Part 24 (2/2)
Thank you, sir.”
He stood aside to let us pa.s.s, the box pinned between him and the wall.
Never in my life have I known roses with a more pungent and penetrating odour! Britton seemed to fairly reek with it.
”I like the perfumes the women are using nowadays,” said Mr. Pless affably, as we felt our way down the steps.
”Attar of roses,” said I, sniffing.
”Umph!” said he.
It was quite dark and very damp in the underground pa.s.sages. I had the curious sensation of lizards wriggling all about me in the sinister shadows. Then and there I resolved that the doors of this pestilential prison should be locked and double locked and never opened again, while I was master of the place.
Moreover, old man Schmick was down for a bad half-hour with me. How came these doors to be unlocked when the whole place was supposed to be as tight as a drum? If nothing else sufficed, the two prodigious Schmicks would be required to stand guard, day and night, with bludgeons if needs be. I intended to keep snooping busybodies out of that side of the castle if I had to nail up every door in the place, even at the risk of starving those whom I would defend.
Especially was I firm in my resolve to keep the meddling ex-husband in his proper place. Granted that he suspected me of a secret amour, what right had he to concern himself about it? None whatever. I was not the first baron to hold a fair prisoner within these powerful walls, and I meant to stand upon my dignity and my rights, as every man should who--But, great heaven, what an imbecile view to take of the matter! Truly my brain was playing silly tricks for me as I stumbled through the murky corridors. I had my imagination in a pretty fair state of subjection by the time we emerged from the dungeons and started up the steps. Facts were facts, and I would have to stick to them.
That is why I bethought myself to utter this sage observation:
”Britton is a faithful, obliging fellow, Mr. Pless. It isn't every Englishman who will gracefully submit to being chucked out of comfortable quarters to make room for others. We're a bit crowded, you know. He gave up his room like a gentleman and moved over temporarily into the other wing. He was afraid, don't you see, that the baby might disturb my guests. A very thoughtful, dependable fellow.”
”Yes,” said he, ”a very dependable fellow, Mr. Smart. My own man is much the same sort of a chap. He also is married.” Did I imagine that he chuckled?
Half an hour later when I rejoined my guests after a session with Conrad Schmick, I was somewhat annoyed by the dig George Hazzard planted in my devoted ribs, and the furtive wink he gave me. The two ladies were regarding me with expressions that seemed pretty well divided between disapproval and mirth. The baron, whose amicable relations with Mr. Pless evidently had been restored, was grinning broadly at me.
And the Countess imperiously had directed me to supply her with all the scandal of the hour!
CHAPTER IX
I AM INVITED OUT TO DINNER
I sometimes wonder what would happen if I really had a mind of my own.
Would I be content to exercise it capably? Would I cease to be putty in the hands of other people? I doubt it. Even a strong, obdurate mind is liable to connect with conditions that render it weak and pliable for the simple reason that it is sometimes easier to put up with a thing than to try to put it down. An exacting, arbitrary mind perhaps might evolve a set of resolutions that even the most intolerant would hesitate to violate, but for an easygoing, trouble-dodging brain like my own there is no such thing as tenacity of purpose, unless it be in the direction of an obfuscated tendency to maintain its own pitiful equilibrium. I try to keep an even ballast in my dome of thought and to steer straight through the sea of circ.u.mstance, a very difficult undertaking and sometimes hazardous.
A man with a firm, resolute grip on himself would have checked Mr.
Pless and Baron Umovitch at the outset of their campaign to acquire undisputed possession of _all_ the comforts and conveniences that the castle afforded.
He would have said no to their demands that all work about the place should be regulated according to their own life-long habits, which, among other things, included lying in bed till noon, going back to bed at three for a quiet nap, and staying up all night so that they might be adequately worn out by the time they went to bed in the first place.
I mention this as a single instance of their power to over-ride me.
It got to be so that when a carpenter wanted to drive a nail he had to subst.i.tute a screw and use a screw-driver, a noiseless process but an insufferable waste of time and money. Lathers worked four days on a job that should have been accomplished in as many hours. Can you imagine these expert, able-bodied men putting laths on a wall with screw-drivers?
When Elsie Hazzard, painfully aware of my annoyance, asked the two n.o.blemen why on earth they couldn't get up for breakfast, they coldly informed her that they were civilised human beings and not larks.
They used my study for purposes of their own, and glared at me when I presumed to intrude upon their privacy. Mr. Pless took possession of this room, and here received all sorts of secret operatives engaged in the task of unearthing the former Mrs. Pless. Here he had as many as fifteen reports a day by messenger from all parts of the land and here he discussed every new feature of the chase as it presented itself, coolly barring me out of my sanctum sanctorum with the impa.s.sive command to knock before attempting to enter.
In spite of their acrimonious tilts over the card table, he and the baron were as thick as could be when it came to the question of the derelict countess. They maintained the strictest privacy and resented even the polite interest of their four American friends.
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