CHAPTER IV

THE COUNT'S ARRIVAL

THURSDAY came. A wire had been received saying that the guest would arrive at four, and the car had been sent for him.

Adrienne had seen that the spare room was ready and comfortable for him. She even put a blue jar of daffodils on the writing bureau, and wondered, as she did so, if he would notice or appreciate them.

Tea was brought into the drawing-room. The Admiral paced the room in expectation of the arrival. The General was out with the dogs.

"Don't want to see the fellow more than I can help," he said as he went off.

When the car arrived, the Admiral went out into the hall, and a moment later Adrienne was shaking hands with a tall, broad-shouldered man not in the very least like a Frenchman in voice or manner or look. He had a clean-shaven, tanned face, startlingly clear blue eyes, and a very determined mouth and chin.

"We've heard about each other, sure!" he said. "But it's very pleasant to see one another at last."

His grip was so hearty that Adrienne winced. She smiled at his slight Americanism.

"I was at school when you were over here before."

"Yes, and I was shown a photo of you in tennis costume, with long hair, and a smile that made me want to kiss you!"

"Will you have some tea?"

Adrienne's tone was cool and detached, but nothing quenched Guy de Beaudessert. He was alive to his finger-tips, and turned to the Admiral with a flood of talk about France and her difficulties.

Adrienne listened, and was surprised at the interest she felt in what he was saying.

"I'm not French, you know. I never would take my father's title. If you haven't a position in France, you're better without it. Indeed, you're not popular with the powers that be, if you keep up a state of 'Noblesse.' My stepmother won't understand this, but even she to the neighbours round is simply 'Madame.' And what is the good of a handle to your name when your house is in ruins, and your property nil?"

"I wonder," said Adrienne a little pointedly, "that you don't live with Aunt Cecily when you are over there. It would make her less lonely."

"I dine with her every night and spend the evening with her," he responded quickly, "but my visits are not long ones, and I confine my energies wholly and unreservedly to the farm which I took over ten years ago, and which bolsters up the estate."

"Are times still bad?" asked the Admiral.

"What can you expect after such a devastating War? And you know how the franc stands."

"I can't think why my sister persists in living out there. She would do much better to sell the Château and come to England."

Guy gave a little laugh and turned to Adrienne.

"You are young and enthusiastic, I am sure," he said; "you must use your powers of influence to induce her to leave her ruined castle."

"No," said Adrienne perversely; "if her heart is there, why should I try to tear her away from it?"

Guy made no reply, but turned to the Admiral.

"My stepmother is unfortunate in her adviser out there. He is a little village notary, and she turns to him for everything. He's fleecing her right and left, and she won't see it. Why don't you or the General pay her a visit sometimes? You could do more with her than the rest of us."

"Never!" laughed the Admiral. "Cecily has always managed us. We never could manage her. And we're both getting old now, and are neither of us good travellers. I should think a young and able man like yourself is more than sufficient for her."

They talked on for some time; and then, when tea was over, Guy strode to the window and stood looking out.

"An English garden," he said; "there's nothing like it in the world. Miss Chesterton, will you take me over it?"

"Certainly," Adrienne answered politely.

She led the way through the hall, taking down a straw hat from the hatstand and putting it on her head. Then they crossed the lawn together, and wandered down the paths between the herbaceous borders in the old walled garden.

"When are you coming over to us?" he said, turning to her quickly. "Can you manage to get away by the 18th?"

"No," said Adrienne, with a little hauteur in her tone; "that date does not suit me. I will come a few days later on. I have talked it over with my uncles and they are willing to spare me for a month—not longer, they say."

"I suppose, like most old people, they're inclined to be selfish," Guy remarked.

"They're neither old nor selfish," said Adrienne hotly.

Guy smiled to himself. He wanted to break the icy crust in Adrienne's voice, and he had succeeded.

"Excuse me, I think they are; here are two of them in a comfortable house, waited on by efficient servants, and everything to their hand. In France their sister lives alone, she has lost her daughter. The times have been hard. She has lost money, ergo, she has lost good servants, for she cannot afford to keep them. Now, as I go about the world, I see this, that half creation is overburdened, because the other half refuses to shoulder their portion. Here's your opportunity to put your shoulder to the wheel, leave the burdenless ones, and ease the big burden of loneliness and unhappiness which is bearing down your aunt. If your uncles are unselfish, they will be willing and anxious for you to do this."

"And where do I come in?" asked Adrienne, trying to speak lightly. "I seem to be but a pawn in the game."

"We're all pawns," said Guy, "and pawns are not to be despised, for their life is full of purpose and aim, and every step they take is a vital one. Remember that some pawns become queens."

Then Adrienne laughed.

She had a delicious laugh, soft and mellow and infectious.

"I am beset with preachers," she said; "are all young men so serious, I wonder? You needn't pile it on, for I'm going, and my uncles are willing that I should do so. They're such unselfish dears that they are sparing me. As you go about the world, do you preach to everyone as you have done to me?"

He surprised her by joining in her laughter.

"I always make a bee-line to my point," he said, "and you must allow that this is a selfish age. I suppose you're not an exception to the run of girls I've come across. 'To have a good time' is the whole aim of their existence."

"A moment ago it was the old who were selfish, now it is the young. What a censorious person you are!"

He did not answer her, but bent his head and buried his face in a mauve lilac bush, then he straightened himself.

"I'm not as bad as I sound," he said. "We must be friends, you and I."

"I never shall be friends with anyone who carps and cavils at the world in general. It is so easy to find fault with the times. Everyone does it. It is second nature—first the weather, then this modern world! And yet the poor old world goes on rolling, and men and women go on living. And history repeats itself. I'm not pessimistic, and I hope I never shall be. And I've lived with kind relatives and I've nice friends. And nothing is wrong with the world, it is only individuals."

Adrienne spoke hotly. There was a pink flush on her cheeks.

"I applaud your sentiments, and I hope you will instil them into your aunt's heart. Poor soul, she sadly needs more optimism in her outlook."

"And now, having finished judging us all, may we talk of other things?"

Again he laughed.

"Are you a gardener? Who supervises this delightful spot? I am sure brains have been at work in the choice of colours."

"My Uncle Tom and I do it between us, but it is our dear Barton who does the actual work. We potter round in the evenings, taking up a few weeds here and there. Is there a garden at the Château?"

"There used to be. I think something could be made of it now, but there is no one with a head to do it—or hands either, for the matter of that. You'll see your aunt's staff and will, I expect, marvel at their industry as I do. The country villages in the out-of-way provinces in France have still the feudal system of retainers who grow up round the Château and consider they are part and parcel of it. It is out of date and all wrong from the socialist point of view, but it's rather pathetic. We have nothing like it in America, and I guess it's fast vanishing out of England!"

"What do you call yourself? French or American?" asked Adrienne, standing still and regarding him with a flash of amusement in her pretty grey eyes.

"I'm a mongrel, nothing more or less. You'll be able to tell me in a few weeks' time which country I favour most."

"I think," said Adrienne rather slowly, "that I should do better if I were to time my visit to my aunt when yours ends. She can't need me so much when you are there as when she is quite alone."

"She mustn't ever be alone again," was his quick response. "It has been nearly disastrous for her nerves as it is—these months since her daughter has left her! You don't realize how imperative it is that she should have companionship."

"No, I don't," said Adrienne quietly; "there are so many widows who live their lives alone. I feel sorry for them, but they have had a good time, and if I were to like moralizing as you do, I should say that good and bad times are the lot of us all. Even the flowers require shade as well as sunshine. Aunt Cecily is no worse off than hundreds of other women. I know several widows in our neighbourhood, but they manage to exist, and love managing their husband's properties."

They had made their round of the garden by this time, and Adrienne led the way back to the house. She found it impossible to suppress or to silence Guy de Beaudessert. He talked again about loneliness and depression.

"I know what destructive forces they are. I have seen it out in the Bush and on ranches in the Rockies. I've experienced it myself, and if it can be eased or prevented in any way, for God's sake, I say it must be done."

He had quite silenced Adrienne by the time they had reached the house. She felt as if her aunt's circumstances must rule her life, and was unusually thoughtful for the rest of the day.

At dinner the guest was the chief speaker; he talked well, and his range of experience was wide. There seemed hardly a country which he had not visited.

"How can you hope to benefit any faction of the human race which is outside your own orbit, unless you have visited and lived in it until you understood the views and aims of the individuals therein? I take up the papers and read the rot that is talked in Parliament on Imperial interests. Every politician who seeks to benefit his country ought to travel round for at least five years. Then his sentiments and advice would be worth listening to. And, mind you, this delegate business is worse than useless. Let them go on their own, and rough it like our pioneers. Then they would get to the heart of things, not a scratch on the veneered surface whilst being regaled by sumptuous banquets, and driven in luxury to see the city from a Rolls-Royce."

"You sound rather like these infernal Socialists and Radicals," spluttered forth the General.

"Oh, no, Uncle Tom," said Adrienne; "it is they who go round in cars, and overeat themselves at banquets."

"The question of £ s. d. doesn't enter your head," said the General; "we would all like to travel and see the world, but it can't be done on nothing."

"Oh," laughed Guy; "go as a stowaway—a stoker—a steward—but go, and get your mind broadened, and don't think the world begins and ends with the Trinity of the British Isles."

"Rot, my dear fellow, rot!" exclaimed the General. "Britain is good enough for me. Rolling stones may roll round the globe, but they'll gather no moss; and will only fill themselves to repletion with self-glorification and—dashed cocksureness!"

Adrienne's laugh rang out merrily.

"You and Uncle Derrick have both been about on the other side of the globe, Uncle Tom, so don't pretend you haven't. I am the only stay at home. But if I visited every country in the world, I know I should come back and say that England was the brightest and best of them all."

"Well, well," said the peace-loving Admiral, "we will admit that some of our rulers would be the better for practical knowledge outside our Empire, but travellers are not infallible. Their outlook is sometimes biased by the company in which they have found themselves."

The General subsided, but he had a way of glaring at Guy that tickled Adrienne's sense of humour. After dinner she got hold of him.

"You're like a turkey-cock, my dear," she said to him; "you wait till the first word comes out of this young man's mouth, and then you try to gobble him up. And it isn't a bit of good wasting your ammunition on him. He's impervious to every insult you can offer him."

"Dash it all, I don't want to insult him. I think it's the other way about. But I won't swallow my country being blackened. And for consummate impudence give me an American, and that a young one."

"He doesn't seem young to me. He's done so much and seen so much. But I own I'd like to see him crushed by someone. I'm sure he never has been, and I am afraid never will be."

Yet shortly after, when Guy sat himself down to the piano and began to play, without music, some of the compositions of the old masters and then drifted into Chopin and Grieg, his exquisite touch and soulful rendering of some of the most beautiful passages brought tears to her eyes and a thrill to her heart.

Adrienne was very susceptible to music. She whispered to her Uncle Tom:

"He is an angel, after all! He has an angel's soul!"

And the General was rude enough to give a loud guffaw, which he stifled with a cough, and then left the room precipitately.

"Oh," cried Adrienne, when Guy rose from the piano, "I'd like to listen to you all night."

He smiled and gave her a little bow in French fashion. "Thank you, but your uncles have had too much of it. I like the organ best. There is one in the hall of the Château. Your aunt likes to listen sometimes. Don't you play yourself?"

"Not much."

"She sings," said the Admiral. "Sit down and sing, my child."

So Adrienne obeyed. She sang a song which Guy had never heard before; and if his music had thrilled her, her voice now thrilled him.

The joyous vibration in it, the sweetness of tone, and pathos, rang on in his ears for hours afterwards:

"Give as the morning that flows out of heaven: Give as the waves when their channel is riven; Give, as the free air and sunshine are given— Lavishly, utterly, carelessly give I Not the faint sparks of thy hearth ever glowing, Not a pale bud from the June roses blowing; Give as He gave thee, who gave thee to live! Pour out thy love like the rush of a river Wasting its waters for ever and ever, Through the burnt sands that reward not the giver! Silent or songful, thou nearest the sea. Scatter thy life as the summer showers pouring! What if no bird through the pearl rain is soaring, What if no blossom looks upward adoring! Look to the life that was lavished for thee." ¹

¹ By R. T. Cooke.

There was silence for a few moments after her last note had died away, then the Admiral said:

"I like the sentiment of that song, my dear. Where did you get it?"

"Godfrey gave it to me, one day after he had been talking to me for my good!"

Here she stole a glance at Guy, and there was something mischievous in her glance.

"You haven't the monopoly of preaching," she said.

"Ah," he said, "if you can sing like that, you must feel like it, and I have no fears for the future."

Then he turned to the Admiral.

"Can I catch an early train back to town to-morrow morning?" he asked.

"Why, certainly. There is the ten o'clock express. But won't you stay with us another day?"

"I'm afraid not."

Then his clear bright eyes looked straight at Adrienne,—"into her soul," she told her uncle afterwards.

"My mission is fulfilled," he said, "and when I accomplish my purpose, I waste no time."

"Don't delude yourself," said Adrienne lightly; "nothing has been altered because of your visit. I had settled with my uncles that I should go over to my aunt. It was all arranged."

The Admiral looked at her reproachfully.

"My dear," he said, "be courteous. I feel deeply indebted to Count de Beaudessert for his interest in my sister, and for his loving thought and care of her. It is very good of him to have come down to us on her behalf."

"Please drop the Count!" said the young man. "But thank you, sir, for your kind words. I don't get many of them."

Adrienne looked a little ashamed of herself. For the rest of his stay she was sweetness itself.

When he shook hands with her the next morning, he kept her hand in his for the fraction of a moment:

"It is only 'au revoir,' and we part friends, do we not? I am forgiven for my audacious interference, for my dictatorial, dogmatic speeches?"

Adrienne smiled up into his face.

"If only you would not try to be so masterful, I think I should get to like you," she said.

He dropped her hand.

"If I was a genuine Frenchy," he said, "I would raise your hand to my lips. We are both, in spite of national prejudices, going to like each other very much."

And then he got into the car awaiting him, and the General, overhearing his words, ejaculated:

"Insufferable puppy!"