Hello there.
Thank you so much for joining me for this reading of Miss Cayley's Adventures.
The charming hilarious old story from 1899.
By English author Grant Allen.
We will be following along in this book with the adventures of a very intelligent,
Educated,
Independent young woman called Lois Cayley,
Who is facing the world on her own after her stepfather's death.
And actually ends up leaving London to travel around Europe on a bicycle.
Which was considered extremely radical for a young unmarried woman in 1899.
So,
Before we get into the story here,
Let's just take a moment to have a nice,
Deep exhale.
Letting go of the day.
Letting go of whichever baggage we might be bringing along with us into this moment.
For right now,
There's nowhere else we have to go,
Nothing else we have to be doing.
So we can just relax,
Get ourselves comfortable,
And enjoy the witty,
Wonderful tale of Miss Kayleigh's Adventures.
Chapter 1 The Adventure of the Cantankerous Old Lady.
On the day when I found myself with tuppence in my pocket.
I naturally made up my mind to go round the world.
It was my stepfather's death that drove me to it.
I had never seen my stepfather.
Indeed.
I never even thought of him as anything more than Colonel Watts Morgan.
I owed him nothing.
Except my poverty.
He married my dear mother when I was a girl at school in Switzerland.
And he proceeded to spend her little fortune,
Left at her sole disposal by my father's will,
In paying his gambling debts.
After that he carried my dear mother off to Burma And when he and the climate between them had succeeded in killing her,
He made up for his appropriations at the cheapest rate by allowing me just enough to send me to Girton.
So,
When the Colonel died in the year I was leaving college,
I did not think it necessary to go into mourning for him.
Especially as he chose the precise moment when my allowance was due.
And bequeathed me nothing but his consolidated liabilities.
Of course,
You will teach,
Said Elsie Petheridge when I explained my affairs to her.
There is a good demand just now for high school teachers.
I looked at her aghast.
Teach!
Elsie!
I cried.
I had come up to town to settle her in at her unfurnished lodgings.
Did you see?
Teach.
That's just like you dear good school mistresses.
You go to Cambridge and get examined till the heart and life have been examined out of you.
Then you say to yourselves at the end of it all,
Let me see.
.
.
What am I good for now?
I'm just about fit to go away and examine other people.
That's what our principle would call a vicious circle.
One could ever admit there was anything vicious at all about you,
Dear.
No,
Elsie,
I do not propose.
To teach.
Nature did not cut me out for a high school teacher.
I couldn't swallow a poker if I tried for weeks.
Pokers don't agree with me.
Between ourselves,
I am a bit of a rebel.
You are brownie,
She answered.
Pausing in her papering with her sleeves rolled up.
They called me Brownie,
Partly because of my dark complexion,
But partly because They could never understand me.
We all knew that long ago.
I laid down the paste brush and mused.
Do you remember,
Elsie?
I said,
Staring hard at the paperboard,
When I first went to Girton.
How all you girls wore your hair quite straight,
In neat,
Smooth coils,
Plaited up at the back about the size of a pancake.
And how,
Of a sudden,
I burst in upon you like a tropical hurricane and demoralised you.
And how after three days of me,
Some of the dear innocents began,
With awe,
To cut themselves artless fringes,
While others went out in fear and trembling and surreptitiously purchased a pair of curling tongs.
I was a bombshell in your midst in those days.
Why,
You yourself were almost afraid at first to speak to me.
You see,
You had a bicycle,
Elsie put in,
Smoothing the half-papered wall.
And in those days,
Of course,
Ladies didn't bicycle.
You must admit,
Brownie dear,
It was a startling innovation.
You terrified us so!
And yet.
.
.
After all.
.
.
There isn't much harm in you.
I hope not,
I said devoutly.
I was before my time.
That was all.
At present,
Even a curate's wife may blamelessly bicycle.
But if you don't teach,
" Elsie went on,
Gazing at me with those wondering big blue eyes of hers.
Whatever will you do,
Brownie?
" Her horizon was bounded by the scholastic circle.
I haven't the faintest idea.
I answered,
Continuing to paste.
Only.
.
.
As I can't trespass upon your elegant hospitality for life.
Whatever I mean to do,
I must begin doing this morning.
When we've finished the papering.
I couldn't teach.
Teaching.
Like,
Move.
Is the refuge of the incompetent.
And I don't,
If possible,
Want to sell bonnets.
As a milliner's girl?
Elsie asked with a face of red.
Horrible.
As a milliner's girl.
Why not?
It is an honest calling.
Earl's daughters do it now!
But you needn't look so shocked.
I tell you,
Just at present,
I'm not contemplating it.
Then what do you contemplate?
Bye!
Paused.
And reflected.
I am here.
In London?
I answered.
Gazing rapt at the ceiling.
London.
Whose streets are paved with gold.
Though it looks at first sight like muddy flagstones.
London,
The greatest and richest city in the world.
Where an adventurous soul ought surely to find some loophole for an adventure?
Mmm,
That piece is hung crooked,
Dear.
We shall have to take it down again.
I devise a plan.
Therefore,
I submit myself to fate.
Or,
If you prefer it,
I leave my future in the hands of Providence I shall stroll out this morning,
As soon as I've cleaned myself,
And embrace the first stray enterprise that offers me.
Ah,
Baghdad.
With enchanted carpets.
Let one but float my way,
And high presto,
I seize it.
I go where glory or a modest competence waits me.
I snatch at the first offer,
The first hint of an opening.
LC.
Stared at me.
More aghast.
And more puzzled than ever.
Boots!
How?
She asked.
Where?
WHEN?
!
Are so strange.
What will you do to find one?
Put on my hat and walk out?
" I answered.
Nothing could be simpler.
And this city bursts with enterprises and surprises.
Strangers from east to west hurry through it in all directions.
Omnibuses traverse it from end to end.
Even,
I am told,
To Islington and Putney.
Within,
Folks sit face to face who never saw one another before in their lives.
And who may never see one another again.
On the contrary,
May pass the rest of their days together.
I had a lovely harangue,
Or pat in my head,
In much the same strain,
On the infinite possibilities of entertaining angels,
Unawares,
In cabs,
On the underground,
In the aerated bread shops,
But Elsie's widening eyes of horror pulled me up short,
Like a handsome in Piccadilly when the inexorable upturned hand of the policeman checks it.
Oh!
"'Brownie!
' she cried,
Drawing back.
You don't mean to tell me.
.
.
You're going to ask the first young man you meet in an omnibus.
To marry you!
I shriek.
With laughter.
Elsie!
I cried,
Kissing her dear yellow little head.
You are.
Impayable.
You never will learn what I mean!
You don't understand the language.
No.
No!
I am going out simply in search of adventure.
What adventure may come,
I have not at this moment the faintest conception.
The fun lies in the search.
Uncertainty,
The toss-up of it.
What is the good of being penniless,
With the trifling exception of tuppence,
Unless you are prepared to accept your position in the spirit of a masked bull at Covent Garden?
I have never been to one.
Elsie Putin.
Gracious heavens,
Neither have I.
What on earth do you take me for?
But I mean to see where fate will lead me.
I.
.
.
May go with you?
Lc pleated Certainly not,
My child,
I answered.
She was three years older than I,
So I had the right to patronise her.
That would spoil all.
Your dear little face would be quite enough to scare away.
Timid adventure?
She knew what I meant.
It was gentle and pensive,
But It lacked initiative.
So.
When we had finished that wall,
I.
.
.
Popped on my best hat.
And popped out by myself into Kensington Gardens.
I am told I ought to have been terribly alarmed at the straits in which I found myself.
A girl of twenty-one,
Alone in the world,
And only tuppence short of penniless,
Without a friend to protect,
A relation to counsel her,
I don't count Aunt Susan who lurked in ladylike indigence at Blackheath.
And whose counsel,
Like her tracks,
Was given away too profusely to everybody.
To allow of one's placing any very high value upon it.
But.
.
.
As a matter of fact.
.
.
I must admit,
I was not in the least alarmed.
Nature had endowed me with a profusion of crisp black hair.
And plenty of high spirits.
If my eyes had been like Elsie's.
That liquid blue which looks out upon life with mingled pity and amazement.
I might have felt as a girl ought to feel under such conditions,
But having large,
Dark eyes.
With a bit of a twinkle in them.
And being as well able to pilot a bicycle as any girl of my acquaintance,
I have inherited,
Or acquired,
An outlook on the world which distinctly leans rather towards cheeriness than despondency.
I croak.
With difficulty.
So I accepted my plight as an amusing experience,
Affording full scope for the congenial exercise of courage and ingenuity.
Hello?
Boundless are the opportunities of Kensington Gardens.
The round pond,
The winding serpentine,
The mysterious seclusion of the Dutch brick palace.
Genii swarm there.
One jostles possibilities.
It is a land of romance.
Bounded on the north by the abyss of Bayswater and on the south by the amphitheatre of the Albert Hall.
But for a centre of adventure,
I chose the long walk.
It beckoned me somewhat,
As the north-west passage beckoned my seafaring ancestors,
The buccaneering mariners of Elizabethan Devon.
I sat down on a chair at the foot of an old elm with a poetic hollow.
Prosaically filled by a utilitarian plate of galvanised iron.
Two ancient ladies were seated on the other side already.
Very grand-looking dames,
With the haughty and exclusive ugliness of the English aristocracy in its later stages.
For France.
Hideousness commend me to the noble dowager.
They were talking confidentially as I sat down.
The trifling episode of my approach did not suffice to stem the full stream of their conversation.
The great ignore the intrusion of their inferiors.
Yes,
It's a terrible nuisance,
The eldest and ugliest of the two observed.
She was a high-born lady with a distinctly cantankerous cast of countenance.
She had a Roman nose,
And her skin was wrinkled like a wilted apple.
She wore coffee-coloured point lace in her bonnet,
With a complexion to match.
But what could I do,
My dear?
I simply can't.
Put up with such insolence.
So I looked her straight back in the face.
Oh,
She quailed,
I can tell you.
And I said to her,
In my iciest voice.
You know how icy I can be when occasion demands it.
The second old lady nodded an ungrudging assent,
As if perfectly prepared to omit her friend's rare gift of iciness.
I said to her,
Celestine!
You can take your month's wages.
And half an hour to get out of this house.
And she dropped me a deep reverence and she answered,
Oui,
Madame.
Merci beaucoup,
Madame.
Je ne désirais pas me.
.
.
Madame.
And out!
She flounced.
So,
There was the end of it.
Still,
You go to Schlangenbad on Monday?
That's the point.
On Monday.
If it weren't for the journey,
I should have been glad enough to be rid of the minks.
I'm glad as it is indeed,
For a more.
.
.
Insolent,
Upstanding,
Independent,
Answer you back again,
Young woman,
With a sneer of her own.
I never saw Amelia.
But I must get to Schlangenbad.
Now.
There the difficulty comes in.
On the one hand.
.
.
If I engage a maid in London,
I have the choice of two evils.
Either I must take a traipsing English girl,
And I know by experience that an English girl on the continent is a vast deal worse than no maid at all,
You have to wait upon her!
Instead of her waiting upon you,
She gets seasick on the crossing,
And when she reaches France or Germany,
She hates the meals,
And she detests the hotel servants,
And she can't speak the language so that she's always calling you in to interpret for her in her private differences with the field de chambre and the landlord.
Or else.
.
.
I must pick up a French maid in London.
And I know equally,
By experience,
That the French maids one engages in London are invariably Dishonest more dishonest than the rest even.
They've come here.
Because.
.
.
They have no character to speak of elsewhere.
And they think you aren't likely to write an enquire of their last mistress in Toulouse or St Petersburg.
Then again.
On the other hand,
I can't wait to get married.
A Gretchen.
An unsophisticated little Gretchen.
Of the town of Schlangenbad.
I suppose there are.
Unsophisticated girls in Germany still?
Made in Germany.
They don't make them any longer in England,
I'm sure.
Like everything else,
The trade in rustic innocence has been driven from the country.
I can't wait!
To get a Gretchen.
As I should like to do,
Of course,
Because I simply don't undertake to cross the channel alone.
And go all that long journey by Ostend.
Cali.
Brussels and Cologne to Schlangenbad.
You could get a temporary maid,
Her friend suggested.
In a lull of the tornado.
The cantankerous old lady flared up.
Yes.
And have my jewel case stolen?
Or find she was an English girl without one word of German.
Or nurse her on the boat when I want to give my undivided attention to my own misfortunes.
No,
Amelia.
I call it positively unkind of you to suggest such a thing.
You're so.
.
.
I'm sympathetic.
I put my foot down there i will not temporary person.
I sore.
My chance!
This was a delightful idea!
Why not start for Schlangenbad with the cantankerous old lady?
Of course.
I had not the slightest intention of taking a lady's maid's place for a permanency,
Nor even,
If it comes to that,
As a passing expedient,
But if I wanted to go around the world.
How could I do better than set out by the Rhine country?
The Rhine leads you on to the Danube.
The Danube to the Black Sea.
The Black Sea to Asia.
And so,
By way of India,
China and Japan,
You reach the Pacific and San Francisco.
Whence one returns quite easily by New York and the White Star Liners.
I began to feel like a globetrotter already.
The cantankerous old lady.
What's the thin end of the wedge?
The first rung of the ladder?
I proceeded to put my foot on it.
I leaned around the corner of the tree and spoke.
Excuse me,
I said in my suavest voice,
But I think I see a way out of your difficulty.
My first impression was that the cantankerous old lady would go off in a fit of rage.
Feet of apoplexy.
She grew.
Purple in the face with indignation and astonishment.
That a casual outsider should venture to address.
Huh.
So much so,
Indeed,
That for a second I almost regretted my well-meant interposition.
Then.
.
.
She scanned me up and down.
As if I were a girl in a mantle shop,
And she contemplated buying either me or the mantle.
At last,
Catching my eye,
She.
.
.
Thought better of it and burst out laughing.
What?
Do you mean.
.
.
?
Buy this.
What's dropping?
She asked.
I flushed up in turn.
This is a public place,
I replied with dignity.
And you spoke in a tone which was hardly designed for the strictest privacy.
If you don't wish to be overheard,
You oughtn't to shout.
Besides,
I desired to do you a service.
The cantankerous old lady regarded me once more from head to foot.
I did not quail.
Then she turns to her companion.
The girl has spirit,
She remarked,
In an encouraging tone,
As if she were discussing some absent person.
Upon my word.
Amelia!
Rather like the look of her.
Well.
.
.
My good woman,
What do you want to suggest to me?
Merely this,
I replied,
Bridling up and crushing her.
Bye!
I'm a guillotine girl.
An officer's daughter.
No more a good woman than most others of my class and I had nothing in particular to do for the moment.
I don't object to going to Schlangenbad.
I would convoy you over as companion or lady help.
Anything else you choose to call it,
I would remain with you there for a week till you could arrange with your Gretchen.
Presumably unsophisticated.
And then I would leave you.
Salary is unimportant.
My fare suffices.
I accept the chance as a cheap opportunity of attaining Schlangenbad.
The yellow-faced old lady.
Put up her long-handled tortoiseshell eyeglasses and inspected me all over again.
What?
I did?
She murmured.
What?
Are girls coming to I wonder?
GOTTEN?
!
GERTON!
Place at Cambridge.
You speak Greek?
Of course.
But how about German?
Like a native,
I answered with cheerful promptitude.
I was at school in Canton Bern.
It is a mother tongue to me.
No.
Nah.
The old lady went on fixing her keen small eyes on my mouth.
Those little lips!
Never frame themselves to Schlacht!
Wunderschön!
They were not cut.
For it.
Pardon me?
I answered in German.
What I say?
That I mean.
The never-to-be-forgotten music of the Fatherland's speech has,
On my infant ear from the first beginning,
Impressed itself.
The old lady laughed aloud.
Don't!
I hate the lingo.
It's the one tongue on earth that even a pretty girl's lips fail to render attractive.
You yourself make faces over it.
What's your name,
Young woman?
Lois Cayley.
Lois?
What a name!
I never heard of any Lois in my life before,
Except Timothy's grandmother.
You're not anybody's grandmother,
Are you?
Not to my knowledge,
I answered gravely.
She burst out laughing again.
Well.
.
.
Y'all do,
I think.
She said.
Catching my arm.
That big mill down yonder hasn't ground the originality altogether out of you?
I adore originality.
It was clever of you to catch at the suggestion of this arrangement.
Lois Cayley,
You say?
Any relation of a madcap Captain Cayley whom I used once to know?
In the 42nd Highlanders?
Yes.
Daughter?
I answered,
Flashing.
For I was proud of my father.
Bye.
He died.
Poor fellow.
He was a good man.
Soldier.
And his I felt she was going to say,
He's fool of a widow,
But a glance from me quelled her.
His.
.
.
Widow went and married that Good-looking scapegrace!
Jack Waltz Morgan.
Never marry a man,
My dear,
With a double-barrelled name and no visible means of subsistence.
Above all,
If he's generally known by a nickname,
So.
You're poor Tom Cayley's daughter.
Wow.
We can settle this little matter between us.
Mind,
I'm a person who always expects to have my own way.
If you come with me to Schlangenbad,
You must do as I tell you.
Bye!
Think I could manage it?
For a week.
I answered demurely.
She smiled at my audacity.
We passed onto terms.
They were quite satisfactory.
She wanted no references.
Do I look like a woman who cares about a reference?
What are called characters?
Are usually essays in how not to say it.
You.
Take my fancy.
That's the point.
And poor Tom Cayley.
But mind,
I will not be contradicted.
I will not contradict your wildest misstatement,
" I answered,
Smiling.
And your name and address,
I asked,
After we had settled preliminaries.
A faint red spot rose quaintly in the centre of the cantankerous old lady's sallow cheeks.
My dear?
She murmured.
Bye.
Me.
Is the one thing on earth I'm really.
.
.
A shape.
My parents chose to inflict upon me the most odious label that human ingenuity ever devised for a Christian soul.
And I've not had courage enough to burst out and change it.
Gleam of intuition flashed across me.
You don't mean to say,
I exclaimed,
That you're called Georgina?
The cantankerous old lady gripped my arm hard.
Usually intelligent ones.
Oh,
She broke him.
How?
Um.
.
.
Ahem Did you guess?
It is Georgina!
Fellow feeling?
" I answered,
So is mine.
Georgina Lewis.
But as I quite agree with you as to the effect.
.
.
Of such conduct,
I have suppressed the Georgina.
It ought to be made penal to send innocent girls into the world so burdened.
My opinion to a T.
Are really an exceptionally sensible young woman.
There's my name and address.
I start on Monday.
I glanced at her card.
The very copper plate was noisy.
Lady Georgina Forley 49 Fortescue Crescent W.
It had taken us 20 minutes to arrange our protocols.
As I walked off,
Well pleased,
Lady Georgina's friend ran after me quickly.
You must take care.
She said in a warning voice.
You've caught torture.
So,
I suspect,
I answered.
But a week.
In Tartary.
Will be at least an experience.
She has an awful temper.
That's nothing.
So have I.
I assure you.
And if it comes to blows.
.
.
I'm bigger and younger and stronger.
Than she is.
Wow.
I wish you well out of it.
Thank you.
It is kind of you to give me this warning,
But.
.
.
I think I can take care of myself.
I come,
You see,
Of a military family.
I nodded my thanks and strolled back.
To Elsie's.
Dear little Elsie was in transports of surprise when I related my adventure.
Will you really go?
What will you do?
Oh,
My dear,
When you.
.
.
There!
I haven't a notion,
I answered.
That's where the fun comes in.
But anyhow,
I shall have got there.
Oh,
Brownie.
You might starve.
And I might starve in London.
In either place,
I have only two hands and one head to help me.
But then,
Here,
You're among friends.
You might stop with me forever!
I kissed her fluffy forehead.
You.
Good.
Generous little Elsie,
I cried.
I won't stop here one moment after I have finished the painting and papering.
I came here to help you.
I couldn't go on eating your hard-earned bread and doing nothing.
I know.
How sweet you are.
But the last thing I want is to add to your burdens.
Let us roll up our sleeves again and hurry on with the day dough.
But brownie.
You'll want to be getting your own things ready.
Remember?
Germany on Monday.
I shrugged my shoulders.
What is a foreign trick I picked up in Switzerland?
What have I got to get ready?
I asked.
I can't go out and buy a complete summer outfit in Bond Street for tuppence.
Now Don't look at me like that.
Be practical,
Elsie,
And let me help you paint the daydome.
For unless I helped her,
Poor Elsie could never have finished it herself.
I cut out half her clothes for her.
Her own ideas were almost entirely limited to differential calculus.
And cutting out of blouse by differential calculus?
Is weary uphill work for a high school teacher.
By Monday,
I had papered and furnished the rooms and was ready to start on my voyage of exploration.
I met the cantankerous old lady at Charing Cross by appointment and proceeded to take charge of her luggage and tickets.
Oh my,
How fussy she was.
You will drop that basket!
I hope you have got through tickets via Malinet,
Not by Brussels.
I won't go by Brussels.
You have to change there.
Now,
Mind you notice how much the luggage weighs in English pounds.
And make the man at the office give you a note of it to check those horrid Belgian porters.
They'll charge you for double the weight unless you reduce it at once to kilograms.
I know their ways.
Foreigners have no consciences.
They just go to the priest and confess,
You know,
And wipe it all out and start fresh again on a career of crime next morning.
I'm sure I don't know why I ever go abroad.
The only country in the world fit to live in is England.
No mosquitoes,
No passports,
No.
.
.
Goodness gracious,
Child!
Don't let that odious man bang about my hatbox!
Have you no immortal soul,
Porter,
That you crush other people's property as if it was black beetles?
No,
I will not let you take this,
Lois.
This is my jewel box.
It contains all that remains of the Forley family jewels.
I positively decline to appear at Schlangenbad without a diamond to my back.
This never leaves my hands.
It's hard enough nowadays to keep body and skirt together.
Have you secured that coupé at Austent?
We got into our first class carriage.
It was clean and comfortable.
But the cantankerous old lady made the porter mop the floor and fidgeted and worried.
Till we slid out of the station.
Fortunately,
The only other occupant of the compartment was a most urbane and obliging continental gentleman.
I say continental because.
.
.
Quite make out whether he was French,
German or Austrian.
Who was anxious in every way to meet Lady Georgiana's wishes.
Did Madame desire to have the window open?
Oh,
Certainly.
With pleasure.
The day was so sultry.
Closed a little more,
Parfaitement.
There was a current of air!
Il faut leur mettre.
.
.
Madame would prefer the corner.
No?
Then perhaps she would like this valise for a footstool?
Pyramide,
Just thus.
A cold draft runs so often along the floor in railway carriages.
This is Kent that we traverse often.
Garden of Eden.
As a diplomat he knew every nook of Europe and he echoed the mot he had accidentally heard drop from madame's lips on the platform.
No country in the world so delightful as Inc.
Monsieur is attached to the embassy in London?
Lady Georgina inquired,
Growing affable.
He twirled his grey moustache,
A waxed moustache of great distinction.
No,
Madame,
I have quitted the diplomatic service.
I inhabit London now.
Pour mon arremente.
Some of my compatriots call it triste.
For me,
I find it the most fascinating capital in Europe.
What gaiety!
What movement!
What poetry!
What a mystery!
If mystery means fog,
It challenges the world.
I interposed.
He gazed at me with fixed eyes.
Yes.
Mademoiselle?
" he answered,
In quite a different and markedly chilly voice.
Whatever your great country attempts.
Were it only.
A fog.
It's a Chiefs.
Consummately.
I have.
Quick.
Intuitions.
I felt the foreign gentleman took an instinctive dislike to me.
To make up for it,
He talked much and with animation to Lady Georgina.
They ferreted out friends in common.
And were as much surprised at it as people always are at that inevitable experience.
Yes,
Madame.
I recollect him well.
In Vienna.
I was there at the time.
Attache-toi,
Les garçons!
He was a charming man.
You read his masterly paper on the central problem of the dual empire?
You were in Vienna then?
The cantankerous old lady mused back.
Lois,
My child,
Don't stare.
She had covenanted from the first to call me Lois,
As my father's daughter.
And I confess,
I preferred it to being Miss Kaleid.
We must surely have met!
Dare I ask your name,
Monsieur?
I could see the foreign gentleman was delighted at this turn.
He had plead for it.
And carried his point.
He meant her to ask him.
He had a card in his pocket,
Conveniently close,
And he handed it across to her.
She read it and passed it on.
Monsieur l'éconte de la roche sur l'oreille.
Ewww!
I remember your name well!
The cantankerous old lady broken I think you knew my husband.
Sir Evelyn Forley.
And my father,
Lord Kynaston?
The Count looked profoundly surprised and delighted.
What?
You are then Lady Georgina Foley,
He cried,
Striking an attitude.
Indeed?
Milady,
Your admirable husband was one of the very first to exert his influence in my favour at Vienna.
Do I recall him?
C'est chère,
Sir Evelyn!
If i recall him What a fortune to renconter!
I must have seen you some years ago at Vienna,
Milady.
Though I had not then the great pleasure of making your acquaintance.
But your face had impressed itself on my subconscious self.
I did not learn till later that the esoteric doctrine of the subconscious self was Lady Georgina's favourite hobby?
The moment chance led me to this courage this morning,
I said to myself,
That face!
Those features.
So vivid,
So striking.
I have seen them somewhere With what do I connect them in the recesses of my memory?
High born family.
Genius!
Hein!
The diplomatic service.
Some unnameable job.
Some faint touch of.
.
.
Eccentricity.
Ah!
I have it!
Vienna.
A carriage with footmen in red livery,
A noble presence,
A crowd of wits.
Poets,
Artists,
Politicians,
Pressing eagerly round Orlando.
That was my mental picture as I sat and confronted you.
I understand it all now.
This is Lady Georgina.
I thought the cantankerous old lady who was a shrewd person in her way must surely see through this obvious patter.
Part.
I had underestimated the average human capacity for swallowing flattery.
Instead of dismissing his fulsome nonsense with a contemptuous smile,
Lady Georgina perked herself up.
With a conscious air of coquetry.
And asked for more.
Yes.
They were delightful days in Vienna,
She said,
Simpering.
I was young then,
Count.
I enjoyed life.
With a zest.
Persons of milady's temperament Ah,
Always young!
" The Count retorted glibly.
Leaning forward and gazing at her.
Growing old is a foolish habit of the stupid and the vacant.
Men and women of esprit.
I never older.
One learns as one goes on in life to admire.
Not the obvious beauty of mere youth.
And health.
He glanced across at me disdainfully.
But the profounder beauty of deep.
Character.
In her face.
That calm and serene beauty which is imprinted on the brow.
By experience of The emotions.
I have had my moments,
Lady Georgina Mermaid.
With her head on one side.
Believe it.
Milady.
The count answered and left.
Au gout!
Then it's forth.
To Dover,
They talked together with ceaseless animation.
The cantankerous old lady was capital company.
She had a tang in her tongue.
And in the course of 90 minutes,
She had laid alive the greater part of London society.
With keen wit and sprightliness.
I laughed against my will at her ill-tempered Sallies.
They were too funny not to amuse.
In spite of their vitriol.
As for the count.
.
.
He was charmed.
He talked well himself,
Too,
And between them,
I almost forgot the time.
Till we arrived at Dover.
It was a very rough passage.
The count helped us to carry our nineteen hand packages and four rugs on board.
But I noticed that,
Fascinated as she was with him,
Lady Georgina resisted his ingenious efforts to gain possession of her precious jewel case as she descended the gangway.
She clung to it like grim death.
Even in the chops of the channel.
Fortunately,
I am a good sailor.
And when Lady Georgina's sallow cheeks began to grow pale,
I was steady enough to supply her with her shawl and her smelling bottle.
She fidgeted and worried the whole way over.
She would be treated like a vertebrate animal.
Those horrid Belgians had no right to stick their deck chairs just in front of her.
The pertinence of the hussies with the bright red hair.
A gross's daughters,
She felt sure.
Venturing to come and sit on the same bench.
No!
The bench,
For ladies only,
Under the lee of the funnel.
Ladies only,
Indeed!
Did the baggages pretend they considered themselves ladies?
Oh.
That placid old gentleman in the episcopal gaiters was their father,
Was he?
Wow.
A bishop should bring up his daughters better.
Having his children in subjection with all gravity?
Instead of which,
Lois,
My smelling salts!
This was a b- beastly boat.
Such an odour of machinery!
They had no decent boats nowadays.
With all our boasted improvements,
She could remember well.
When the cross-channel service was much better conducted than it was at present.
But that was before we had compulsory education.
The working classes were driving trade out of the country.
And the consequence was we couldn't build a boat which didn't reek like an oil ship.
Even the sailors on board were French!
Jabbering idiots.
Not an honest British jactar among the lot of them.
Though the stewards were English,
And very inferior cockney English at that,
With their offhand ways and their school-bored airs and graces,
She'd scoreboard them if they were her servants.
She'd show them the sort of respect that was due to people of birth.
And education.
But the children of the lower classes never learnt their catechism nowadays.
They were too much occupied with literature.
Geography.
And free and drawing.
Happily for my nerves.
A good lurch to Leawood put a stop for a while to the course of her thoughts on the present distresses.
At Ostend.
The Count.
Made a second gallant attempt to capture the jewel case?
Which Lady Georgina automatically repulsed.
She had a fixed habit,
I believe,
Of sticking fast to that jewel case.
For she was too overpowered by the Count's urbanity,
I feel sure,
To suspect for a moment his honesty of purpose.
But whenever she travelled,
I fancy,
She clung to her case as if her life depended on it.
Depended upon it.
It contained the whole of her.
Valuable.
Diamonds!
We had 20 minutes for refreshments at Ostend,
During which interval my old lady declared with warmth that I must look after her registered luggage,
Though as it was booked through to Cologne I could not even see it till we crossed the German frontier.
For the Belgian douanier seal up the van as soon as the through baggage for Germany is unloaded.
To satisfy her,
However,
I went through the formality of pretending to inspect it.
And rendered myself hateful to the head of the Duan by asking various foolish and inept questions.
On which Lady Georgina insisted.
When I had finished this silly and uncongenial task,
For I am not by nature fussy,
And it is hard to assume fussiness as another person's proxy.
I returned to our coupé which I had arranged for in London.
To my great amazement,
I found the cantankerous old lady and the egregious count.
Comfortably seated there.
Monsieur has been good enough to accept a place.
In our carriage,
She observed,
As I entered.
He bowed and smiled.
Oh,
Raza,
Madame has been so kind as to offer me one.
He corrected.
Would you like some lunch,
Lady Georgina?
I asked in my chilliest voice.
There are ten minutes to spare,
And the buffet is excellent.
An admirable inspiration,
The Count Mermaid.
Permit me to escort you,
Milady.
"'You will come,
Lois?
' Lady Georgina asked.
Thank you,
I answered,
For I had an idea.
I am a capital sailor but the sea takes away my appetite.
Then you'll keep our places,
She said,
Turning to me.
I hope you won't allow them to stick in any more.
Horrid foreigners.
They will try to force them on you,
Unless you insist.
I know their tricky ways.
You have the tickets,
I trust,
And the bulletin for the coupé.
Well,
Mind you don't lose the paper for the registered luggage.
Don't let those dreadful porters touch my cloaks!
And if anybody attempts to get in,
Be sure you stand in front of the door as they mount to prevent them.
The Count.
Handed her out.
He was all high,
Courtly politeness.
As Lady Georgina descended.
He made yet another dexterous effort to relieve her of her jewel case.
I don't think she noticed it,
But automatically,
Once more,
She waved him aside.
Then she turned to me.
Here,
My dear,
" she said,
Handing it to me,
You'd better take care of it.
If I lay it down in the buffet while I'm eating my soup,
Some rogue may run away with it.
But mind!
Don't let it out of your hands,
On any account.
Hold it so on your knee and for Heavens sake!
Doot.
Part with it.
By this time,
My suspicions of the Count.
.
.
Were profound.
From the first,
I had doubted him.
He was so.
.
.
Blandly plausible.
But as we landed at Ostend,
I had accidentally overheard a low,
Whispered conversation when he passed a shabby-looking man who had travelled in a second-class carriage from London.
That succeeds,
The shabby-looking man had muttered under his breath in French,
As the haughty nobleman with the waxed moustache brushed by him.
That succeeds admirably,
The Count had answered in the same soft undertone.
Saroussia.
Merveille!
I understood him to mean that He had prospered.
In his attempt to impose on Lady Georgina.
They had been gone five minutes at the buffet,
When the Count came back hurriedly to the door of the coupé with a nonchalant air.
Oh,
Mademoiselle,
He said in an offhand tone,
Lady Georgina has sent me to fetch her jewel case.
I gripped it hard with both hands.
Pardon,
Monsieur Lecomte,
I answered.
Lady Georgina entrusted it to my safekeeping.
And without her leave I cannot give it up to anyone.
You mistrust me?
He cried,
Looking black.
You doubt my honor?
You doubt my word when I say that milady assent me?
Do two.
I answered calmly.
But I have Lady Georgina's orders to stick to this case.
Until Lady Georgina returns,
I stick to it.
He murmured some indignant remark below his breath.
And walked off.
The shabby-looking passenger was pacing up and down the platform outside.
In a badly made dust coat.
As they passed,
Their lips moved.
The counts seemed to mutter,
C'est un coup manqué.
However,
He did not desist even so.
I saw he meant to go on with his dangerous little game.
He returned to the buffet and rejoined Lady Georgina.
I felt sure it would be useless to warn her,
So completely had the Count succeeded in gulling her.
But I took my own steps.
I examined the jewel case closely.
It had a leather outer covering.
Within was a strong steel box with stout bands of metal to bind it.
I took my cue at once and acted for the best on my own responsibility.
When Lady Georgina and the Count returned,
They were like old friends together.
The quails in aspic,
And the sparkling hot had evidently opened their hearts to one another.
As far as Malinet,
They laughed and talked without ceasing.
Lady Georgina was now in her finest vein of spleen.
Her acid wit grew sharper and more caustic each moment.
Not a reputation in Europe had a rag left to cover it.
As we steamed in beneath the huge iron roof of the main central junction.
I had observed,
All the way from Austin,
That the Count had been anxious lest we might have to give up our coupé at Malinet.
I assured him,
More than once,
That his fears were groundless,
For I had arranged at Charing Cross that it should run right through to the German frontier.
But he waved me aside with one lordly hand.
I had not told Lady Georgina of his vain attempt to take possession of her jewel case,
And the bare fact of my silence made him increasingly suspicious of me.
Pardon me,
Mademoiselle,
He said coldly.
You do not understand these lines as well as I do.
Nothing is more common than for those rascals of railway clerks to sell one a place in a coupé,
Or a wagon lit,
And then never reserve it,
Or turn one out half-way It is very possible me lady may have to descend at Maliné.
Lady Georgina bore him out by a large variety of selected stories concerning the various atrocities of the rival companies which had stolen her luggage on her way to Italy.
As for train de luxe,
They were dens of robbers.
So,
When we reached Malinet.
.
.
Just to satisfy Lady Georgina,
I put out my head and inquired of a porter.
As I anticipated,
He replied that there was no change.
We went through to Verfier.
The count,
However,
Was still unsatisfied.
He descended and made some remarks a little farther down the platform to an official in the gold-banded cap of a chef de gare,
Or some such functionary.
Then he returned to us all fuming.
It is as I said,
He exclaimed,
Flinging open the door.
These rogues have deceived us.
The coupé goes no further.
You must dismount at once,
Milady,
And take the train just opposite.
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!
The train is just starting!
I scrambled after her with my 14 bundles,
Keeping a quiet eye,
Meanwhile,
On the jewel case.
We took our seats in the opposite train,
Which I noticed was marked Amsterdam Brussels 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.
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'm 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 selfsame moment,
With a piercing shriek,
Both trains started.
Lady Georgina threw up her hands in a frenzy of horror.
Bye!
Diamonds!
She cried aloud.
Ow!
Please.
My diamonds!
"'Don't distress yourself,
' I answered,
Holding her back,
For I verily believed 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.
Hacking 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.
Bye!
Dear!
She cried.
You!
Ah,
The cleverest little woman!
I ever met in my life.
Who am I?
Could have suspected such a polished gentleman.
Why?
You're worth your weight.
In gold.
What the dickens shall I do without you?
It's Schlangenbard!
Chapter 2 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 parish 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 was 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 room 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.
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.
Bye!
Thought of that,
" I answered,
But I decided to risk it.
I felt it was worthwhile.
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 check upon me.
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 check 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 fennings 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.
And marks a shilling.
Ridiculous of them to divide it into 10 pence instead of 12.
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?
Franks and Sultines 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.
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.
Civilized 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 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 traveling with her.
And never gave anyone 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 15 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 reaps.
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 wisty,
Were in attendance on invalid wives or sisters.
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 tortoiseshell 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 jumbo,
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 cafe where three young exquisites sat sipping rye 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.
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 Wow.
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 attache 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 roentgen ray.
I could see she was asking herself whether this was a conspiracy.
And whether I had come there on purpose to meet Harold.
About.
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.
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.
Bye!
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,
Language young man.
Large,
Poetical eyes.
An artistic moustache.
Just a trifle oriental-looking.
That Harold,
The cantankerous old lady,
Rapped out sharply,
With clear conviction.
A 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.
Then I might have guessed it was far more likely he was trying to avoid my companion.
I was a nobody.
Lady Georgina Foley.
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.
I do 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!
Well,
The hash!
Such hash!
What?
That's the way in Germany.
He's an ungrateful monster!
If he comes now,
I shall refuse to see him.
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 see me?
How can I come to see you if you don't tell me where you are?
Lady Georgina Forley,
Europe was the only address I knew.
It strikes me as insufficient.
His gentle drool.
To Lady Georgina's assiduous soprano.
It seemed to.
.
.
Disarm her.
She turned to me with a benignant wave of her hand.
Miss Kayleigh,
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 attache 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?
Aang.
Companion.
It was the first nasty thing she had said of me.
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 courses?
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.
Certainly,
Most respected aunt,
I shall much prefer it.
She let her piercing eye descend upon me once more.
I was aware that I had been talking with frank ease of manner to Mr.
Tillington,
And that I had said several things which clearly amused him.
Then I remembered all at once our relative positions.
A companion,
I felt,
Should know her place.
It is not her role to be smart and amusing.
Perhaps,
I said,
Drawing back,
Mr.
Tillington would like to remain in his present quarters till the end of the week,
While I am with you,
Lady Georgina.
After that,
He could have my room.
It might be more convenient.
His eye caught mine quickly.
Oh.
You're only going to stop a week then,
Miss Cayley?
" he put in.
With an air of disappointment.
Only a week,
I nodded.
My.
.
.
Dear child,
The cantankerous old lady broke out.
What nonsense!
You do talk!
Only going to stop.
A week.
How can I exist?
Chew.
That was the arrangement,
I said mischievously.
You were going to look about,
You recollect,
For an unsophisticated Gretchen?
You don't happen to know of any warehouse where a supply of unsophisticated Gretchins is kept constantly in stock,
Do you,
Mr Tillington?
No,
I don't,
He answered,
Laughing.
I believe there are dodos and orcs eggs in very small numbers still to be procured in the proper quarters,
But the unsophisticated gretchen,
I am credibly informed,
Is an extinct animal.
Why,
The cap of one fetches high prices nowadays among collectors.
But you will come to the hotel at once,
Harold?
" Lady Georgina interposed.
You certainly aren't.
I will move in without delay.
If Miss Cayley is going to stay for a single week only,
That adds one extra inducement for joining you immediately.
His aunt's stony eye was cold as marble.
So,
When we got back to our hotel after the baths that afternoon,
The concierge greeted us with,
Well,
Your noble nephew has arrived.
Hi,
Well-born countess.
He came with his boxes just now and has taken a room near the Honourable Ladyships.
Lady Georgina's face was a study of mingled emotions.
I don't know whether she looked more pleased or jealous.
Later in the day I chanced on Mr Tillington sunning himself on a bench in the hotel garden.
He rose and came up to me as fast as his languid nature permitted.
Oh,
Miss Cayley,
He said abruptly,
I do want to thank you so much for not betraying me.
I know you spotted me twice in the town yesterday and I also know you were good enough to say nothing to my revered aunt about it.
I.
.
.
Had no reason for wishing to hurt Lady Georgina's feelings,
I answered with a permissible evasion.
His countenance fell.
Aye.
Never thought of that,
He interposed,
With one hand on his moustache.
I fancied you did it out of fellow-feeling.
We all think of things mainly from our own point of view first,
" I answered.
The difference is that some of us think of them from other people's afterwards.
Motives are mixed.
He smiled.
I didn't know my deeply venerated relative was coming here so soon.
He went on.
I thought she wasn't expected till next week!
My brother wrote me that she had quarrelled with her French maid,
And it would take her full ten days to get another.
I meant to clear out before she arrived.
To tell you the truth,
I was going tomorrow.
And now you are stopping on?
He caught my eye again.
Circumstances alter cases,
He murmured with meaning.
It is hardly polite to describe one as a circumstance.
I objected.
I meant,
He said quickly,
My aunt alone is one thing,
My aunt with a friend is quite another.
I see,
I answered.
There is safety in numbers.
He eyed me hard.
Are you medieval?
Or Martin.
He asked.
"'Modern,
I hope?
' I replied.
Then I looked at him again.
"'Oxford?
' He nodded.
And you?
Half-joking.
Cambridge,
I said,
Glad to catch him out.
Ward College.
Merton.
Yours,
Girton.
The odd rhyme amused him.
Thenceforth,
We were friends.
Two varsity men,
He said.
And indeed,
It does make a queer sort of link.
A Freemasonry to which even women are now admitted.
At dinner and through the evening,
He talked a great deal to me.
Lady Georgina putting in from time to time a characteristic growl about the tableau d'oeuvre chicken.
A special breed,
My dear,
With eight drumsticks apiece,
Or about the inadequate lighting of the heavy German salon.
She was worse than ever.
Pungent as a rule,
That evening she was grumpy.
When we retired for the night,
To my great surprise,
She walked into my bedroom.
She seated herself on my bed.
I saw she had come to talk over Harold.
He will be very rich,
My dear,
You know.
A great catch in time.
He will inherit all my brother's money.
Lord kind Aston's Bless the child,
No!
Kynastons,
As poor as a church mouse,
With the tithes unpaid.
He has three sons of his own,
And not a blessed stiver to leave between them.
How could he?
Or Dear Idiot.
Agricultural depression.
A splendid Pauper.
He has only the estate,
That's in Essex.
Land going begging,
Worth nothing a year.
Encumbered up to his eyes.
And loaded with first rent charges,
Jointures,
Settlements.
Money,
Indeed.
Oh,
Kynaston.
It's my brother Marmaduke's,
I mean.
Lucky dog,
He went in for speculation.
Began life as a guinea pig and rose with the rise of soap and cocoa.
He's worth his half million.
Oh.
Mr.
Marmaduke Ashurst?
Lady Georgina nodded.
Mommies of Fool,
She said briefly.
But.
.
.
He knows which side of his bread is buttered.
And Mr.
Tillington is.
.
.
His nephew?
Bless the child.
Yes.
Have you never read your British Bible?
The peerage!
Astonishing!
The ignorance of these Girton Girls!
They don't even know the leeches run at Doncaster!
The family names Ashurst.
Kynaston's an earl.
I was Lady Georgina Ashurst before I took it into my head to marry and do for poor Evelyn Forley.
My younger brothers,
The Honourable Marmaduke Ashurst,
Women get the best of it there.
It's about the only place where they do get the best of it.
And Earl's daughter.
.
.
Is Lady Betty.
His son's nothing more than The Honourable Tom.
So,
One scores off one's brothers.
My younger sister,
Lady Guinevere Ashurst,
Married Stanley Tillington of the Foreign Office,
Harold's,
Their eldest son.
Now,
Child,
Do you grasp it?
Perfectly,
I answered.
You speak like de Bray.
Has issue.
Harold.
And Harold will inherit all Marmaduke's money.
What I'm always afraid of is that some fascinating adventurers will try to marry him out of hand.
A pretty face.
And over goes Harold.
My business in life is to stand in the way and prevent it.
She looked me through and through again with her x-ray scrutiny.
I.
.
.
Don't think.
Mr Tillington is quite the sort that falls a prey to Adventuruses?
I answered boldly.
Awww.
But there are faggots and faggots,
The old lady said,
Wagging her head with profound meaning.
Never mind,
Though.
I'd like to see an adventurous Mary of Harold without my leave.
I'd lead her a life.
I'd turn her black hair grey for her.
I should think,
I assented,
You could do it,
Lady Georgina,
If you gave your attention seriously to it.
From that moment forth.
I was aware that my cantankerous old lady's malign eye was inexorably fixed upon me every time I went within speaking distance of Mr.
Tillington.
She watched him.
Like a lynx.
She watched me like a dozen lynxes.
Wherever we went,
Lady Georgina was sure to turn up in the neighbourhood.
She was perfectly ubiquitous.
She seemed to possess a worldwide circulation.
I don't know whether it was this constant suggestion of hers that I was stalking her nephew,
Which roused my latent human feeling of opposition,
But in the end,
I began to be aware that rather liked the supercilious attaché when otherwise He evidently liked me.
And he tried to meet me.
Whenever he spoke to me,
Indeed,
It was without the superciliousness which marked his manner towards others.
In point of fact,
It was with graceful deference.
He watched for me on the stairs,
In the garden,
By the terrace.
Whenever he got a chance,
He sidled over and talked to me.
Sometimes he stopped in to read me Hynek.
He also introduced me to select portions of Gabriel Denuncio.
It is feminine to be touched by such obvious attention.
I confess.
Before long,
I grew.
To like.
Mr Harold Tillington.
The closer he followed me up,
The more did I perceive that Lady Georgina threw out crid hints,
With increasing spleen,
About the ways of adventuresses.
They were hints of that acrimonious,
Generalised kind,
Too,
Which one cannot answer back without seeming to admit that the cap has fitted.
It was atrocious how middle-class young women nowadays ran after young men of birth and fortune.
A girl would stoop to anything in order to catch five hundred thousand.
Guileless youths should be thrown among their natural equals.
It was a mistake to let them see too much of people of a lower rank,
Who considered themselves good-looking.
And the clever ones were the worst.
They pretended to go in for intellectual companionship.
I also noticed that,
Though at first Lady Georgina had expressed the strongest disinclination to my leaving her after the time originally proposed,
She now began to take for granted that I would go at the end of my week,
As arranged in London,
And she even went on to some overt steps towards securing the help of the blameless Gretchen.
We had arrived at Schlangenbad on Tuesday.
I was to stop with the cantankerous old lady till the corresponding day of the following week.
On the Sunday,
I wandered out on the wooded hillside behind the village.
And as I mounted the path,
I was dimly aware,
By a sort of instinct,
That Harold Tillington was following me.
He came up with me at last near a ledge of rock.
How fast you walk!
He exclaimed.
I gave you only a few minutes start and yet even my long legs have had hard work to overtake you.
I am a fairly good climber,
I answered,
Sitting down on a little wooden bench.
You see,
At Cambridge,
I went on the river a great deal.
Like nude and sculled.
And then besides,
I've done a lot of bicycling.
What a splendid birthright it is,
He cried,
To be a wholesome Athletic.
English Girl.
One can't think how one admires English girls after living a year or two in Italy.
Where women are dolls except for a brief period of intrigue before they settle down to be contented frumps with an outline like a barrel.
A little muscle and a little mind are no doubt advisable adjuncts for a housewife,
I admitted.
You shall not say that word,
He cried,
Seating himself at my side.
It is a word for Germans.
Housewife.
Our English ideal is something immeasurably higher and better.
Companion.
A compliment.
Do you know,
Miss Cayley,
It always sickens me when I hear German students sentimentalising over their Mieze.
Their beautiful,
Pure,
Insipid,
Yellow-haired,
Blue-eyed nature.
Her so fair,
So innocent,
So unapproachably vacuous,
So like a wax doll.
And then think of how they design her in days to come to cook sausages for their dinner and knit them endless stockings through a placid middle age till the needles drop from her paralysed fingers and she retires into frilled caps and Teutonic senility.
You seem to have almost as low an opinion of foreigners as your respected aunt,
I exclaimed,
Looking quizzically at him.
He drew back,
Surprised.
Oh,
No!
I'm not narrow-minded like my aunt,
I hope,
" he answered.
I am.
.
.
A good cosmopolitan.
I allow continental nations all their own good points.
Each has many.
But,
Ah.
They're women,
Miss Cayley.
And their point of view of their women,
You will admit that there they can't hold a candle to English women.
Bye!
Drew a circle in the dust with the tip of my parasol.
On that issue.
.
.
"'I may not be a wholly unprejudiced observer,
' I answered.
The fact of my being myself,
An Englishwoman,
May possibly to some extent influence my judgment.
You are sarcastic,
He cried,
Drawing away.
Not at all,
I answered,
Making a wider circle.
I spoke a simple fact,
But What is your ideal then?
As opposed to the German one.
Gazed at me.
And hesitated.
His lips.
Half parted.
My idea?
He said,
After a pause.
My ideal.
Do you happen to have such a thing as a pocket mirror about you?
" I laughed in spite of myself.
Now Mr.
Tillington,
" I said severely.
If you're going to pay compliments.
I shall have to return.
If you want to stop here with me,
You must remember that I am only Lady Georgina Forley's temporary lady's maid.
Besides,
I didn't mean that.
I meant,
What is your ideal of a man's right relation to his merchant?
Don't say merchant!
" he cried petulantly.
It sounds as if you thought me one of those Sentimental Germans.
I hate sentiment.
Then.
.
.
Towards the woman of his choice.
He glanced up through the trees at the light overhead.
And spoke more slowly than ever.
I think.
He said,
Fumbling his watch chain nervously.
A man ought to wish the woman he loves to be dead.
A free agent.
Is equal in point of action.
Even as she is nobler and better than he in all spiritual matters.
I think.
He ought to desire for her a life as high as she is capable of leading.
With full scope for every faculty of her intellect.
Our emotional nature.
She should be beautiful with a vigorous,
Wholesome,
Many-sided beauty,
Moral,
Intellectual,
Physical,
Yet with soul in her too.
And with the soul and the mind lighting up her eyes as it lights up well.
That is immaterial.
And if a man can discover such a woman as that and can induce her to believe in him,
To love him,
To accept him.
Though how such a woman can be satisfied with any man at all is,
To me,
Unfathomable.
Well,
Then.
I think he should be happy in devoting his whole life to her.
And should give himself up to repay her kindness.
Condescension in taking him.
And you hate sentiment,
I put in,
Smiling.
He brought his eyes back from the sky suddenly.
Miss Cayley?
He said.
This is cruel.
I was in earnest.
You were playing with me.
I believe the chief characteristic of the English girl is supposed to be Common sense,
I answered calmly.
And I trust I possess it.
But indeed,
As he spoke,
My heart was beginning to make its beat felt.
For he was a charming young man.
He had a soft voice and lustrous eyes.
It was a summer's day,
And alone in the woods with one other person,
Where the sunlight falls mellow in spots like a leopard's skin.
One is apt to remember that we are all human.
That evening,
Lady Georgina managed to blurt out more malicious things than ever about the ways of adventuresses,
And the duty of relations in saving young men from the clever clutches of designing creatures.
She was ruthless in her rancour.
Her jibes stung me.
On Monday,
At breakfast,
I asked her casually if she had yet found a Gretchen.
No,
She answered in a gloomy voice.
All slatins,
My dear.
All slatterns.
Brought up in pigsties.
I wouldn't let one of them touch my hair for thousands.
That's unfortunate,
I said dryly,
For you know I'm going tomorrow.
If I had dropped a bomb in their midst,
They couldn't have looked more astonished.
Tomorrow.
Lady Georgina gasped.
Clutching my arm.
You!
Don't mean it,
Child.
You don't mean it.
I asserted my ego.
Certainly,
I answered with my coolest air.
I said,
I thought I could manage you for a week,
And.
.
.
I have managed you.
She almost burst into tears.
My child!
My child,
What shall I do?
Chew.
The.
Unsophisticated gretchen I answered.
Trying not to look concerned.
For in my heart of hearts,
In spite of her innuendos,
I had really grown rather to like the cantankerous old lady.
She rose hastily from the table and darted up to her own room.
Lois,
She said as she rose,
In a curious voice of mingled regret and suspicion,
I will talk to you about this later.
I could see she was not quite satisfied in her own mind whether Harold Tillington and I had not arranged this coup together.
I put on my hat and strolled off into the garden,
And then along the mossy hill path.
In a minute more,
Harold Tillington was beside me.
He seated me,
Half against my will,
On a rustic bench.
Look here,
Miss Cayley,
" he said with a very earnest face.
Is this really true?
Are you going tomorrow?
My voice trembled a little.
Yes?
I answered,
Biting my lip.
I am going.
I.
.
.
See several reasons why I should go,
Mr Tillington.
But so soon?
Yes,
I think so.
The sooner the better.
My heart was racing now.
And his eyes pleaded mutely.
Where are you going?
I.
.
.
Shrugged my shoulders.
And pouted my lips a little.
I don't know.
I replied.
The world is all before me.
Where to choose?
I am.
Unadventurous I said it boldly,
And I am in quest of adventures.
I really have not yet given a thought to my next place of sojourn.
But you will let me know when you have decided?
It was time.
To speak out.
No,
Mr Tillington,
I said with decision.
I will not let you know.
One of my reasons for going is that I think I had better.
.
.
See no more of you.
He flung himself on the bench at my side and folded his hands in a helpless attitude,
But Miss Cayley!
He cried.
This is.
.
.
So short a notice!
Give a fellow no chance!
I hoped.
I might have.
.
.
Seen more of you.
Might have had some opportunity of letting you realize how deeply.
I admired and respected you.
Some opportunity of showing myself as I really am to you before.
.
.
Before.
He paused and looked hard at me.
I.
.
.
Did not know what to say.
Really?
Liked him.
So much.
And when he spoke in that voice,
I could not bear to seem cruel to him.
Indeed,
I was aware at the moment how much I had grown to care for him in those six short days.
But I knew it was impossible.
Don't.
Say it.
Mr.
Tillington,
I murmured,
Turning my face away.
The less said,
The sooner mended.
But I must,
He cried,
I must tell you now.
If I am to have no chance afterwards?
Bye!
Wanted you to see more of me before I ventured to ask you if you could ever be.
Love me.
If you could ever suffer me to.
.
.
Go through life with you.
To share my all.
With you.
He seized my trembling hand.
Lois!
He cried in a pleading voice.
Must!
Ask you.
I can't expect you to answer me now,
But.
.
.
Do say you will give me at least some other chance of seeing you,
And then,
In time of.
.
.
Pressing my suit upon you?
Tears stood in my eyes.
He was so.
.
.
Earnest.
So charming.
Part.
I remembered Lady Georgina.
And his prospective half million.
I moved his hand away,
Gently.
Cannot.
I said.
Cannot.
I am a penniless girl.
And adventurous.
Your family.
Your uncle?
Would never forgive you.
If you married me.
I will not stand in your way.
I.
.
.
I like you.
Very much,
Though I have seen so little of you,
But I feel.
It is impossible.
I am going tomorrow.
Then I rose of a sudden and ran down the hill with all my might,
Lest I should break my resolve,
Never stopping once till I reached my own bedroom.
An hour later,
Lady Georgina burst in upon me in high dungeon.
MWAH!
"'Lois,
My child?
' she cried.
"'What's this?
' Oh,
God.
Ahem.
Does it mean?
Harold tells me he has proposed to you.
Proposed?
To you!
And you,
Wolf?
You rejected him!
I dried my eyes and tried to look steadily at her.
Yes.
Lady Georgina?
I faulted.
You need not be afraid.
I have refused him.
End.
I mean it.
She looked at me.
Ooh la la.
A ghost.
And?
You mean it?
She repeated.
You mean to refuse him?
All I can say is Louis Cayley.
I call it pure cheek of you.
What?
I cried.
Drawer and bag.
Yes!
Cheek?
" she answered volubly.
40,
000 a year!
And a good.
Old family.
Harold?
Hillington.
Is my nephew!
He's an Earl's grandson.
He's an attache at root!
And he's bound to be one of the richest commoners in England.
Cool.
Are you?
I'd like to know,
Miss,
That you dare!
To reject him.
I stared at her.
Amazed.
Lady Georgina,
" I cried,
You said you wished to protect your nephew against bare-faced adventuresses who were setting their caps at him.
She fixed her eyes on me.
Half angry,
Half tremulous.
"'Of course,
' she answered with withering scorn.
But then I thought you were trying to catch him!
He tells me now,
You won't have him!
And you won't tell him where you're going.
I call it share.
Insolence!
Where do you hail from,
Girl,
That you should refuse my nephew?
A man that any woman in England would be proud to marry.
40,
000 a year?
Earl's grandson?
That's what comes,
I suppose,
Of going to Girton.
I drew myself up.
Lady Georgina.
I said coldly.
I.
.
.
Cannot allow you to use such language to me.
I promised to accompany you to Germany for a week.
And I have kept my word.
I like your nephew.
I respect your nephew.
He has behaved like a gentleman,
But.
.
.
I will not marry him.
Your own conduct showed me,
In the plainest way,
That you did not judge such a match desirable for him.
And I have common sense enough to see that you were quite right.
I am a lady by birth and education.
I am an officer's daughter,
But I am not what society calls a good match for Mr.
Tillington.
He had better marry into a rich stockbroker's family.
It was an unworthy taunt.
The moment it escaped my lips,
I regretted it.
To my intense surprise,
However,
Lady Georgina flung herself on my bed and burst into tears.
Bye.
Dear!
She sobbed out.
Covering her face with her hands.
I thought.
You would be sure to set your cap.
At Harold.
And after I had seen you for 24 hours.
I said to myself,
That's just the sort of girl Harold ought to fall in love with.
I felt sure he would fall in love with you.
I brought you here on purpose.
I saw you had all the qualities that would strike Harold's fancy.
So I had made up my mind for a delightful regulation family quarrel.
I was going to oppose you and Harold tooth and nail.
I was going to threaten that Marmy would leave his money to Kynaston's eldest son.
I was going to kick up!
Dickens of a row about it.
Then,
Of course,
In the end,
We should all have been reconciled.
We should have kissed and made friends.
Fool.
Yaw!
Just.
The.
One.
Girl.
In the world for Harold.
Indeed,
I never met anybody so beautiful.
Capable and so Intelligent!
And now you spoil all my sport by going and refusing him.
It's really most ill-timed of you.
And Harold.
Who sent me here.
Trembling with anxiety.
To see whether I can't induce you to think better of your decisions.
I made up my mind at once.
No,
Lady Georgina,
I said.
In my gentlest voice.
Positively stooping down and kissing her.
Like Mr.
Tillington.
Very much.
I dare not tell you how much I like him.
Here is a deer.
Kind fellow.
I cannot rest under the cruel imputation of being moved by his wealth.
And having tried to capture him.
Even if you didn't think so,
His family would.
I am sorry to go.
In a way,
I like you.
But.
.
.
It is best to adhere to our original plan.
If I changed my mind,
You might change yours again.
Let us say no more.
I will go.
But.
.
.
You will see Harold again?
Not alone.
Only at dinner.
For I feared,
Lest,
If he spoke to me alone,
He might over-persuade me.
Then,
At least you will tell him where you are going.
No,
Lady Georgina.
I do not know myself.
And besides,
It is best that this should now be put to bed.
Final.
She.
Flung herself upon me.
But my dear child!
A lady can't go out into the world with only two pounds in pocket.
You must let me lend you something.
I unwound her clasping hands.
No.
Dear Lady Georgina,
" I said.
Though I was loathe to say it.
You are very sweet and good,
But I.
.
.
Must work out my life in my own way.
I have started to work it out.
I won't be turned aside,
Just here on the threshold.
And.
.
.
You won't stop with me?
She cried,
Opening her arms.
You think me?
Two cantankerous?
I think.
You have a deer.
Kind,
Old heart,
I said.
Under the quaintest and crustiest outside such a heart ever wore.
You're a truculent old darling.
That's the plain truth of it.
She kissed me.
I kissed her in return with fervour,
Though I am but a poor hand at kissing for a woman.
I don't know about that,
She said,
Drying her eyes.
I have set my heart upon you now.
And Harold.
Has set his heart upon you.
And considering that your own heart goes much the same way.
I dare say,
My dear,
We shall find in the end some convenient road out of it.
Nevertheless,
Next morning.
.
.
I set out by myself in the coach from Schlangenbad.
I went forth into the world to live my own life.
Partly because it was just then so fashionable,
But mainly because fate had denied me the chance of living anybody else's.
Chapter 3.
The adventure of the inquisitive American.
In one week,
I had multiplied my capital two hundred and forty-fold.
I left London with tuppence in the world.
I quitted Schlangenbad with two pounds in pocket.
There's a splendid turnover,
I thought to myself.
If this luck holds at the same rate,
I shall have made 480 pounds by Tuesday next.
And I may look forward to being a Barney Bernardo by Christmas.
Christmas.
For I had taken high mathematical honours at Cambridge.
And if there is anything on earth on which I pride myself,
It is my firm grasp of the principle of ratios.
Still,
In spite of this brilliant financial prospect,
A budding Klondike,
I went away from the little spa on the flanks of the towners with a heavy heart.
I had grown quite to like dear,
Virulent,
Fidgety old Lady Georgina,
And I felt that it had cost me a distinct wrench to part with Harold Tillington.
The wrench left a scar which was long in healing.
But.
.
.
As I am not a professional sentimentalist.
I will not trouble you here with details of the symptoms.
My livelihood,
However,
Was now assured me.
With two pounds in pocket.
A sensible girl can read her title clear to six days' board and lodging at six marks a day,
With a glorious margin of four marks over for pocket money.
And if,
At the end of six days,
My fairy godmother had not pointed me out some other means of earning my bread honestly,
I should feel myself unworthy to be ranked in the noble army of the adventuresses.
I thank thee.
Lady Georgina for teaching me that word.
An adventurous I would be,
For I loved adventure.
Meanwhile,
It occurred to me that I might fill up the interval by going to study art at Frankfurt.
Elsie Petheridge had been there and had impressed upon me the fact that I must on no account omit to see the Städel Gallery.
She was strong on culture.
Besides,
The study of art should be most useful to an adventurous mind.
For she must need all the arts that human skill has developed.
So,
To Frankfurt I betook myself.
And found there a nice little pension.
For ladies only,
Frau Bockenhaefner assured me,
At very moderate rates in a pleasant part of the Lundenstrasse.
It had dimmity curtains.
I will not deny that.
As I entered the house I was conscious of feeling Lonely.
My heart sank once or twice.
As I glanced round the luncheon table at the domestically unsympathetic German old maids who formed the rank and file of my fellow boarders.
There they sat.
Eight comfortable frowls who had missed their vacation.
Plentiful ladies bulging and surging in tightly stretched black silk bodices They had been cut out.
For such housewives as Harold Tillington had described,
But found themselves deprived of their natural sphere in life by the unaccountable caprice.
Of the men of their nation.
Each was a model Teutonic matron monkey.
Each looked capable of frying Frankfurt's sausages to a turn.
And knitting woollen socks to a remote eternity.
But I sought in vain for one kindred soul among them.
How horrified they would have been with their fat pudding faces and big saucer eyes had I boldly announced myself as an English Adventurist.
I spent my first morning in laborious self-education at the Ariadneum and the Städel gallery,
I borrowed a catalogue.
I wrestled with van der Weyden.
I toiled like a galley slave at Maester Wilhelm and Maester Stefan.
I have a confused recollection that I saw a number of stiff medieval pictures and an alabaster statue of the lady who smiled as she rode on a tiger.
Taken at the beginning of that interesting episode?
But the remainder of the institute has faded from my memory.
In the afternoon,
I consoled myself for my herculean efforts in the direction of culture by going out for a bicycle ride on a hired machine.
To which end I decided to devote my pocket money.
You will,
Perhaps,
Object here that my conduct was imprudent?
To raise that objection is to misunderstand the spirit of these artless adventures.
I told you that I set out to go round the world.
But to go round the world does not necessarily mean to circumnavigate it.
My idea was to go round by easy stages.
Seeing the world as I went,
As far as I got,
Taking as little heed as possible of the morrow.
Most of my readers,
No doubt,
Accept that philosophy of life on Sundays only.
On weekdays,
They swallow the usual contradictory economic platitudes about prudential forethought and the horrid improvidence of the lower classes.
For myself.
I am not built that way.
I prefer to take life in a spirit of pure inquiry.
I put on my hat,
I saunter where I choose.
So far as circumstances permit.
And I wait to see what chance will bring me.
My ideal is this.
Breeziness.
The hired bicycle was not a bad machine,
As hired bicycles go.
It jolted one,
As little as you can expect from a common hatch.
It never stopped at a beer garden,
And it showed very few signs of having been ridden by beginners with an unconquerable desire to tilt at the hedgerow.
So.
Off I soared at once,
Heedless of the jeers of Teutonic youth who found the sight of a lady riding a cycle in skirts.
A strange one.
For in South Germany,
The rational costume is so universal among women cyclists that tis the skirt that provokes unfavourable comment from those jealous guardians of female propriety,
The street boys.
I hurried on at a brisk pace past the palm garden and the suburbs,
With my loose hair straying on the breeze behind,
Till I found myself pedalling at a good round pace on a broad level road which led towards a village by name Fraunheim.
As I scurried across the plain with the wind in my face,
Not unpleasantly,
I had some dim consciousness of somebody unknown flying after me headlong.
My first idea was that Harold Tillington had hunted me down and tracked me to my lair.
But gazing back,
I saw my pursuer was a tall and ungainly man with a straw-coloured moustache.
Apparently American.
And that he was following me on his machine,
Closely watching my action.
He had such a cunning expression on his face.
And seemed so strangely inquisitive,
With eyes riveted on my treadles,
That I didn't quite like the look of him.
I put on the pace to see if I could outstrip him,
For I am a swift cyclist,
But his long legs were too much for me.
He did not gain on me,
It is true,
But neither did I outpace him.
Pedalling my very hardest,
And I can make good time when necessary,
I still kept pretty much at the same distance in front of him all the way to Fraunheim.
Gradually,
I began to feel sure that the weedy-looking man with the alert face was really pursuing me.
When I went faster,
He went faster too.
When I gave him a chance to pass me.
.
.
He kept close at my heels and appeared to be keenly watching the style of my ankle action.
I gathered that he was a connoisseur.
Why on earth he should persecute me,
I could not imagine.
My spirit was roused now.
I peddled with a will.
If I rode all day,
I would not let him go past me.
Beyond the cobble-paved chief street of Fraunheim,
The road took a sharp bend and began to mount the slopes of the Taunus suddenly.
It was an abrupt,
Steep climb But I flatter myself.
I am a tolerable mountain cyclist.
I rode sturdily on.
My pursuer darted after me.
But on this stiff upward grade,
My lightweight and agile ankle action told,
I began to distance him.
He seemed afraid that I would give him the slip.
And called out suddenly with a whoop.
In English.
Stop!
Miss!
I looked back with dignity but answered nothing.
He put on the pace,
Panting.
I peddled away and got clear from him.
At a turn of the corner,
However.
.
.
As luck would have it,
I was pulled up short by a mounted policeman.
He blocked the road with his horse like an ogre.
And asked me in a very gruff Swabian voice if this was a licensed bicycle.
I had no idea,
Till he spoke,
That any license was required?
Though to be sure I might have guessed it,
For modern Germany is studded with notices at all the street corners to inform you in minute detail that Everything is forbidden.
I stammered out that I did not know.
The mounted policeman drew near and inspected me rudely.
It is strongly undersaid,
He began,
But just at that moment my pursuer came up and with American quickness took in the situation.
He accosted the policeman in choice bad German I have two licenses,
He said,
Producing a handful.
The frow line rides with me.
I was too much taken aback.
At so providential an interposition to contradict this highly imaginative statement,
My highwayman had turned into a protecting knight-errant of injured innocents.
I let the policeman go his way.
Then I glanced at my preserver.
A very ordinary,
Modern St George,
He looked.
With no lance to speak of,
And no steed but a bicycle.
Yet his mien was reassuring.
Good morning,
Miss,
He began.
He called me miss every time he addressed me as though he Took me for a barmaid?
Excuse me.
But why did you want to speed her?
I.
.
.
Thought you were pursuing me,
" I answered.
A little tremulous,
I will confess,
But avid of incident.
And if i was he went on you might have conjectured miss it was for our mutual advantage a businessman don't go out of his way unless he expects to turn an honest dollar and he don't reckon on other folks going out of theirs unless he knows he can put them in the way of turning an honest dollar with him.
That's reasonable,
I answered,
For I am a political economist.
The benefit should be mutual.
But I wondered if.
.
.
He was going to propose at sight to me.
He looked me all up and down.
You're a lady of considerable personal attractions,
" he said musingly.
As if he were criticising a horse.
And I want one that sort.
That's just why I trailed you.
See?
Besides which,
There's some style about you.
Style,
I repeated.
Yes,
He went on.
You know how to use your feet.
And you have good night.
Understandings.
I gathered from his glance that he referred to my nether limbs.
We are all vertebrate animals.
Why seek to conceal the fact?
I.
.
.
Fail to follow you,
I answered frigidly.
I really didn't know what the man might say next.
That's so,
He replied.
It was I that followed you.
Seems I didn't make much of a job of it either anyway.
I mounted my machine again.
Good morning,
I said coldly.
I am much obliged for your kind assistance,
But Your remark was fictitious and I desire to go on unaccompanied.
He held up his hand in warning.
"'You ain't goin'!
' he cried,
Horrified.
"'You ain't goin' without hearin' me!
' I mean business,
Say.
Don't chuck away good money like that.
I tell you,
There's dollars in it.
In.
What?
I asked,
Still moving on,
But curious.
On the slope,
If need were,
I could easily distance him.
Why,
In this cycling of yours,
" he replied,
You're just about the very woman I'm looking for,
Miss.
Loooooooots.
That's what I call you.
I can put you in the way of making you pile,
I can!
This is a bona fide offer.
No flies on my business.
You decline it?
Prejudice.
Injures you,
Injures me.
Be reasonable anyway.
I looked round and laughed.
Formulate yourself,
" I said briefly.
He rose to it like a man.
Meet me at Fraunheim,
Corner by the post office,
10 o'clock tomorrow morning,
He shouted as I rode off.
And if I don't convince you there's money in this job,
My name's not Cyrus W.
Hitchcock.
Something about his keen mind.
Unlovely face impressed me with a sense of his underlying honesty.
Very well,
I answered.
I'll come if you follow me no further.
I reflected that Fraunheim was a populous village and that only beyond it did the mountain road over the townness begin to grow lonely.
If he wished to cut my throat,
I was well within reach of the resources of civilization.
When I got home to the abode of blighted frowls that evening,
I debated seriously with myself whether or not I should accept Mr Cyrus W.
Hitchcock's mysterious invitation.
Prudence said no.
Curiosity said yes.
I put the question to a meeting of one.
And since I am a daughter of Eve.
.
.
Curiosity had it.
Carried unanimously.
I think I might have hesitated,
Indeed,
Had it not been for the blighted frowls.
Their talk was of dinner and of the digestive process.
They were critics of digestion.
They each of them sat so complacently through the evening.
Solid and stolid.
Stodgy and podgy,
Stuffed,
Comatose images,
Knitting white woollen shawls to throw over their capacious shoulders at tableau d'art.
And they purr.
With such content.
In their middle-aged rotundity.
That I made up my mind I must take warning bitimes and avoid their temptations to Adipose deposit.
I prefer to grow upwards.
The frow grows sideways.
Better get my throat cut by an American desperado in my pursuit of romance than settle down on a rock like a placid,
Fat oyster.
I am not by nature sessile.
Adventures are to the adventurous.
They abound on every side,
But only the chosen few have the courage to embrace them.
And they will not come to you.
You must go out to seek them.
Then they meet you halfway,
And rush into your arms,
For they know they're true lovers.
There were eight blighted frowns at the home for lost ideals.
And I could tell by simple inspection that they had not had an average of half an adventure per lifetime between them.
Be sat.
And knitted still.
Awesome.
Examples.
If I had declined to meet Mr.
Hitchcock at Fraunheim.
I know not what changes it might have induced in my life.
I might now be knitting.
I went boldly forth on a voyage of exploration,
Prepared to accept aught that fate held in store for me.
As Mr Hitchcock had assured me there was money in his offer,
I felt justified in speculating.
I expended another three marks on the hire of a bicycle,
Though I ran the risk thereby of going perhaps without Monday's dinner.
That showed my vocation.
The blighted frows,
I felt sure,
Would have clung to their dinner at all hazards.
When I arrived at Fraunheim,
I found my alert American punctually there before me.
He raised his crush hat with awkward politeness.
I could see he was little accustomed to ladies' society.
Then he pointed to a close cab,
In which he had reached the village.
I've got it inside.
He whispered.
In a confidential tone.
Couldn't let him catch sight of it.
You see,
There's dollars in it.
What have you got inside?
I asked suspiciously,
Drawing back.
I don't know why,
But the word.
.
.
Eat.
Somehow suggested a better way.
Corpse?
I began to grow frightened.
Why,
The wheel,
Of course,
He answered.
Ain't you come here to ride it?
Wheel?
I echoed vaguely,
Pretending to look wise,
But unaware as yet that that word was the accepted Americanism for a cycle.
And I have come to ride it!
"'Why,
Certainly,
' he replied,
Jerking his hand towards the cab.
But we mustn't start right here.
This thing has got to be kept dark.
Don't you see?
Till the last day.
Till the last day.
That was ominous.
It sounded like monomania.
So weird.
Ghostly and elusive.
I began to suspect my American ally of being a dangerous madman.
Just you wheel away a bit up the hill,
" he went on,
Out of sight of the folks,
And I'll fetch her along to you.
Huh?
I cried.
Hoo!
For the man bewildered me.
Whaaaaat?
The wheel,
Miss!
You understand?
This is business,
You bet!
And you're just the right woman.
He motioned me on.
Urged by a sort of spell,
I remounted my machine and rode out of the village.
He followed on the box seat of his cab.
Then,
When we had left the world well behind and stood among the sun-smitten bowls of the pine trees,
He opened the door mysteriously and produced from the vehicle a very odd looking bicycle.
It was clumsy to look at.
It differed immensely in many particulars from any machine I had yet seen or ridden.
The strenuous American fondled it for a moment with his hand as if it were a pet child.
Then he mounted nimbly.
Cried Sean in his eye.
I saw in a second he was a fond inventor.
He rode a few yards on.
Next,
He turned to me eagerly.
This machine,
He said in an impressive voice,
Is propelled by an eccentric.
Like all his countrymen,
He laid most stress on unaccented syllables.
Oh.
I knew you were an eccentric,
I said,
The moment I set eyes upon you.
He surveyed me gravely.
You misunderstand me,
Miss.
He corrected.
When I say an eccentric,
I mean a crank.
They are much the same thing,
" I answered briskly,
Though I confess I would hardly have applied so rude a word as crank to you.
He looked me over suspiciously.
As if I were trying to make game of him.
But my face was sphinx-like.
So he brought the machine a yard or two nearer and explained its construction to me.
He was quite right.
It was driven by a crank.
It had no chain,
But was moved by a pedal working narrowly up and down,
And attached to a rigid bar which impelled the wheels by means of an eccentric.
Besides this,
It had a curious device for altering the gearing automatically while on road,
So as to enable one to adapt it to the varying slope in mountain hills.
This part of the mechanism he explained to me elaborately.
There was a gauge in front which allowed one to sight the steepness of the slope by mere inspection,
And according as the gauge marked 1,
2,
3 or 4 as its gradient on the scale,
The rider pressed a button on the handlebar with his left hand once,
Thrice,
Thrice or four times,
So that the gearing adapted itself without an effort to the rise in the surface.
Thanks.
Besides,
There were devices for rigidity and compensation.
Altogether,
It was a most apt and ingenious piece of mechanism.
I did not wonder he was proud of it.
Get up and ride,
Miss,
He said in a persuasive voice.
I did as I was bid.
To my immense surprise,
I ran up the steep hill as smoothly and easily as if it were a perfectly laid level.
"'Goes nicely,
Doesn't she?
' Mr Hitchcock murmured,
Rubbing his hands.
Beautifully,
I answered.
One could ride such a machine up Mont Blanc,
I should fancy.
He stroked his chin with nervous fingers.
It ought to knock them,
He said in an eager voice.
It's geared to run up most anything in creation.
How steep!
One foot and three.
That's good.
Yes.
It'll climb Mount Washington.
What do you call it?
" I asked.
He looked me over with close scrutiny.
IN AMARCA!
He said slowly.
We call it the Great Manitou.
Because it can do pretty well what it chooses.
But in Europe?
I'm thinking of calling it the.
.
.
Martin Conway or the Wimper or something like that.
Why so?
Well,
Because it's a famous mountain climber.
I see,
I said.
With such a machine,
You'll put a notice on the Matterhorn,
This hill is dangerous to cyclists.
He laughed low to himself.
And rubbed his hands again.
You.
Do,
Miss,
" he said.
You're the right sort,
You are.
The moment I seen you,
I thought we two could do a trade together.
Benefits may benefits you.
A mutual advantage.
Reciprocity is the soul of business.
You have some going,
You,
You have.
There's money in your feet.
You give these mon-hairs feets!
You take the clear starch out of them.
I.
.
.
Fail to catch on,
I answered,
Speaking his own dialect to humour him.
Oh,
You'll get there all the same,
He replied,
Stroking his machine meanwhile.
It was a squirrel,
It was.
He pronounced it squirrel.
It'd run up a tree if it wanted,
Wouldn't it?
He was talking to it now as if it were a dog or a baby.
There,
There.
It mustn't kick.
It was a frisky little thing.
Just you step up on it,
Miss,
And have a go at Bat Bear Mountain.
I stepped up and had a go.
The machine.
Bounded forward like an agile greyhound.
You had but to touch it.
And it ran of itself.
Never had I ridden so vivacious,
So animated a cycle.
I returned to him sailing with the gradient reversed.
The Manitou glided smoothly,
As on a gentle slope without the need for backpedalling.
It soars,
He remarked with enthusiasm.
Balloons are at discount beside it?
" I answered.
Now.
You want to know about this business,
I guess.
He went on.
You want to know just where the reciprocity comes in and how.
I am ready to hear you expound,
I admitted smiling.
Oh,
It ain't all on one side,
He continued,
Eyeing his machine at an angle with the parental affection.
I'm gonna make your fortune right here.
You shall ride her for me on the last day.
And if you pull this thing off,
Don't you be scared that I won't treat you handsome.
If you were.
.
.
A little more succinct.
I said,
Gravely,
We should get Farada faster.
Perhaps you wonder,
He put in,
That with money on it like this,
I shouldn't trust the job into the hands of a female.
I winced,
But was silent.
Where?
It's like this,
Don't you see?
If.
.
.
A female wins.
It makes success all the more striking.
And conspicuous.
The world today is ruled by advertisement.
I could stand it no longer.
Mr Hitchcock,
I said with dignity.
Bye!
Haven't the remotest idea?
What on earth?
You are talking about.
He gazed at me with surprise.
Whaaat?
He exclaimed at last.
And you can cycle like that?
Not know what all the cycling world is mad about?
Wa-ha!
You don't mean to tell me you're not a pro-fessional.
I enlightened him at once as to my position in society.
Which was.
.
.
Respectable,
If not lucrative.
His face fell somewhat.
Ha-to-day!
Still.
You'd run all the same,
Wouldn't you?
He inquired.
Rum.
For what?
I asked innocently.
Parliament?
The Presidency?
The Frankfurt Town Council?
He had difficulty in fathoming the depths of my ignorance.
But.
.
.
By degrees,
I understood him.
It seemed that the German imperial and Prussian royal governments had offered a kaiserly and kingly prize for the best military Bicycle.
The course to be run over the towners from Frankfurt to Limburg,
The winning machine to get the equivalent of a thousand pounds.
Each firm to supply its own make and rider.
The last day.
Was Saturday next?
And the great Manitou was the dark horse of the contest.
Then all was clear as day to me.
Mr Cyrus W.
Hitchcock was keeping his machine a profound secret.
He wanted a woman to ride it so that his triumph might be the more complete.
And the moment he saw me pedal up the hill in trying to avoid him,
He recognised at once that I was that man.
Bye!
Recognised it too.
It was a pre-ordained harmony.
After two or three trials,
I felt that the Manitou was built for me.
And I was built for the Manitou.
We ran together like parts of one mechanism.
I was always famed for my circular ankle action,
And in this new machine,
Ankle action was everything.
Strength of limb counted for naught.
What told was the power of clawing up again promptly.
I possess that power.
I have.
Prehistoric feat.
My remote progenitors must certainly have been tree-haunting monkeys.
We arranged terms then and there.
You accept implicitly.
If I pulled off the race,
I was to have £50.
If I didn't,
I was to have five.
It ain't only your skill,
You see,
" Mr.
Hitchcock said with frank commercialism.
Each year.
Personal attractiveness as well that I go upon.
That's an element to consider in business relations.
My face is my fortune,
I answered gravely.
He nodded acquiescence.
Till Saturday then!
I was free.
Meanwhile,
I trained and practiced quietly with the Manitou in sequestered parts of the hills.
I also took spells turnabout at the Städel Institute.
I like to intersperse culture and athletics.
I know something about athletics and hope in time to acquire a taste for culture.
Tis expected of a Girton girl.
Though my own accomplishments run rather towards rowing,
Punting.
Bicycling.
On Saturday,
I confess I rose with great misgivings.
I was not a professional.
And to find oneself practically backed for a thousand pounds in a race against men is a trifle disquieting.
Still.
Having once put my hand to the plough,
I felt I was bound to pull it through somehow.
I dressed my hair neatly in a very tight coil.
I ate a light breakfast,
Eschewing the fried sausages which the blighted frowls pressed upon my notice,
And satisfying myself with a gently boiled egg and some toast and coffee.
I always found I rode best at Cambridge on the lightest diet.
In my opinion,
The raw beef regime is a serious error in training.
At a minute or two before eleven,
I turned up at the Schillerplatz in my short serge dress and cycling jacket.
The great square was thronged with spectators to see us start.
The police made a lane through their midst for the riders.
My backer had advised me to come to the post as late as possible.
For I have andered your name,
He said,
Simply as Lois Cayley.
These Deutschers don't think but what you're a man and a brother.
But I am apprehensive of contingencies.
When you put in a show.
They'll try to raise objections to you on account of you being a female.
There won't be much time,
Though,
And I shall rush the objections.
Once they let you run and win,
It don't matter to me whether I get the 20,
000 marks or not.
It's the advertisement that tells.
Just you mark my words,
Miss,
And don't you make no mistake about it.
The world today is governed by advertisement.
I turned up at the last moment and cast a timid glance at my competitors.
They were all men,
Of course.
And two of them were German officers in a sort of.
.
.
Undress cycling uniform.
They eyed me super-silliously.
One of them went up and spoke to the hair-over-superintendent who had charge of the contest.
I understood him to be lodging an objection against a mere woman taking part in the race.
The hair-over-superintendent,
A bulky official,
Came up beside me and perpended visibly.
He bent his big brows to it.
It was appalling to observe the measurable amount of Teutonic celebration.
Going on under cover of his round green glasses.
He was perpending for some minutes.
Time was almost up.
He turned to Mr.
Hitchcock.
Having finally made up his colossal mind,
And murmured rudely,
Compete.
Why not?
I inquired in my very sweetest German.
With an angelic smile,
Though my heart trembled.
Warum nicht?
Because the word rider.
In the kaiserly and kingly for this contest provided decree is distinctly in the masculine gender status.
"'Pardon me,
Herr Oversuperintendent,
' I replied,
Pulling out a copy of Law 97 on the subject,
With which I had duly provided myself,
If you will.
To section 45 of the Bicycles Circulation Regulation Act,
Your attention turn.
You will find it therein expressly enacted that,
Unless any clause be anywhere to the contrary inserted,
The word rider in the masculine gender put,
Shall here the word rideress in the feminine,
To embrace,
Be considered.
For anticipating this objection,
I had taken the precaution to look the legal question up beforehand.
That is true,
The hair-over-superintendent observed in a musing voice.
Gazing down at me with relenting eyes.
The masculine.
Habitually embraces.
The feminine.
And he brought his massive intellect to bear upon the problem once more with prodigious concentration.
I seized my opportunity.
Let me start,
At least,
" I urged,
Holding out the act.
If I win,
You can,
The matter more fully,
With the kaiserly and kingly governments hereafter,
Argue out.
I guess this will be an international affair.
Mr.
Hitchcock remarked,
Well pleased.
It would be a first-rate advertisement.
For the great Manitou.
If England and Germany were to make the question into a Cass's belly,
The United States could look on and pocket the chestnuts.
Two minutes to go!
The official starter with the watch called out.
Fall in then frowline Englanderin,
The hair-over-superintendent observed.
Without prejudice,
Waving me into line.
He pinned a badge with a large number 7 on my dress.
The kaiserly and kingly governments shall,
On the affair of the starting's legality,
Hereafter,
On my report,
More at leisure pass judgment.
The lieutenant in undress uniform drew back a little.
"'If this is to be woman's play,
' he muttered,
"'then can a Prussian officer himself,
By competing,
Not into contempt bring I dropped a little curtsy.
If the Hare Lieutenant is afraid even to enter against an Englishwoman,
I said,
Smiling.
He came up to the scratch sullenly.
One minute to go,
Called out the starter.
We were all on the alert.
There was a pause.
A deep breath.
I was horribly frightened.
But I tried to look calm.
Then shop.
And quick came the one word.
GO!
And like arrows from a bow,
Off we all started.
I had ridden,
Over the whole course,
The day but one before,
On a mountain pony,
With an observant eye and my sedulous American,
Rising at five o'clock so as not to excite undue attention,
And I therefore knew beforehand the exact route we were to follow.
But.
.
.
I confess,
When I saw the Prussian Lieutenant and one of my other competitors dash forward at a pace that simply astonished me,
That fifty pounds seemed to melt away in the dim abyss of the Ervige kite.
I gave up all for lost.
I could never make the running against such practiced cyclists.
However,
We all turned out into the open road which leads across the plain and down the main valley in the direction of Mayans.
For the first 10 miles or so it is a dusty level.
The surface is perfect,
But it was a blinding white thread.
As I toiled along into that broiling June day,
I could hear the voice of my backer who followed on horseback,
Exhorting me in loud tones Don't scorch,
Miss.
Don't scorch.
Never mind if you lose sight of them.
Keep your wind.
That's the point.
The wind.
The Wham's Aphrothyme!
Let him beat you on the level.
You'll catch him up fast enough when you get on the town-us.
But in spite of his encouragement,
I almost lost heart as I saw one after another of my opponent's backs disappear in the distance.
Till at last I was left toiling along the bare white road alone.
In a shower bath of sunlight with just a dense cloud of dust rising grey far ahead of me.
My head swam.
It repented me of my boldness.
Then the riders on horseback began to grumble.
For by police regulation they were not allowed to pass the hindmost of the cyclists and they were kept back by my presence from following up their special champions.
Give it up frow line give it up they cried you're beaten let us pass and get forward But.
.
.
At the selfsame moment,
I heard the shrill voice of my American friend whooping aloud across the din.
Don't you do nothing of the sort,
Miss.
You stick to it and keep your wind.
It's the wind that wins.
Them Germans won't be worth a cent on the high slopes anyway.
Encouraged by his voice,
I worked steadily on.
Neither scorching nor relaxing,
But maintaining an even pace at my natural pitch under the broiling sunshine.
Heat rose in waves on my face from the road below.
In the thin white dust,
The accusing tracks of six wheels confronted me.
Still,
I kept on following them.
Till I reached the town of Host,
Nine miles from Frankfurt,
Soldiers along the route were timing us at intervals with chronometers and noting our numbers.
As I rattled over the paved high street,
I called aloud to one of them,
How far ahead the last man He shouted back good-humouredly,
Four minutes for our line!
Again,
I lost heart.
Then I mounted a slight slope.
And felt how easily the Manitou moved up the gradient.
From its summit,
I could note a long,
Grey cloud of dust rolling steadily onward down the hill,
Towards Hattersheim.
I coasted down with my feet up and a slight breeze just calling me.
Mr Hitchcock behind called out,
Full-throated from his seat,
No hurry,
No flurry,
Take your time,
Take your time,
Miss.
Over the bridge at Hattersheim,
You turn to the right abruptly and begin to mount by the side of a pretty little stream,
The Schwarzberg,
Which runs brawling over rocks down the Taunus from Eppstein.
By this time,
The excitement had somewhat cooled down for the moment.
I was getting reconciled to be beaten on the level and began to realise that my chances would be best as we approached the steepest bits of the mountain road about Niederhausen.
So.
.
.
I positively plucked up heart to look about me and enjoy the scenery.
With hair flying behind,
That coil had played me false.
I swept through Hofheim,
A pleasant little village at the mouth of a grassy valley enclosed by wooded slopes,
The Schwarzbach making cool music in the glen below as I mounted beside it.
Clambering larches like huge candelabra stood out on the ridge,
Silhouetted against the skyline.
How far ahead the last man?
I cried to the recording soldier.
He answered me back,
Two minutes,
Frowline.
I was gaining on them.
I was gaming!
I thundered across the Schwarzbach by half a dozen clamorous little iron bridges,
Making easy time now,
And with my feet working as if they were themselves an integral part of the machinery.
It looked a vertical ascent.
The Manitou glided well in its oil bath at its halfway gearing.
I rode for dear life.
At 16 miles,
Lorsbach.
At 18,
Epstein.
The road still rising.
How far ahead the last man?
Just around the corner from our line.
I put on a little steam.
Sure enough,
Round the corner,
I caught sight of his back.
With a spurt,
I passed him.
A dust-covered soul,
Very hot and uncomfortable,
He had not kept his wind.
I flew past him like a whirlwind.
But oh,
How sultry hot in that sweltering,
Close valley!
A pretty little town,
Epstein,
With its medieval castle perched high on a craggy rock.
I owed it some gratitude,
I felt,
As I left it behind,
For t'was here that I came up with the tail end of my opponents.
That one victory cheered me.
So far,
Our route had lain along the well-made-but-dusty High Road in the steaming valley.
At Niederjosbach,
Two miles on,
We quitted the road abruptly.
By the course marked out for us,
And turned up a mountain path.
Only wide enough for two cycles abreast.
A path that clambered towards the higher slopes of the Taunus.
That was arranged on purpose.
For this was no fair weather show but a practical trial for military bicycles under the conditions they might meet with in actual warfare.
It was rugged riding.
Black walls of pine rose steep on either hand.
The ground was uncertain.
Our path mounted sharply from the first.
The steeper the better.
By the time I had reached Oberjossbach,
Nestling high among larch woods,
I had distanced all but two of my opponents.
It was cooler now too.
As I passed the hamlet,
My cry altered.
How far ahead?
The first man.
Two minutes for our line.
A civilian?
No.
No.
A Prussian officer?
The Herr Lieutenant led them.
For old England's sake,
I felt I must beat him.
The steepest slope of all lay in the next two miles.
If I were going to win.
I must pass these two there.
For my advantage lay all in the climb.
If it came to coasting,
The men's mere weight scored a point in their favour.
Crash.
Don't.
I.
Huddled away like a machine.
The manatee sobbed.
My ankles flew round so that I scarcely felt them.
The road was rough and scarred with waterways,
Ruts turned by rain to runnels,
At half a mile,
After a desperate struggle among sand and pebbles,
I passed the second man.
Just ahead,
The Prussian officer looked round and saw me.
Thunder weather!
You.
There?
Englander in?
" he cried.
Darting me a look of unchivalrous dislike.
Such as only your sentimental German can cast at a woman.
Yes i am here behind you here lieutenant i answered putting on a spurt and i hope next to be before you He answered not a word,
But worked his hardest.
So did I.
He bent forward.
I sat erect on my Manitou,
Pulling hard at my handles.
Now my front wheel was upon him.
It reached his pedal.
We were abreast.
He had a narrow thread of solid path,
And he forced me into a runnel.
Still,
I gained.
He swerved.
I think he tried to foul me.
But the slope was too steep.
His attempt recoiled on himself.
He ran against the rock at the side and almost overbalanced.
That second,
Lost him.
I waved my hand as I sailed ahead.
Good morning!
I cried gaily.
See you again at Limburg!
From the top of the slope.
I put my feet up and flew down into Idstein.
A thundershower burst.
I was glad of the cool of it.
It laid the dust.
I regained the high road.
From that moment,
Save for the risk of side slips,
T'was easy running.
Just an undulating line with occasional ups and downs.
But I saw no more of my pursuers till 22 kilometers metres farther on,
I rattled on the cobble-paved causeway into Limburg.
I had covered the 46 miles in quick time for a mountain climb.
As I crossed the bridge over the Lahn,
To my immense surprise,
Mr Hitchcock waved his arms all excitement to greet me.
He had taken the train on from Epstein,
It seemed,
And got there before me.
As I dismounted at the cathedral,
Which was our appointed end,
And gave my badge to the soldier,
He rushed up and shook my hand.
FIFTY POUNDS!
He cried.
50 pounds?
How's that?
For the great Anglo-Saxon race and hooray for the Manitou!
The second man,
The civilian,
Rode in wet and draggled forty seconds later.
As for the Hare Lieutenant.
.
.
A disappointed man.
Yay!
Fell out by the way,
Alleging a puncture.
I believe he was ashamed to admit the fact that he had been beaten in open fight by the objugated Englanderin.
So,
The end of it was,
I was now a woman of means,
With £50 of my own to my credit.
I lunched with my backer royally at the best inn in Limburg.
Chapter 4 The Adventure of the Amateur Commission Agent My eccentric American.
Had assured me that if I won the great race for him,
I need not be scared lest he should fail to treat me well.
And to do him justice,
I must admit that he kept his word magnanimously.
While we sat at lunch in the cozy hotel at Limburg,
He counted out and paid me in hand the fifty good gold pieces he had promised me.
Whether these Deutschers fork out my twenty thousand marks or not,
He said in his brisk way,
It don't much matter.
I shall get the contract and I shall have gotten the advertisement.
Why do you start your bicycles in Germany though?
I asked innocently.
I should have thought myself there was so much a better chance of selling them in England.
He closed one eye and looked abstractedly at the light through his glass of pale yellow.
Hello Brunniburger with the author.
England Yes.
England?
Well,
Seamus,
You have not been raised in business.
Business is business.
The way to do it in Germany is to manufacture for yourself.
And I've got my work started right here in Frankfurt.
The way to do it in England,
Where capitals dirt cheap.
Is to sell your patent for every cent it's worth.
To an English company and let them boom or bust on it.
I see,
I said,
Catching at it.
The principles as clear as mud the moment you point it out to one.
An English company will pay you well for the concession and work for a smaller return on its investment than you Americans are content to receive on your capital.
That's so.
You hit it in one,
Miss.
Which will you take,
A cigar or a coconut?
I smiled.
And what do you think you will call the machine in Europe?
He gazed hard at me.
And stroked his straw-coloured moustache.
Well.
.
.
What do you think of The Lois Cayley.
For heaven's sake,
No!
I cried fervently.
Mr.
Hitchcock.
I implore you.
He smiled pity for my weakness.
Rawr!
High-toned again.
He repeats it as if it were some natural malformation under which I laboured.
Huh?
If you don't like it,
Miss,
Well,
Say no more about it.
I am a gentleman.
I am.
What's the matter with you?
The Excelsior!
Nothing except that it's very bad Latin,
I objected.
That may be so.
But it's very good business.
He paused and mused.
Then he murmured low to himself.
Went through an alpine village past.
That's where the idea of the Excelsior comes in,
See?
It goes up Mont Blanc.
You said it yourself.
Through snow and ice a cycle with the strange device excelsior if i were you i said I would stick to the name.
Manitou It's original and it's distinctive.
Think so?
Then chalk it up.
The Thing's Done!
You may not be aware of it,
Miss,
But you are a lady for whose opinion in such matters I have a high regard.
And you understand Europe.
I do not.
I admit it.
Everything seems to me to be verboten.
In Germany.
And everything else to be bad form in England.
We walked down the steps together.
What a picturesque old town,
I said,
Looking round me well pleased.
Its beauty appealed to me,
For I had fifty pounds in pocket,
And I had lunched sumptuously.
Old Town,
He repeated,
Gazing with a blank stare.
You call this town old,
Do you?
Why?
Of course!
Just look at the cathedral!
800 years old at least!
He ran his eye down the streets.
Dissatisfied.
Will?
If this town is old,
He said at last with a snap of his fingers,
It's precious little for its age.
And he strode away towards the railway station.
What about the bicycle?
I asked,
For it lay,
A silent victor,
Against the railing of the steps,
Surrounded by a crowd of inquiring Teutons.
He glanced at it carelessly.
Oh,
Well,
He said.
You might keep it.
He said it so exactly in the tone in which one tells a waiter he may keep the change.
That I resented the impertinence.
No,
Thank you,
I answered.
I.
.
.
Do not require it.
He gazed at me open mouthed.
Bye!
Put my foot in it again?
" he interposed.
Not high-toned enough,
Eh?
Now I do regret it.
No offense meant,
Miss,
Nor none need be taken.
What I meant to insinuate was this.
You have won the big race for me.
Folks will notice you and talk about you at Frankfurt.
If you write a man or two.
That'll make him talk the more.
A mutual advantage.
Benefits you.
Benefits me.
You get the wheel.
I get the advertisement.
I saw that reciprocity was the lodestar of his life.
Very well,
Mr.
Hitchcock,
I said,
Pocketing my pride.
I'll except the machine.
And I'll ride it.
Then.
.
.
A light dawned upon me.
I soar.
Eventualities.
Look here.
I went on,
Innocently.
Recollect I was a girl just fresh from Girton.
Bye!
And thinking of going on very soon to Switzerland.
Why shouldn't I do this?
Try to sell your machines.
Or rather,
Take orders for them from anybody that admires them.
Mutual advantage.
Benefits you,
Benefits me.
You sell your wheels,
I get He stared at me.
The commission?
I don't know what commission means,
I answered,
Somewhat at sea as to the name,
But I thought it might be worth your while,
Till the Manitou becomes better known,
To pay me,
Say,
10% on all orders I brought you.
His face was one broad smile.
I do admire at you miss,
He cried,
Standing still to inspect me.
You may not know the meaning of the word commission,
But darned if you haven't got a hang of the thing itself.
That would do honor to a Wall Street operator,
Anyway.
Then,
That's business?
I asked eagerly,
For I beheld vistas.
Business?
He repeated.
Yes,
That's just about the size of it.
Business.
Advertisement mess may be the soul of commerce,
But commissions its body.
You gonna win and win!
10% on every order you send me.
He insisted on taking my ticket back to Frankfurt.
My affair,
Miss,
My affair.
There was no gain saying him.
He was immensely elated.
The biggest thing in cycles since dunlop tires he repeated and tomorrow they'll give me advertisements gratis in air!
Newspaper.
Next morning he came round to call on me at the abode of unclaimed domestic angels.
He was explicit and generous.
Look here,
Miss.
He began.
I didn't do fair by you when you interviewed me about your agency last evening.
I took advantage at the time of your youth and inexperience.
You suggested 10% as the amount of your commission on sales you might affect.
And I'm jumped at it.
That was conduct unworthy of a gentleman.
I will not deceive you.
The Ordinary Commission on Transactions in Wheels?
Is 25 percent.
I'm going to sell the Manitou retail at 20 English pounds apiece.
You shall have your 25%.
On all orders.
£5?
For every machine I sell!
" I exclaimed,
Overjoyed.
He nodded.
That's so cool.
I was simply amazed at this magnificent prospect.
The cycle trade must be honeycombed with middlemen's profits,
I cried,
For I had my misgivings.
Let so,
He replied again.
Then just you take and be a middle woman.
As a consistent socialist,
It is your duty to fleece the capitalist.
And the consumer.
A mutual benefit!
Triangular this time!
I get the order,
The public gets the machine,
And you get the commission.
I'm richer,
You are richer,
And the public is mounted on much the best will ever yet invented.
That.
Sounds.
Plausible.
I admit it.
I shall try it on in Switzerland.
I shall climb up steep hills whenever I see any likely customers looking on.
Then I shall stop and ask them the time,
As if quite accidentally.
He rubbed his hands.
You take the business like a young duck to the water,
He exclaimed admiringly.
That's the way to rake em in!
You go up and say to them,
Why not investigate?
We defy competition.
Leave the drudgery of walking uphill beside your cycle.
Progress is the order of the day.
Use modern methods.
This is the age of the telegraph,
The telephone,
And the typewriter.
You can no longer afford to go on with an antiquated,
Anti-diluvian,
Armor-plated wheel,
Invest in a hill climber,
The last and lightest product of evolution.
Is it common sense to buy an old-style,
Unautomatic,
Single-geared,
Inconvertible ten-ton machine when,
For the same money or less,
You can purchase the self-acting Manitou,
A priceless gem,
As light as a feather,
With all the most recent additions and improvements?
Reasonable.
Get the best.
That's the style to fetch him.
Aye.
Laughed in spite of myself.
Oh!
Mr.
Hitchcock,
I burst out.
That's not my style at all!
I shall say simply,
This is a lovely new bicycle.
You can see for yourself how it climbs hills.
Try it if you wish.
It skims like a swallow.
And I get what they call £5 commission on every one I can sell of them.
I think that way of dealing is much more likely to bring you in orders.
His admiration was undisguised.
Well.
.
.
I do call you a woman of business,
Miss,
He cried.
You see it at a glance.
That's so.
That's the right kind of thing to rope in the Europeans.
Some originality about you.
You take them on their own ground.
You've got the draw on them you have.
I like your system.
You'll just hole in the dollars.
I hope so,
I said fervently,
For I had evolved in my own mind,
Oh,
Such a lovely scheme for Elsie Petheridge's holidays.
He gazed at me once more.
If only I could get hold of a woman of business like you.
To soar through life with me.
He murmured.
I grew interested in my shoes.
His open admiration was getting quite embarrassing.
He paused a minute.
Then he went on.
Will?
What do you say you do it?
Two.
What?
I asked,
Amazed,
To my proposition.
My offer.
I.
.
.
I don't understand.
I stammered out,
Bewildered.
The.
25% you mean?
No,
The devotion of A laptop.
He answered,
Looking sideways at me.
Miss Kayleigh.
When a businessman advances a proposition,
Commercial or otherwise,
He advances it because he means it.
He asks a prompt reply.
Your time is valuable,
So is mine.
Are you prepared to consider it?
Mr Hitchcock!
I said,
Drawing back.
Think you misunderstand.
I think you do not realize.
All right,
Miss,
He answered promptly,
Though with a disappointed air.
If it cannot be managed,
It cannot be managed.
I understand.
You're European exclusiveness.
I know your prejudices.
But this little episode need not antagonize with the normal course of ordinary business.
I respect you,
Miss Cayley.
You are a lady of the house.
Intelligence!
Of initiative.
And of high-toned cultures.
I will wish you good day for the present.
Without further words.
And I shall be happy at any time to receive your orders on the usual commission.
He.
.
.
Backed out.
And was gone.
He was so honestly blunt that I really quite liked him.
Next day,
I bade a tearless farewell to the blighted frowls.
When I told those eight phlegmatic souls I was going,
They all said,
So,
Much as they had said,
So,
To every previous remark I had been moved to make to them.
So is capital garnishing,
But viewed as a staple of conversation,
I find it a trifle vapid,
Not to say monotonous.
I set out on my wanderings,
Therefore,
To go round the world on my own account and my own manitou.
Which last I grew to love in time with a love passing the love of Mr Cyrus Hitchcock.
I carried the strict necessary before me in a small,
Waterproof,
Bicycling valise,
But I sent on the portmanteau containing my whole estate,
Real or personal,
To some point in advance which I hoped to reach from time to time in a day or two.
My first day's journey was along a pleasant road from Frankfurt to Heidelberg.
Some 54 miles in all,
Skirting the mountains the greater part of the way.
The Manitou took the ups and downs so easily that I diverged at intervals to choose side paths over the wooded hills.
I arrived at Heidelberg as fresh as a daisy,
My mount not having turned a hair,
Meanwhile.
A favourite expression of cyclists which carries the more conviction to an impartial mind because of the machine being obviously hairless.
Thence I journeyed on by easy stages to Karlsruhe,
Baden,
Appenweyer and Offenburg,
Where I set my front wheel resolutely for the Black Forest.
It is the prettiest and most picturesque route to Switzerland.
And,
Being also the hilliest,
It would afford me,
I thought,
The best opportunity for showing off the Manitou's paces and trying my apprentice hand as an amateur cycle agent.
From the quaint little Black Eagle at Offenburg,
However,
Before I dashed into the forest,
I sent off a letter to Elsie Petheridge,
Setting forth my lovely scheme for her summer holidays.
She was.
Delicate poor child,
And the London winters sorely tried her.
I was now.
A millionaire with the better part of £50 in pocket,
So I felt I could afford to be royal in my hospitality.
As I was leaving Frankfurt,
I had called at a tourist agency and bought a second-class circular ticket from London to Lucerne and back.
I made it second class because I am opposed on principle to excessive luxury.
And also because it was three guineas cheaper.
Even £50 will not last forever,
Though I could scarce believe it.
You see,
I am not wholly free,
After all,
From the besetting British vice of prudence.
It was a mighty joy to me to be able to send this ticket to Elsie at her lodgings in Bayswater,
Pointing out to her that now the whole mischief was done.
And that if she would not come out as soon as her summer vacation began,
T'was a point of honour with Elsie to say vacation instead of holidays,
To join me at Lucerne and stop with me as my guest at a mountain pension,
The ticket would be wasted.
I love burning my boats.
It is the only safe way for securing prompt action.
Then I turned my flying wheels up into the black sky.
Forest.
Growing weary of my loneliness.
For it is not all jam to ride by oneself in Germany.
And longing for Elsie to come out and join me.
I loved to think how her dear,
Pale cheeks would gain colour and tone on the hills above the brony hills.
Where,
For business reasons,
So I said to myself,
With the conscious pride of the Commission Agent,
I propose to pass the greater part of the summer.
From Offenburg to Hornburg,
The road makes a good,
Stiff climb of 27 miles and some 1200 English feet in altitude.
With a fair number of minor undulations on the way to diversify it.
I will not describe the route,
Though it is one of the most beautiful I have ever travelled.
Rocky hills,
Ruined castles,
Huge straight-stemmed pines that clamber up green slopes or halt in sombre line against steeps of broken crag,
The reality surpasses my poor powers of description.
And the people I passed on the road were almost as quaint and picturesque in their way as the hills and the villages.
The men in red-lined jackets,
The women in black petticoats,
Short-waisted green bodices and broad-brimmed straw hats with black and crimson pom-poms.
But on the steepest gradient,
Just before reaching Hornburg,
I got my first nibble.
Strange to say from two German students.
They wore Heidelberg caps and were toiling up the incline with short,
Broken wind.
I put on a spurt with the Manitou and passed them easily.
I did it just at first in pure wantonness of health and strength,
But the moment I was clear of them,
It occurred to the business half of me that here was a good chance of taking an order.
Filled with this bright idea,
I dismounted near the summit and pretended to be engaged in lubricating my bearings.
Though,
As a matter of fact,
The Manitou runs in a bath of oil,
Self-feeding,
And needs no looking after.
Presently,
My two Heidelburgers straggled up,
Hot,
Dusty,
Panting.
Woman-like,
I pretended to take no notice.
One of them drew near and cast an eye on the manatee.
That's a new machine,
Frowline,
He said at last,
With more politeness than I expected.
It is,
I answered casually.
The latest model.
Climbs hills like no other.
And I feigned to mount and glide off towards Hornburg,
Stop a moment.
Pray,
Fraulein?
My prospective buyer called out.
Here!
Heinrich!
I wish you this new so excellent mountain climbing machine without chain propelled more fully to investigate.
I am going on to Hornburg,
I said with mixed feminine guile and commercial strategy.
Still,
If your friend wishes to look.
.
.
They both jostled round it,
With axe innumerable,
And after minute inspection,
Pronounced its principle.
Wunderschön!
Might I essay it?
Heinrich asked.
Oh,
By all means,
I answered.
He paced it downhill a few yards,
Then skimmed up again.
It is a bird!
He cried to his friend with many guttural interjections.
Like the eagle's flight so soars it.
Come,
Try the thing,
Ludwig.
You permit frown lines?
I nodded.
They both mounted it several times.
It behaved like a beauty.
Then one of them asked,
And where can man of this new so remarkable machine nearest by purchase himself make possessor?
I am the sole agent.
I burst out with swelling dignity.
If you will give me your orders with cash in hand for the amount,
I will send the cycle,
Carriage paid,
To any address you desire in Germany.
You?
They exclaimed incredulously.
The frowline is pleased to be humorous.
Very well,
I answered,
Vaulting into the saddle.
If you choose to doubt my word,
I waved one careless hand.
And coasted off.
Good morning,
Meine Herren.
They lumbered after me on their ramshackled traction engines.
Pardon,
Fraulein,
Do not thus go away.
Oblige us at least with the name and address of the maker?
Bye!
Perpended,
Like the hair over superintendent at Frankfurt.
Look here,
I said at last,
Telling the truth with frankness.
I get 25% on all bicycles I sell.
I am,
As I say,
The maker's sole agent.
If you order through me,
I touch my prophet.
If otherwise,
I do not.
Still,
Since you seem to be gentlemen,
They bowed and swelled visibly.
I will give you the address of the firm trusting to your honor to mention my name.
I handed them a card.
If you decide on ordering.
The price of the poultry is 400 marks.
It is worth every fennig of it.
And before they could say more,
I had spurred my steed and swept off at full speed round a curve of the highway.
I penciled a note to my American that night from Hornburg.
Detailing the circumstance.
But I am sorry to say,
For the discredit of humanity,
That when those two students rode the same evening from their inn in the village to order Manitou's,
They did not mention my name.
Doubtless under the misconception that by suppressing it they would save my commission.
However,
It gives me pleasure to add,
Per contra,
As we say in business,
That when I arrived at Lucerne a week or so later,
I found a letter,
Posterrestante,
From Mr Cyrus Hitchcock,
In closing an English £10 note.
He wrote that he had received two orders for Manitous from Hornburg,
And feeling considerable confidence that these must necessarily originate from my German students,
He had the pleasure of forwarding me what he hoped would be the first of many similar commissions.
I will not describe my further adventures on the still steeper mountain road from Hornburg to Triberg and St.
George and how I got bites on the way from an English curate,
An Austrian hussar,
And two unprotected American ladies,
Nor how I angled for them all by riding my machine up impossibly hills.
And then reclining gracefully to eat my lunch,
Three times in one day,
On mossy banks at the summit,
I felt a perfect little hypocrite.
But Mr Hitchcock had remarked that business is business,
And I will only add,
In confirmation of his view,
That by the time I reached Lucerne,
I had sown the good seed in fifteen separate human souls,
No less than four of which brought forth fruit in orders for Manitous before the end of the season.
I had now so little fear what the morrow might bring forth that I settled down in a quiet hotel at Lucerne till Elsie's holidays began.
And amused myself,
Meanwhile,
By picking out the hilliest roads I could find in the neighbourhood in order to display my steel steed's possibilities to the best advantage.
By the end of July,
Elsie joined me.
She was half angry at first that I should have forced the ticket and my hospitality upon her.
Nonsense,
Dear,
I said,
Smoothing her hair,
For her pale face quite frightened me.
What is the good of a friend if she will not allow you to do her little favours?
Brownie,
You said you wouldn't stop and be dependent upon me one day longer than was necessary in London.
That was different,
I cried.
That was me.
This is you.
I am a great,
Strong,
Healthy thing,
Fit to fight the battle of life and take care of myself.
You,
Elsie.
Are one of those.
Fragile little flowers,
Which it is everybody's duty to protect.
And to care for.
She would have protested more,
But I stifled her mouth with kisses.
Indeed,
For nothing did I rejoice in my prosperity so much as for the chance it gave me of helping poor,
Dear overworked,
Overwrought Elsie.
We took up our quarters thenceforth at a high-perched little guesthouse near the top of the Brunner.
It was bracing for Elsie.
And it lay close to a tourist track where I could spread my snares and exhibit the Manitou in its true colours to many passing visitors.
Elsie tried it and found she could ride on it with ease.
She wished she had one of her own.
A bright idea struck me.
In fear and trembling,
I wrote.
Suggesting to Mr.
Hitchcock that I had a girlfriend from England stopping with me in Switzerland and that two Manitous would surely be better than one as an advertisement.
I confess,
I stood aghast at my own cheek.
But my hand,
I fear,
Was rapidly growing subdued to that it worked in.
Anyhow,
I sent the letter off.
And weighted developments.
By return of post came an answer from my American.
Dear miss by rail herewith please receive one ladies number four automatic quadruple geared self-feeding manitou as per your esteemed favor of july 27th for which I desire to thank you.
The more I see of your way of doing business,
The more I do admire at you.
This is an elegant poster.
Two high-toned English ladies,
Mounted on man-a-dos,
Careerin' up the Alps,
Represent to both of us quite a mint of money.
The mutual benefit to me,
To you,
And to the other lady ought to be simply incalculable.
I shall be pleased at any time to hear of any further developments of your very remarkable advertising skills.
And I am obliged to you for this brilliant suggestion you have been good enough to make to me.
Respectfully Cyrus W.
Hitchcock What?
Am I to have it for nothing,
Brownie?
" Elsie exclaimed,
Bewildered,
When I read the letter to her.
Bye!
Assumed the heirs of a woman of the world.
Why?
Certainly,
My dear,
I answered as if I always expected to find bicycles showered upon me.
It's a mutual arrangement.
Benefit him.
Benefits you.
Reciprocity is the groundwork of business.
He gets the advertisement.
You get the amusement.
It's a form of handbill,
Like the ladies who exhibit their back hair,
Don't you know,
In that window in Regent Street?
Thus,
Inexpensively mounted,
We scoured the country together up the steepest hills between Standstadt and Meiringen.
We had lots of nibbles.
One lady in particular often stopped to look on and admire the manatee.
She was a nice-looking widow of 45,
Very fresh and round-faced,
A Mrs Everleigh,
We soon found out,
Who owned a charming chalet on the hills above Lungern.
She spoke to us more than once.
What a perfect deer of a machine!
She cried.
I wonder if I dare try it?
Can you cycle?
I asked.
I could once,
She answered.
I was awfully fond of it.
But Dr Fortescue Langley won't let me any longer.
Try it,
I said,
Dismounting.
She got up and rode.
Isn't it just lovely?
She cried ecstatically.
Buy one,
" I put in.
They're as smooth as silk.
They cost only £20.
And on every machine I sell,
I get £5 commission.
I should love to,
She answered,
But Dr Fortescue Langley Who is he?
I asked.
I don't believe in drug drenches.
She looked quite shocked.
Oh!
He's not that kind,
You know,
" she put in breathlessly.
He's the celebrated,
Esoteric.
.
.
Faith healer.
He won't let me move far away from Lungen,
Though I'm longing to be off to England again for the summer.
My boys at Portsmouth.
Then why don't you disobey him?
That face was a study.
Damned!
She answered in an awestruck voice.
He comes here every summer.
And he does me so much good,
You know?
He diagnoses my inner self.
He treats me psychically.
When my inner self goes wrong,
My bangle turns dusky.
She held up her right hand with an Indian silver bangle on it.
And sure enough,
It was tarnished with a very thin black deposit.
My soul is ailing now,
She said in a kiss.
Comically serious voice.
But it is seldom so in Switzerland.
The moment I land in England,
The bangle turns black.
And remains black till I get back to Luzon again.
When she had gone.
I said to Elsie,
Is out.
About the bangle.
State of health.
Might affect it,
I suppose.
Though it looks to me like.
.
.
A surface deposit of.
.
.
Sulfide.
I knew nothing of chemistry,
I admit,
But I had sometimes messed about in the laboratory at college with some of the other girls,
And I remember now that sulphide of silver was a blackish-looking body like the film On the Bangle.
However,
At the time I thought no more about it.
By dint of stopping and talking,
We soon got quite intimate with Mrs Everly.
As always happens,
I found out I had known some of her cousins in Edinburgh where I always spent my holidays while I was at Girton.
She took an interest in what she was kind enough to call my originality.
And before a fortnight was out,
Our hotel being uncomfortably crowded,
She had invited Elsie and myself to stop with her at the chalet.
We went and founded a delightful little home.
Mrs Everly was charming.
But.
.
.
We could see at every turn that Dr Fortescue Langley had acquired a firm hold over her.
He's so.
.
.
Clever,
You know,
" she said,
And so spiritual.
He exercises such strong,
Odyllic force He binds my being together.
If he misses a visit,
I feel my inner self goes all to pieces.
Does he come often?
I asked,
Growing interested.
Oh dear,
No,
She answered.
I wish he did.
It would be ever so good for me.
But he's so much run after.
I am but one among many.
He lives at Chateau d'Aix and comes across to see patients in this district once a fortnight.
It is a privilege to be attended by an intuitive seer like Dr.
Fortescue Langley.
Mrs Everly was rich.
Left comfortably,
As the phrase goes,
But with a clause which prevented her marrying again without losing her fortune.
And I could gather from various hints that Dr Fortescue Langley,
Whoever he might be,
Was bleeding her to some tune.
Using her soul and her inner self as his financial lancet.
I also noticed that what she said about the bangle was strictly true,
Generally bright as a new pin.
On certain mornings it was completely blackened.
I had been at the chalet ten days,
However,
Before I began to suspect the real reason.
Then it dawned upon me one morning in a flash of inspiration.
The evening before had been cold,
For at the height where we were perched,
Even in August,
We often found the temperature chilly in the night,
And I heard Mrs Everleigh tell Cecile,
Her maid,
To fill the hot water bottle.
It was a small point,
But it somehow went home to me.
Next day,
The bangle was black,
And Mrs Everly lamented that her inner self must be suffering from an attack of evil vapours.
I held my peace at the time.
But I asked Cecile a little later to bring me that hot water bottle.
As I more than half expected,
It was made of India rubber wrapped carefully up in the usual red flannel bag.
Lend me your brooch,
Elsie,
" I said.
I want to try a little experiment.
Won't a frank do as well?
Elsie asked,
Tendering one.
That's equally silver.
I think not,
I answered.
A frank is most likely too hard.
It has base metal to alloy it.
But I will vary the experiment by trying both together.
Your brooch is Indian and therefore soft silver.
The native jewelers never use alloy.
Hand it over.
It will clean with a little plate powder if necessary.
I'm going to see what blackens Mrs Everleigh's bangle.
I laid the frank and the brooch on the bottle,
Filled with hot water,
And placed them for warmth in the fold of a blanket.
After déjeuner,
We inspected them.
As I anticipated,
The brooch had grown black on the surface with a thin,
Iridescent layer of silver sulphide,
While the frank had hardly suffered at all from the exposure.
I called in Mrs Everly and explained what I had done.
She was astonished.
And half-incredulous.
How could you ever?
Of it!
" she cried,
Admiringly.
Bye.
I was reading an article yesterday about India rubber in one of your magazines,
I answered,
And the person who wrote it said the raw gum was hardened for vulcanising by mixing it with sulphur.
When I heard you ask Cecile for the hot water bottle,
I thought at once,
The sulphur!
And the heat account for the tarnishing of Mrs Everleigh's bangle.
And the Frank!
Doesn't tarnish.
Then that must be why my other silver bracelet,
Which is English-make and harder,
Never changes colour.
And Dr.
Fortescue Langley assured me it was because the soft one was of Indian metal and had mystic symbols on it.
Symbols that answered to the cardinal moods of my subconscious self.
And that darkened in sympathy.
Bye!
Jumped at a clue.
Talked about your subconscious self?
" I broke in.
Yes,
She answered.
He always does.
It's the keynote of his system.
He heals by that alone.
My dear.
After this,
How can I ever believe in him?
Does he know about the hot water bottle?
I asked.
Oh yes,
He ordered me to use it on certain nights.
And when I go to England,
He says I must never be without one.
I see now.
That was why my inner self invariably went wrong in England.
It was all just the sulphur.
Blackening the bangles!
I reflected.
A middle-aged man?
I asked.
Stout.
Diplomatic looking.
With wrinkles round his eyes and a distinguished grey moustache twirled up oddly at the corners.
That's the man,
My dear,
His very picture.
Where on earth have you seen him?
And He talks of.
.
.
Subconscious selves,
I went on.
He practices on that basis.
He says it's no use prescribing for the outer man.
To do that is to treat mere symptoms,
The subconscious self.
Is the inner seat of diseases.
How long has he been in Switzerland?
Oh,
He comes here every year.
He arrived this season late in May,
I fancy.
When will he visit you again,
Mrs.
Everly?
Tomorrow morning.
I made up my mind at once.
Then.
.
.
I must see him without being seen,
I said.
I think I know him.
He is.
Our count,
I believe,
For I had told Mrs Everleigh and Elsie the queer story of my journey from London Impossible,
My dear!
Possible.
I have in mind.
Elicit faith in him.
Wait and see,
Mrs.
Everly.
You acknowledge he duped you over the affair of the bangle?
There are two kinds of dupe.
One kind,
The Communist,
Goes on believing in its deceiver,
No matter what happens.
The author.
Far rarer,
Has the sense to know it has been deceived.
If you make the deception as clear as day to it.
Mrs Everly was,
Fortunately,
Of the rarer class.
Next morning,
Dr Fortescue Langley arrived by appointment.
As he walked up the path,
I glanced at him from my window.
It was the count.
Not a doubt of it.
On his way to gull his dupes in Switzerland,
He had tried to throw in an incidental trifle of a diamond robbery.
I telegraphed the facts at once to Lady Georgina at Schlangenbad.
She answered,
I am coming.
Ask the man to meet his friend on Wednesday.
Mrs Everly,
Now almost convinced,
Invited him.
On Wednesday morning,
With a bounce,
Lady Georgina burst in upon us.
My dear!
Such a journey alone at my age.
But there.
.
.
I haven't known a happy day since you left me.
Oh yes,
I got my Gretchen!
Unsophisticated?
Wow.
That's not the word for it.
I declare to you,
Lois,
There isn't a trick of the trade.
In Paris or London,
Not a Percocet or a Ticket.
That that girl isn't up to.
Comes straight from the remotest recesses of the Black Forest and hadn't been with me a week.
I assure you,
Honor bright.
Before she was band-aligning her yellow hair and rouging her cheeks?
And wearing my brooches and wagering gloves.
Hotel waiters upon the barred and races.
Ah!
Her language!
And her manners.
Why weren't you born in that station of life,
I wonder child?
So that I might offer you 500 a year.
And all found to come and live with me forever.
But this Gretchen!
Her fringe,
Her shoes,
Her ribbons.
Upon my soul,
My dear.
I don't know what girls are coming to nowadays.
Ask Mrs Lynn Linton,
I suggested,
As she paused.
She is a recognised authority on the subject.
The cantankerous old lady stared at me.
And this cow?
She went on.
So you have really tracked him!
You're a wonderful girl,
My dear.
I wish you were a lady's maid.
You'd be worth me any money.
I explained how I had come to hear of Dr Fortescue Langley.
Lady Georgina waxed warm.
Dr Fortescue Langley,
She exclaimed,
The wicked wretch!
But he didn't get my diamonds.
Carried them here in my hand all the way from Wiesbaden.
I wasn't going to leave them for a single day to the tender mercies of that unspeakable Gretchen.
The fool would lose them.
Well,
We'll catch him this time,
Lois,
And we'll give him ten years for it!
"'Ten years?
' Mrs.
Everly cried,
Clasping her hands in horror.
Lady Georgina!
We waited in Mrs Everleigh's dining room,
The old lady and I,
Behind the folding doors.
At three precisely.
Dr Fortescue Langley walked in.
I had difficulty in restraining Lady Georgina from falling upon him prematurely.
He talked a lot of high-flow nonsense to Mrs.
Everly and Elsie about the influences of the planets and the 75 emanations and the eternal wisdom of the East and the medical efficacy of subconscious suggestion.
Excellent patter,
All of it.
Quite as good in its way as the diplomatic patter he had poured forth in the train to Lady Georgina.
It was rich in spheres,
In elements,
In cosmic forces.
At last,
As he was discussing the reciprocal action of the inner self upon the exhalations of the lungs,
We pushed back the door and walked calmly in upon him.
His breath came and went.
The exhalations of the lungs showed visible perturbation.
He rose and stared at us.
For a second,
He lost his composure.
Then,
As bold as brass,
He turned with a cunning smile to Mrs Everleigh.
"'Where on earth did you pick up such acquaintances?
' he inquired,
In a well-simulated tone of surprise.
Yes,
Lady Georgina.
I have met you before,
I admit,
But.
.
.
It can hardly be agreeable to you to reflect under what circumstances.
Lady Georgina was beside herself.
You.
Huh?
She cried,
Confronting him.
Dare to brazen it out!
You miserable sneak!
But you can't bluff me now.
I have the police outside.
Which i regret to confess was a light-hearted fiction.
The police,
He echoed,
Drawing back.
I could see he was frightened.
I had an inspiration again.
That moustache!
I said,
Calmly.
In my most commanding voice.
He clapped his hand to it in horror.
In his agitation,
He managed to pull it a little bit awry.
It looked so absurd hanging there,
All crooked.
But I thought it kinder to him to.
.
.
Remove it altogether.
The thing peeled off with difficulty,
For it was a work of art,
Very firmly and gracefully fastened with sticking plaster,
But it peeled off at last.
And with it the whole of the Counts and Dr Fortescue Langley's distinction.
The man stood revealed.
A very palpable Manservant!
Lady Georgina stared hard at him.
Well… Have I seen you?
Before She murmured slowly.
That face is familiar to me.
Why?
Yes.
You went once to Italy as Mr Marmaduke Ashherd's courier.
I know you now.
Your name is Higginson.
It was a comedown for the Comte de la Roche-sur-l'Arrée.
Yet he swallowed it like a man,
At a single gulp.
Yes,
My lady,
He said,
Fingering his hat nervously.
Now all was up.
You are quite right,
My lady.
But.
.
.
What would you have me do?
Times are hard on us couriers.
Nobody wants us now.
I must take to what I can.
He assumed once more the tone of the Vienna diplomat.
Que voulez-vous,
Madame?
These are revolutionary days.
A man of intelligence must move with the zeitgeist.
Lady Georgina burst into a loud laugh.
Oh!
She cried.
I talked to this lackey from London to Maligny without ever.
.
.
Suspecting him?
Hickinson!
You're a fraud.
But you're a precious,
Clever one.
He bowed.
I am happy to have merited Lady Georgina Forleys.
Commendation,
He answered with his palm on his heart in his grandiose manner.
But I shall hand you over to the police.
All the same,
You are a thief.
And a swindler.
He assumed a comic expression.
Unhappily.
Not a thief,
He objected.
This young lady prevented me from appropriating your diamonds.
Convey,
The wise call it.
I wanted to take your jewel case.
And she put me off with a sandwich tin.
I wanted to make an honest penny out of Mrs Everly.
And she confronts me with your ladyship and tears my moustache off.
Lady Georgina regarded him with a hesitating expression.
But.
I shall.
Called the police,
She said,
Wavering visibly.
De Grijs,
My lady,
De Grijs.
Is it worthwhile?
Pour si peu de choses.
Consider.
Have really affected me.
Nothing.
Will you charge me with having taken,
In error,
A small tin sandwich case?
Value.
11 puns?
An affair of a week's imprisonment.
That is positively all you can bring up against me.
And.
.
.
Brightening up visibly.
I have the case still.
I will return it tomorrow with pleasure to your ladyship.
But the India rubber water bottle I put in,
You have been deceiving Mrs Everly.
It blackens silver and you told her lies in order to extort money under false pretenses.
He shrugged his shoulders.
You are Too clever for me,
Young lady.
He broke out.
Nothing to say to you.
Lady Georgina.
Mrs.
Everly.
You are human.
Let me go.
Reflect.
I have things I could tell that would make both of you look ridiculous.
That journey to Malinet,
Lady Georgina?
Those Indian charms,
Mrs Everly?
Besides.
You have spoiled my game.
Let that suffice you.
I can practice in Switzerland no longer.
Allow me to go in peace.
And I will try.
Once more.
To be.
Indifferent,
Honest.
He backed slowly towards the door.
With his eyes fixed on them.
I stood by and waited.
Inch by inch.
He retreated.
Lady Georgina looked down abstractedly at the carpet.
Mrs Everly looked up abstractedly at the ceiling.
Neither spoke another word.
The Rogue?
Backed out by degrees.
Then he sprang downstairs and,
Before they could decide,
Was well out into the open.
Lady Georgina was the first to break the silence.
After all?
My dear she murmured,
Turning to me.
There was!
A deal of sound English common sense about Dogberry?
I remembered then his charge to the watch to apprehend a rogue.
How,
If I will not stand?
Why then?
Take no note of him,
But let him go.
And presently call the rest of the watch together and thank God.
You are rid of a knave.
When I remembered how Lady Georgina had hobnobbed with the Count.
From Ostend to Malinee.
I agreed.
To a great extent.
Both with her and with Dogbury.
Chapter 5 The Adventure of the Impromptu Mountaineer The explosion and evaporation of Dr Fortescue Langley,
With whom were amalgamated the Comte de La Roche-sur-Larue,
Mr Higginson the courier,
And whatever else that versatile gentleman chose to call himself,
Entailed many results of varying magnitudes.
In the first place,
Mrs Everly ordered a great manner-to.
That,
However,
Mattered little to The Firm,
As I loved to call us,
Because it shocked dear Elsie so.
For,
Of course,
After all her kindness,
We couldn't accept our commission on her purchase,
So that she got her machine cheap for £15 from the maker.
But in the second place,
I declare I am beginning to write like a woman of business,
She decided to run over to England for the summer to see her boy at Portsmouth,
Being certain now that the discolouration of her bangle depended more on the presence of sulphur in the India rubber bottle than on the passing state of her astral body.
Oh gee.
Tis an abrupt descent.
From the inner self to the outer self.
A hot water bottle.
I admit.
But Mrs Everleigh took the plunge with grace,
Like a sensible woman.
Dr Fortescue Langley had been annihilated for her at one blow.
She returned forthwith.
To common sense and England.
What will you do with the chalet while you're away?
Lady Georgina asked when she announced her intention.
You can't shut it up to take care of itself.
Every blessed thing in the place will go to rack and ruin.
Shutting up a house.
Means spoiling it forever.
Why,
I've got a cottage of my own that I let for the summer in the best part of Surrey.
A pretty little place,
Now vacant,
For which,
By the way,
I want a tenant,
If you happen to know of one.
And when it's left empty for a month or two,
Perhaps it would do for me,
Mrs Everleigh suggested,
Jumping at it.
I'm looking out for a furnished house for the summer,
Within easy reach of Portsmouth and London,
For myself and Oliver.
Lady Georgina seized her arm with a face of blank horror.
Mah!
Dear!
" she cried.
For you!
I wouldn't.
Of letting it to you.
A nasty.
Cold,
Unwholesome house on stiff clay soil with detestable drains in the deadliest part of the Weald of Surrey.
Why,
You and your boy would catch your deaths of rheumatism.
"'Is it the one I saw advertised in the Times this morning,
I wonder?
' Mrs Everleigh inquired in a placid voice.
"'Charming furnished house on Holmesdale Common?
' Six bedrooms,
Four reception rooms,
Splendid views,
Pure air,
Picturesque surroundings,
Exceptionally situated.
I thought of writing about it.
That's it,
Lady Georgina exclaimed,
With a demonstrative wave of her hand.
I drew up the advertisement myself.
Exceptionally situated,
I should just think it was.
My dear,
I wouldn't let you rent the place for worlds!
Oh,
Horrid.
Little hole,
Stuck down in the bottom of a boggy hollow,
As damp as Devonshire,
With the paper peeling off the walls,
So that I had to take my choice.
Between giving it up myself 10 years ago or removing to the cemetery.
And I've let it ever since to city men with large families.
Nothing would induce me to allow you and your boy to expose yourself to such risks.
For Lady Georgina had taken quite a fancy to Mrs Everly.
But what I was just going to say was this.
You can't shut your house up.
It'll all go mouldy.
Houses always go mouldy shut up in summer.
And you can't leave it to your servants.
I know the baggages.
No conscience.
No conscience.
They'll ask their entire families to come and stop with them en bloc.
And turn your place into a perfect piggery.
When I went away from my house in town one autumn,
Didn't I leave a policeman?
And his wife in charge?
A most respectable man.
Only he happened to be an Irishman.
And what?
Was the consequence?
My dear,
I assure you I came back unexpectedly from poor dear Kynaston's one day at a moment's notice having quarrelled with him over.
.
.
Home rule or education or something.
Poor dear Kynaston's what they call a liberal,
I believe.
Got at by that man,
Rosebery.
And there didn't I find all the O'Flanagans and O'Flahettys and O'Flins in the neighbourhood.
My drawing room!
With a strong detachment of O'Donoghues and O'Dochettys and O'Driscolls lying around loose in possession of the library.
Never leave a house to the servants,
My dear.
It's positively suicidal.
Put in a responsible caretaker.
Of whom you know something.
Like Lois here,
For instance.
"'Louis!
' Mrs Everleigh echoed.
" Damn me!
That's just the very thing.
What a capital idea.
I never thought of Lois.
She and Elsie might stop on here with Ursula and the gardener.
I protested that if we did,
It was our clear duty to pay a small rent,
But Mrs Everly brushed that aside.
You've robbed yourselves over the bicycle,
She insisted,
And I'm delighted to let you have it.
It's I who ought to pay,
For you'll keep the house dry for me.
I remembered Mr.
Hitchcock.
Mutual advantage benefits you,
Benefits me.
And made no bones about it.
In the end,
Mrs Everleigh set off for England with Cecile.
Leaving Elsie and me in charge of Ursula,
The gardener,
And the chalet.
As for Lady Georgina.
.
.
Having by this time completed her cure at Schlangenbad,
Complexion as usual.
No guinea yellower.
She telegraphed for Gretchen.
I can't do without the idiot.
And hung around Lucerne.
Apparently for no other purpose but to send people up the Brünnig on the hunt for our wonderful new machines.
And so put money in our pockets.
She was much amused when I told her that Aunt Susan,
Who lived,
You will remember,
In respectable indigence at Blackheath,
Had written to expostulate with me on my unladylike conduct in becoming a bicycle commission agent.
Un-ladylike!
The cantankerous old lady exclaimed with warmth,
What does the woman mean?
Has she got no gumption?
It's ladylike,
I suppose,
To be a companion,
Or a governess,
Or a music teacher,
Or something else in the black-thread-glove way in London.
But not to sell bicycles for a good round commission!
My dear.
Between you and me.
I don't see it.
If you had a brother now.
.
.
He might sell cycles,
Or corn a wheat,
Or rig the share market,
Or do anything else he pleased in these days,
And nobody would think the worst of him as long as he made money.
And it's my opinion that what is source for the goose can't be far out for the gander.
And vice versa.
Besides which?
What's the use of trying to be ladylike?
You are a lady child!
And you couldn't help being one.
Why trouble to be like what nature made you?
Tell Aunt Susan from me to put that in her pipe and smoke it.
I did tell Aunt Susan by letter.
Giving Lady Georgina's authority for the statement.
And I really believe it had a consoling effect upon her.
For Aunt Susan is one of those innocent-minded people who cherish a profound respect.
For the opinions and ideas of a lady of title.
Especially where questions of delicacy are concerned.
It calmed her to think that though I,
An officer's daughter,
Had declined upon trade,
I was mixing,
At least,
With the best people.
We had a lovely time at the chalet.
Two girls alone,
Messing just as we pleased in the kitchen,
And learning from Ursula how to concoct pot-au-feu in the most approved Swiss fashion.
We pottered as we women love to potter,
Half the day long.
The other half we spent in riding our cycles about the eternal hills and ensnaring the flies whom Lady Georgina dutifully sent up to us.
She was our decoy duck.
And,
In virtue of her handle,
She decoyed to a marvel.
Indeed,
I sold so many Manitous that I began to entertain a deep respect for my own commercial faculties.
As for Mr Cyrus W.
Hitchcock,
He wrote to me from Frankfurt.
The world continues to revolve on its axis,
The Manitou.
And the machine is booming!
Orders romp in daily.
When you ventilated the suggestion of an agency at Lindbergh.
I concluded at a glance,
You had the material of a first-class businesswoman about you.
But I reckon I did not know what a traveler meant till you started on the road.
I am now enlarging and altering this factory to meet increased demands.
Branch offices in Berlin,
Hamburg,
Krefeld,
And Dusseldorf inspect our stock before dealing elsewhere.
A liberal discount allowed to the trade 200 agents wanted in all towns of Germany If they were every one of them like you,
Miss.
Well,
I guess I would hire the town of Frankfurt for my business premises.
One morning,
After we had spent about a week at the chalet by ourselves,
I was surprised to see a young man with a knapsack on his back walking up the garden path towards our cottage.
Quick,
Else he,
I cried,
Being in a mischievous mood.
Come here with the opera glass.
There's a man in the offing.
What?
Elsie exclaimed,
Shocked,
As usual,
At my levity.
A man!
I answered,
Squeezing her arm.
A man!
A real live man!
A specimen of the masculine gender in the human being.
Man ahoy!
He has come at last,
The lodestar of our existence.
Next minute.
I was sorry I spoke,
For as the man drew nearer,
I perceived that he was endowed with very long legs and a languidly poetical bearing.
That supercilious smile?
That enticing moustache?
Could it be?
Yes!
It was!
Not a doubt of it.
Harold?
!
Tillington!
I grew grave at once.
Harold Tillington.
And the situation.
Was serious.
What can he want here?
I exclaimed,
Drawing back.
Hoo.
Is it?
Elsie asked for being a woman,
She read at once in my altered demeanour the fact that the man was not unknown to me.
Lady Georgina's nephew,
I answered.
With a tell-tale cheek,
I fear.
You remember I mentioned to you that I had met him at Schlangenbad This is really too bad of that wicked old lady Georgina.
She has told him where we lived!
And sent him up to see us.
Perhaps,
Elsie put in,
He wants to charter a bicycle.
I glanced at Elsie sideways.
I had an uncomfortable suspicion that she said it slyly.
Like one who knew he wanted nothing of the sort.
But,
At any rate,
I brushed the suggestion aside,
Frankly.
Nonsense,
I answered.
He wants me,
Not a bicycle.
He came up to us,
Waving his hat.
He did look handsome.
Well,
Miss Cayley,
He cried from afar,
I have tracked you to your lair.
I have found out where you abide.
What a beautiful spot!
And how well you're looking.
This is an unexpected.
.
.
I paused.
He thought I was going to say pleasure.
But I finished it.
Intrusion.
His face fell.
How did you know we were at Lungan?
Mr Tillington.
My respected relative,
He answered laughing.
She mentioned,
Casually,
His eyes met mine,
That you were stopping in a chalet And as I was on my way back to the diplomatic mill,
I thought I might just as well walk over the Grimsel and the Furker and then on to the Gotthard.
The court is at Monza.
So it occurred to me that in passing I might venture to drop in and say,
How do you do to you?
Thank you.
I answered severely.
But my heart spoke otherwise.
I do.
Very well.
And you,
Mr.
Tillington?
Badly.
He echoed.
Badly.
Since you went away from Schlangenbad.
I gazed at his dusty feet.
You are tramping,
I said cruelly.
I suppose you'll get forward for lunch to Meiringen.
I.
.
.
I.
.
.
Did not contemplate it.
Indeed.
Grew bolder.
No.
To say the truth,
I half hoped I might stop and spend the day here with you.
Elsie,
I remarked firmly,
If Mr.
Tillington persists in planting himself upon us like this,
One of us must go and Investigate the kitchen department.
Elsie rose like a lamb.
I have an impression that she gathered we wanted to be left alone.
He turned to me imploringly.
"'Lois!
' he cried,
Stretching out his arms with an appealing air.
I may stay,
Mayn't I?
Bye!
Tried to be stern.
But I fear it was a feeble pretense.
We are two girls alone in a house,
" I answered.
Lady Georgina,
As a matron of experience,
Ought to have protected us.
Merely to give you lunch is almost irregular.
Good diplomatic word.
Irregular.
Stoop.
In these days,
I suppose you may stay.
If you leave early in the afternoon.
That's the utmost I can do for you.
You.
Are not gracious,
He cried,
Gazing at me with A wistful look.
I did not dare to be gracious.
Uninvited guests.
Must not quarrel with their welcome.
I answered severely.
Then the woman in me broke forth,
But.
.
.
Indeed,
Mr Tillington.
I.
.
.
Um,
Glad to see you.
He leaned forward eagerly.
So,
You're not angry with me,
Lois?
I may call you Lois.
I.
.
.
Trembled.
And hesitated.
I.
.
.
I'm not angry with you.
I I like you too much to be ever angry with you.
And I am glad you came,
Just this once,
To see me.
Yes.
When we are alone,
You may call me.
Lois.
He tried to seize my hand.
I withdrew it.
Then.
.
.
I may perhaps hope,
He began,
That some day I shook my head.
No.
No,
I said,
Regretfully.
You.
.
.
Misunderstand me.
I like you.
Very much.
And I like to see you.
As long as you are rich and have prospects like yours,
I could never marry you.
My pride wouldn't let me.
Take that as final.
I looked away.
He bent forward again.
But if I were poor,
He put in eagerly.
Bye!
Hesitated.
Then my heart rose and I gave way.
If ever You are poor.
I faltered.
Penniless.
Hunted.
Friendless.
Come to me,
Harold.
And I will help.
And comfort you.
But not till then.
Not till then.
I implore you.
He leant back and clasped his hands.
You have given me something to live for,
Dear Lois,
He murmured.
I will try.
To be poor.
Penniless,
Hunted,
Friendless.
To win you.
I will try.
And when that day arrives,
I shall come to claim you.
We sat for an hour.
And had A delicious talk about nothing.
But we.
.
.
Understood each other.
Only that artificial barrier divided us.
At the end of the hour,
I heard Elsie coming back by judiciously slow stages from the kitchen to the living room,
Through six feet of passage,
Discoursing audibly to Ursula all the way,
With a tardiness that did honour to her heart and her understanding.
Dear Kind little Elsie.
I believe she had never a tiny romance of her own,
Yet her sympathy for others was sweet to look upon.
We lunched at a small deal table in the veranda.
Around us rose the pinnacles.
The scent of pines and moist moss was in the air.
Elsie had arranged the flowers,
And got ready the omelette,
And cooked the chicken cutlets,
And prepared the junket.
I never thought I could do it alone without you,
Brownie.
I tried and it all came right by magic somehow.
We laughed and talked incessantly.
Harold was in excellent queue.
And Elsie took to him.
A livelier or merrier table there wasn't in the twenty-two cantons that day than ours under the sapphire sky,
Looking out on the sun-smitten snows of the Jungfrau.
After lunch,
Harold BANG!
Hard to be allowed to stop.
Fatigue.
I had misgivings,
But I gave way.
He was such good company.
One may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,
Says the wisdom of our ancestors.
And after all,
Mrs Grundy was only represented here by Elsie.
The gentlest and least censorious of her daughters.
So.
.
.
He stopped and chatted till four.
When I made tea and insisted on dismissing him.
He meant to take the rough mountain path over the screes from Lungern to Meieringen,
Which ran right behind the chalet.
I feared lest he might be belated,
And urged him to hurry.
Thanks,
I'm happier here,
" he answered.
I was sternness itself.
You promised me,
I said in a reproachful voice.
He rose instantly and bowed.
Your will is law.
Even when it pronounces sentence of exile.
Would we walk a little way with him?
No,
I faltered.
We would not.
We would follow him with the opera glasses and wave him farewell when he reached the column.
He shook our hands.
Unwillingly.
And turned up the little path.
Looking handsomer than ever.
It led ascending through a fir wood to the rock-strewn hillside.
Once,
A quarter of an hour later,
We caught a glimpse of him near a sharp turn in the road.
After that,
We waited in vain,
With our eyes fixed on the cold.
Not a sign.
Could we discern of him?
At last,
I grew anxious.
He ought to be there,
I cried.
Few me!
He ought,
Elsie answered.
I swept the slopes with the opera glasses.
Anxiety and interest in him quickened my senses,
I suppose.
Look here,
Elsie.
I burst out at last.
Just take this glass and have a glance at those birds down the crag below the cone.
Don't they seem to be circling?
And behaving most oddly?
Elsie gazed where I bid her.
The.
Wheeling round and round,
" she answered after a minute.
And they certainly do look as if they were screaming.
They seem to be frightened,
I suggested.
It looks like it,
Brownie.
Then he's fallen over a precipice,
I cried,
Rising up,
And he's lying there on a ledge by their nest.
Elsie!
We must go to him!
She clasped her hands and looked terrified.
Oh!
Me.
She exclaimed.
Her face was deadly white.
Mine burned like fire.
Not a moment to lose,
I said,
Holding my breath.
Get out the rope and.
.
.
Let us run to him.
Don't you think,
Elsie suggested,
We had better hurry down on our cycles to Lungan and call some men from the village to help us?
We are two girls and alone.
What can we do to aid him?
No,
I answered promptly.
That won't do.
It would only lose time and time may be precious.
You and I must go.
I'll send Ursula off to bring up guides from the village.
Fortunately,
We had a good long coil of new rope in the house,
Which Mrs Everleigh had provided in case of accident.
I slipped it on my arm and set out on foot,
For the path was by far too rough for cycles.
I was sorry afterwards that I had not taken Ursula.
And sent Elsie to Lungen to rouse the men.
For she found the climbing hard.
And I had difficulty at times in dragging her up the steep and stony pathway.
Almost a watercourse.
However,
We persisted in the direction of the colm,
Tracking Harold by his footprints,
For he wore mountain boots with sharp-headed nails,
Which made dints in the moist soil and scratched the smooth surface of the rock where he trod on it.
We followed him thus for a mile or two along the regular path,
Then,
All of a sudden,
In an open path,
The trail failed us.
I turned back a few yards and looked close,
With my eyes fixed on the spongy soil,
As keen as a hound that sniffs his way after his quarry.
He went off here,
Elsie,
I said at last,
Pulling up short by a spindle bush on the hillside.
How do you know,
Brownie?
Why,
See,
There are the marks of his stick.
He had a thick one,
You remember,
With a square iron spike.
These are its dints.
I've been watching them all the way along from the chalet.
But there are so many such marks.
Yes,
I know.
I can tell his from the older ones,
Made by the spikes of alpenstocks,
Because Harold's are fresher and sharper on the edge.
They look so much newer.
See?
Here,
He slipped on the rock.
You can know that scratch is recent by the clean way it's traced.
And the little glistening crystals still left behind in it.
Those other marks have been windswept and washed by the rain.
There are no broken particles.
How on earth did you find that out,
Brownie?
Now on earth.
Did I find it out?
I wondered myself,
But the emergency seemed somehow to teach me something of the instinctive lore of hunters and savages.
I did not trouble to answer her.
At this bush the tracks fail,
I went on.
And look!
He must have clutched at that branch and crushed the broken leaves as the twigs slipped through his fingers.
He left the path here then.
And struck off on a shortcut of his own along the hillside,
Lower down.
And see?
We must follow him.
She shrank from it.
But I held her hand.
It was a more difficult task to track him now,
For we had no longer the path to guide us.
However,
I explored the ground on my hands and knees and soon found marks of footsteps on the boggy patches,
With scratches on the rock where he had leapt from point to point or planted his stick to steady himself.
I tried to help Elsie along among the littered boulders and the dwarf growth of windswept Daphne.
But poor child,
It was too much for her.
She sat down after a few minutes upon the flat juniper scrub.
And began to cry.
What was I to do?
My anxiety was breathless.
I couldn't leave her there alone.
And I couldn't forsake Harold.
Yet I felt every minute might now be critical.
We were making among wet,
Wattleberry thicket and torn rock.
Towards the spot where I had seen the birds wheel and circle,
Screaming.
The only way left.
Was to encourage Elsie and make her feel the necessity for instant action.
He is alive still,
I exclaimed,
Looking up.
The birds are crying.
If he were dead,
They would return to their nest.
Elsie,
We must get to him.
She rose,
Bewildered,
And followed me.
I held her hand tight and coaxed her to scramble over the rocks where the scratches showed the way,
Or to clamber at times over fallen trunks of huge fir trees.
Yet it was hard work climbing.
Even Harold's sure feet had slipped often on the wet and slimy boulders,
Though,
Like most of Queen Margarita's set,
He was an expert mountaineer.
Then,
At times,
I lost the faint track,
So that I had to diverge and look close to find it.
These delays fretted me.
See?
A stone loosed from its bed.
He must have passed by here.
That twig is newly snapped.
No doubt he caught at it.
Ha!
The moss there has been crushed,
A foot has gone by,
And the ants on that ant hill with their eggs in their mouths,
A man's tread has frightened them.
So,
By some instinctive sense,
As if the spirit of my savage ancestors revived within me,
I managed to recover the spore again and again by.
.
.
A miracle.
Till,
At last,
Round a corner,
By a defiant cliff,
With a terrible foreboding,
My heart stood still within me.
We had come to an end.
A great projecting buttress of crag rose sheer in front Above lay loose boulders.
Below was a shrub-hung precipice.
The birds we had seen from home were still circling and screaming.
They were a pair of peregrine hawks.
Their nest seemed to lie far below the broken scar,
Some sixty or seventy feet beneath us.
He is not dead!
I cried once more with my heart in my mouth.
If he were,
They would have returned.
He has fallen.
And is lying alive below,
There.
Elsie shrank back against the wall of rock.
I advance on my hands and knees to the edge of the precipice.
It was not quite sheer,
But it dropped like a sea cliff with broken ledges.
I could see where Harold had slipped.
He had tried to climb round the crag that blocked the road,
And the ground at the edge of the precipice had given way with him.
It showed a recent founder of a few inches.
Then he clutched at a branch of broom as he fell,
But it slipped through his fingers,
Cutting them,
For there was blood on the wiry stems.
I knelt by the side of the cliff and craned my head over.
I scarcely dared to look.
In spite of the birds,
My heart misgave me.
There,
On a ledge deep below.
You laddie!
In a mass,
Half raised on one arm.
Not dead.
I believed.
Harold!
I cried,
Harold!
He turned his face up.
And saw me,
His eyes lighted with joy.
He shouted back.
Something but I could not hear it.
I turn to Elsie.
I must go down to him.
Ah,
Tears rose again.
Oh,
Brownie!
I unwound the coil of rope.
The first thing was to fasten it.
I could not trust Elsie to hold it.
She was too weak and too frightened to bear my weight.
Even if I wound it round her body,
I feared my mere mass might drag her over.
I peered about at the surroundings.
No tree grew near.
No rock had a pinnacle sufficiently safe to depend upon.
But I found a plan soon.
In the crag behind me was a cleft.
Narrowing wedge shape as it descended.
I tied the end of the rope round a stone,
A good,
Big,
Water-worn stone,
Rudely girdled with a groove near the middle,
Which prevented it from slipping.
Then I dropped it down the fissure till it jammed,
After which I tried it to see if it would bear.
It was firm as the rock itself.
I let the rope down by it and waited a moment to discover whether Harold could climb.
He shook his head.
And took a notebook with evident pain from his pocket.
Then he scribbled a few words and pinned them to the rope.
I hold it up.
Can't move,
Either severely bruised and sprained or else legs broken.
There was no help for it then.
I must go to him.
My first idea was merely to glide down the rope with my gloved hands before I chanced to have my dogskin bicycling gloves in my pocket.
Fortunately,
However,
I did not carry out this crude idea too hastily.
For next instant it occurred to me that I could not swarm up again.
I have had no practice in rope climbing.
Here was a problem.
But the moment suggested its own solution.
I began making knots,
Or rather nooses or loops in the rope at intervals of about 18 inches.
What are they for?
Elsie asked,
Looking on in wonder.
Footholds to climb up by.
But the ones above will pull out with your weight.
I don't think so.
Still,
To make sure,
I shall tie them with this string.
I must get down to him.
I threaded a sufficient number of loops,
Trying the length over the edge.
Then I said to Elsie,
Who sat cowering,
Propped against the crag,
You must come and look over and do as I wave to you.
Mind,
Dear,
You must.
Two lives depend upon it.
Brownie.
I didn't!
I shall turn giddy and fall over.
I smoothed her golden hair.
Elsie,
Dear,
I said gently,
Gazing into her blue eyes.
You are a woman.
A woman can always be brave where those she loves are concerned.
And I believe you love me.
I led her coaxingly to the edge.
Sit there,
I said,
In my quietest voice,
So as not to alarm her.
You can lie at full length if you like and only just peep over.
But when I wave my hand,
Remember,
You must pull the rope up.
She obeyed me like a child.
I knew she loved me.
I gripped the rope and let myself down,
Not using the loops to descend,
But just sliding with hands and knees and allowing the knots to slacken my pace.
Halfway down,
I will confess the eerie feeling of physical suspense.
Was horrible.
One hung so,
In mid-air,
The hawks flapped their wings,
But.
.
.
Harold was below.
And a woman can always be brave where those she loves Well.
.
.
Just that moment.
Catching my breath.
I knew.
Bye.
Loved.
Harold.
I glided down swiftly.
The air whizzed.
At last,
On a narrow shelf of rock,
I leant over him.
He seized my hand.
I knew you would come,
He cried.
I felt sure you would find out.
How you found out.
Heaven only knows.
You're clever.
Brave little woman.
Are you terribly hurt?
I asked,
Bending close.
His clothes were torn.
I hardly know.
I can't move.
It may only be bruises.
Can you climb by these nooses with my help?
He shook his head.
Oh.
No.
Couldn't climb at all.
I must be lifted somehow.
You had better go back to Lungen and bring men to help you and leave you here alone.
Never,
Harold,
Never.
When.
What can we do?
Bye!
Reflected a moment.
Lend me your pencil,
I said.
He pulled it out.
His arms were almost unhurt,
Fortunately.
I scribbled a line to Elsie.
Tie my plaid to the rope and let it down.
Then I waved to her to pull up again.
I was half surprised to find she obeyed the signal,
For she crouched there,
White-faced and open-mouthed,
Watching.
But I have often observed that women are almost always brave in the great emergencies.
She pinned on the plaid and let it down with commendable quickness.
I doubled it and tied firm knots in the four corners so as to make it into a sort of basket.
Then I fastened it at each corner with a piece of the rope,
Crossed in the middle till it looked like this.
One of the cages they use in mills for letting down sacks with.
As soon as it was finished I said,
Now just try to crawl into it.
He raised himself on his arms and crawled in with difficulty.
His legs dragged after him.
I could see he was in great pain.
But still,
He managed it.
I planted my foot in the first noose.
You must sit still,
I said,
Breathless.
I am going back to haul you up.
Are you?
Strong enough,
Lois?
With Elsie to help me.
Yes.
I often stroked a four at Girton.
I can trust you?
" he answered.
It thrilled me that he said so.
I began my hazardous journey.
I mounted the rope by the nooses,
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Counting them as I mounted.
I did not dare to look up or down as I did so,
Lest I should grow giddy and fall.
Kept my eyes fixed firmly,
Always,
On the one noose in front of me.
My brain swam.
The rope swayed and creaked.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Forty.
Foot after foot.
I slipped them in mechanically,
Taking up with me the longer coil whose ends were attached to the cape.
And Harold.
My hands trembled.
It was.
Ghastly,
Swinging there between earth and heaven.
Forty-five,
Forty-six,
Forty-seven.
I knew there were forty-eight of them.
At last.
After some weeks,
As it seemed,
I reached the summit.
Tremulous and half-dead,
I prized myself over the edge with my hands and knelt once more on the hill beside Elsie.
She was white.
But attentive.
What next,
Brownie?
A voice quivered.
I looked about me.
I was too faint and shaky after my perilous ascent to be fit for work.
But there was no help for it.
What could I use as a pulley?
Not a tree grew near.
Part.
The stone jammed in the fissure might once more serve my purpose.
I tried it again.
It had borne my weight.
Was it strong enough to bear the precious weight of Harold?
I tugged at it.
And thought so.
I passed the rope round it like a pulley,
And then tied it about my own waist.
I had a happy thought.
I could use myself as a windlass!
I turned on my feet for a pivot.
Elsie helped me to post.
Up you go!
I cried cheerily.
We wound slowly for fear of shaking him.
Bit by bit,
I could feel the cage rise gradually from the ground.
Its weight,
Taken so with living capstan and stone axle,
Was less than I should have expected.
But the pulley helped us,
And Elsie,
Spurred by need,
Put forth more reserve of nervous strength than I could easily have believed lay in that tiny body.
I twisted myself round and round,
Close to the edge,
So as to look over from time to time,
But not at all quickly,
For fear of dizziness.
The rope shook restrained and gave,
It was a deadly ten minutes of suspense and anxiety.
Twice or thrice as I looked down I saw a spasm of pain break over Harold's face.
But when I paused and glanced inquiringly,
He motioned me to go on with my venturesome task.
There was no turning back now.
We had almost got him up.
When the rope at the edge began to creep.
Ominously.
It was straining at the point where it grated against the brink of the precipice.
My heart gave a leap.
If the rope broke,
All was over.
With a sudden dart forward,
I seized it with my hands,
Below the part that gave.
Then one fierce little run back,
And I brought him level with the edge.
He clutched at Elsie's hand.
I turned thrice round to wind the slack about my body.
The taut rope cut deep into my flesh,
But nothing mattered now except to save him.
Catch the cloak,
Elsie!
Cried.
Catch it!
Pull him gently in!
LC.
Caught it!
And pulled him in with wonderful pluck and calmness.
We hauled him over the edge.
He lay.
Safe.
On the bank.
We all three broke down and cried like children together.
I took his hand in mine and held it.
In silence.
When we found words again.
I drew a deep breath and said simply,
How?
Did you manage?
To do it.
I tried to clamber past the wall.
The bar to the way there.
Bye.
Sheer force of stride.
You know,
My legs are long and I somehow overbalanced myself.
But I didn't exactly fall.
If I had fallen,
I must have been killed.
I rolled and slid down.
Clutching at the weeds in the crannies as I slipped and stumbling over the projections.
Quite losing my foothold on the ledges.
Until I.
.
.
I found myself brought up short with a.
.
.
Bump at the end of it.
And you think no bones are broken?
I can't feel sure.
It hurts me.
Horribly to move.
I fancied just at first I must have fainted.
But I'm inclined to guess I'm only sprained and bruised and sore all over.
Why?
You're as bad as me,
I believe.
See?
Your dear Hansa.
Or torn.
Bleeding?
How are we ever to get him back again,
Brownie?
Elsie put in.
She was paler than ever now,
And prostrate with the after-effects of her unwanted effort.
You are a practical woman,
Elsie,
I answered.
Stop with him here a minute or two.
I'll climb up the hillside and halloo for Ursula and the men.
From Lungan.
I climbed and hallooed.
In a few minutes,
Worn out as I was,
I had reached the path above and attracted their attention.
They hurried down to where Harold lay,
And,
Using my cage for a litter slung on a young fir trunk,
Carried him back between them,
Across their shoulders,
To the village.
He pleaded hard to be allowed to remain at the chalet.
And Elsie joined her prayers to his.
But there I was adamant.
It was not so much what people might say that I minded,
But a deeper difficulty.
For if once I nursed him through this trouble,
How could I?
Or any woman in my place any longer,
Refuse him.
I passed him ruthlessly on to Lungan,
Though my heart ached for it.
And telegraphed at once to his nearest relative,
Lady Georgina,
To come up and take care of him.
He recovered rapidly.
Though sore and shaken,
His worst hurts,
It turned out,
Were sprains.
And in three or four days he was ready to go on again.
I called to see him before he left.
I dreaded the interview.
For one's own heart is a hard enemy to fight so long.
But how could I let him go without one word of farewell to him?
After this,
Lois,
He said,
Taking my hand in his,
And I was weak enough for a moment to let it lie there.
You cannot say no to me.
Oh,
How I longed to fling myself upon him and cry out,
No,
Harold,
I cannot.
I love you too dearly.
With his future.
And Marmaduke Ashurst's half million.
Restrained me.
For his sake,
And for my own,
I held myself in,
Courageously.
Though indeed it needed some courage and self-control.
I withdrew my hand slowly.
Do you remember?
I said.
You asked me that first day at Schlangenbad.
It was an epoch to me now,
That first day.
Whether I was medieval or modern.
And I answered,
Modern,
I hope.
And you said,
That's well.
You see,
I don't forget the least things you say to me.
Well.
Because I am modern.
My lips trembled and belied me.
I can answer you.
No.
I can,
Even now,
Refuse you.
The old-fashioned girl.
Medieval girl would have held that because she saved your life.
If I did save your life,
Which is a matter of opinion,
She was bound to marry you.
I am modern.
And I see things differently.
If there were reasons at Schlangenbad which made it impracticable for me to accept you,
Though my heart pleaded hard,
I do not deny it,
Those reasons cannot have disappeared merely because you have chosen to fall over a precipice and I have pulled you up again.
My decision was founded,
You see,
Not on passing accidents of situation but on permanent considerations.
Nothing has happened in the last three days to affect those considerations.
We are still ourselves.
You.
Rich.
Penniless adventurous I could not accept you when you asked me at Schlangenbad.
On just the same grounds.
I cannot accept you now.
I do not see how the unessential fact that I made myself into a winch to pull you up the cliff And.
.
.
But.
.
.
I'm still smarting for it!
He looked me all over comically.
How severe we are,
He cried in a bantering tone.
And how extremely skirtiny A system of logic.
Ratiocinative and Inductive by Lois Cayley What a pity we didn't take a professor's chair!
My child.
That isn't you.
It's not yourself at all.
It's an attempt to be unnaturally and unfemininely reasonable.
Logic.
Lid.
I broke down.
Utterly.
Harold,
I cried,
Rising.
I love you.
I admit,
I love you.
I will never marry you.
While you have those thousands.
I haven't got them yet,
Or the chance of inheriting them.
He smothered my hand with kisses.
For I withdrew my face.
If you admit you love me,
He cried quite joyously,
Then all is well.
When once a woman admits that the rest is but a matter of time.
And Lois.
I can wait a thousand years for you.
Not in my case.
I answered through my tears.
Not in my case,
Harold!
I am a modern woman.
And what I say I mean.
I will renew my promise.
If ever.
You are poor.
And friendless.
Come to me.
I am yours.
Till then.
Don't harrow me by asking me the impossible.
I tore myself away.
At the hall door,
Lady Georgina intercepted me.
She glanced at my red eyes.
Then you have taken him,
She cried,
Seizing my hand.
I shook my head firmly.
I could hardly speak.
No.
Lady Georgina.
I answered in a choking voice,
I have refused him.
Again.
I will not stand in his way.
I will not.
Ruin his prospects.
She drew back and let her chin drop.
Wow.
Of all the hard-hearted.
Hooray!
Obdurate young women I ever saw in my born days if you're not the very hardest.
I half ran from the house.
I hurried home to the chalet.
There,
I dashed into my own room,
Locked the door behind me,
Flung myself wildly on my bed,
And burying my face in my hands had a good long time.
Hard-hearted,
Cruel,
Obdurate cry.
Exactly like any other medieval woman.
It's all very well being modern.
But my experience is that when it comes to a man one loves,
Well.
The Middle Ages are still horribly strong within us.
Chapter 6 The Adventure of the Urbane Old Gentleman When Elsie's holidays,
I beg pardon,
Vacation,
Came to an end,
She proposed to return to her high school in London.
Zeal for the higher mathematics devoured her.
But she still looked so frail and coughed so often,
A perfect Campo Santo of a cough.
In spite of her sum of open-air exercise that I.
.
.
Positively worried her into consulting a doctor.
Not one of the Fortescue Langley order,
The report he gave was mildly unfavourable.
He spoke disrespectfully of the apex of her right lung.
It was not exactly tubercular,
He remarked,
But he feared tuberculosis.
Excuse the long words.
The phrase was his,
Not mine.
I repeat verbatim.
He vetoed her,
Exposing herself to a winter in London in her present unstable condition.
Davos?
Well,
No,
Not Davos with deliberative thumb and finger on close-shaven chin.
He judged her too delicate for such drastic remedies.
Those high mountain stations suited best the robust invalid who had dropped by accident into casual thysis.
For Miss Petheridge's case,
Looking wise.
He would not recommend the Riviera,
Either.
Too stimulating.
Too exciting!
What this young lady needed most was rest.
Rest in some agreeable southern town,
Some city of the soul,
Say Rome or Florence,
Where she might find much to interest her,
And might forget the apex of her right lung,
In the new world of art that opened around her.
Very well,
I said promptly.
That's settled,
Elsie.
The apex and you shall winter in Florence.
What?
Brownie?
Can we afford it?
Afford it,
I echoed.
Goodness gracious,
My dear child.
Bourgeois sentiment.
Your medical attendant says to you,
Go to Florence,
And to Florence you must go.
There's no getting out of it.
Why,
Even the swallows fly south when their medical attendant tells them England is turning a trifle too cold for them.
But what will Miss Latimer say?
She depends upon me to come back at the beginning of term.
She must have somebody to undertake the higher mathematics.
And she will get somebody,
Dear,
" I answered calmly.
Don't trouble your sweet little head about that.
An eminent statistician has calculated that 530 duly qualified young women are now standing foursquare in a solid phalanx in the streets of London,
All agog to teach the higher mathematics.
To anyone who wants them at a moment's notice.
Let Miss Latimer take her pick.
Of the 530.
I'll wire to her at once.
Elsie Petheridge,
Unable through ill health to resume her duties,
Ordered to Florence,
Resigns post engage substitute.
That's the way to do it.
Elsie clasped her small white hands in the despair of the woman who considers herself indispensable as if we were any of us indispensable.
Dearest!
Girls!
They'll be so disappointed!
They'll get over it,
I answered grimly.
There are worse disappointments in store for them in life.
Which is a fine,
Old,
Crusted platitude worthy of Aunt Susan.
Anyhow,
I've decided.
Look here,
Elsie.
I stand to you in loco parentis.
I have already remarked,
I think,
That she was three years my senior.
I was so pleased with this phrase that I repeated it lovingly.
I stand to you dear in loco parentis.
Now,
I can't let you endanger your precious health by returning to town and Miss Latimer this winter.
Let us be categorical.
I go to Florence.
You go with me.
What shall we live upon?
Elsie suggested piteously.
Are fellow creatures as usual?
" I answered with prompt callousness.
I object to these base utilitarian considerations being imported into the discussion of a serious question.
Florence!
Is the city of art.
As a woman of culture,
It behooves you to revel in it.
Your medical attendant sends you there.
As a patient and an invalid,
You can revel with a clear conscience.
Money.
Wow.
Money is.
.
.
A secondary matter.
All philosophies and all religions agree that money Isn't he a dross?
Filthy lucra!
Rise superior to it.
We have a fair sum in hand,
To the credit of the firm.
We can pick up some more,
I suppose,
In Florence.
How?
I reflected.
Elsie,
I said,
You are deficient in faith.
Which is one of the leading Christian graces.
My mission in life is to correct that want in your spiritual nature.
Observe how beautifully all these events work in together.
The winter comes when no man can bicycle,
Especially in Switzerland.
Therefore,
What is the use of my stopping on here after October?
Again,
In pursuance of my general plan of going round the world,
I must get forward to Italy.
Your medical attendant considerably orders you,
At the same time,
To Florence.
In Florence we shall still have chances of selling Manitous.
Though possibly,
I admit,
In diminished numbers.
I confess at once that people come to Switzerland to tour and are therefore liable to need our machines.
Well,
They go to Florence to look at pictures and a bicycle would doubtless prove inconvenient.
And then you fix it,
Or the pity.
Still,
We may sell a few.
But.
.
.
I describe another opening.
You write shorthand,
Don't you?
Oh,
Little dear,
Only 90 words a minute.
That's not business.
Advertise yourself.
A la Cyrus Hitchcock,
Say boldly,
I write shorthand.
Leave the world to ask how fast.
It will ask it quick enough without your suggesting it.
My idea is this.
Florence is a town teeming with English tourists of the cultivated classes.
Men of letters,
Painters,
Antiquaries,
Art critics,
I suppose even art critics may be classed as cultivated.
Such people are sure to need literary aid.
We exist to supply it.
We will set up the Florentine School of Stenography and Typewriting.
Or buy a couple of typewriters.
How can we pay for them,
Brownie?
I gazed at her in despair.
Elsie!
I cried.
Clapping my hands to my head.
You are not practical.
Did I ever suggest we should pay for them?
I said merely buy them.
Base is the slave that pays.
That's Shakespeare.
And we all know Shakespeare is the mirror of nature.
Argyle,
It would be unnatural to pay for a typewriter.
We will!
Hire a room in Florence,
On tick of course,
And begin operations.
Clients will flock in and we tide over the winter.
There's enterprise for you.
" And I struck an attitude.
Elsie's face looked her doubts.
I walked across to Mrs Everleigh's desk and began writing a letter.
It occurred to me.
.
.
That Mr.
Hitchcock who was a man of business might be able to help a woman of business in this delicate matter.
I put the point to him fairly and squarely,
Without circumlocution.
We were going to start an English typewriting office in Florence.
What was the ordinary way for people to become possessed of a typewriting machine without the odious and mercenary preliminary of paying for it?
The answer came back with commendable promptitude.
Dear Miss,
Your spirit of enterprise is really remarkable.
I have forwarded your letter to my friends of the Spread Eagle Typewriting and Phonograph Company Limited of New York City,
Informing them of your desire to open an agency for the sale of their machines in Florence,
Italy,
And giving them my estimate of your business capacities.
I have advised their London house to present you with two complimentary machines for your own use and your partner's.
And also to supply a number of others for disposal in the city of Florence.
If you would further like to undertake an agency for the development of the trade in salt cod fish large quantities of which are of course consumed in catholic europe I could put you in a communication with my respected friends,
Monsieurs Abel,
Woodward,
And Co.
,
Exporters of preserved provisions,
St.
John,
Newfoundland,
But Perhaps in this suggestion,
I am not sufficiently high-toned.
Respectfully,
Cyrus W.
Hitchcock The moment had arrived for Elsie to be firm.
Have no prejudice against trade,
Brownie,
" she observed emphatically,
But I do draw the line at salt fish.
So do I,
Dear,
" I answered.
She sighed her relief.
I really believe she half expected to find me trotting about Florence with miscellaneous samples of Moncieu's,
Abel,
Woodward's esteemed productions protruding from my pocket.
So,
To Florence we went.
My first idea was to travel by the Brenner route through to Tyrol,
But a queer little episode which met us at the outset on the Austrian frontier put a check to this plan.
We cycled to the border,
Sending our trunks on by rail.
When we went to claim them at the Austrian Custom House,
We were told they were detained for political reasons.
Political reasons?
I exclaimed.
Nonplussed.
Even so,
Frowline,
Your boxes contain revolutionary literature.
Some mistake,
I cried warmly.
I am but a drawing-room socialist.
Not at all.
Look here.
And he drew a small book out of Elsie's portmanteau.
What?
Elsie?
A conspirator?
Elsie in league with Nihilists,
So mild and so meek.
I could never have believed it!
I took the book in my hands and read the title,
Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies.
This is astronomy,
I burst out.
Don't you see?
Sun and star circling?
The revolution of the planets?
It matters not,
Frowline.
Our instructions are strict.
We have orders to intercept all revolutionary literature without distinction.
Come,
Elsie,
I said firmly,
This is too ridiculous.
Let us give them a clear berth,
These kaiserly,
Kingly blockheads.
So we registered our luggage right back to Lucerne and cycled over the Gotthard.
When at last,
By leisurely stages,
We arrived at Florence,
I felt there was no use in doing things by halves.
If you are going to start the Florentine school of stenography and typewriting,
You may as well start it on a proper basis.
So I took sunny rooms at a nice hotel for myself and Elsie,
And hired a ground floor in a convenient house close under the shadow of the great marble campanile.
Considerations of space compel me to curtail the usual gush about Anolfo and Giotto.
This was our office.
When I had got a Tuscan painter to plant our flag in the shape of a signboard,
I sailed forth into the street and inspected it from outside with a swelling heart.
It is true,
The Tuscan painter's unaccountable predilection for the rare spellings school without an H and stenography with an F somewhat damped my exuberant pride for the moment,
But I made him take the board back and correct his Italianate English.
As soon as all was fitted up with desk and tables,
We reposed upon our laurels and waited only for customers in shoals to pour in upon us.
I called them customers.
Elsie maintained that we ought rather to say clients.
Being by temperament averse to sectarianism,
I did not dispute the point with her.
We reposed on our laurels.
In vain.
Neither customers nor clients seemed in any particular hurry to disturb our leisure.
I confess,
I took this ill.
It was a rude awakening.
I had begun to regard myself as the special favourite of a fairy godmother.
It surprised me to find that any undertaking of mine did not succeed immediately.
However.
.
.
Reflecting that my fairy godmother's name was really Enterprise.
I recalled Mr Cyrus W.
Hitchcock's advice and Advertised.
There's one good thing about Florence Elsie,
I said,
Just to keep up her courage.
When the customers do come,
There'll be interesting people and it will be interesting work.
Artistic work,
Don't you know?
Fra Angelico and Della Robbia and all that sort of thing.
Or else fresh light on Dante and Petrarch.
When they do come.
No doubt.
Elsie answered dubiously.
But do you know,
Brownie,
It strikes me there isn't quite that literary stir and ferment one might expect in Florence.
Dante and Petrarch appear to be dead.
The distinguished authors fail to stream in upon us as one imagined with manuscripts to copy.
I affected an air of confidence.
For I had sunk capital in the concern.
That's businesslike.
Sunk capital.
Oh!
"'We're a new firm,
' I assented carelessly.
Enterprise is yet young.
When Cultivated Florence learns we're here,
Cultivated Florence will invade us in its thousands.
But we sat in our office and bit our thumbs all day.
The thousands stopped at home.
We had ample opportunities for making studies of the decorative detail on the Campanile,
Till we knew every square inch of it better than Mr Ruskin.
Elsie's notebook contains,
I believe,
1100 separate sketches of the Campanile.
From the right end,
The left end,
And the middle of our window,
With 805 distinct distortions of the individual statues that adorn its niches on the side turned towards us.
At last,
After we had sat and bitten our thumbs and sketched the four greater prophets for a fortnight on end,
An immense excitement occurred.
An old gentleman was distinctly seen to approach and to look up at the signboard which decorated our office.
I instantly slipped in a sheet of Foolscap and began to typewrite with alarming speed.
Click,
Click,
Click.
While Elsie,
Rising to the occasion,
Set to work to transcribe imaginary shorthand as if her life depended upon it.
The old gentleman,
After a moment's hesitation,
Lifted the latch of the door somewhat nervously.
I affected to take no notice of him.
So breathless was the haste with which our immense business connection compelled me to finger the keyboard,
But looking up at him under my eyelashes,
I could just make out he was a peculiarly bland and urbane old person.
Dressed with the greatest care,
And some attention to fashion.
His face was smooth.
It tended towards portliness.
He made up his mind and entered the office.
I continued to click till I had reached the close of a sentence,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.
Then I looked up sharply.
Can I do anything for you?
I inquired in the smartest tone of business.
I observed that politeness is not professional.
The urbane old gentleman came forward with his hat in his hand.
He looked as if he had just landed from the 18th century.
His figure was that of Mr.
Edward Gibbons.
"'Yes,
Madame,
' he said,
In a markedly deferential tone,
Fussing about with the rim of his hat as he spoke,
And adjusting his pince-nez.
I was recommended to your.
.
.
Your establishment for shorthand and typewriting.
I have some work which I wish done if it falls within your province but I am rather particular.
I require a quick worker.
Excuse my asking it,
But how many words can you do a minute?
Shorthand,
I asked sharply,
For I wished to imitate official habits.
The urbane old gentleman bowed.
Yes,
Shorthand,
Certainly.
I waved my hand with careless grace towards Elsie,
As if these things happened to us daily.
Miss Petheridge undertakes the shorthand department,
I said,
With decision.
I am the typewriting from dictation.
Miss Petheridge,
Forward.
Elsie rose to it like an angel.
"'A hundred,
' she answered,
Confronting him.
The old gentleman bowed again.
"'And your terms?
' he inquired in a honey-tongued voice.
"'If I may venture to ask them—' We handed him our printed tariff.
He seemed satisfied.
Could you spare me an hour this morning?
" he asked,
Still fingering his hat nervously with his puffy hand.
But perhaps you are engaged.
I fear I intrude upon you.
Not at all,
I answered,
Consulting an imaginary engagement list.
This work can wait.
Let me see.
11.
30 Elsie,
I think you have nothing to do before one that cannot be put off?
Quite so.
Very well then.
Yes,
We are both at your service.
The urbane old gentleman looked about him for a seat.
I pushed him our one easy chair He withdrew his gloves with great deliberation and sat down in it with an apologetic glance.
I could gather from his dress and his diamond pin that he was wealthy.
Indeed.
I half guessed who he was already.
There was a fussiness about his manner which seemed strangely familiar to me.
He sat down by slow degrees,
Edging himself about till he was thoroughly comfortable.
I could see he was of the kind that will have comfort.
He took out his notes and a packet of letters which he sorted slowly.
Then he looked hard at me and at Elsie.
He seemed to be making his choice between us.
After a time,
He spoke.
I think,
He said in a most leisurely voice,
I will not trouble your friend to write shorthand for me after all.
Or should I say your assistant?
Excuse my change of plan.
I will content myself with dictation.
You can follow on the machine.
As fast as you choose to dictate to me,
He glanced at his notes and began a letter.
It was a curious communication.
It seemed to be all about buying Bertha and selling Clara.
A cold-blooded proceeding which almost suggested Slave dealing.
I gathered he was giving instructions to his agent.
Could he have business relations with Cuba,
I wondered?
But there were also hints of mysterious Middies.
Brave British Tars to the rescue,
Possibly?
Perhaps my bewilderment showed itself upon my face,
For at last he looked queerly at me.
You don't quite like this,
I'm afraid,
" he said,
Raking off short.
I was the soul of business.
Not at all,
I answered.
I am an automaton,
Nothing more.
It is a typewriter's function to transcribe the words a client dictates as if they were absolutely meaningless to her.
Quite right,
He answered approvingly.
Quite right.
I see you understand.
A very proper spirit.
Then the woman within me got the better of the typewriter,
Though I confess,
I continued,
I do feel it is a little unkind to sell Clara at once for whatever she will fetch.
It seems to me.
.
.
Wow.
I'm chivalrous.
He smiled,
But held his peace.
Still.
.
.
The middies,
I went on.
They will perhaps take care that these poor girls are not ill-treated.
He leaned back.
Clasped his hands and regarded me fixedly.
Bertha,
He said after a pause,
Is Brighton A's.
To be strictly correct,
London,
Brighton and South Coast first preference debentures Clara is Glasgow and South Western deferred stock.
Middies are Midland ordinary.
But I respect your feeling.
You are a young lady of principle.
And he fidgeted more than ever.
He went on dictating for just an hour.
His subject matter.
Bewildered me.
It was all about.
.
.
India bills and telegraphic transfers and selling cotton short and holding tight to Egyptian unified.
Markets,
It seemed,
Were glutted.
Hungarians were only to be dealt in if they hardened?
Hardened sinners,
I know,
But what are hardened Hungarians?
And fears were not unnaturally expressed that Turks might be irregular.
Consuls,
It appeared,
Were certain to give way for political reasons.
But the downward tendency of Australians,
I was relieved to learn for the honour of so great a group of colonies,
Could only be temporary.
Greeks were growing decidedly worse.
Though I had always understood Greeks were bad enough already,
And Argentine Central were likely to be weak,
But provincials must soon become commendably firm,
And if Uruguay's went flat,
Something good ought to be made out of them.
Scotch rails might shortly be quiet.
I always understood they were based upon sleepers.
But if Southeastern stiffened,
Advantage should certainly be taken of their stiffening.
He would telegraph particulars on Monday morning.
And so on till my brain reeled.
Artistic Florence?
Was this the Filippo Lippi,
The Michelangelo I dreamed of?
At the end of the hour,
The urbane old gentleman rose urbanely.
He drew on his gloves again,
With the greatest deliberation,
And hunted for his stick as if his life depended upon it.
Let me see.
.
.
I had a pencil.
Oh,
Thanks.
Yes,
That is it.
This cover protects the point.
My hat.
Ah,
Certainly.
And my notes.
Much obliged.
Notes always get mislaid.
People are so careless.
Then I will come again tomorrow,
The same hour,
If you will kindly keep yourself disengaged.
Though,
Excuse me,
You had better make an entry of it at once upon your agenda.
I shall remember it,
" I answered,
Smiling.
No.
Will you?
But you haven't my name.
I know it,
" I answered.
At least,
I think so.
You are.
.
.
Mr Marmaduke Ashurst.
Lady Georgina Foley sent you here.
He laid down his hat and gloves again,
So as to regard me more undistracted.
You are.
A most remarkable young lady,
" he said in a very slow voice.
I impressed upon Georgina that she must not mention to you that I was coming.
On Earth.
Did you recognize me?
Intuition,
Most likely.
He stared at me with a sort of suspicion.
Please don't tell me you think me like my sister.
He went on.
Although,
Of course.
Every right-minded man feels a natural respect and affection for the members of his family.
Bows,
If I may so say,
To the inscrutable decrees of Providence which has mysteriously burdened him with them,
Still There are points about Lady Georgina which I cannot conscientiously assert I approve of.
I remembered mommy's a fool.
And held my tongue judiciously.
I do not resemble her,
I hope.
He persisted,
With a look which I could almost describe as wistful.
Bye!
Family likeness,
Perhaps,
I put in.
Family likenesses exist,
You know?
Often with complete divergence of tastes and character.
He looked relieved.
That is true!
Wow,
How true.
But the likeness,
In my case I must admit,
Escapes me.
I temporized.
Strangers see these things most,
I said,
Airing the stock platitudes.
It may be superficial.
And,
Of course,
One knows that profound differences of intellect and moral feeling often occur within the limits of a single family.
You are quite right,
He said with decision.
Georgina's principles are not mine.
Excuse my remarking it,
But you seem to be a young lady of unusual penetration.
I saw he took my remark.
As a compliment.
What I really meant to say was that a commonplace man might easily be brother to so clever a woman as Lady Georgina.
He gathered up his hat,
His stick,
His gloves,
His notes and his typewritten letters one by one and backed out politely.
He was a punctilious millionaire.
He had risen by obanity to his brother-directors like a model guinea pig.
He bowed to us each separately,
As if we had been duchesses.
As soon as he was gone,
Elsie turned to me.
Brownie!
How on earth did you guess it?
They're so awfully different!
Not at all,
I answered.
A few surface unlikenesses only just mask an underlying identity.
If you surface unlikenesses,
Only just mask an underlying identity.
Their features are the same,
But his are plump.
Has shrunken.
Lady Georgina's expression is sharp and worldly.
Mr Ashurst's is smooth and bland and financial.
And then their manner Both are fussy.
But Lady Georgina's is.
.
.
Honest,
Open,
Ill-tempered fuzziness.
Mr.
Ashhurst's is concealed under an artificial mask of obsequious politeness.
One's cantankerous,
The other's only.
.
.
Pernickety.
It's one tune,
After all,
In two different keys.
From that day forth,
The urbane old gentleman was a daily visitor.
He took an hour at a time at first,
But after a few days the hour lengthened out apologetically to an entire morning.
He presumed to ask my Christian name the second day and remembered my father.
A man of excellent principles.
But he didn't care for Elsie to work for him.
Fortunately for her,
Other work dropped in once we had found a client,
Or else,
Poor girl,
She would have felt sadly slighted.
I was glad she had something to do.
The sense of dependence weighed heavily upon her.
The urbane old gentleman did not confine himself entirely after the first few days to stock exchange literature.
He was engaged on a work.
He spoke of it always with bated breath.
And a capital letter was implied in his intonation.
The work was one on the interpretation of prophecy.
Unlike Lady Georgina,
Who was tart and crisp,
Mr Marmaduke Ashurst was devout and decorous.
Where she said.
.
.
Hack of fools.
He talked with unction of the mental deficiencies of our poorer brethren.
But.
.
.
His religious opinions and his stockbroking had got strangely mixed up at the wash somehow.
He was convinced that the British nation represented the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel.
And in particular,
If real.
A matter on which,
As a mere laywoman,
