Part 25 (1/2)
The Tyndals paid Sir Lionel compliments, and seemed to be delighted to meet him, evidently regarding him as a great celebrity, which, I suppose, he really is. Then, when they had made him sufficiently uncomfortable (compliments are to him what a sudden plague of locusts would be to most men), they turned to me.
”Surely we have met before, Miss Lethbridge?” remarked Mrs. Tyndal. And you ought to have seen how Mrs. Senter's features sharpened, as she waited for me to stammer or blush.
As far as the blush was concerned, she had her money's worth; and I only didn't stammer because I was obliged to stop and think before replying.
I almost wors.h.i.+pped Sir Lionel when he answered for me, in a quick, positive way he has, which there seems no gainsaying. I suppose men who live in the East cultivate that, as it keeps natives from arguing and answering back.
”Impossible,” said he, ”unless it was at Versailles, where my ward has been at school since she was a very small child, with no holidays except at St. Cloud.”
”Mightn't it have been at Paris?” obligingly suggested Mrs. Senter, determined I shouldn't be let off, if conviction of any sort were possible.
”No, I don't think it was at Paris,” murmured Mrs. Tyndal, reflectively, eyeing me in the sunset light, which was turning to pure amethyst. ”Now, where _could_ it have been? I seem to a.s.sociate your face with--with Italy.”
Oh, my goodness! She _was_ getting ”warm” in our game of ”hide the handkerchief.”
”She has never been to Italy,” said Sir Lionel, beginning to look rather cross, as if Mrs. Tyndal were taking liberties with his belongings--of which, you see, he thinks me one.
”Not even--Venice?” she persisted. ”Oh, yes, _that_ is it! Now I know where I seem to have seen you--at Venice. You remember, don't you, George?”
By this time sparks had lighted up in Sir Lionel's eyes, as if he were a Turk, and one of the ladies of his harem were unjustly suspected.
”It is impossible for Mr. Tyndal to remember what didn't happen,” he said, dropping a lump of ice into his voice. ”You saw someone who looked like her in Venice, perhaps, but not my ward.”
I was almost sorry for the poor Tyndals, who meant no harm, though they had the air of being so frightfully rich and prosperous that it seemed ridiculous to pity them.
”Of course, it could only have been a resemblance,” said Mr. Tyndal, with that snubby glare at Mrs. Tyndal which husbands and wives keep for each other.
”It must have been,” she responded, taking up her cue; for naturally they didn't want to begin their acquaintance with a distinguished person by offending him.
These signs of docility caused Sir Lionel to relent and come down off his high horse. Whenever he has been at all haughty or impatient with his sister (whose denseness would sometimes try a saint) he is sorry in a minute, and tries to be extra nice. It was the same now in the case of the poor Tyndals, whose Etonian cousin had all the time been gazing up at him with awed adoration, as of a hero on a pedestal; and suddenly a quaint thought struck me. I remembered about the Bengalese Sir Lionel was supposed to have executed for some offence or other, and I could see him being sorry immediately afterward, tearing around trying to stick their heads on again, and saying pleasant words.
Well, he stuck the Tyndals' heads on very kindly, so that they almost forgot they'd ever been slashed off; and when Mrs. Norton came out, which she did in a few minutes, looking as if she'd washed the dust off her face with kitchen soap, we all strolled up and down together, till it was time for dinner.
Mrs. Tyndal walked with me, but not a word did she say about Venice.
That subject was to be tabooed, but I'm far from sure she was convinced of her mistake, and she couldn't overcome her intense interest in my features. However, she seems good-natured, as if even to please Mrs.
Senter she wouldn't care to do me a bad turn. Only, I don't think people do things from motives as a rule, do you? They just suddenly find they want to do them, and presto, the things are done! That's why the world's so exciting.
We chatted non-committally of cabbages and kings and automobiles; and I recalled tracing pneu-tracks like illusive lights and shadows before us on the damp road, as we spun into Tintagel. No doubt they were the pneus of the Tyndals.
Their table was next ours in the dining room, so close that motor-chat was tossed back and forth, and it appeared that Mr. Tyndal was as proud of his car as a cat of its mouse. Mrs. Tyndal's mice are her jewels, and she has droves of them, which she displayed at dinner. Afterward she did lace-work, which made her rings gleam beautifully, and she said she didn't particularly like doing it, but it was something to ”kill time.”
How awful! But I suppose frightfully rich people are like that. They sometimes get fatty degeneration of the soul.
Well, nothing more happened that evening, except that the Tyndal boy and I made great friends--quite a nice boy, pining for some mischief that idle hands might do; and his cousins said that, as we were going to stop several days at Tintagel, ”making it a centre,” they would stop, too.
Sir Lionel didn't appear overjoyed at the decision, but Mrs. Senter seemed glad. She and her sister, Mrs. Burden, have known the Tyndals for years, and are by way of being friends, yet she works off her little firework epigrams against them when their backs are turned, as she does on everybody. According to her, their princ.i.p.al charm for society in London is their cook; and she says the art treasures in their house are all illegitimate; near-Gobelin, not-quite-Raphaels, and so on. She makes Sir Lionel smile; but I wonder if she'd adopt this cheap method if he'd ever mentioned to her (as he has to me) that of all meannesses he despises disloyalty?
The Tyndal boy went up to bed before the rest of us, and when Sir Lionel and Mrs. Norton had been forced to play bridge with Mrs. Senter and Mr.
Tyndal, I slipped away, too.
We'd lived in the hotel such a short time, and it's so big, that I counted on recognizing my room by the boots which I put outside the door when I went down to sunset and dinner. Of course, I'd forgotten my number, as I always do. I wouldn't consider myself a normal girl if I didn't.
There were the boots, not taken away yet--looking abject, as boots do in such situations--but I was pleased to see that they compared favourably in size with the gray alligator-skin and patent leather eccentricities of Mrs. Senter, reposing on an adjacent doormat. With this frivolous reflection in my mind, it didn't occur to me, as I turned the handle of the door marked by my brown footgear, that the room now appeared farther to the left, along the pa.s.sage, than I had the impression of its being.