The Chauffeur and the Chaperon. C. N. Williamson
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stepsister had lacked.
"Well, in the circumstances, I think we should be callous brutes not to say 'Yes,'" I replied.
"I don't want to force you into consenting from pure generosity," went on Mr. Starr. "If you'd like to consult your relations, and have them find out that I'm all right——"
I laughed again. "I know you better than I do them," said I. "I've never seen them yet. I think we can take you on faith, just as you've taken our claims to the boat. Your Scotch aunt alone would be a guarantee, if we needed one. A Scotch aunt sounds so extra reliable. But perhaps my relatives may be of use in other ways, as they've lived in Rotterdam always, I fancy. They might even find us a skipper, if your negotiations fall through. Anyhow, I'll write a letter from our hotel to the head of the family, introducing myself as his long-lost cousin twice removed."
"What is your hotel, if I may ask?" inquired Mr. Starr.
I told him, and it turned out that it had been his till this very morning, when he had removed his things to "Lorelei," with the intention of living on board till he was ready to start. Now he proposed to have them taken back to the hotel, and rearranged on the barge when his aunt came. As for that sly old person, the caretaker, our new friend volunteered to straighten out everything with him, our affair as well as his own.
"When he discovers that we can't be bothered having the law of him, as he richly deserves, he will remember his English, or I'll find the way to make him," said the young man in such a joyous, confident way, that thereupon I dubbed him our "lucky Starr."
IV
"How funny if I've got relations who can't speak any language except Dutch!" I said, after I'd sent a letter by messenger to the address of the Robert van Buren found in the directory.
But half an hour later an answer came back, in English. Mine very sincerely, Robert van Buren, would give himself the pleasure of calling on his cousin immediately. When I received this news it was one o'clock, and we were finishing lunch at the hotel, in the society of Mr. Starr, who had already wired to his aunt that she was to play the part of chaperon.
I read the letter aloud, and Phil and I decided that it sounded old.
"Mother spoke once or twice of father's cousin, Robert van Buren; so I suppose he's about the age my father would have been if he'd lived," I said. "I hope he'll not turn out a horror."
"I hope he'll not forbid you to associate with my aunt and me," cut in Mr. Starr. "It's a stiff kind of handwriting."
"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 fiancée at Scheveningen," he went on, à 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 Saturday 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