"Britton," said I. "My valet"s wife. I don"t believe you will disturb her. She"s on the top floor, I think."
He still smiled. "A little remote from Britton, isn"t she?"
I think I glared. What right had he to meddle in Britton"s affairs?
"I am afraid your fancy draws a rather long bow, Mr. Pless," said I, coldly.
He was at once apologetic. "If I offend, Mr. Smart, pray forgive me.
You are quite justified in rebuking me. Shall we return to our own ladies?"
Nothing could have been more adroit than the way he accused me in that concluding sentence. It was the quintessence of irony.
"I"d like to have your opinion as to the best way of restoring or repairing those mural paintings in the dome of the east hall," I said, detaining him. It was necessary for me to have a good excuse for rummaging about in the unused part of the castle. "It seems too bad to let those wonderful paintings go to ruin. They are hanging down in some places, and are badly cracked in others. I"ve been worrying about them ever since I came into possession. For instance, that Murillo in the centre. It must be preserved."
He gave me another queer look, and I congratulated myself on the success of my strategy.
He took it all in. The mocking light died out in his eyes, and he at once became intensely interested in my heaven-sent project. For fifteen or twenty minutes we discussed the dilapidated frescoes and he gave me the soundest sort of advice, based on a knowledge and experience that surprised me more than a little. He was thoroughly up in matters of art. His own chateau near Buda Pesth, he informed me, had only recently undergone complete restoration in every particular. A great deal of money had been required, but the expenditures had been justified by the results.
Paintings like these had been restored to their original glory, and so on and so forth. He offered to give me the address of the men in Munich who had performed such wonders for him, and suggested rather timidly that he might be of considerable a.s.sistance to me in outlining a system of improvements. I could not help being impressed. His manner was most agreeable. When he smiled without malice, his dark eyes were very boyish. One could then forget the hard lines of dissipation in his face, and the domineering, discontented expression which gave to him the aspect of a far greater age than he had yet attained. A note of eager enthusiasm in his voice proved beyond cavil that if this sprig of n.o.bility had had half a chance in the beginning he might have been n.o.bler than he was to-day. But underneath the fascinating charm of manner, back of the old world courtliness, there lurked the ever dominant signs of intolerance, selfishness and--even cruelty. He was mean to the core. He had never heard of the milk of human kindness, much less tasted of it.
There was no getting away from the fact that he despised me for no other reason than that I was an American. I could not help feeling the derision in which he held not only me but the Hazzards and the Smiths as well. He looked upon all of us as coming from an inferior race, to be tolerated only as pa.s.sers-by and by no means worthy of his august consideration. We were not of his world and never could be.
Ign.o.ble to him, indeed, must have been the wife who came with the vulgar though welcome dollars and an ambition to be his equal and the sharer of his heaven-born glory! He could not even pity her!
While he was discoursing so amiably upon the subjects he knew so well by means of an inherited intelligence that came down through generations, I allowed my thoughts to drift upstairs to that frightened, hunted little fellow-countrywoman of mine, as intolerant, as vain perhaps as he after a fashion, and cursed the infernal custom that lays our pride so low. Infinitely n.o.bler than he and yet an object of scorn to him and all his people, great and small; a discredited interloper who could not deceive the lowliest menial in her own household into regarding her as anything but an imitation. Her loveliness counted for naught. Her wit, her charm, her purity of heart counted for even less than that. She was a thing that had been bartered for and could be cast aside without loss--a p.a.w.n. And she had committed the inconceivable sin of rebelling against the laws of commerce: she had defaulted! They would not forgive her for that.
My heart warmed toward her. She had been afraid of the dark! I can forgive a great deal in a person who is afraid of the dark.
I looked at my watch. a.s.suming a careless manner, I remarked:
"I am afraid we shall be late for the start. Are you going out with us in the boat or would you prefer to browse about a little longer?
Will you excuse me? I must be off."
His cynical smile returned. "I shall forego the pleasure of browsing in another man"s pasture, if you don"t mind."
It was almost a direct accusation. He did not believe a word of the Britton story. I suddenly found myself wondering if he suspected the truth. Had he, by any chance, traced the fugitive countess to my doors?
Were his spies hot upon the trail? Or had she betrayed herself by indiscreet acts during the past twenty-four hours? The latter was not unlikely; I knew her whims and her faults by this time. In either case, I had come to feel decidedly uncomfortable, so much so, in fact, that I was content to let the innuendo pa.s.s without a retort. It behooved me to keep my temper as well as my wits.
"Come along," said I, starting off in the direction of the lower regions. He followed. I manoeuvred with such success that ultimately he took the lead. I hadn"t the remotest idea how to get to the confounded dungeons!
It never rains but it pours. Just as we were descending the last flight of stairs before coming to the winding stone steps that led far down into the earth, who but Britton should come blithely up from the posterior regions devoted to servants and their ilk. He was carrying a long pasteboard box. I said something impressive under my breath.
Britton, on seeing us, stopped short in his tracks. He put the box behind his back and gazed at me forlornly.
"Ah, Britton," said I, recovering myself most creditably; "going up to see little John Bellamy, I suppose."
I managed to shoot a covert look at Mr. Pless. He was gazing at the half-hidden box with a perfectly impa.s.sive face, and yet I knew that there was a smile about him somewhere.
The miserable box contained roses, I knew, because I had ordered them for Rosemary.
"Yes, sir," said my valet, quite rigid with uncertainty, "in a way, sir." A bright look flashed into his face. "I"m taking up the wash, Mr. Smart. From the laundry over in the town, sir. It is somethink dreadful the way they mangle things, sir. Especially lady"s garments.
Thank you, sir."
He stood aside to let us pa.s.s, the box pinned between him and the wall.
Never in my life have I known roses with a more pungent and penetrating odour! Britton seemed to fairly reek with it.
"I like the perfumes the women are using nowadays," said Mr. Pless affably, as we felt our way down the steps.
"Attar of roses," said I, sniffing.
"Umph!" said he.
It was quite dark and very damp in the underground pa.s.sages. I had the curious sensation of lizards wriggling all about me in the sinister shadows. Then and there I resolved that the doors of this pestilential prison should be locked and double locked and never opened again, while I was master of the place.
Moreover, old man Schmick was down for a bad half-hour with me. How came these doors to be unlocked when the whole place was supposed to be as tight as a drum? If nothing else sufficed, the two prodigious Schmicks would be required to stand guard, day and night, with bludgeons if needs be. I intended to keep snooping busybodies out of that side of the castle if I had to nail up every door in the place, even at the risk of starving those whom I would defend.
Especially was I firm in my resolve to keep the meddling ex-husband in his proper place. Granted that he suspected me of a secret amour, what right had he to concern himself about it? None whatever. I was not the first baron to hold a fair prisoner within these powerful walls, and I meant to stand upon my dignity and my rights, as every man should who--But, great heaven, what an imbecile view to take of the matter! Truly my brain was playing silly tricks for me as I stumbled through the murky corridors. I had my imagination in a pretty fair state of subjection by the time we emerged from the dungeons and started up the steps. Facts were facts, and I would have to stick to them.
That is why I bethought myself to utter this sage observation:
"Britton is a faithful, obliging fellow, Mr. Pless. It isn"t every Englishman who will gracefully submit to being chucked out of comfortable quarters to make room for others. We"re a bit crowded, you know. He gave up his room like a gentleman and moved over temporarily into the other wing. He was afraid, don"t you see, that the baby might disturb my guests. A very thoughtful, dependable fellow."
"Yes," said he, "a very dependable fellow, Mr. Smart. My own man is much the same sort of a chap. He also is married." Did I imagine that he chuckled?
Half an hour later when I rejoined my guests after a session with Conrad Schmick, I was somewhat annoyed by the dig George Hazzard planted in my devoted ribs, and the furtive wink he gave me. The two ladies were regarding me with expressions that seemed pretty well divided between disapproval and mirth. The baron, whose amicable relations with Mr. Pless evidently had been restored, was grinning broadly at me.
And the Countess imperiously had directed me to supply her with all the scandal of the hour!
CHAPTER IX
I AM INVITED OUT TO DINNER
I sometimes wonder what would happen if I really had a mind of my own.
Would I be content to exercise it capably? Would I cease to be putty in the hands of other people? I doubt it. Even a strong, obdurate mind is liable to connect with conditions that render it weak and pliable for the simple reason that it is sometimes easier to put up with a thing than to try to put it down. An exacting, arbitrary mind perhaps might evolve a set of resolutions that even the most intolerant would hesitate to violate, but for an easygoing, trouble-dodging brain like my own there is no such thing as tenacity of purpose, unless it be in the direction of an obfuscated tendency to maintain its own pitiful equilibrium. I try to keep an even ballast in my dome of thought and to steer straight through the sea of circ.u.mstance, a very difficult undertaking and sometimes hazardous.
A man with a firm, resolute grip on himself would have checked Mr.
Pless and Baron Umovitch at the outset of their campaign to acquire undisputed possession of _all_ the comforts and conveniences that the castle afforded.
He would have said no to their demands that all work about the place should be regulated according to their own life-long habits, which, among other things, included lying in bed till noon, going back to bed at three for a quiet nap, and staying up all night so that they might be adequately worn out by the time they went to bed in the first place.
I mention this as a single instance of their power to over-ride me.
It got to be so that when a carpenter wanted to drive a nail he had to subst.i.tute a screw and use a screw-driver, a noiseless process but an insufferable waste of time and money. Lathers worked four days on a job that should have been accomplished in as many hours. Can you imagine these expert, able-bodied men putting laths on a wall with screw-drivers?
When Elsie Hazzard, painfully aware of my annoyance, asked the two n.o.blemen why on earth they couldn"t get up for breakfast, they coldly informed her that they were civilised human beings and not larks.
They used my study for purposes of their own, and glared at me when I presumed to intrude upon their privacy. Mr. Pless took possession of this room, and here received all sorts of secret operatives engaged in the task of unearthing the former Mrs. Pless. Here he had as many as fifteen reports a day by messenger from all parts of the land and here he discussed every new feature of the chase as it presented itself, coolly barring me out of my sanctum sanctorum with the impa.s.sive command to knock before attempting to enter.
In spite of their acrimonious tilts over the card table, he and the baron were as thick as could be when it came to the question of the derelict countess. They maintained the strictest privacy and resented even the polite interest of their four American friends.