The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories

by George Barr McCutcheon

  The fundamental problem was this: why was I breaking my neck to get to her before Blatchford had time to deliver my response to her appealing little note? It was something of a facer, and it set me to wondering. Why was I so eager? Could it be possible that there was anything in the speculation of my servants? I recalled the sensation of supreme delight that shot through me when I received her note, but after that a queer sort of oblivion seems to have surrounded me, from which I was but now emerging in a timely struggle for self-control. There was something really startling about it, after all.

  I profess to be a steady, level-headed, prosaic sort of person, and this surprising reversion to extreme youthfulness rather staggered me. In fact it brought a cold chill of suspicion into existence. Grown-up men do not, as a rule, fly off the head unless confronted by some prodigious emotion, such as terror, grief or guilt. And yet here was I going into a perfect rampage of rapture over a simple, unconventional communication from a lady whom I had known for less than a month and for whom I had no real feeling of sympathy whatever. The chill of suspicion continued to increase.

  If it had been a cigar that I was smoking it would have gone out through neglect. A cigarette goes on forever and smells.

  After ten minutes of serious, undisturbed consideration of the matter, I came to the final conclusion that it was not love but pity that had driven me to such abnormal activity. It was nonsense to even argue the point.

  Having thoroughly settled the matter to my own satisfaction and relief, I acknowledged a feeling of shame for having been so precipitous. I shudder to think of the look she would have given me if I had burst in upon her while in the throes of that extraordinary seizure. Obviously I had lost my wits. Now I had them once more, I knew what to do with them. First of all, I would wait until one o’clock before presenting myself for luncheon. Clearly that was the thing to do. Secondly, I would wait on this side of the castle instead of returning to my own rooms, thereby avoiding a very unpleasant gauntlet. Luckily I had profited by the discussion in the servants’ quarters and was not wearing a three days’ growth of beard. Moreover, I had taken considerable pains in dressing that morning. Evidently a presentiment.

  For an hour and a half by my watch, but five or six by my nerves, I paced the lonely, sequestered halls in the lower regions of the castle. Two or three times I was sure that my watch had stopped, the hands seemed so stationary. The third time I tried to wind it, I broke the mainspring, but as it was nearly one o’clock not much harm was done.

  That one little sentence, “Have you deserted me?” grew to be a voluminous indictment. I could think of nothing else. There was something ineffably sad and pathetic about it. Had she been unhappy because of my beastly behaviour? Was her poor little heart sore over my incomprehensible conduct? Perhaps she had cried through sheer loneliness—But no! It would never do for me to even think of her in tears. I remembered having detected tears in her lovely eyes early in our acquaintance and the sight of them—or the sensation, if you please—quite unmanned me.

  At last I approached her door. Upon my soul, my legs were trembling! I experienced a silly sensation of fear. A new problem confronted me: what was I to say to her? Following close upon this came another and even graver question: what would she say to me? Suppose she were to look at me with hurt, reproachful eyes and speak to me with a little quaver in her voice as she held out her hand to me timidly—what then? What would become of me? By Jove, the answer that flashed through my whole body almost deprived me of reason!

  I hesitated, then, plucking up my courage and putting all silly questions behind me, I rapped resoundingly on the door.

  The excellent Hawkes opened it! I started back in dismay. He stood aside impressively.

  “Mr. Smart!” he announced. Damn it all!

  I caught sight of the Countess. She was arranging some flowers on the table. Blatchford was placing the knives and forks. Helen Marie Louise Antoinette stood beside her mistress holding a box of flowers in her hands.

  What was it that I had been thinking out there in those gloomy halls? That she would greet me with a pathetic, hurt look and…

  “Good morning!” she cried gaily. Hurt? Pathetic? She was radiant! “So glad to see you again. Hawkes has told me how busy you’ve been.” She dried her hands on the abbreviated apron of Helen Marie Louise Antoinette and then quite composedly extended one for me to shake.

  I bowed low over it. “Awfully, awfully busy,” I murmured. Was it relief at finding her so happy and unconcerned that swept through me? I am morally, but shamelessly certain it wasn’t!

  “Don’t you think the roses are lovely in that old silver bowl?”

  “Exquisite.”

  “Blatchford found it in the plate vault,” she said, standing off to admire the effect. “Do you mind if I go on arranging them?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer resumed her employment.

  “Bon jour, m’sieur,” said Helen Marie Louise Antoinette over her mistress’s shoulder. One never knows whether a French maid is polite or merely spiteful.

  “It seems ages since I saw you last,” said the Countess in a matter-of-fact tone, jiggling a rose into position and then standing off to study the effect, her head cocked prettily at an angle of inquiry.

  It suddenly occurred to me that she had got on very well without me during the ages. The discovery irritated me. She was not behaving at all as I had expected. This cool, even casual reception certainly was not in keeping with my idea of what it ought to have been. “But Mr. Poopendyke has been awfully kind. He has given me all the news.”

  Poopendyke! Had he been visiting her without my knowledge or—was I about to say consent?

  “There hasn’t been a great deal of news,” I said.

  She dropped a long-stemmed rose and waited for me to pick it up.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Oh, did it prick you?”

  “Yes,” said I flatly. Then we both gave the closest attention to the end of my thumb while I triumphantly squeezed a tiny drop of blood out of it. I sucked it. The incident was closed. She was no longer interested in the laceration.

  “Mr. Poopendyke knew how lonely I would be. He telephoned twice a day.”

  I thought I detected a slight note of pique in her voice. But it was so slight that it was hardly worth while to exult.

  “So you thought I had deserted you,” I said, and was a little surprised at the gruffness in my voice.

  “The violets appeased me,” she said, with a smile. For the first time I noticed that she was wearing a large bunch of them. “You will be bankrupt, Mr. Smart, if you keep on buying roses and violets and orchids for me.”

  So the roses were mine also! I shot a swift glance at the mantelpiece, irresistibly moved by some mysterious force. There were two bowls of orchids there. I couldn’t help thinking of the meddling, over-zealous geni that served the hero of Anstey’s “Brass Bottle” tale. He was being outdone by my efficacious secretary.

  “But they are lovely,” she cried, noting the expression in my face and misconstruing it. “You are an angel.”

  That was the last straw. “I am nothing of the sort,” I exclaimed, very hot and uncomfortable.

  “You are,” was her retort. “There! Isn’t it a lovely centre-piece? Now, you must come and see Rosemary. She adores the new elephant you sent to her.”

  “Ele—” I began, blinking my eyes. “Oh—oh, yes, yes. Ha, ha! the elephant.” Good Heavens, had that idiotic Poopendyke started a menagerie in my castle?

  I was vastly relieved to find that the elephant was made of felt and not too large to keep Rosemary from wielding it skilfully in an assault upon the hapless Jinko. She had it firmly gripped by the proboscis, and she was shrieking with delight. Jinko was barking in vain-glorious defence. The racket was terrible.

  The Countess succeeded in quelling the disturbance, and Rosemary ran up to kiss me. Jinko, who disliked me because I looked like the Count, also ran up but his object was to bite me. I made up my mind, there and then tha
t if I should ever, by any chance, fall in love with his mistress I would inaugurate the courting period by slaying Jinko.

  Rosemary gleefully permitted me to sip honey from that warm little spot on her neck, and I forgot many odious things. As I held her in my arms I experienced a vivid longing to have a child of my own, just like Rosemary.

  Our luncheon was not as gay nor as unconventional as others that had preceded it. The Countess vainly tried to make it as sprightly as its predecessors, but gave over in despair in the face of my taciturnity. Her spirits drooped. She became strangely uneasy and, I thought, preoccupied.

  “What is on your mind, Countess?” I asked rather gruffly, after a painful silence of some duration.

  She regarded me fixedly for a moment. She seemed to be searching my thoughts. “You,” she said very succinctly. “Why are you so quiet, so funereal?” I observed a faint tinge of red in her cheeks and an ominous steadiness in her gaze. Was there anger also?

  I apologised for my manners, and assured her that my work was responsible. But her moodiness increased. At last, apparently at the end of her resources, she announced that she was tired: that after we had had a cigarette she would ask to be excused, as she wanted to lie down. Would I come to see her the next day?

  “But don’t think of coming, Mr. Smart,” she declared, “if you feel you cannot spare the time away from your work.”

  I began to feel heartily ashamed of my boorishness. After all, why should I expend my unpleasant humour on her?

  “My dear Countess,” I exclaimed, displaying a livelier interest than at any time before, “I shall be delighted to come. Permit me to add that my work may go hang.”

  Her face brightened. “But men must work,” she objected.

  “Not when women are willing to play,” I said.

  “Splendid!” she cried. “You are reviving. I feel better. If you are going to be nice, I’ll let you stay.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do my best.”

  She seemed to be weighing something in her mind. Her chin was in her hands, her elbows resting on the edge of the table. She was regarding me with speculative eyes.

  “If you don’t mind what the servants are saying about us, Mr. Smart, I am quite sure I do not.”

  I caught my breath.

  “Oh, I understand everything,” she cried mischievously, before I could stammer anything in reply. “They are building a delightful romance around us. And why not? Why begrudge them the pleasure? No harm can come of it, you see.”

  “Certainly no harm,” I floundered.

  “The gossip is confined to the castle. It will not go any farther. We can afford to laugh in our sleeves, can’t we?”

  “Ha, ha!” I laughed in a strained effort, but not into my sleeve. “I rejoice to hear you say that you don’t mind. No more do I. It’s rather jolly.”

  “Fancy any one thinking we could possibly fall in love with each other,” she scoffed. Her eyes were very bright. There was a suggestion of cold water in that remark.

  “Yes, just fancy,” I agreed.

  “Absurd!”

  “But, of course, as you say, if they can get any pleasure out of it, why should we object? It’s a difficult matter keeping a cook any way.”

  “Well, we are bosom friends once more, are we not? I am so relieved.”

  “I suppose Poopendyke told you the—the gossip?”

  “Oh, no! I had it from my maid. She is perfectly terrible. All French maids are, Mr. Smart. Beware of French maids! She won’t have it any other way than that I am desperately in love with you. Isn’t she delicious?”

  “Eh?” I gasped.

  “And she confides the wonderful secret to every one in the castle, from Rosemary down to Jinko.”

  “’Pon my soul!” I murmured.

  “And so now they all are saying that I am in love with you,” she laughed. “Isn’t it perfectly ludicrous?”

  “Perfectly,” I said without enthusiasm. My heart sank like lead. Ludicrous? Was that the way it appeared to her? I had a little spirit left. “Quite as ludicrous as the fancy Britton has about me. He is obsessed by the idea that I am in love with you. What do you think of that?”

  She started. I thought her eyes narrowed for a second. “Ridiculous,” she said, very simply. Then she arose abruptly. “Please ring the bell for Hawkes.”

  I did so. Hawkes appeared. “Clear the table, Hawkes,” she said. “I want you to read all these newspaper clippings, Mr. Smart,” she went on, pointing to a bundle on a chair near the window. We crossed the room. “Now that you know who I am, I insist on your reading all that the papers have been saying about me during the past five or six weeks.”

  I protested but she was firm. “Every one else in the world has been reading about my affairs, so you must do likewise. No, it isn’t necessary to read all of them. I will select the most lurid and the most glowing. You see there are two sides to the case. The papers that father can control are united in defending my action; the European press is just the other way. Sit down, please. I’ll hand them to you.”

  For an hour I sat there in the window absorbing the astonishing history of the Tarnowsy abduction case. I felt rather than observed the intense scrutiny with which she favoured me.

  At last she tossed the remainder of the bundle unread, into a corner. Her face was aglow with pleasure.

  “You’ve read both sides, and I’ve watched you—oh, so closely. You don’t believe what the papers over here have to say. I saw the scowls when you read the translations that Mr. Poopendyke has typed for me. Now I know that you do not feel so bitterly toward me as you did at first.”

  I was resolved to make a last determined stand for my original convictions.

  “But our own papers, the New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago journals,—still voice, in a way, my principal contention in the matter, Countess. They deplore the wretched custom among the idle but ambitious rich that made possible this whole lamentable state of affairs. I mean the custom of getting a title into the family at any cost.”

  “My dear Mr. Smart,” she said seriously, “do you really contend that all of the conjugal unhappiness and unrest of the world is confined to the American girls who marry noblemen? Has it escaped your notice that there are thousands of unhappy marriages and equally happy divorces in America every year in which noblemen do not figure at all? Have you not read of countless cases over there in which conditions are quite similar to those which make the Tarnowsy fiasco so notorious? Are not American women stealing their children from American husbands? Are all American husbands so perfect that Count Tarnowsy would appear black among them? Are there no American men who marry for money, and are there no American girls given in marriage to wealthy suitors of all ages, creeds and habits? Why do you maintain that an unfortunate alliance with a foreign nobleman is any worse than an unhappy marriage with an ordinary American brute? Are there no bad husbands in America?”

  “All husbands are bad,” I said, “but some are more pre-eminently evil than others. I am not finding fault with Tarnowsy as a husband. He did just what was expected of him. He did what he set out to do. He isn’t to be blamed for living up to his creed. There are bad husbands in America, and bad wives. But they went into the game blindly, most of them. They didn’t find out their mistake until after the marriage. The same statement applies to husbands and wives the world over. I hold a brief only against the marriage wherein the contracting parties, their families, their friends, their enemies, their bankers and their creditors know beforehand that it’s a business proposition and not a sacred compact. But we’ve gone into all this before. Why rake it up again.”

  “But there are many happy marriages between American girls and foreign noblemen—dozens of them that I could mention.”

  “I grant you that. I know of a few myself. But I think if you will reflect for a moment you’ll find that money had no place in the covenant. They married because they loved one another. The noblemen in such cases are real noblemen, and their American wives are
real wives. There are no Count Tarnowsys among them. My blood curdles when I think of you being married to a man of the Tarnowsy type. It is that sort of a marriage that I execrate.”

  “The buy and sell kind?” she said, and her eyes fell. The colour had faded from her cheeks.

  “Yes. The premeditated murder type.”

  She looked up after a moment. There was a bleak expression in her eyes.

  “Will you believe me if I say to you that I went into it blindly?”

  “God bless my soul, I am sure of it,” I cried earnestly. “You had never been in love. You did not know.”

  “I have told you that I believed myself to be in love with Maris. Doesn’t—doesn’t that help matters a little bit?”

  I looked away. The hurt, appealing look was in her eyes. It had come at last, and, upon my soul, I was as little prepared to repel it as when I entered the room hours ago after having lived in fear of it for hours before that. I looked away because I knew that I should do something rash if I were to lose my head for an instant.

  She was like an unhappy pleading child. I solemnly affirm that it was tender-heartedness that moved me in this crucial instant. What man could have felt otherwise?

  I assumed a coldly impersonal tone. “Not a single editorial in any of these papers holds you responsible for what happened in New York,” I said.

  She began to collect the scattered newspaper clippings and the type-written transcriptions. I gathered up those in the corner and laid them in her lap. Her fingers trembled a little.

  “Throw them in the fireplace, please,” she said in a low voice. “I kept them only for the purpose of showing them to you. Oh, how I hate, how I loathe it all!”

  When I came back from the fireplace, she was lying back in the big, comfortable chair, a careless, whimsical smile on her lips. She was as serene as if she had never known what it was to have a heart-pang or an instant of regret in all her life. I could not understand that side of her.