Part 20 (1/2)

'No more suicides, no more subscriptions, I suppose,' said Logan; 'but the practice proved that the reigning Princes of Scalastro had feeling hearts.'

While the Earl developed this theme, Miss Willoughby, accompanied by Miss Blossom, had joined Merton in the outer room. Miss Blossom, being clad in white, with her blue eyes and apple-blossom complexion, looked like the month of May. But Merton could not but be struck by Miss Willoughby.

She was tall and dark, with large grey eyes, a Greek profile, and a brow which could, on occasion, be thunderous and lowering, so that Miss Willoughby seemed to all a remarkably fine young woman; while the educated spectator was involuntarily reminded of the beautiful sister of the beautiful Helen, the celebrated Clytemnestra. The young lady was clad in very dark blue, with orange points, so to speak, and compared with her transcendent beauty, Miss Blossom, as Logan afterwards remarked, seemed a

'Wee modest crimson-tippit beastie,'

he intending to quote the poet Burns.

After salutations, Merton remarked to Miss Blossom that her well-known discretion might prompt her to take a seat near the window while he discussed private business with Miss Willoughby. The good-humoured girl retired to contemplate life from the cas.e.m.e.nt, while Merton rapidly laid the nature of Lord Embleton's affairs before the other lady.

'You go down to Rookchester as a kinswoman and a guest, you understand, and to do the business of the ma.n.u.scripts.'

'Oh, I shall rather like that than otherwise,' said Miss Willoughby, smiling.

'Then, as to the regular business of the Society, there is a Prince who seems to be thought unworthy of the daughter of the house; and the son of the house needs disentangling from an American heiress of great charm and wealth.'

'The tasks might satisfy any ambition,' said Miss Willoughby. 'Is the idea that the Prince and the Viscount should _both_ neglect their former flames?'

'And burn incense at the altar of Venus Verticordia,' said Merton, with a bow.

'It is a large order,' replied Miss Willoughby, in the simple phrase of a commercial age: but as Merton looked at her, and remembered the vindictive feeling with which she now regarded his s.e.x, he thought that she, if anyone, was capable of executing the commission. He was not, of course, as yet aware of the moral resolution lately arrived at by the young potentate of Scalastro.

'The ma.n.u.scripts are the first thing, of course,' he said, and, as he spoke, Logan and Lord Embleton re-entered the room.

Merton presented the Earl to the ladies, and Miss Blossom soon retired to her own apartment, and wrestled with the correspondence of the Society and with her typewriting-machine.

The Earl proved not to be nearly so shy where ladies were concerned. He had not expected to find in his remote and long-lost cousin, Miss Willoughby, a magnificent being like Persephone on a coin of Syracuse, but it was plain that he was prepossessed in her favour, and there was a touch of the affectionate in his courtesy. After congratulating himself on recovering a kinswoman of a long-separated branch of his family, and after a good deal of genealogical disquisition, he explained the nature of the lady's historical tasks, and engaged her to visit him in the country at an early date. Miss Willoughby then said farewell, having an engagement at the Record Office, where, as the Earl gallantly observed, she would 'make a suns.h.i.+ne in a shady place.'

When she had gone, the Earl observed, '_Bon sang ne peut pas mentir_! To think of that beautiful creature condemned to waste her lovely eyes on faded ink and yellow papers! Why, she is, as the modern poet says, ”a sight to make an old man young.”'

He then asked Logan to acquaint Merton with the new and favourable aspect of his affairs, and, after fixing Logan's visit to Rookchester for the same date as Miss Willoughby's, he went off with a juvenile alertness.

'I say,' said Logan, 'I don't know what will come of this, but _something_ will come of it. I had no idea that girl was such a paragon.'

'Take care, Logan,' said Merton. 'You ought only to have eyes for Miss Markham.'

Miss Markham, the precise student may remember, was the lady once known as the Venus of Milo to her young companions at St. Ursula's. Now mantles were draped on her stately shoulders at Madame Claudine's, and Logan and she were somewhat hopelessly attached to each other.

'Take care of yourself at Rookchester,' Merton went on, 'or the Disentangler may be entangled.'

'I am not a viscount and I am not an earl,' said Logan, with a reminiscence of an old popular song, 'nor I am not a prince, but a shade or two _wuss_; and I think that Miss Willoughby will find other marks for the artillery of her eyes.'

'We shall have news of it,' said Merton.

II. The Affair of the Jesuit

Trains do not stop at the little Rookchester station except when the high and puissant prince the Earl of Embleton or his visitors, or his ministers, servants, solicitors, and agents of all kinds, are bound for that haven. When Logan arrived at the station, a bowery, flowery, amateur-looking depot, like one of the 'model villages' that we sometimes see off the stage, he was met by the Earl, his son Lord Scremerston, and Miss Willoughby. Logan's baggage was spirited away by menials, who doubtless bore it to the house in some ordinary conveyance, and by the vulgar road. But Lord Embleton explained that as the evening was warm, and the woodland path by the river was cool, they had walked down to welcome the coming guest.

The walk was beautiful indeed along the top of the precipitous red sandstone cliffs, with the deep, dark pools of the Coquet sleeping far below. Now and then a heron poised, or a rock pigeon flew by, between the river and the cliff-top. The opposite bank was embowered in deep green wood, and the place was very refres.h.i.+ng after the torrid bricks and distressing odours of the July streets of London.