第56章

With mimic din of stroke and ward The broadsword upon target jarr'd.

The Lady of the Lake.

Robin Anstruther was telling stories at the tea-table.

"I got acquainted with an American girl in rather a queer sort of way," he said, between cups. "It was in London, on the Duke of York's wedding-day. I'm rather a tall chap, you see, and in the crowd somebody touched me on the shoulder, and a plaintive voice behind me said, `You're such a big man, and I am so little, will you please help me to save my life? My mother was separated from me in the crowd somewhere as we were trying to reach the Berkeley, and I don't know what to do.' I was a trifle nonplussed, but I did the best I could. She was a tiny thing, in a marvellous frock and a flowery hat and a silver girdle and chatelaine. In another minute she spied a second man, an officer, a full head taller than I am, broad shoulders, splendidly put up altogether. Bless me! if she didn't turn to him and say, `Oh, you're so nice and big, you're even bigger than this other gentleman, and I need you both in this dreadful crush. If you'll be good enough to stand on either side of me, I shall be awfully obliged.' We exchanged amused glances of embarrassment over her blonde head, but there was no resisting the irresistible. She was a small person, but she had the soul of a general, and we obeyed orders. We stood guard over her little ladyship for nearly an hour, and I must say she entertained us thoroughly, for she was as clever as she was pretty. Then I got her a seat in one of the windows of my club, while the other man, armed with a full description, went out to hunt up the mother; and, by Jove! he found her, too. She would have her mother, and her mother she had. They were awfully jolly people; they came to luncheon in my chambers at the Albany afterwards, and we grew to be great friends."

"I dare say she was an English girl masquerading," I remarked facetiously. "What made you think her an American?"

"Oh, her general appearance and accent, I suppose."

"Probably she didn't say Barkley," observed Francesca cuttingly;

"she would have been sure to commit that sort of solecism."

"Why, don't you say Barkley in the States?"

"Certainly not; we never call them the States, and with us c-l-e-r-k spells clerk, and B-e-r-k Berk."

"How very odd!" remarked Mr. Anstruther.

"No odder than you saying Bark, and not half as odd as your calling it Albany," I interpolated, to help Francesca.

"Quite so," said Mr. Anstruther; "but how do you say Albany in America?"

"Penelope and I always call it Allbany," responded Francesca nonsensically, "but Salemina, who has been much in England, always calls it Albany."

This anecdote was the signal for Miss Ardmore to remark (apropos of her own discrimination and the American accent) that hearing a lady ask for a certain med'cine in a chemist's shop, she noted the intonation, and inquired of the chemist, when the fair stranger had retired, if she were not an American. "And she was!" exclaimed the Honourable Elizabeth triumphantly. "And what makes it the more curious, she had been over here twenty years, and of course, spoke English quite properly."

In avenging fancied insults, it is certainly more just to heap punishment on the head of the real offender than upon his neighbour, and it is a trifle difficult to decide why Francesca should chastise Mr. Macdonald for the good-humoured sins of Mr. Anstruther and Miss Ardmore; yet she does so, nevertheless.

The history of these chastisements she recounts in the nightly half- hour which she spends with me when I am endeavouring to compose myself for sleep. Francesca is fluent at all times, but once seated on the foot of my bed she becomes eloquent!

"It all began with his saying--"

This is her perennial introduction, and I respond as invariably, "What began?"

"Oh, to-day's argument with Mr. Macdonald. It was a literary quarrel this afternoon."

"'Fools rush in--'" I quoted.

"There is a good deal of nonsense in that old saw," she interrupted;

"at all events, the most foolish fools I have ever known stayed still and didn't do anything. Rushing shows a certain movement of the mind, even if it is in the wrong direction. However, Mr. Macdonald is both opinionated and dogmatic, but his worst enemy could never call him a fool."

"I didn't allude to Mr. Macdonald."

"Don't you suppose I know to whom you alluded, dear? Is not your style so simple, frank, and direct that a wayfaring girl can read it and not err therein? No, I am not sitting on your feet, and it is not time to go to sleep; I wonder you do not tire of making those futile protests. As a matter of fact, we began this literary discussion yesterday morning, but were interrupted; and knowing that it was sure to come up again, I prepared for it with Salemina. She furnished the ammunition, so to speak, and I fired the guns."

"You always make so much noise with blank cartridges I wonder you ever bother about real shot," I remarked.

"Penelope, how can you abuse me when I am in trouble? Well, Mr. Macdonald was prating, as usual, about the antiquity of Scotland and its aeons of stirring history. I am so weary of the venerableness of this country. How old will it have to be, I wonder, before it gets used to it? If it's the province of art to conceal art, it ought to be the province of age to conceal age, and it generally is.

`Everything doesn't improve with years,' I observed sententiously.

"'For instance?' he inquired.

"Of course you know how that question affected me! How I do dislike an appetite for specific details! It is simply paralysing to a good conversation. Do you remember that silly game in which some one points a stick at you and says, `Beast, bird, or fish,--BEAST!' and you have to name one while he counts ten? If a beast has been requested, you can think of one fish and two birds, but no beast.