The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories

by George Barr McCutcheon

  “Alas!” interrupted I, shaking my head. “There is more than one way to look at the law. I’m afraid you have got yourself into a serious—er—pickle.”’

  “I don’t care,” she said defiantly. “It is the law’s fault for not prohibiting such marriages as ours. Oh, I know I must seem awfully foolish and idiotic to you, but—but it’s too late now to back out, isn’t it?”

  I did not mean to say it, but I did—and I said it with some conviction: “It is! You must be protected.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” she cried, clasping and unclasping her little hands. I found myself wondering if the brute had dared to strike her on that soft, pink cheek!

  Suddenly a horrible thought struck me with stunning force.

  “Don’t tell me that your—your husband is the man who owned this castle up to a week ago,” I cried. “Count James Hohendahl?”

  She shook her head. “No. He is not the man.” Seeing that I waited for her to go on, she resumed: “I know Count James quite well, however. He is my husband’s closest friend.”

  “Good heaven,” said I, in quick alarm. “That complicates matters, doesn’t it? He may come here at any time.”

  “It isn’t likely, Mr. Smart. To be perfectly honest with you, I waited until I heard you had bought the castle before coming here myself. We were in hiding at the house of a friend in Linz up to a week ago. I did not think it right or fair to subject them to the notoriety or the peril that was sure to follow if the officers took it into their heads to look for me there. The day you bought the castle, I decided that it was the safest place for me to stay until the danger blows over, or until father can arrange to smuggle me out of this awful country. That very night we were brought here in a motor. Dear old Conrad and Mrs. Schmick took me in. They have been perfectly adorable, all of them.”

  “May I enquire, madam,” said I stiffly, “how you came to select my abode as your hiding place?”

  “Oh, I have forgotten to tell you that we lived here one whole summer just after we were married. Count Hohendahl let us have the castle for our—our honey-moon. He was here a great deal of the time. All sorts of horrid, nasty, snobbish people were here to help us enjoy our honeymoon. I shall never forget that dreadful summer. My only friends were the Schmicks. Every one else ignored and despised me, and they all borrowed, won or stole money from me. I was compelled to play bridge for atrociously high stakes without knowing one card from the other. But, as I say, the Schmicks loved me. You see they were in the family ages and ages before I was born.”

  “The family? What family?”

  “The Rothhoefen family. Haven’t they told you that my great-grandmother was a Rothhoefen? No? Well, she was. I belong to the third generation of American-born descendants. Doesn’t it simplify matters, knowing this?”

  “Immensely,” said I, in something of a daze.

  “And so I came here, Mr. Smart, where hundreds of my ancestors spent their honeymoons, most of them perhaps as unhappily as I, and where I knew a fellow-countryman was to live for awhile in order to get a plot for a new story. You see, I thought I might be a great help to you in the shape of suggestion.”

  She smiled very warmly, and I thought it was a very neat way of putting it. Naturally it would be quite impossible to put her out after hearing that she had already put herself out to some extent in order to assist me.

  “I can supply the villain for your story if you need one, and I can give you oceans of ideas about noblemen. I am sorry that I can’t give you a nice, sweet heroine. People hate heroines after they are married and live unhappily. You—”

  “The public taste is changing,” I interrupted quickly. “Unhappy marriages are so common nowadays that the women who go into ’em are always heroines. People like to read about suffering and anguish among the rich, too. Besides, you are a Countess. That puts you near the first rank among heroines. Don’t you think it would be proper at this point to tell me who you are?”

  She regarded me steadfastly for a moment, and then shook her head.

  “I’d rather not tell you my name, Mr. Smart. It really can’t matter, you know. I’ve thought it all out very carefully, and I’ve decided that it is not best for you to know. You see if you don’t know who it is you are sheltering, the courts can’t hold you to account. You will be quite innocent of deliberately contriving to defeat the law. No, I shall not tell you my name, nor my husband’s, nor my father’s. If you’d like to know, however, I will tell you my baby’s name. She’s two years old and I think she’ll like you to call her Rosemary.”

  By this time I was quite hypnotised by this charming, confident trespasser upon my physical—and I was about to say my moral estate. Never have I known a more complacent violater of all the proprieties of law and order as she appeared to be. She was a revelation; more than that, she was an inspiration. What a courageous, independent, fascinating little buccaneer she was! Her calm tone of assurance, her overwhelming confidence in herself, despite the occasional lapse into despair, staggered me. I couldn’t help being impressed. If I had had any thought of ejecting her, bag and baggage, from my castle, it had been completely knocked out of my head and I was left, you might say, in a position which gave me no other alternative than to consider myself a humble instrument in the furthering of her ends, whether I would or no. It was most amazing. Superior to the feeling of scorn I naturally felt for her and her kind,—the fools who make international beds and find them filled with thorns,—there was the delicious sensation of being able to rise above my prejudices and become a willing conspirator against that despot, Common Sense.

  She was very sure of herself, that was plain; and I am positive that she was equally sure of me. It isn’t altogether flattering, either, to feel that a woman is so sure of you that there isn’t any doubt concerning her estimate of your offensive strength. Somehow one feels an absence of physical attractiveness.

  “Rosemary,” I repeated. “And what am I to call you?”

  “Even my enemies call me Countess,” she said coldly.

  “Oh,” said I, more respectfully. “I see. When am I to have the pleasure of meeting the less particular Rosemary?”

  “I didn’t mean to be horrid,” she said plaintively. “Please overlook it, Mr. Smart. If you are very, very quiet I think you may see her now. She is asleep.”

  “I may frighten her if she awakes,” I said in haste, remembering my antipathy to babies.

  Nevertheless I was led through a couple of bare, unfurnished rooms into a sunny, perfectly adorable nursery. A nursemaid,—English, at a glance,—arose from her seat in the window and held a cautious finger to her lips. In the middle of a bed that would have accommodated an entire family, was the sleeping Rosemary—a tiny, rosy-cheeked, yellow haired atom bounded on four sides by yards of mattress.

  I stood over her timorously and stared. The Countess put one knee upon the mattress and, leaning far over, kissed a little paw. I blinked, like a confounded booby.

  Then we stole out of the room.

  “Isn’t she adorable?” asked the Countess when we were at a safe distance.

  “They all are,” I said grudgingly, “when they’re asleep.”

  “You are horrid!”

  “By the way,” I said sternly, “how does that bedstead happen to be a yard or so lower than any other bed in this entire castle? All the rest of them are so high one has to get into them from a chair.”

  “Oh,” she said complacently, “it was too high for Blake to manage conveniently, so I had Rudolph saw the legs off short.”

  One of my very finest antique bedsteads! But I didn’t even groan.

  “You will let me stay on, won’t you, Mr. Smart?” she said, when we were at the fireplace again. “I am really so helpless, you know.”

  I offered her everything that the castle afforded in the way of loyalty and luxury.

  “And we’ll have a telephone in the main hall before the end of a week,” I concluded beamingly.

  Her face clouded. “Oh, I�
�d much rather have it in my hallway, if you don’t mind. You see, I can’t very well go downstairs every time I want to use the ’phone, and it will be a nuisance sending for me when I’m wanted.”

  This was rather high-handed, I thought.

  “But if no one knows you’re here, it seems to me you’re not likely to be called.”

  “You never can tell,” she said mysteriously.

  I promised to put the instrument in her hall, and not to have an extension to my rooms for fear of creating suspicion. Also the electric bell system was to be put in just as she wanted it to be. And a lot of other things that do not seem to come to mind at this moment.

  I left in a daze at half-past three, to send Britton up with all the late novels and magazines, and a big box of my special cigarettes.

  CHAPTER VI

  I DISCUSS MATRIMONY

  Poopendyke and I tried to do a little work that evening, but neither of us seemed quite capable of concentration. We said “I beg pardon” to each other a dozen times or more, following mental lapses, and then gave it up. My ideas failed in consecutiveness, and when I did succeed in hitching two intelligent thoughts together he invariably destroyed the sequence by compelling me to repeat myself, with the result that I became irascible.

  We had gone over the events of the day very thoroughly. If anything, he was more alarmed over our predicament than I. He seemed to sense the danger that attended my decision to shelter and protect this cool-headed, rather self-centred young woman at the top of my castle. To me, it was something of a lark; to him, a tragedy. He takes everything seriously, so much so in fact that he gets on my nerves. I wish he were not always looking at things through the little end of the telescope. I like a change, and it is a novelty to sometimes see things through the big end, especially peril.

  “They will yank us all up for aiding and abetting,” he proclaimed, trying to focus his eyes on the shorthand book he was fumbling.

  “You wouldn’t have me turn her over to the law, would you?” I demanded crossly. “Please don’t forget that we are Americans.”

  “I don’t,” said he. “That’s what worries me most of all.”

  “Well,” said I loftily, “we’ll see.”

  We were silent for a long time.

  “It must be horribly lonely and spooky away up there where she is,” I said at last, inadvertently betraying my thoughts. He sniffed.

  “Have you a cold?” I demanded, glaring at him.

  “No,” he said gloomily; “a presentiment.”

  “Umph!”

  Another period of silence. Then: “I wonder if Max—” I stopped short.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, with wonderful divination. “He did.”

  “Any message?”

  “She sent down word that the new cook is a jewel, but I think she must have been jesting. I’ve never cared for a man cook myself. I don’t like to appear hypercritical, but what did you think of the dinner tonight, sir?”

  “I’ve never tasted better broiled ham in my life, Mr. Poopendyke.”

  “Ham! That’s it, Mr. Smart. But what I’d like to know is this: What became of the grouse you ordered for dinner, sir? I happen to know that it was put over the fire at seven—”

  “I sent it up to the countess, with our compliments,” said I, peevishly. I think that remark silenced him. At any rate, he got up and left the room.

  I laid awake half the night morbidly berating the American father who is so afraid of his wife that he lets her bully him into sacrificing their joint flesh and blood upon the altar of social ambition. She had said that her father was opposed to the match from the beginning. Then why, in the name of heaven, wasn’t he man enough to put a stop to it? Why—But what use is there in applying whys to a man who doesn’t know what God meant when He fashioned two sexes? I put him down as neutral and tried my best to forget him.

  But I couldn’t forget the daughter of this browbeaten American father. There was something singularly familiar about her exquisite face, a conviction on my part that is easily accounted for. Her portrait, of course, had been published far and wide at the time of the wedding; she must have been pictured from every conceivable angle, with illimitable gowns, hats, veils and parasols, and I certainly could not have missed seeing her, even with half an eye. But for the life of me, I couldn’t connect her with any of the much-talked-of international marriages that came to mind as I lay there going over the meagre assortment I was able to recall. I went to sleep wondering whether Poopendyke’s memory was any better than mine. He is tremendously interested in the financial doings of our country, being the possessor of a flourishing savings’ account, and as he also possesses a lively sense of the ridiculous, it was not unreasonable to suspect that he might remember all the details of this particular transaction in stocks and bonds.

  The next morning I set my labourers to work putting guest-rooms into shape for the coming of the Hazzards and the four friends who were to be with them for the week as my guests. They were to arrive on the next day but one, which gave me ample time to consult a furniture dealer. I would have to buy at least six new beds and everything else with which to comfortably equip as many bed-chambers, it being a foregone conclusion that not even the husbands and wives would condescend to “double up” to oblige me. The expensiveness of this ill-timed visit had not occurred to me at the outset. Still there was some prospect of getting the wholesale price. On one point I was determined; the workmen should not be laid off for a single hour, not even if my guests went off in a huff.

  At twelve I climbed the tortuous stairs leading to the Countess’s apartments. She opened the door herself in response to my rapping.

  “I neglected to mention yesterday that I am expecting a houseful of guests in a day or two,” I said, after she had given me a very cordial greeting.

  “Guests?” she cried in dismay. “Oh, dear! Can’t you put them off?”

  “I have hopes that they won’t be able to stand the workmen banging around all day,” I confessed, somewhat guiltily.

  “Women in the party?”

  “Two, I believe. Both married and qualified to express opinions.”

  “They will be sure to nose me out,” she said ruefully. “Women are dreadful nosers.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get a lot of new padlocks for the doors downstairs and you’ll be as safe as can be, if you’ll only keep quiet.”

  “But I don’t see why I should be made to mope here all day and all night like a sick cat, holding my hand over Rosemary’s mouth when she wants to cry, and muzzling poor Jinko so that he—”

  “My dear Countess,” I interrupted sternly, “you should not forget that these other guests of mine are invited here.”

  “But I was here first,” she argued. “It is most annoying.”

  “I believe you said yesterday that you are in the habit of having your own way.” She nodded her head. “Well, I am afraid you’ll have to come down from your high horse—at least temporarily.”

  “Oh, I see. You—you mean to be very firm and domineering with me.”

  “You must try to see things from my point of—”

  “Please don’t say that!” she flared. “I’m so tired of hearing those words. For the last three years I’ve been commanded to see things from some one else’s point of view, and I’m sick of the expression.”

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t put me in the same boat with your husband!”

  She regarded me somewhat frigidly for a moment longer, and then a slow, witching smile crept into her eyes.

  “I sha’n’t,” she promised, and laughed outright.

  “Do forgive me, Mr. Smart. I am such a piggy thing. I’ll try to be nice and sensible, and I will be as still as a mouse all the time they’re here. But you must promise to come up every day and give me the gossip. You can steal up, can’t you? Surreptitiously?”

  “Clandestinely,” I said, gravely.

  “I really ought to warn you once more about getting yourself invol
ved,” she said pointedly.

  “Oh, I’m quite a safe old party,” I assured her. “They couldn’t make capital of me.”

  “The grouse was delicious,” she said, deliberately changing the subject. Nice divorcees are always doing that.

  We fell into a discussion of present and future needs; of ways and means for keeping my friends utterly in the dark concerning her presence in the abandoned east wing; and of what we were pleased to allude to as “separate maintenance,” employing a phrase that might have been considered distasteful and even banal under ordinary conditions.

  “I’ve been trying to recall all of the notable marriages we had in New York three years ago,” said I, after she had most engagingly reduced me to a state of subjection in the matter of three or four moot questions that came up for settlement. “You don’t seem to fit in with any of the international affairs I can bring to mind.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t bother about that, Mr. Smart,” she said severely.

  “Of course you were married in New York?”

  “In a very nice church just off Fifth Avenue, if that will help you any,” she said. “The usual crowd inside the church, and the usual mob outside, all fighting for a glimpse of me in my wedding shroud, and for a chance to see a real Hungarian nobleman. It really was a very magnificent wedding, Mr. Smart.” She seemed to be unduly proud of the spectacular sacrifice.

  A knitted brow revealed the obfuscated condition of my brain. I was thinking very intently, not to say remotely.

  “The whole world talked about it,” she went on dreamily. “We had a real prince for the best man, and two of the ushers couldn’t speak a word of English. Don’t you remember that the police closed the streets in the neighbourhood of the church and wouldn’t let people spoil everything by going about their business as they were in the habit of doing? Some of the shops sold window space to sight-seers, just as they do at a coronation.”

  “I daresay all this should let in light, but it doesn’t.”

  “Don’t you read the newspapers?” she cried impatiently. She actually resented my ignorance.