Set in Silver. C. N. Williamson
Читать онлайн книгу.
her dying request was that he should take care of her daughter and her daughter's money. You would have thought that that must have softened even a hard heart, wouldn't you? But the Dragon's was evidently sentiment-proof, even so many years ago, when he must have been comparatively young—if Dragons are ever young.
He accepted the charge (Ellaline thinks her money probably influenced him to do that; and perhaps he was paid for his trouble); but, instead of carrying out his engagements, like a faithful guardian, he packed the poor four-year-old baby off to some pokey, prim people in the country, and promptly went abroad to enjoy himself. There Ellaline would no doubt have been left to this day, dreadfully unhappy and out of her element, for the people were an English curate and his wife; but, luckily, her mother had stipulated that she was to be sent to the same school in France where she herself had been educated—Madame de Maluet's.
Never once has her guardian shown the slightest sign of interest in Ellaline: hasn't asked for her photograph or written her any letters. They've communicated with each other only through Madame de Maluet, four times a year or so; and Ellaline doesn't feel sure that her fortune has been properly administered, so she says she ought to marry young and have a husband to look after her interests.
When I ventured to hope that the Dragon wasn't quite so scaly and taily as she painted him, she proved her point by telling me that he'd been censured lately in the English Radical papers for killing a lot of poor, defenceless Bengalese in cold blood. Somebody must have sent her the cuttings, for Ellaline hardly knows that newspapers exist. I dare say it was Kathy Bennett, one of Madame's few English pupils. Ellaline has chummed up with her lately. And that news does seem to settle the man's character, doesn't it? He must be a perfect brute.
Ellaline says that she'd rather die than lose Honoré, also that he'll kill himself if he loses her. And now, dearest—now for the Thunderbolt! She vows that the only thing which can possibly save her is for me to take her place for five or six weeks, until her soldier's manœuvres are over and he can get leave to whisk her off to Scotland for the wedding.
You're the quickest-witted darling in the world, and you generally know all that people mean even before they speak. Yet I can see you looking puzzled as well as startled, and muttering to yourself: "Take Ellaline's place? Where—how—when?"
I was like that myself while she was trying to explain. I stared with an owlish stare for about five minutes, until her real idea in all its native wildness, not to say enormity, burst upon me.
She wants to go day after to-morrow to Madame de Blanchemain's, as she'd expected to do before she heard that the Dragon was coming to gobble her up. She wants to stay there quietly until Honoré can take her, and she wants me to pretend to be Ellaline Lethbridge!
I nearly fell off my chair at this point, but I hope you won't do anything like that—which is the reason why I've been working up to the revelation with such fiendish subtlety. Have you noticed it?
Ellaline has plotted the whole scheme out. I shouldn't have thought her capable of it; but she says it's desperation.
She's certain she can persuade Madame de Maluet to let her leave school, to go to the station and meet the Dragon (that's the course he himself suggests: too much trouble even to run out to Versailles and fetch her) with only me as chaperon. I dare say she's right about Madame, for all the teachers will be gone day after to-morrow, and Madame herself invariably collapses the moment school breaks up: she seems to break up with it, and to have to lie in bed for at least half a week to be mended.
Madame has really quite a flattering opinion of my discretion. She's told me so several times. I suppose it's the way I do my hair for school, which does give me a look of incorruptible virtue, doesn't it? Fortunately she doesn't know I always change it (if not too tired) ten minutes after I get home to you.
Well, then, taking Madame's permission for granted, Ellaline points out that all stumbling-blocks are removed, for she won't count moral ones, or let me count them.
I'm to see her off for St. Cloud, and wait to receive the Dragon. "Sir, behold the burnt-offering—I mean, behold your ward!"
And I'm to go on being a burnt-offering till it's convenient for the real Ellaline to scrape my ashes off the smoking altar.
It's all very well to make fun of the thing like that. But to be serious—and goodness knows it's serious enough—what's to be done, little mother? Ellaline has (because I insisted) given me till to-morrow morning to answer. I explained that my consent must depend on your consent. So that's why I haven't had anything to eat since breakfast. I rushed home to write this immense letter to you, and get it off to catch the post. It will arrive in the morning with your coffee and petits pains—how I wish I were in its place! You can take half an hour to make up your mind (I'm sure with your lightning wits you wouldn't ask longer to decide the fate of the Great Powers of Europe) and then telegraph me simply "Yes," or "No." I will understand.
For my own sake, naturally, I should prefer "No." That goes unsaid, doesn't it? I should then be relieved of responsibility; for even Ellaline, knowing that you and I are all in all to each other, could hardly expect me to fly in your face, just to please her. But, on the other hand, if you did think I could do this dreadful thing without thereby becoming myself a Dreadful Thing, it would be a glorious relief to pay my debt of gratitude to Ellaline, yes, and even over-pay it, perhaps. One likes to over-pay a debt that's been owing a long time, for it's like adding an accumulation of interest that one's creditor never expected to get.
When, gasping after the first shock, I pleaded that I'd do anything else, make any other sacrifice for Ellaline's sake, except this one, she flashed out (with the odd shrewdness which lurks in her childishness like a bright little garter-snake darting its head from a bed of violets), saying that was always the way with people. They were invariably ready to do for their best friends, to whom they were grateful, anything on earth except the only thing wanted.
Well, I had no answer to make; for it's true, isn't it? And then Ellaline sobbed dreadfully, clutching at me with little, hot, trembling hands, crying that she'd counted on me, that she'd been sure, after all my promises, I wouldn't fail her. She'd felt so safe with me! Are you surprised I hadn't the heart to refuse? I confess, dear, that if I were quite alone in the world (though the world wouldn't be a world without you) I should certainly have grovelled and consented then and there.
She says she won't close her eyes to-night, and I dare say she won't, in which case she'll be as pathetic as a broken flower to-morrow. I don't think I shall sleep much either, wondering what your verdict will be.
I really haven't the remotest idea whether it will be Yes or No. Usually I imagine that I can pretty well guess what your opinion is likely to be, but I can't this time. The thing to decide upon is in itself so fantastic, so monstrous, that one moment I tell myself you won't even consider it. The next minute I remember what a dear little "crank" you are on the subject of gratitude—your "favourite virtue," as you used to write in old-fashioned "Confession Albums" of provincial American friends when I was a child.
If people do anything nice for you, you run your little high-heeled shoes into holes to do something even nicer for them. If you're invited out to tea, you ask your hostess to lunch or dinner, in return: that sort of thing invariably; and you've brought me up with the same bee in my bonnet. So what will your telegram be?
Whatever you say, you may count on a meek "Amen, so be it," from
Your most admiring subject,
Audrie.
P.S.—Of course, it isn't as if this man were an ordinary, nice, inoffensive human man, is it? I do think that almost any treatment is too good for such a cold-blooded, supercilious old Dragon. And you needn't reprove me for "calling names." With singular justice Providence has ticketed him as appropriately as his worst enemy would have dared to do. They have such weird names in Cornwall, don't they?—and it seems he's a Cornishman. Until lately he was plain Mister, now he's Sir Lionel Pendragon. Somebody has been weak enough to die and leave him a title, and also an estate (though not in Cornwall) which he's returning to England in greedy haste to pounce upon. So characteristic,