The Chauffeur and the Chaperon Part 53

"She left a message," explained the L.C.P. "I saw her off--as was my duty, since she did not care to disturb dear Nell, so early in the morning. You see, I alone was in her confidence. I knew, last night, after you had all gone to bed, that the telegram _might_ come, and I promised if it did, to go with her to the station. Remind me to give you the message--when we've started."

As she said this, I felt instinctively that I should have seen deep meaning in her eyes, were they not hidden by their blue gla.s.ses; and curiosity to know the worst battled with reluctance to hear it. Perhaps it was well that at this moment Alb gathered us for a start, and that there was no chance for private conversation in the carriage, which took Nell, one of the twins, and the Chaperon with me to the Rowing and Yachting Club, where "Mascotte" and "Waterspin" awaited us. This respite gave me time to get on my armor, and fasten up several, if not all the buckles--some of which I realized were lamentably weak.

On board, there was the usual business of putting our belongings to rights after an absence on sh.o.r.e; and when I came on to "Mascotte" from "Waterspin," already Amsterdam--with its smoke cloud and widespreading ma.s.s of buildings, like gray bubbles against the clear sky--was sinking out of sight. We were teuf-teufing comfortably along a modest ca.n.a.l, leading us southward, and Alb was explaining to the L.C.P. and the van Buren girls that, to reach Rotterdam by the shortest way, he meant to avoid the places we had seen: Aalsmeer, with its menagerie of little tree-animals, and the great Haarlemmer-meer Polder. Suddenly, as the motor's speed increased, after taking me on, Phyllis left Robert and Nell, to come to my side. A look from her beautiful eyes warned me that something interesting was due, and by one accord, we moved as far as possible from our friends.

"Best of brothers," she whispered; "I've been dying to thank you. At last my chance has come. You are wonderful! You _said_ you would, you know, and that I was to trust you; but I never thought you _could_. How did you do it?"

"With my little hatchet," I answered dreamily.

Her eyes opened wide. "Your--what?"

"It needed a sharp instrument," said I. "But how did you know it was mine?"

"You were with her so much, and had so many private talks. I felt you had a plan. But I could only _hope_, not expect. Do tell me everything."

"Suppose you tell _me_ everything," I bargained. "We may be playing at cross purposes. What has happened to you?"

"I'm engaged," said Phyllis. "Isn't it glorious?"

"I don't know that I should go so far as to say that," I replied, wondering why my heart was not aching harder.

"Perhaps, then, you've never been in love?" she suggested.

"Oh, haven't I? I've been in nothing else lately--except hot water."

"You do say such odd things. But I bless you, if I can't understand you.

You've made me _so_ happy."

"You didn't tell me you were in love with Robert."

"Of course not--_then_. It would have been too bold, even to tell myself, when--he was engaged to some one else. But pity's akin to love, isn't it? And there was no harm in pitying him because he was bound to a--a _creature_, who could never deserve his love."

"Even if he hadn't given it to you."

"That was _fate_, wasn't it? But if it hadn't been for my clever brother, we could never have belonged to each other."

"Some men are born brothers, some achieve brotherhood, others have it thrust upon them," I muttered. "You and he had better take advantage of the lull to be married," I said aloud.

"The lull?"

"In Freule Menela. She'll be hailing and thundering and lightning soon."

"Oh, do you think she'll try to get Robert back again?" gasped Phyllis.

"Unless another and riper fruit drops into her mouth."

"As if it would! You frighten me. Robert did beg last night that I'd marry him almost at once, and not go back to England--unless--on our honeymoon. I told him I wouldn't think of such a thing.

But--perhaps--oh, we _couldn't_ lose each other now. I do believe we were made for one another."

"I begin to believe so, too," said I.

And as that belief increased, so decreased the pain of my loss. Phyllis still is, and ever will be, a Burne-Jones Angel; and when, with her sleeves rolled up, she makes cake in the six-foot-by-six kitchen of "Waterspin," among the blue china and bra.s.ses, she is enough to melt the heart of Diogenes. Nevertheless, I cannot break mine at losing a girl who was born for a Robert van Buren. After all, Nell is more bewilderingly beautiful, and has twice Phyllis's magnetism. She has too fine a sense of humor to fall in love with a man's inches and muscles.

That one speech of Phyllis's taught me resignation, and showed me in a flash that, despite her charms, she is somewhat early Victorian.

I glanced toward Nell, on whose brilliant face indifference to her good-looking cousin was expressed, as she stood talking to him--probably about himself--and wondered how, for a little while, my wors.h.i.+p could have strayed from her to Phyllis. A girl born for Robert van Buren!--A sense of calm, beatific brotherliness stole through my veins. Nell had never been so lovely or so lovable, and I resolved to find out from my sister if she still thought there might be hope for me in that direction.

"I shouldn't keep Robert waiting," I went on, without a pang. "There's no telling what Freule Menela mightn't do. She's clever--as well as spiteful."

"And poor Robert is so honorable," sighed Phyllis. "If he'd known that you were working to--to free him, he might have felt it was a plot, and have refused to accept his release. You don't think I ought to tell him, do you?"

"Certainly not," said I. "That's our secret."

"How good you are! Well, I'll take your advice. Yet it does seem so strange--to be married, and live in Holland, when I never thought that anything could be really nice out of England. But Robert seems to me exactly like an Englishman: that's why I love him so dreadfully."

"And I suppose you seem to him exactly like a Dutch girl: and that's why he loves you so dreadfully," was the answer in my mind; but I kept it there. It might have dashed Phyllis's happiness to realize this truth.

"If I let Robert make arrangements for our marriage almost at once, Freule Menela couldn't get him back, could she, for he would be more bound to me than he ever was to her," said my sister.

"In that line alone lies safety," I replied. "Have you told Miss Van Buren--your stepsister, I mean?"

"Oh yes, as soon as it happened, of course. Nell and I never have secrets from each other--at least, we haven't till lately. I thought she would have guessed, but do you know, she _didn't_? She fancied, from things I'd said, that I was making up my mind to--that is, to try and learn to care for _another person_. She disapproved of my doing that, it seems, which is the reason she's been so odd. Not that she didn't consider us suited to each other--the other one and I--but she thought, with all his faults, he was so much of a man that it wasn't fair for a girl to accept his love if she had to try and learn to care for him simply because he happened to be _there_. I see now, in the light of this new happiness, that she was quite right. But I didn't dream then, that the one man I could _really_ care for, could ever be more to me than a dear friend. And a girl feels so humiliated to be thinking of a man who's engaged to some one else. She gets the idea that the best thing would be to occupy her mind with another man, if there's anybody who likes her very much. And Lady MacNairne has always been hinting this last fortnight--but, oh no, I'm not thinking what I'm saying! Even though you are my brother, I've no right to tell you that."

"Sister, I insist that you shall tell me," I said, with all my native fierceness. And Phyllis is not a girl to rebel, if a male person commands.

"Well, then--but she is perhaps mistaken. I hope now that she _is_."

"In thinking what?"

"That--that Jonkheer Brederode cares more for me than for Nell."

"I wonder," said I.

"Oh course," went on Phyllis modestly, "Nell's a hundred times prettier and more interesting than I am (though, thank goodness, Robert doesn't think so), but she snubbed the Jonkheer so dreadfully at first, and then, after she'd changed and been nice to him for a day or two, she got worse than ever. At least, she hardly ever speaks to him at all. She just keeps out of his way, and leaves him to--others. So his self-respect may have been hurt (I can't say vanity as I might with some men, because Jonkheer Brederode isn't a bit vain, though he has a right to be) and he may have turned his thoughts toward one who sympathized with him. Several little things lately have looked as if it were so; but I do pray it's not, now that I'm so happy. It would be too hard if he were to bear a double disappointment, after the trouble he has taken, and the sacrifices he has made--leaving his beautiful home and all its luxuries, and the friends who appreciate him as a splendid fellow and a grand sportsman, to be skipper week after week on this little boat."

"You forget that he has had the privilege of _my_ society," I reminded her.

"Oh yes, I know you must be great chums, or he wouldn't have come. But Robert says----"

"What does Robert say?"

"Nothing. Only that he and Jonkheer Brederode have known each other so long, he thinks it odd never to have heard him mention your name as his friend."

"Alb is singularly reserved," I remarked.

"So I said to Robert, and he admitted it. But it was rather a coincidence that he wanted to know us, wasn't it? However, I suppose your friends.h.i.+p must have made up to him for everything he's suffered. I did dread his learning about Robert and me, for fear it might hurt him, and Robert did too, a little; for Robert is so adorably foolish, he thinks every one must care for me. But he told him this morning."

"What did Alb say?" I asked.