For a few moments I was kept waiting, then a fluent waiter appeared to recommend the most desirable dishes of the day. His eloquence was in full tide, when a man paused before the entrance of my arbor, hesitated, and went on to the next.
"That is engaged, sir," called out the waiter.
"I don"t understand Dutch," answered the new-comer in American-English.
"Can you speak French?"
The waiter could, and did. The man--a good-looking fellow, with singularly brilliant black eyes and a fetching smile--explained that it was he who had engaged the arbor, that he was expecting a lady, and would not order luncheon until she joined him.
He sat down with his gray flannel back to me, but I could see him through the screen of leaves and lattice, and it was clear that he was nervous. He kept jumping up, going to the doorway, staring out, and returning to throw himself on the hard green bench with an impatient sigh. Evidently She was late.
An omelet arrived for me, and still my neighbor was alone; but I had scarcely taken up my fork when a light, tripping step sounded crisply on the crushed sea-sh.e.l.ls of the path outside. A shadow darkened the doorway, and for an instant a pocket-edition of a woman, in a neat but well-worn tailor-made dress, hung on my threshold. Rather like a trim gray sparrow she was, expecting a crumb, then changing her mind and hopping further on to find it.
But the change of mind came only with the springing up of the young man in the adjoining arbor.
"_Aunt Fay_, is that you?" he inquired, in an anxious voice, speaking the name with marked emphasis.
"Oh!" chirped the gray sparrow, flitting to the next doorway, "I must have counted wrong. I saw a young man alone, and--Then you are my nephew--_Ronald_."
She also threw stress upon the name and the relationship, and, though I knew nothing of the face that lurked behind a tissue veil, I became aware that the lady was an American.
"Funny thing," I said to myself. "They don"t seem to have met before.
She must be a long-lost aunt."
My neighbor would have ushered his relative into the arbor, but she lingered outside.
"Come, Tibe," she cried, with a shrill change of tone. "Here, Tibe, Tibe, Tibe!"
There was a sudden stir in the garden, a pulling of chairs closer to small tables, a jumping about of waiters, a few stifled shrieks in feminine voices, and a powerful tan-colored bulldog, with a peculiarly concentrated and earnest expression on his countenance, bounded through the crowd toward his mistress, with a fine disregard of obstacles.
Evidently, if there was any dodging to be done, he had been brought up to expect others to do it; and I thought the chances were that he would seldom be disappointed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _There was a sudden stir in the garden._]
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Nephew Ronald, as the monster cannoned against him. "You didn"t mention This."
"No; I knew you were sure to love him. I wouldn"t have anything to do with a creature who didn"t. Isn"t he exquisite?"
"He"s a dream," said the young man; but he did not specify what kind of dream.
"Where I go, there Tibe goes also," went on the lady. "His name is Tiberius, but it"s rather long to say when he"s doing something that you want him to stop. He"ll lunch with us like a perfect gentleman. Oh, he is more _flower_ than dog! Tibe, come away from that door _instantly_!"
The flower had paused to see whether he approved of my lunch, and from the way he turned back a protruding black drapery of underlip from a pair of upstanding ivory tusks, I judged that neither it nor I found favor in his eyes. Perhaps he resented laughter in mine; yet there was something after all in the flower simile, if not precisely what the blossom"s adoring mistress meant. Tibe"s face distinctly resembled a pansy, but an appalling pansy, the sort of pansy you would not like to meet in the dark.
Whatever may have been his opinion of me, he had to be dragged by the collar from my door, and later I caught the glitter of his gaze through the lattice.
Aunt Fay slipped in between bench and table, sitting down opposite to me, and when the nephew took his old place I had glimpses of her over his shoulder.
She was unfastening her veil. Now it had fallen. Alas for any hopes which the trim, youthful figure might have raised! Her thick gray hair was plastered down over temples, cheeks, and ears, and a pair of uncommonly large blue spectacles left her eyes to the imagination.
"I began to be afraid there might have been some mistake in the telegram I sent, after I got your letter saying I mustn"t come to your address,"
began Nephew Ronald, hastily, after a moment of silence that followed the dropping of the veil. "What I said was, "Buiten Oord, third arbor on the left as you come in by main entrance, lunch quarter past twelve. Any cabman will know the place." Was the message all right?"
"Yes," replied Aunt Fay; "but I suffer a little with my eyes. That"s why I stopped when I came to the next arbor. I"m late, because darling Tibe ran away just as I was hailing a cab, so I had to let that one go, and rescue him from the crowd. Wherever he goes he has a throng round him.
People admire him so much. Down, my angel! You mustn"t put your feet on strange gentlemen"s tables, when you"re invited to lunch. He"s hungry, poor lamb."
"I hope you are also," said Nephew, politely; but his voice was heavy. I wondered if he were disappointed in Aunt, or if it was only that the Pansy had got on his nerves. "Here"s my waiter. We"ll have something to eat, and talk things over as we lunch. There"s a tremendous _menu_ for a _table d"hote_ meal--thoroughly Dutch. No other people could get through it and live. Probably you would prefer----"
"Let me see. Potage d"Artois; Caneton de Luxembourg; Soles aux fines herbes; Pommes Natures; Fricandeau de Veau; Haricots Princesse; Poulet roti; Compote; Homard frais; Sauce Ravigottes; Salad mele; Creme au chocolat; Fromage; Fruit. Humph, funnily arranged, isn"t it? But Tibe and I have been living in furnished lodgings, and we--er--have eaten rather irregularly. I dare say between us we might manage the lunch as it is."
Nephew Ronald ordered it, and another silence fell. I think that he drummed on the table.
"We might as well get to business," suggested the lady. "Does the aunt engagement begin immediately?"
"I--er--there"s one difficulty," faltered the young man. "Unfortunately I injudiciously let drop that my aunt was a _fine_ woman."
"Really! You might better have waited till you made her acquaintance.
You can"t pick and choose in a hurry, when you must have a ready-made aunt, my dear sir. Myself, I _prefer_ small women. They are more feminine."
"Please don"t be angry. You see, it was like this. I said that, when I still hoped to have a real aunt on hand for my purpose. That was the way the sc.r.a.pe began. I inadvertently let out her name and a lot of things----"
"To the young ladies I"m to chaperon?"
"Yes, to the young ladies. If they remember the description----"
"You can say you referred to your aunt"s character when you remarked that she was a fine woman."
"I suppose so" (still doubtfully). "But then there"s another trouble, you know. I advertised in _Het Nieus van den Dag_ for a _Scotch_ aunt."
I moved suddenly, for a queer thought jumped into my head. The blue spectacles were focused on me, and there was a low murmur, to which the man responded in his usual tone. "No danger. _Dutch._ I heard him talking to the waiter."
Now, perhaps I should have called through the lattice and the leaves: "Combination of Dutch and English. Half and half. As much at home in one language as the other." But for several reasons I was silent. One was, that it was easier to be silent than to make a fuss. Another was that, if the suspicion which had just sprung into my head had any foundation, it was mine or any man"s duty to know the truth and act upon it. So I sat still, and went on with my luncheon as my next door neighbors went on with theirs; and no one remembered my existence except Tibe.
"I"ve no moral objection to being a Scotch aunt," said the obliging lady.
"It"s your accent, not your morals, that sticks in my throat."
"The latter, I trust were sufficiently vouched for in the letter from our American Consul here. You can call on him if you choose. Few ready-made aunts obtained by advertis.e.m.e.nt would have what I have to recommend me. As for a Scotch accent, I"ve bought Burns, and a Crockett in Tauchnitz, and by to-morrow I"ll engage that no one--unless a Scotsman--would know me from a Scotswoman. Hoot, awa", mon. Come ben."
"But--er--my aunt"s rather by way of being a swell. She wouldn"t be found dead saying "hoot, awa", "or "come ben." There"s just a little indescribable burr-r----"
"Then I will have just a little indescribable burr-r. And you can buy me a Tartan blouse and a Tam."
"I"m afraid a Tam wouldn"t--wouldn"t quite suit your style, or--or that of any well-regulated aunt; and a well-regulated aunt is absolutely essential to the situation. I----"
"_Do_ you mean to insinuate that I am not a well-regulated aunt?" There was a rustling in the arbor. "Come, Tibe," the lady added in a firm voice, "you and I will go away and leave this gentlemen to select from all the other charming and eligible aunts who have no doubt answered his quite conventional and much-to-be-desired advertis.e.m.e.nt."
"For heaven"s sake, don"t go!" cried the man, springing to his feet.
"There, your dog"s got the duck. But it doesn"t matter. n.o.body else worth speaking of--n.o.body in any way possible--has answered my advertis.e.m.e.nt. I can"t lose you. But, you see, I somehow fancied from your letter that you were large and imposing, just what I wanted; and you said you"d lately been in Scotland----"