, and, I might say, of principles, separates a simple Jeffersonian Democrat like myself from the professor of an hereditary European dignity. I am therefore able, sir, to accept, with comparatively few reservations, the explanation which you have tendered to my daughter, and vicariously, as I understand it, to me.”
David repressed a groan, and hastily cast about in his mind for a decent pretext for flight. “I assure you that it greatly relieves me to find you so courteously magnanimous,” he said. “I merely yielded to the playful impulse of the moment; and as your daughter has so kindly told you, I made haste thereafter to repair my error, when its possible misinterpretation occurred to me.” He bowed again, in response to the other’s solemn genuflection, and looked toward the door.
“I should be pleased, sir,” Mr. Skinner said, “if you would honour us by remaining to luncheon.”
“Ah, I should have liked that so much,” answered David, with fervour, “but unhappily I have an engagement at Marlborough House. It will be no end of a bore, but it can’t be helped. An invitation there, you know, is equivalent to a command. That is one of the drawbacks of a monarchy—but of course every system has its weak points.”
“That is a generalisation,” returned Mr. Skinner, “to which I am not prepared to give unmeasured adhesion. I will explain to you, sir, briefly, the reasons which dictate my hesitation to entirely——”
“I’m afraid, Mr. Skinner, that I must tear myself away,” put in David, anxiously consulting his watch. “The Prince never forgives a fellow being late. He has to live so much on a time-table himself, you know, forever catching trains, and changing his uniforms, and turning up at the exact minute all over the place, laying corner-stones, and opening docks and unveiling statues, and so on, that it makes him intolerant of other people’s lapses. And he’s got a fearful memory for that sort of thing.”
“I assume that you speak of the Heir Apparent,” commented the other. “Am I to understand that you live in a state of personal subjection—that a nobleman in your position, for example, contemplates with apprehension the contingency of causing even the most trivial and transitory displeasure to the personage alluded to?”
“Apprehension, my dear sir? Positive horror! Ah, you little know the reality! Thoughtless people see us from the outside, and they lightly imagine that our lives are one ceaseless round of luxurious gaiety and gilded pleasure. They fancy that to have titles, to bear hereditary distinctions, to fill high places at Court, must be the sum of human happiness. Of course, I suppose we do have a better time than the average, but we pay a price for it. We smile, it is true, but there is always a shudder beneath the smile. A mere breath, a suspicion, the veriest paltry whim of royal disfavour, and we might better never have been born! And so,” he finished with an uneasy graciousness, “you will understand my abrupt leavetaking now.”
“I promise myself on another occasion, sir,” said Mr. Skinner, with more warmth, “the privilege of discussing these topics with you at length. I do not deny that I am myself, to-day, somewhat preoccupied, and lacking in the power of intellectual concentration. Another occasion, I trust, will find me better fitted to bestow upon these subjects the alertness of comprehension and clarity of judgment which their importance demands. At the moment, I confess my mind is burdened with another matter.”
“O, papa—you haven’t gone and lost your letter of credit!” The girl intervened with accents of alarm.
The old gentleman shook his head, and smiled in a dubious fashion. “No,” he replied, hesitatingly, “it is merely that I—I have been enjoined to secrecy about a very curious and interesting revelation which has been made to me, and concealment is profoundly alien to my nature. The necessity for maintaining a mysterious reserve weighs upon me, sir, with unaccustomed oppression.”
“It is something that you have learned this morning?” demanded the daughter. “I’ll make you tell me as soon as we’re alone.”
“Ah, that cannot be,” the father answered. “My faith has been honourably pledged, and must be scrupulously observed.”
“But surely it couldn’t have been stipulated that I was not to know,” she urged. “That would be absurd. And besides, who knows of even my existence over here?”
“Incomprehensible as it may appear to your perceptions,” responded Mr. Skinner, “it happens that you were particularly alluded to in the terms of the confidential compact imposed upon me.”
“Then you had no business to enter into it at all,” she replied, vigorously. “Papa, I am surprised at you!”
There was something in his thoughts which lit the old gentleman’s dry countenance with a transient gleam of enjoyment. “I hazard the humble opinion that your surprise will be appreciably augmented when, at the proper time, the truth shall have been revealed to you.” He turned, with the flicker-ings of a whimsical smile in his eye, to their guest. “It is an extraordinary coincidence, sir; but you are also in a manner associated with the occult event to which I may not at present more pointedly refer.”
David musingly looked the old gentleman in the eye. “Yes, I know,” he answered; “but I agree with you that it should not be divulged to your daughter. As you have said, we men of the world are in duty bound to keep a decent veil drawn over certain phases of life. I am quite with you in that, sir; we cannot sufficiently respect and guard the sweet-minded innocence of our young ladies.”
Mr. Skinner looked hard at the nobleman, and drew up his slender figure. “My memory, sir,” he announced stiffly, “fails to recall any observation resembling in the slightest degree, either in form or sentiments, that which you have ascribed to me. Forgive me, sir, if I venture to further remind you that I have no desire to regard myself, or to be regarded, as a man of the world, in the sense in which I understand that term to be used by the aristocratic class in Great Britain.”
The young lady seemed to share her father’s feelings in the matter. “You must remember, Lord Drumpipes,” she put in, coldly, “that our standards in such things are not yours. I daresay it seems natural enough to one in your position, and with your antecedents and associations, that a venerable, white-haired old gentleman should have disgraceful secrets which he ought to conceal from his family; but we take a different view of the meaning of the word ‘gentleman,’ and of the obligations which it involves.”
“Ah, now I have offended you!” cried David, with a show of remorse. “I assure you that my only thought was to help your good father out of a fix. If I have done wrong, I beg you will put it down to my overeagerness to be of assistance. And now,” he stole a dismayed glance at his watch, “now I really must run. Good-bye! Good-bye, Mr. Skinner. Remember that I count upon that famous discussion with you. And you may rely entirely upon my discretion—in the matter of your secret, you know.”
Father and daughter stood for a moment, gazing at the door behind which their noble guest had disappeared. Then the girl turned her eyes with decision upon the author of her being.
“Papa,” she said, with calm resolution, “what did he intend to convey by his remarks about this secret of yours?”
“Why, Adele,” the other protested, faltering a little under her look, “you yourself repudiated, in the most eloquent and unanswerable words, the bare suggestion that I could possibly be animated by the desire to cloak any unworthy deed or incident from your observation.”
“That was for his benefit,” she replied, tranquilly. “I was determined that he should know what we thought of his code of morals. But that does not at all affect the question of what you have been doing. Do I understand that you are going to insist on refusing to tell me where you have been, whom you have seen, what your so-called secret is about?”
“Adele!” he urged, “I really must preserve a reticence as to the essential details of the matter in question—perhaps only for a few days—at least until the obligation of secrecy is removed. You would not have me recreant to my plighted faith, would you?”
“But what business had you going and making her any such promise?”
“Her!” Mr. Skinner said, feebly smiling; “you jest, my dear Adele. How can you conceivably imagine it was a ‘her’?”
“I don’t imagine; I know,” responded the daughter, with a hard, dry smile. “You have been seeing that yellow-haired girl that Lord Drumpipes had with him at the Museum yesterday. The letter which summoned you forth this morning was from her. You made some paltering excuses to me, and went out to meet her—and you won’t look me in the eye and deny it.”
In truth he did not take up her challenge. He hung his head, looked away, and shuffled with his feet. “All I am at liberty to say,” he remarked at last, with visible emotion, “is that my grief at being compelled to rest temporarily under the unwelcome shadow of your suspicion is, to some slight extent, mitigated by the consciousness that when you know all you will do ample justice to the probity of my motives and the honourable character of my actions. I might even go further, and express the conviction that the outcome will be of a nature to a............