CHAPTER X A SPECIALIST IS CONSULTED

The amiable discussion, begun in the interval after lunch, was continued at the Palace Hotel during that pleasant hour when tea is a memory and dinner an expectation.

The girls had gone up to their room by this time, hand in hand, and tremulous with the powers of suppressed narration. For them the supreme issue concerned an amiable lady who was quite in ignorance of the surprise prepared for her, and would certainly shed tears when the amatory bombshell exploded. For the youths it was another matter altogether. Conscience had begun to twit them with melancholy gibes upon their rashness. Or, as Bob put it tersely, a couple of wives and three hundred and ninety pounds a year between the pair of them. That was the bald truth. It had seemed otherwise in the woods when the sun shone, and the great mountains looked down kindly upon the lovers.

"What we want," said Dick resolutely, "is someone to advise us." He was a sentimental person, and given to idealism. "We ought to know how we stand before the thing goes any further. Marjory's a dear little girl, and I shall never marry anybody else. But that doesn't say I have the right to marry her on a hundred and ninety a year—you'll admit that, Bob?"

Bob admitted it, and ordered a "mixed Vermouth." They were sitting in the bar at the time, and could hear Bess Bethune scolding the doctor in the passage outside. Distantly, from the drawing-room came the strains of one of Schubert's nocturnes, played by a "half-back" from Harrow, who had some difficulty with the bass. The charming Swiss girl, who served them, did not understand much English, but they would have consulted her for two pins, so dreadful was the emergency.

"It's my opinion, we were just rushed into it," said Bob, taking up the conversation from an unobservable point, "I like Nellie better than any girl I ever saw, but I confess it's rather a knock to hear she's been engaged three times already. Suppose I were to meet one of the other fellows when we're married! He'd have the laugh of me, anyway."

Dick sighed.

"Marjory's been engaged once—she told me so. I don't think a girl can be expected to know her own mind until she's two or three and twenty. We'd have to take a little flat somewhere, and cut it deuced close; do you think she is the girl to do that, Bob?"

Bob was far from thinking it.

"She proposes to run a motor, Dick, she told me so. You've got fifteen hundred a year and a shooting-box in Scotland, so the hotel says. My place is in Norfolk—I suppose they mean the tent Jack Stevens and I pitched by Horsey Mere last autumn. I didn't say so, though; let's keep it up as long as we can; in for a penny, in for fifteen hundred pound, you know."

Dick drained his glass and appeared to cogitate. Presently he said, almost as though it were an inspiration:

"I tell you what, Bob, let's talk to the 'little widow' about it. I'm sure she's a woman of the world. She'd put us straight, right enough; let's go up and see her."

Bob looked at him scornfully.

"Why, where do you think she is, then?"

"Who, Mrs. Kennaird? Why, in Number 43, of course. It's on the board, isn't it?"

"The board be hanged! She's left the hotel—she left this morning, and went up to the chalet, near Benny's."

"Then let's go to the chalet after her. I'm sure she's one of the nicest little women in the place. And she's been married herself; she'd know what we ought to do. Let's go and see her now."

He stood up, excited by the idea; and, really, when he came to reflect upon it, Bob did not find the notion displeasing. It was true that there had been ugly talk in the hotel concerning this very person; true that she had left under circumstances so mysterious that a hundred versions were already current, both of her past life and the promise of her future. In these the boys had taken little part, except to say that it was a pity people had nothing better to do than to slander so charming a lady; and their abstention made the proposed visit to her chalet seem quite chivalrous. Five minutes later they were climbing up the steps of the skating-rink; whence it was but a little way to the bungalow.

There were lights in the lower windows of the house, and when they knocked, a solemn-looking Swiss maid opened to them and listened as a freckled automaton to their far from coherent explanations. They wished to see Mrs. Kennaird—for they were still in ignorance of her true name—upon a private matter, and one to be explained to no other. To which Dick added the rider, that they would be very grateful to Mrs. Kennaird if she would see them, and would waste as little as possible of her valuable time; a rigmarole at which Bob would have laughed had he not been so very nervous. But, as he was nervous, he stood first upon one foot and then upon the other and never said a word until the maid returned and ushered them into the drawing-room where the "little widow" awaited them. Bob did not know quite why it was, but from that very moment he felt as though his troubles were at an end; while as for Dick, he declared afterwards that all his anxiety vanished like the mists directly he set eyes on that gracious lady.

Lily was surprised to see the boys, for she had been awaiting another—perhaps she welcomed them with a greater cordiality upon that account. Very charming, in a loose gown of black lace, it was not her beauty but her womanhood which cast a spell wherever she went; and to be sure, she was as much out of place in that mediocre medley of Andana as a diamond in a setting of German silver.

"Yes," she said, encouraging Bob to speak, "I remember you perfectly, Mr. Otway; were we not fellow-prisoners at Sierre during the blizzard? And Mr. Fenton: why, you rode in the same sleigh the day we came here."

Fenton said that it was so, and apologised at the same time for certain frivolities upon the journey, particularly for the votive offering of snow hurled at the shrine of one Sir Gordon Snagg. When this had provoked the kindly lady to a smile, Bob took up the running.

"Everyone at the hotel is beastly sorry that you have left," he exclaimed, and then qualified it by saying: "That is, everyone who counts. The place seems quite different since you went."

"Oh, but I only left this morning, and you were paper-chasing, were you not?"

"Of course he was," cried Dick, "and proposing to Nellie Rider at the same time. That's what he came to tell you, Mrs. Kennaird."

"While Bob wants to say that he is engaged to Marjory, and doesn't know what to do about it."

"To do about it! Oh, my dear Mr. Fenton, what do you mean?"

They were both blushing very much by this time, and it was quite a charity to ask them to sit down. Lily herself took a seat upon the sofa, and, enjoying the situation immensely, encouraged them to go on.

"So I must congratulate you both; how good of you to take me into your confidence so soon. Why, it was only this morning, was it not?"

"In the woods below the Zaat," interposed Bob quickly; "I could show you the place."

"And I was just a quarter of a mile away. Was it not a coincidence, Mrs. Kennaird? We were both done for when we met."

She looked from one to the other, asking herself whether this was said in jest, or was indeed the very far from sentimental confession of a not unsentimental youth. And that was a riddle she could not read. It seemed to her that she was listening to boys from a public school, who had all the fine airs and the sporadic idiom of the city, but were at heart as simple as any Corydon from remote pastures.

"Really," she said, with just a suspicion of reproach in her tone. "Really, you must be serious, Mr. Fenton."

"I was never more serious in my life. We're both engaged, and we've got three hundred and ninety pounds a year between us; that's why we've come to you. You can tell us what we ought to do about it."

She laughed—it was so droll.

"Then you regard it altogether as a matter of money?"

Bob looked rueful.

"We don't, but Mrs. Rider will. These old girls are regular nuts on the cash; she's sure to want to know what we've got."

"Then, of course, you will tell her everything?"

They looked at each other a little sorrowfully. It was Dick who made answer.

"If we do, the engagements will be off. We shall have to cut the girls to-morrow, and it would make it awkward for them. Don't you think we could have a truce or something—lie low until the night before we go? Don't you think that, Mrs. Kennaird?"

Lily shook her head.

"I think you are a pair of babies," she said emphatically. "You don't seem to know whether you wish to marry or not. That enters into the question, I think; you certainly ought to make up your minds."

They nodded their heads as though perfectly in accord with so obvious a truth. Presently, Bob, who hugged his knee during the harangue—not under the delusion that it was Nellie Rider's waist, but because he did not know what to do with his hands—spoke for the pair of them.

"You see," he said—and Lily saw nothing but the humour of it—"you see it's this way. Dick's a sentimentalist, and I'm a philosopher, and we've tumbled into the same boat somehow. I would like to marry Nellie if I could make her happy, and all that sort of thing; but it's rotten beginning on two hundred a year, and Dick's only got a hundred and ninety. Now what I feel is this: Is it quite fair to the girls?"

"Did you think of that when you proposed to them this morning?"

Dick shook his head.

"I was never more in love in my life," he said. "I forgot everything else in heaven or earth but Marjory. I would marry her to-morrow, if it wasn't for the beastly cash."

"And you, Mr. Otway?"

"I say the same, but I don't think I should care to begin so soon. She might give me a year's grace."

Lily nodded her head; she understood now.

"I think you will have your year," she said a little merrily. "To tell you the truth, Mr. Otway, I should not be surprised if you remained a bachelor. As to Mr. Fenton, well, I think that will depend upon Mrs. Rider. Would you like me to speak to her for you, for both of you if you wish it?"

They jumped at the idea. She was a regular brick, and so very much superior to anyone at Andana that the thing was as good as done if she became their ambassador. The promise put them in the seventh heaven.

"If she says 'No,' we can let bygones be bygones," Bob added enthusiastically. "I will treat Nellie as a sister, and the hotel need know nothing about it. You don't know what a load you've taken off my back, Mrs. Kennaird; I shall never forget it."

She rejoined that it was a pleasure to help two silly boys in love, and having said it, the boys in their turn perceived that the interview must terminate. Reluctantly, they shook hands with her, and then, as she stood with them a moment at the door of the chalet, Dick Fenton remarked the presence of two gendarmes, who were going up toward Vermala, carrying lanterns in their hands. He bethought him immediately of the comic-tragedy of the morning, and began to tell her about it, just to show that he could speak of other things than matrimony.

"They say there's been a murder up in the woods," he declared cheerfully; "that's the very latest intelligence at Vermala. Bob saw an Englishman being followed by one of the Swiss police, and he heard a weird cry a little while afterwards. Then we met an old Frenchman, who declared that he saw the gendarme fall on the slope below the Zaat. Those fellows would be going up to look for him, I suppose. There'll be a pretty hullabaloo if they find him."

She did not speak a word; they mistook her silence for lack of interest, and fearing to stay longer, said "good night" once more, and went with boyish steps down the hillside together.