In the early afternoon of Thursday, David Mosscrop walked apart on shaded gravel-paths, beneath arches of roses and the feathered canopy of cedars high above, with Adele by his side.
“Oh, it’s all right. The waiter will come out and tell us when it is ready,” he said reassuringly, in comment upon her backward glance. “I want to speak with you. There was no such thing as a word with you by yourself on the road.”
“Why, we talked every mortal minute,” she protested.
“Ah yes, we talked, but I don’t recall that anything was said.”
“I daresay my conversation is empty to the last degree,” she observed; “but I am usually spared such frank statements of the fact.”
“Ah, but I want to be thought of as something a little different from the usual,” urged David.
“Your efforts in that direction have been extraordinarily successful. Pray, do not imagine that they are unappreciated. I admit freely that you seem to have quite exhausted the unusual, my Lord.”
“No; I’ve still got something up my sleeve,” said David, lightly enough. But the tone in which she had uttered those final two words caught his attention. They carried a suggestion of emphasis which fell outside the bounds of genial banter. Meditating upon it he stole a covert glance at her, and encountered two wide-awake black eyes intently scrutinising him in turn. “It was about that I wished to consult you,” he added, conscious of an embarrassed tongue.
“Won’t it be better to stick to scenery?” she asked. Yes, there was undoubtedly a mocking touch in her voice. “That is so safe a subject. This dear old hotel here, now, how perfectly satisfying it is! Those wonderful trees out in front, and the white chalk hill behind, and this garden, and then the comfort and charm of everything inside, and the thought that people have been coming here for hundreds of years, or is it thousands?—it is so different from anything we have in America—even in Kentucky. And then the whole drive from London—through such delicious country, all so rich and smooth and neatly packed together, and so full of the notion that people are all the while planting and pruning and admiring every inch of it that you can’t help feeling affectionately toward it yourself! Perhaps there is a certain hint of the artificial about it, but somehow that seems rather in keeping with the day than otherwise, doesn’t it, my Lord?”
While he hesitated about an answer, she touched him on the arm. “Here are papa and Mr. Linkhaw coming along after us—probably to tell us luncheon is ready. Shan’t we wait for them?”
“Heavens, no!” cried David, starting forward. “We’ve been chained to them on the top of the coach for two whole hours,” he went on, in defensive explanation of his warmth. “Really, we have earned the right to a few quiet words by ourselves.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Adele, quickening her pace to suit his. “Only it’s fair to warn you, though, that my temper has its limitations. I am a variable person. Sometimes it happens that all at once I weary of a joke, after it has been carried to a certain length, and then I can be as unpleasant as they make ’em.”
“I find that my own sense of humour has a tendency to flag under sustained effort, as I get older,” said David. “But there are so many pleasantries afloat—perhaps you wouldn’t mind indicating the one which particularly fatigues you, and I will put my foot on it at once.”
“Oh, by no means! That would be far too crude. We are all your guests, and you are in charge of the entertainment, and I couldn’t dream of suggesting anything.”
“Except that you find yourself no longer amused,” ventured David, cautiously.
“Oh. not at all.” She spoke with perfunctory languor, and simulated a little yawn. “I daresay it is all immensely funny, only I got up earlier than usual this morning, and no doubt that has dulled my wits somewhat.”
David perceived on the instant how matters stood. “I also rose at an extravagantly early hour,55 he said, and it is about my reasons for doing so that I want to tell you. But, first of all, let us be frank with each other. I have done nothing but accede to a situation created for me by Archie and yourself. It has been within your power to end it at any moment you choose. It has been all along much more your joke than mine. It isn’t fair to round on me for merely humouring your own conception of sport.”
Adele halted momentarily, and surveyed his composed, swarthy countenance with lifted brows. “So you saw all along that I knew!” she exclaimed, in honest surprise.
“How could I have imagined that so clumsy a performance as mine would deceive so clever a young woman?” he rejoined, with a sprightly bow.
“Oh, you did it awfully well,” she assured him, complacently. “But tell me, did Archie suspect that I knew?”
“I have been intimate with Archie from the cradle,” said David, “but I am still very shy about forming opinions as to his mental processes. In this case, however, I think it is safe to say he didn’t suspect—and still doesn’t suspect.”
“Poor old Archie,” mused Adele, with a ripening smile. “I knew who he was before I’d even laid eyes on him. A school-friend of mine in Galveston wrote to me that she had met a real Earl, who insisted on being known as Mr. Linkhaw, and that he was returning to England by way of Kentucky. I’ve had three months of the rarest fun in never letting on that I had the remotest suspicion. You can’t imagine how comical it was. He used to get, quite tearful sometimes, I abused the aristocracy so fiercely. And then, the joke was, papa began—his whole idea of conversation is to take up to-day what I’ve said yesterday, and multiply my words by a hundred and twelve, and produce the result as his own; and he worked up the anti-Earl agitation till Archie very nearly went off into chronic melancholia. It was better than any comedy that ever was written—but then you stumbled your way into the middle of it, and got it all twisted and tangled up—and it hasn’t been so amusing since then.”
“My dear Miss Skinner,” protested David, “I think my entrance upon the scene deserves a gentler verb. If you will search your memory, you will find that I came in by express invitation. It was you who deliberately thrust my mock honours upon me.”
“Oh, I know that,” she responded, readily enough. “I thought that would only make the thing funnier still—but somehow it hasn’t. It isn’t anything about Archie and me, you know. But there is another element in the case that I feel very keenly about. It has been puzzling me for days, but I only learned the truth last night. I simply made papa tell me. I refused flat-footed to come here to-day, or to do anything else that was reasonable, unless he did tell me. I have a cousin here in England, Mr. Mosscrop, a daughter of my father’s own brother, and she is one of the dearest girls that ever lived.”
“I can readily credit that,” declared David, pointing his meaning with a little inclination of the head.
“Oh, she is far nicer than I am,” cried Adele. “She wouldn’t trifle with the feelings of the man she loved, or play tricks with him just for the sake of fun. In fact, I almost blame her for taking such things too seriously. She hasn’t had too easy a time of it, poor girl, and it has made her, I think, altogether too humble. She met a young man in the midst of her troubles who, it seems, was civil to her, and even kind as men go, and what does she do but just sit down and worship the very memory of him, and cry out her pretty blue eyes over it—and he—he walks off and never gives her another thought. That’s the man of it!”
A gleam of indignation flashed through the moisture in her own eyes as she bent them upon her companion. Her bosom heaved the more as she discerned a broad smile extending itself upon his face.
“Although I might demur to details,” he said, restraining the gaiety which struggled for expression in his voice, “I must not pretend to fail to recognise the portrait you have drawn. I am the guilty man!”
“You laugh at it!” she exclaimed. “To you it seems a joke!”
“Are you so certain that there isn’t a joke concealed somewhere about it?” he suggested, calmly.
“I lose patience with you! You make a jest of everything. Tell me this much: Do you or do you not know her present address?”
“I know precisely where she is to be found at the present moment,” said David, speaking now with gravity.
“Well, and have you been there to see her? Have you written to her there? Have you given her the slightest sign since she has been there of any desire on your part to ever see her again?”
“I must answer ‘No’ to each question, I am afraid,” he responded, and had the grace to hang his head.
His evident humility only momentarily impressed her. “I am disappointed in you,” she said. “Where will you find a sweeter or truer woman? Don’t think I am throwing her at your head! Quite the contrary. If you were to ask for her now, I should advise with all my might against you. But you have behaved like a simpleton. I am going to have her always live with me, or near me. She is my own flesh and blood, and I love her as if she were my sister. She doesn’t know, as yet, that I am aware of the relationship; but I have written to her this very morning, telling her to come and see me to-night, when I get back. I am going to spend some money in Scotland.”
“It will be profoundly appreciated, believe me.”
She sniffed at his interjection. “I intend to buy land right and left in Elgin, and if Skirl Castle isn’t good enough—I don’t think much of it from the photographs—we’ll build a bigger one, and we’ll make that whole section hum; and Vestalia shall be as big an heiress as it contains, and the lucky man who marries her shall be treated like a brother of mine and Archie’s. And that is what you have thrown away. I say it to you frankly, because it is all over so far as you are concerned. She will listen to me, and my mind is quite made up—and papa can tell you what that means!”
“Even if your decision were not irrevocable,” said David, solemnly, “my answer would of necessity be the same. I would do much to please you, but I do not see my way to marrying your cousin.”
They had paused to exchange these last sentences, and now upon the instant the Earl and his elderly companion came up. David essayed a revelatory wink to the nobleman, but it fell upon the stony places in Lord Drum-pipes wondering stare.
Mr. Skinner wiped his brow decorously, and breathed appreciation of the halt. “Sir,” he began, addressing David, “I must assume that I............