The Man and the Moment. Glyn Elinor
you suggest a way out?" he reiterated.
Mr. Fordyce did not reply—then after a moment: "You were always too much occupied with women, Michael—from your first scrape when you left Eton; and over this affair you have been a complete fool."
Michael was heard to swear again.
"You have been inconsistent, too, because you did not even employ your usual ruthless methods of doing what you pleased with them. You have simply drifted into allowing this vile creature's cobwebs to cling on to your whole existence until you are almost paralyzed, and it seems to me that an immediate marriage with someone else is your only way of escape. Such a waste of your life! Just analyze the position. You have everything in the world, this glorious place—an old name—money—prestige—and if your inclinations do run to the material side of things instead of the intellectual, they are still successful in their demonstration. No one has a better eye for a horse, or is a finer shot. The best at driven grouse for your age, my boy, I have ever seen. You are full of force, Michael, and ought to do some decent thing—instead of which you spoil the whole outlook by fooling after this infernal woman—and you have not now the pluck to cut the Gordian knot. She will drag you to the lowest depths——"
Then he laughed. "And only think of that voice in one's ears all day long! I would rather marry old Bessie at the South Lodge. She is eighty-four, she tells me, and would soon leave you a widower."
The first ray of hope shot into Michael's bright blue eyes—and he exclaimed with a kind of joy, as he seized Binko, his bulldog, by his fat, engaging throat:
"Bessie! Old Bessie—By Jove, what an idea!—the very thing. She'd do it for me like a shot, dear old body!"
Binko gurgled and slobbered in sympathy.
"She would be kind to you, too, Binko. She would not say she found your hairs on every chair, and that you dribbled on her dress! She would not tell your master that he left his cigarette-ash about, and she hated the smell of smoke! She would not want this room for her boudoir, she——"
Then he stopped his flow of words, suddenly catching sight of the whimsical, sardonic smile upon his friend's face.
"Oh, Lord!" he mumbled, contritely. "I had forgotten you were here, Henry. I am so jolly upset."
"This heartlessness about poor Maurice has finished you, eh?" Mr. Fordyce suggested. He felt he might be gaining his end.
Michael covered his face with his hands.
"It seems so ghastly to think of marriage with the poor chap not yet dead—I am fairly knocked over—it really is the last straw—but she will cry and make a scene—and she has certainly arguments—and it will make one feel such a cad to leave her."
"She wrote that—did she?—wrote of marriage and her husband's last attack of hemorrhage in the same paragraph, I suppose. Michael, it is revolting! My dear boy, you must break away from her—and then do try to occupy yourself with more important things than women. Believe me, they are all very well in their way and in their proper place—to be treated with the greatest courtesy and respect as wives and mothers—even loved, if you will, for a recreation—but as vital factors in a man's real life! My dear fellow, the idea is ridiculous—that life should be for his country and the development of his own soul——"
Michael Arranstoun laughed.
"Jolly old Mohammedan! You think women have none, I suppose!"
Henry Fordyce frowned, because it was rather true—but he denied the charge.
"Nothing of the sort. Merely, I see things at their proper balance and you cannot."
Michael leaned back in his chair; he was quieter for a moment.
"I only see what I want to see, Henry—and I am a savage—I cannot help it—we have always been so. When I fancy a woman, I must obtain her—when I want a horse, I must have it. It is always must—and we have not done so badly. We still possess our shoulders and chins and strength after eleven hundred years of it!" and he stretched out a splendid arm, with a force which could have felled an ox.
An undoubtedly fine specimen of British manhood he looked, sitting there in the June sunlight, which came in a shaft from the south mullioned window in the corner beyond the great fireplace, the space between occupied by a large picture of uncertain date, depicting the landing of Mary, Queen of Scots, in her northern kingdom.
His eyes roamed to this.
"One of my ancestors was among that party," he said, pointing to a figure. "He had just killed a Moreton and stolen his wife, that is why he looks so perky—the fellow in the blue doublet."
Mr. Fordyce rose from his chair and fired his last shot.
"And now a female spider is going to paralyze the last Arranstoun, and rule him for the rest of his days, sapping his vitality."
But Michael protested.
"By heaven, no!"
"Well, I'll leave you to think about it. I am going for another stroll on this lovely day." He had got to the window by this time, which looked into the courtyard on the opposite side to the balcony. "Goodness! what a party of tourists! It is a bore for you to have them all over the place like this! To own a castle with state rooms to be shown to the public has its disadvantages."
Michael looked at them, too, a large party of Americans, mostly of that class which compose the tourists of all countries, and which no nation feels proud to own. He had seen hundreds of such, and turned away indifferently.
"They only come here twice a week, and it has been allowed for such ages—they are generally quiet, and fortunately their perambulations close at the end of the gallery. They don't intrude upon my own suite. They get to the chapel by the outside door."
Henry crossed the room and went on to the balcony.
"Mrs. Hatfield will alter all that," he laughed, as he disappeared from view.
Michael flashed a rageful glance at his back, and then flung himself into his great armchair again, and pulled the wrinkled mass, which called itself a prize bulldog, on to his lap.
"I believe he's right and we are caught, Binko. If we fled to the Rocky Mountains, she would track us. If we stay and face it, she'll make an almighty scandal and force us to marry her. What in the devil's name are we to do——!"
Binko licked his master's hands, and made noises, so full of gurgling, slobbering sympathy, no heart could have remained uncomforted. Who knows! His canine common sense may have telepathically transmitted a thought, for Michael suddenly plopped him on the floor, and stalked toward the fireplace to ring the bell, while he exclaimed, as though answering a suggestion. "Yes, we'll send for old Bessie—that's the only way."
But before he could reach his goal, the picture of Mary, Queen of Scots, landing fell forward with a crash, and through the aperture of a secret door which it concealed, there tumbled a very young and pretty girl right into the room.
CHAPTER II
M r. Arranstoun was extremely startled and annoyed, too, and before he took in the situation, he had exclaimed, while Binko gave an ominous growl of displeasure:
"Confound it—who is that! These are private rooms!" Then, seeing it was a girl on the floor, he said in another voice: "Quiet, Binko—" and the dog retired to his own basket under a distant table. "Oh, I beg your pardon—but——"
The creature on the floor blinked at Michael with large, round, violet eyes, but did not move, while she answered aggrievedly—with a very faint accent, whether a little French or a little American, or a little of both, he was not sure, only that it had something attractive about it.
"You may well say 'but'! I did not mean to intrude