"He can"t make me stiff," said I. "Cousins twice removed don"t count--except when they can be useful."
"A gentleman in the reading-room to see you, miss," announced the waiter, who could speak English, handing me a card on a tray. It was a foreign-looking card, and I couldn"t feel in the least related to it, especially as the "van" began with a little "v."
"Come and support me, Phil," I begged, glancing regretfully at a seductive bit of Dutch cheese studded with caraway seeds, which it would be rude to stop and eat.
It"s rather an ordeal to meet a new relation, even if you tell yourself that you don"t care what he thinks of you. I slipped behind Phil, making her enter the reading-room first, which gave me time to peep over her shoulder and fancy we had been directed wrongly. There was a man in the room, but he could not have been a man in the days when mother was speaking of "father"s cousin." His expression only was old: it might have been a hundred. The rest of him could not be more than twenty-eight, and it was all extremely good-looking. If he were to turn out a cousin I should not have to be ashamed of him. He was like a big, handsome cavalryman, with a drooping mustache that was hay-colored, in contrast with a brown skin, and a pair of the solemnest gray eyes I"ve ever seen--except in the face of a baby.
"Are you Miss Van Buren?" this giant asked Phil gravely, holding out a large brown hand.
"No," said Phil, unwilling to take the hand under false pretenses.
It fell, and so did the handsome face, if anything so solemn could have become a degree graver than before.
"I beg your pardon," said the owner of both, speaking English with a Scotch accent. "I have made a deceit."
I laughed aloud. "I"m Helen Van Buren," I said. And I put out my hand.
His swallowed it up, and though I wear only one ring I could have shrieked. Yet his expression was not flattering. There are persons who prefer my style to Phil"s, but I could see that he wasn"t one of them. I felt he thought me garish; which was unjust, as I can"t help it if my complexion is very white and very pink, my eyes and eyelashes rather dark, and my hair decidedly chestnut. I haven"t done any of it myself, yet I believe the handsome giant suspected me, and was sorry that Phil was not Miss Van Buren.
"Are you my cousin Robert Van Buren"s son?" I asked.
"I am the only Robert van Buren now living," he answered.
I longed to be flippant, and say that there were probably several dotted about the globe, if we only knew them; but I dared not, under those eyes--absolutely dared not. Instead, I remarked inanely that I was sorry to hear his father was not alive.
"He died many years ago. We have got over it," he replied. And I almost laughed again; but that angel of a Phil looked quite sympathetic.
In a few minutes we settled down more comfortably, with Phil and me on a sofa together, and Cousin Robert on a chair, which kept me in fits of anxiety by creaking and looking too small to hold him.
Phil and I held hands, as girls generally do when they are at all self-conscious, if they sit within a yard of each other; and we all began to talk in the absurd way of new-found relations, or people you haven"t seen for a long time.
We asked Robert things, and he answered; and when we"d encouraged him a good deal, he asked us things too, looking mostly at Phyllis. At last we arrived at the information that he had a mother and two sisters, who spent the summers at Scheveningen, in a villa. Then fell a silence, which Phil tactfully broke by saying that she had heard of Scheveningen.
It must be a beautiful place, and she"d been brought up with a cup that came from there. When she was good, as a child, she was allowed to play with it.
"I should think you were always good," said Cousin Robert. Phyllis blushed, and then he blushed too, under his brown skin. "I have also a fiancee at Scheveningen," he went on, a propos of nothing--unless of the blush.
"Is she a Dutch girl?" I asked.
"Oh yes."
"I suppose she is very pretty and charming?"
"I do not know. I am used to her. We have played together when we were young. I go every Sat.u.r.day to Scheveningen, when they are there, to stay till Monday."
"Oh!" said Phil.
"Oh!" said I.
Silence again. Then, "It was very good of you to come and see us so quickly after I wrote."
"It was my duty; and my pleasure too" (as second thought). "You must tell me your plans."
So we told them, and Cousin Robert did not approve. "I do not think it will do," said he, firmly.
"I"m afraid it must do," I returned, with equal firmness disguised under a smile.
Phil apologized for me as she gave me a squeeze of the hand.
"We"ve been very happy together, Nell and I," she explained, "but we have never had much excitement. This is our first chance, and--we shall be _well_ chaperoned by Lady MacNairne."
"Yes; but she is the aunt of the stranger young man."
"Geniuses are never strangers. He is a genius," I said. "You"ve no idea how his Salon picture was praised."
"But his character. What do you know of that?"
"It"s his aunt"s character that matters most, and the MacNairnes are irreproachable."
(I had never heard the name until this morning, but there are some things which you seem to have been born knowing; and I was in a mood to stake my life upon Lady MacNairne.)
"It is better that you see my mother," said Cousin Robert.
"It will be sweet of her to call on us."
"I do not think she can do that. She is too large; and she does not easily move from Scheveningen. But if she writes you a note, to ask you and Miss Rivers, you will go, is it not?"
"With pleasure," I said, "if it isn"t too far. You see, Lady MacNairne may arrive soon, and when she does----"
"But now I will see my mother, and I will bring back the letter. I will drive with an automobile which a friend has lent me--Rudolph Brederode; and when you have read the note, you will both go in the car with me to Scheveningen to stay for all night, perhaps more."
"Oh, we couldn"t think of staying all night," I exclaimed. "We"ll stop here till----"
"It is not right that you stop here. I will go now, and, please, you will pack up to be ready."
"We haven"t unpacked yet," I said. "But we couldn"t possibly--for one thing, your mother may not find it convenient."
My cousin Robert"s jaw set. "She surely will find it convenient."
"What people you Dutch are!" the words broke from me.
He looked surprised. "We are the same like others."
"I think you are the same as you used to be hundreds of years ago, when you first began to do as you pleased; and I suppose you have been doing it ever since."
Cousin Robert smiled. "Maybe we like our own way," he admitted.
"And maybe you get it!"