by Grant Allen
I felt sure he was wrong, and I ventured to say so. But Lady Georgina cried, ‘Nonsense, child! The chef-de-gare must know. Get out at once! Bring my bag and the rugs! Mind that cloak! Don’t forget the sandwich-tin! Thanks, Count; will you kindly take charge of my umbrellas? Hurry up, Lois; hurry up! the train is just starting!’
I scrambled after her, with my fourteen bundles, keeping a quiet eye meanwhile on the jewel-case.
We took our seats in the opposite train, which I noticed was marked ‘Amsterdam, Bruxelles, Paris.’ But I said nothing. The Count jumped in, jumped about, arranged our parcels, jumped out again. He spoke to a porter; then he rushed back excitedly. ‘Mille pardons, miladi,’ he cried. ‘I find the chef-de-gare has cruelly deceived me. You were right, after all, mademoiselle! We must return to the coupé!’
With singular magnanimity, I refrained from saying, ‘I told you so.’
Lady Georgina, very flustered and hot by this time, tumbled out once more, and bolted back to the coupé. Both trains were just starting. In her hurry, at last, she let the Count take possession of her jewel-case. I rather fancy that as he passed one window he handed it in to the shabby-looking passenger; but I am not certain. At any rate, when we were comfortably seated in our own compartment once more, and he stood on the footboard just about to enter, of a sudden he made an unexpected dash back, and flung himself wildly into a Paris carriage. At the self-same moment, with a piercing shriek, both trains started.
Lady Georgina threw up her hands in a frenzy of horror. ‘My diamonds!’ she cried aloud. ‘Oh, Lois, my diamonds!’
‘Don’t distress yourself,’ I answered, holding her back, for I verily believe she would have leapt from the train. ‘He has only taken the outer shell, with the sandwich-case inside it. Here is the steel box!’ And I produced it, triumphantly.
She seized it, overjoyed. ‘How did this happen?’ she cried, hugging it, for she loved those diamonds.
‘Very simply,’ I answered. ‘I saw the man was a rogue, and that he had a confederate with him in another carriage. So, while you were gone to the buffet at Ostend, I slipped the box out of the case, and put in the sandwich-tin, that he might carry it off, and we might have proofs against him. All you have to do now is to inform the conductor, who will telegraph to stop the train to Paris. I spoke to him about that at Ostend, so that everything is ready.’
She positively hugged me. ‘My dear,’ she cried, ‘you are the cleverest little woman I ever met in my life! Who on earth could have suspected such a polished gentleman? Why, you’re worth your weight in gold. What the dickens shall I do without you at Schlangenbad?’
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUPERCILIOUS ATTACHÉ
The Count must have been an adept in the gentle art of quick-change disguise; for though we telegraphed full particulars of his appearance from Louvain, the next station, nobody in the least resembling either him or his accomplice, the shabby-looking man, could be unearthed in the Paris train when it drew up at Brussels, its first stopping-place. They must have transformed themselves meanwhile into two different persons. Indeed, from the outset, I had suspected his moustache— ’twas so very distinguished.
When we reached Cologne, the Cantankerous Old Lady overwhelmed me with the warmth of her thanks and praises. Nay, more; after breakfast next morning, before we set out by slow train for Schlangenbad, she burst like a tornado into my bedroom at the Cologne hotel with a cheque for twenty guineas, drawn in my favour. ‘That’s for you, my dear,’ she said, handing it to me, and looking really quite gracious.
I glanced at the piece of paper and felt my face glow crimson. ‘Oh, Lady Georgina,’ I cried; ‘you misunderstand. You forget that I am a lady.’
‘Nonsense, child, nonsense! Your courage and promptitude were worth ten times that sum,’ she exclaimed, positively slipping her arm round my neck. ‘It was your courage I particularly admired, Lois; because you faced the risk of my happening to look inside the outer case, and finding you had abstracted the blessed box: in which case I might quite naturally have concluded you meant to steal it.’
‘I thought of that,’ I answered. ‘But I decided to risk it. I felt it was worth while. For I was sure the man meant to take the case as soon as ever you gave him the opportunity.’
‘Then you deserve to be rewarded,’ she insisted, pressing the cheque upon me.
I PUT HER HAND BACK FIRMLY.
I put her hand back firmly. ‘Lady Georgina,’ I said, ‘it is very amiable of you. I think you do right in offering me the money; but I think I should do altogether wrong in accepting it. A lady is not honest from the hope of gain; she is not brave because she expects to be paid for her bravery. You were my employer, and I was bound to serve my employer’s interests. I did so as well as I could, and there is the end of it.’
She looked absolutely disappointed; we all hate to crush a benevolent impulse; but she tore the cheque up into very small pieces. ‘As you will, my dear,’ she said, with her hands on her hips: ‘I see, you are poor Tom Cayley’s daughter. He was always a bit Quixotic.’ Though I believe she liked me all the better for my refusal.
On the way from Cologne to Eltville, however, and on the drive up to Schlangenbad, I found her just as fussy and as worrying as ever. ‘Let me see, how many of these horrid pfennigs make an English penny? I never can remember. Oh, those silly little nickel things are ten pfennigs each, are they? Well, eight would be a penny, I suppose. A mark’s a shilling; ridiculous of them to divide it into ten pence instead of twelve; one never really knows how much one’s paying for anything. Why these Continental people can’t be content to use pounds, shillings, and pence, all over alike, the same as we do, passes my comprehension. They’re glad enough to get English sovereigns when they can; why, then, don’t they use them as such, instead of reckoning them each at twenty-five francs, and then trying to cheat you out of the proper exchange, which is always ten centimes more than the brokers give you? What, we use their beastly decimal system? Lois, I’m ashamed of you. An English girl to turn and rend her native country like that! Francs and centimes, indeed! Fancy proposing it at Peter Robinson’s! No, I will not go by the boat, my dear. I hate the Rhine boats, crowded with nasty selfish pigs of Germans. What I like is a first-class compartment all to myself, and no horrid foreigners. Especially Germans. They’re bursting with self-satisfaction — have such an exaggerated belief in their “land” and their “folk.” And when they come to England, they do nothing but find fault with us. If people aren’t satisfied with the countries they travel in, they’d better stop at home — that’s my opinion. Nasty pigs of Germans! The very sight of them sickens me. Oh, I don’t mind if they do understand me, child. They all learn English nowadays; it helps them in trade — that’s why they’re driving us out of all the markets. But it must be good for them to learn once in a way what other people really think of them — civilised people, I mean; not Germans. They’re a set of barbarians.’
We reached Schlangenbad alive, though I sometimes doubted it: for my old lady did her boisterous best to rouse some peppery German officer into cutting our throats incontinently by the way; and when we got there, we took up our abode in the nicest hotel in the village. Lady Georgina had engaged the best front room on the first floor, with a charming view across the pine-clad valley; but I must do her the justice to say that she took the second best for me, and that she treated me in every way like the guest she delighted to honour. My refusal to accept her twenty guineas made her anxious to pay it back to me within the terms of our agreement. She described me to everybody as a young friend who was travelling with her, and never gave any one the slightest hint of my being a paid companion. Our arrangement was that I was to have two guineas for the week, besides my travelling expenses, board, and lodging.
On our first morning at Schlangenbad, Lady Georgina sallied forth, very much overdressed, and in a youthful hat, to use the waters. They are valued chiefly for the complexion, I learned; I wondered then why Lady Georgina came there — for she hadn’t
any; but they are also recommended for nervous irritability, and as Lady Georgina had visited the place almost every summer for fifteen years, it opened before one’s mind an appalling vista of what her temper might have been if she had not gone to Schlangenbad. The hot springs are used in the form of a bath. ‘You don’t need them, my dear,’ Lady Georgina said to me, with a good-humoured smile; and I will own that I did not, for nature has gifted me with a tolerable cuticle. But I like when at Rome to do as Rome does; so I tried the baths once. I found them unpleasantly smooth and oily. I do not freckle, but if I did, I think I should prefer freckles.
We walked much on the terrace — the inevitable dawdling promenade of all German watering-places — it reeked of Serene Highness. We also drove out among the low wooded hills which bound the Rhine valley. The majority of the visitors, I found, were ladies — Court ladies, most of them; all there for their complexions, but all anxious to assure me privately they had come for what they described as ‘nervous debility.’ I divided them at once into two classes: half of them never had and never would have a complexion at all; the other half had exceptionally smooth and beautiful skins, of which they were obviously proud, and whose pink-and-white peach-blossom they thought to preserve by assiduous bathing. It was vanity working on two opposite bases. There was a sprinkling of men, however, who were really there for a sufficient reason — wounds or serious complaints; while a few good old sticks, porty and whisty, were in attendance on invalid wives or sisters.
HE CAST A HASTY GLANCE AT US.
From the beginning I noticed that Lady Georgina went peering about all over the place, as if she were hunting for something she had lost, with her long-handled tortoise-shell glasses perpetually in evidence — the ‘aristocratic outrage’ I called them — and that she eyed all the men with peculiar attention. But I took no open notice of her little weakness. On our second day at the Spa, I was sauntering with her down the chief street— ‘a beastly little hole, my dear; not a decent shop where one can buy a reel of thread or a yard of tape in the place!’ — when I observed a tall and handsome young man on the opposite side of the road cast a hasty glance at us, and then sneak round the corner hurriedly. He was a loose-limbed, languid-looking young man, with large, dreamy eyes, and a peculiarly beautiful and gentle expression; but what I noted about him most was an odd superficial air of superciliousness. He seemed always to be looking down with scorn on that foolish jumble, the universe. He darted away so rapidly, however, that I hardly discovered all this just then. I piece it out from subsequent observations.
Later in the day, we chanced to pass a café, where three young exquisites sat sipping Rhine wines after the fashion of the country. One of them, with a gold-tipped cigarette held gracefully between two slender fingers, was my languid-looking young aristocrat. He was blowing out smoke in a lazy blue stream. The moment he saw me, however, he turned away as if he desired to escape observation, and ducked down so as to hide his face behind his companions. I wondered why on earth he should want to avoid me. Could this be the Count? No, the young man with the halo of cigarette smoke stood three inches taller. Who, then, at Schlangenbad could wish to avoid my notice? It was a singular mystery; for I was quite certain the supercilious young man was trying his best to prevent my seeing him.
That evening, after dinner, the Cantankerous Old Lady burst out suddenly, ‘Well, I can’t for the life of me imagine why Harold hasn’t turned up here. The wretch knew I was coming; and I heard from our Ambassador at Rome last week that he was going to be at Schlangenbad.’
‘Who is Harold?’ I asked.
‘My nephew,’ Lady Georgina snapped back, beating a devil’s tattoo with her fan on the table. ‘The only member of my family, except myself, who isn’t a born idiot. Harold’s not an idiot; he’s an attaché at Rome.’
I saw it at a glance. ‘Then he is in Schlangenbad,’ I answered. ‘I noticed him this morning.’
The old lady turned towards me sharply. She peered right through me, as if she were a Röntgen ray. I could see she was asking herself whether this was a conspiracy, and whether I had come there on purpose to meet ‘Harold.’ But I flatter myself I am tolerably mistress of my own countenance. I did not blench. ‘How do you know?’ she asked quickly, with an acid intonation.
If I had answered the truth, I should have said, ‘I know he is here, because I saw a good-looking young man evidently trying to avoid you this morning; and if a young man has the misfortune to be born your nephew, and also to have expectations from you, it is easy to understand that he would prefer to keep out of your way as long as possible.’ But that would have been neither polite nor politic. Moreover, I reflected that I had no particular reason for wishing to do Mr. Harold a bad turn; and that it would be kinder to him, as well as to her, to conceal the reasons on which I based my instinctive inference. So I took up a strong strategic position. ‘I have an intuition that I saw him in the village this morning,’ I said. ‘Family likeness, perhaps. I merely jumped at it as you spoke. A tall, languid young man; large, poetical eyes; an artistic moustache — just a trifle Oriental-looking.’
‘That’s Harold!’ the Cantankerous Old Lady rapped out sharply, with clear conviction. ‘The miserable boy! Why on earth hasn’t he been round to see me?’
I reflected that I knew why; but I did not say so. Silence is golden. I also remarked mentally on that curious human blindness which had made me conclude at first that the supercilious young man was trying to avoid me, when I might have guessed it was far more likely he was trying to avoid my companion. I was a nobody; Lady Georgina Fawley was a woman of European reputation.
‘Perhaps he didn’t know which hotel you were stopping at,’ I put in. ‘Or even that you were here.’ I felt a sudden desire to shield poor Harold.
‘Not know which hotel? Nonsense, child; he knows I come here on this precise date regularly every summer; and if he didn’t know, is it likely I should try any other inn, when this is the only moderately decent house to stop at in Schlangenbad? And the morning coffee undrinkable at that; while the hash — such hash! But that’s the way in Germany. He’s an ungrateful monster; if he comes now, I shall refuse to see him.’
HAROLD, YOU VIPER, WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY TRYING TO AVOID ME?
Next morning after breakfast, however, in spite of these threats, she hailed me forth with her on the Harold hunt. She had sent the concierge to inquire at all the hotels already, it seemed, and found her truant at none of them; now she ransacked the pensions. At last she hunted him down in a house on the hill. I could see she was really hurt. ‘Harold, you viper, what do you mean by trying to avoid me?’
‘My dear aunt, you here in Schlangenbad! Why, when did you arrive? And what a colour you’ve got! You’re looking so well!’ That clever thrust saved him.
He cast me an appealing glance. ‘You will not betray me?’ it said. I answered, mutely, ‘Not for worlds,’ with a faltering pair of downcast eyelids.
‘Oh, I’m well enough, thank you,’ Lady Georgina replied, somewhat mollified by his astute allusion to her personal appearance. He had hit her weak point dexterously. ‘As well, that is, as one can expect to be nowadays. Hereditary gout — the sins of the fathers visited as usual. But why didn’t you come to see me?’
‘How can I come to see you if you don’t tell me where you are? “Lady Georgina Fawley, Europe,” was the only address I knew. It strikes me as insufficient.’
His gentle drawl was a capital foil to Lady Georgina’s acidulous soprano. It seemed to disarm her. She turned to me with a benignant wave of her hand. ‘Miss Cayley,’ she said, introducing me; ‘my nephew, Mr. Harold Tillington. You’ve heard me talk of poor Tom Cayley, Harold? This is poor Tom Cayley’s daughter.’
‘Indeed?’ the supercilious attaché put in, looking hard at me. ‘Delighted to make Miss Cayley’s acquaintance.’
‘Now, Harold, I can tell from your voice at once you haven’t remembered one word about Captain Cayley.’
Harold stood on the defensive. ‘
My dear aunt,’ he observed, expanding both palms, ‘I have heard you talk of so very many people, that even my diplomatic memory fails at times to recollect them all. But I do better: I dissemble. I will plead forgetfulness now of Captain Cayley, since you force it on me. It is not likely I shall have to plead it of Captain Cayley’s daughter.’ And he bowed towards me gallantly.
The Cantankerous Old Lady darted a lightning glance at him. It was a glance of quick suspicion. Then she turned her Röntgen rays upon my face once more. I fear I burned crimson.
‘A friend?’ he asked. ‘Or a fellow-guest?’
‘A companion.’ It was the first nasty thing she had said of me.
‘Ha! more than a friend, then. A comrade.’ He turned the edge neatly.
We walked out on the terrace and a little way up the zigzag path. The day was superb. I found Mr. Tillington, in spite of his studiously languid and supercilious air, a most agreeable companion. He knew Europe. He was full of talk of Rome and the Romans. He had epigrammatic wit, curt, keen, and pointed. We sat down on a bench; he kept Lady Georgina and myself amused for an hour by his crisp sallies. Besides, he had been everywhere and seen everybody. Culture and agriculture seemed all one to him.
When we rose to go in, Lady Georgina remarked, with emphasis, ‘Of course, Harold, you’ll come and take up your diggings at our hotel?’
‘Of course, my dear aunt. How can you ask? Free quarters. Nothing would give me greater pleasure.’
She glanced at him keenly again. I saw she had expected him to fake up some lame excuse for not joining us; and I fancied she was annoyed at his prompt acquiescence, which had done her out of the chance for a family disagreement. ‘Oh, you’ll come then?’ she said, grudgingly.