[Illustration: And she paused to let the splendour of the gift sink in.]
"I have a bicycle," said Tinker.
"Well—two bicycles—and a pony——"
"I don't like ponies—they're too slow," said Tinker in a weary voice. "I always ride a horse."
"Well, you should have a horse—a horse of your own."
"What's the hunting like? But, there, I know; it can't be up to much; it never is in those southern counties. I always hunt in Leicestershire. I've got used to it."
"You hunt in Leicestershire?" said Lady Beauleigh with some surprise.
"Oh course. Where does one hunt?" said Tinker, echoing her surprise.
"But—but—where does your horse come from? I know your father can't afford to keep horses!"
"Sometimes he can," said Tinker. "And if he has had to sell them, a dozen people will always mount us."
Lady Beauleigh paused; and then she made the last, lavish bid. "And I would allow you a hundred a year pocket-money. Why—why, you would be a little Prince!"
"A little Prince! And learn geography! No, thank you!" said Tinker, startled out of his calm. "Besides," he added carelessly, "I've made five thousand in the last year."
"Five thousand what?"
"Pounds."
"Come, come," said Lady Beauleigh, shaking her head, "you mustn't tell me lies."
"It isn't a lie! Tinker never tells lies," broke in Elsie hotly.
"Hold your tongue, you impertinent little minx!" said Lady Beauleigh sharply. "Who asked you to speak?"
"I think you're a horrid——" said Elsie, and was checked by Tinker's upraised hand.
"And when I died," Lady Beauleigh went on, turning again to Tinker, "I should leave you thirty thousand a year—think of it—thirty thousand a year!"
"It all sounds very nice," said Tinker in a painfully indifferent tone. "But I'm afraid it wouldn't do."
"Wouldn't do? Why wouldn't it do? To live in a beautiful big house in the country, and have everything a boy could want! Why wouldn't it do?" cried Lady Beauleigh, excited by opposition to a feverish desire to compass the end on which her heart had been set for many months.
"Do you really want to know," said Tinker very gently, but with a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
"Yes; I insist on knowing!" cried Lady Beauleigh.
"Well," said Tinker slowly, pronouncing every word with a very deliberate distinctness, "we shouldn't get on, you and I. I don't know how it is; but I never get on with people who keep shops or banks. I'm afraid you're not quite—well-bred."
Stout Lady Beauleigh sprang to her feet.
"Ah, well," said Tinker quietly, "you treated my father and mother very cruelly, you've just said rude things about both of them, and you've been rude to Elsie. The fact is, I don't see that I want a step-grandmother at all; and I can't be expected to want an ill-bred one anyway. So—so—I disown you."
Lady Beauleigh's face quivered with rage; she gathered herself together as if to box Tinker's ears; thought better of it, and hurried away.
Tinker and Elsie looked at one another, and laughed softly.
"Horrid old woman," said Elsie.
"A dreadful person," said Tinker.
As Lady Beauleigh strode out of the gardens, she came full upon Sir Tancred and Dorothy. He raised his hat, she tried to glare through him, and glared at him.
"That's my step-mother," said Sir Tancred. "I wonder what's the matter with her. She looks upset."
"Upset! Why, she looked furious—malignant!" said Dorothy.
Then they saw Tinker and Elsie coming towards them.
"I see," said Sir Tancred softly.
"Oh, if she's met my young charges!" said Dorothy, and she threw out her hands.
"Have you been doing anything to your grandmother, Tinker?" cried Sir Tancred.
"Well—I disowned her," said Tinker.
"Disowned her!"
"Yes; I had to," said Tinker with a faint regret. "She was rude, and she was wearing a gown which would have stood up by itself if she had got out of it—at Monte Carlo—in April—it's impossible!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
TINKER AND THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
Dorothy sat gazing over that charming gulf, charming alike for its scenery and its oysters, the Gulf of Arcachon. She gazed on it without seeing it; her beautiful face was clouded, and her brow was puckered in a wondering perplexity.
Tinker sat on the ground near her, his chin on his knees, observing her with a sympathetic understanding which would have disquieted her not a little, had she not been too busy with her thoughts to notice it.
They were still and silent for a long while, until she sighed; then he said, with unfeigned sadness, "I'm beginning to think he never will."
"Who never will what?" said Dorothy, awaking from her reflections, and extremely disconcerted by the exactness with which Tinker's remark echoed them.
"My father—ask you to marry him," said Tinker succinctly.
"Tinker!" cried Dorothy faintly, and she flushed a very fine red.
"It's all very well to say 'Tinker!' like that," he said, shaking his head very wisely. "But it's much better to look at things straight, don't you know? You often get a little forrarder that way."
"You are a dreadful little boy," said Dorothy with conviction.
"Yes, yes; I'm not blind," said Tinker patiently. "But the point is, that my father is ever so much in love with you, and he'll never ask you to marry him, because you're too rich. I'm sure I've given you every chance," he added with a sigh.
"You have?" said Dorothy, gasping.
"Yes; I'm always seeing that no one makes a third when you and he are together—on moonlit nights and picnics, and so on, don't you know?"
Dorothy laughed, in spite of her discomfort, at this frank discussion of her secret. "But this is inveterate match-making," she said. "Why do you do it?"
"Oh, I think it would be a good thing. You both want it badly, and you'd get on awfully well together. Besides, you're neither of you as cheerful as you used to be, and I don't like it; it bothers me."
"It's very good of you to let it," said Dorothy, smiling.
"Not at all. And Elsie and I would have a settled home, too. It's very funny; but sometimes I get tired of living in hotels."
"I'm sure you do," said Dorothy with sympathy.
"Well, have you got any idea how it can be worked?"
"No!" cried Dorothy, shocked, and flushing again; "I haven't! I wouldn't have!"
"That's silly, when it would be such a good thing," said Tinker with a disapproving air. "However, I suppose I can work it myself. I generally have to when I want anything done."
"What are you going to do?" cried Dorothy in great alarm. "Oh, I do wish I hadn't said anything, or listened to you!"
"I don't know what I'm going to do. These affairs of the heart are always difficult," said Tinker with the air of a sage who has observed many generations of unfortunate lovers.
"I won't have you do anything; I forbid it!" cried Dorothy.
"You shouldn't order your employer about," said Tinker with a smile which, on any face less angelic, would have been a grin. "Besides, I'm responsible, and I must do what's good for you. And, after all, I shan't give you away, don't you know?"
"Oh, do be careful!" said Dorothy plaintively.
"I will," said Tinker; and he rose and sauntered off along the promenade.
Dorothy looked after him with mingled feelings, dread of what he might do, vexation, and a little shame that he should have so easily surprised her secret; though, indeed, she preferred that Tinker should have discovered it rather than anyone else in the world. Then her sure knowledge of his discretion eased her anxiety, and the consideration of his able imagination and versatile ingenuity set a new and strong hope springing up in her.
Tinker strolled along to the Café du Printemps, and found his father sitting before it on the usual uncomfortable little chair before the usual white-topped table. He saw that his father's face wore the same expression as Dorothy's had worn before he had insisted on coming to her aid. Then he saw, with something of a shock, that a glass of absinthe stood on the table. Things must, indeed, be in a bad way if his father drank absinthe at half-past ten in the morning.
However, he hid his disapproval, and sitting down on another uncomfortable chair, he said gently, "What does it mean when a lady is compromised, sir?"
"It means that some accident or other has given malignant fools a chance of gossipping about her," said Sir Tancred in an unamiable tone.
"And the man has to marry her?"
"Of course he has," snapped Sir Tancred.
"Ah!" said Tinker with supreme thoughtful satisfaction.
His father looked at him for a good minute with considerable suspicion, wondering what new mischief he was hatching. But Tinker looked like a guileless seraph pondering the innocent joys of the Islands of the Blessed, to a degree which made such a suspicion a very shameful thing indeed. Partly reassured, Sir Tancred returned to his brooding: he was angry with himself because he felt helpless in an impasse. On the one hand, he could not bring himself to fly from Dorothy; on the other, he could not bring himself to abate his pride, and ask her to marry him. She was so rich; Septimus Rainer had talked of settling five million dollars on her. He looked again at the pondering Tinker; and his helpless irritation found the natural English vent in grumbling.
"Look here," he said, half querulously, half whimsically, "I told you that if you went on adding to our household, I should be travelling about Europe with a caravan. You began by adopting Elsie as a sister, and I said nothing. Then you added Miss Rainer as her governess, and I warned you. Miss Rainer added her father, a millionaire, and he added a maid, a valet, two secretaries, a courier, and a private detective. All these people, I know them well, will marry; and I shall be a patriarch travelling with my tribe. It must stop."
Tinker sighed. "We are a large household—twelve of us, with Selina," he said thoughtfully. "But you might make it more compact, sir."
"More compact—how?"
"You might marry Dorothy; and then you and she could count as one."
A sudden light of exasperation brightened Sir Tancred's eyes, and he made a grab at Tinker's arm. His hand closed on empty air; Tinker was flying like the wind along the promenade.
"Tinker!" roared Sir Tancred; but Tinker went round a corner at the moment at which only the T of his name could fairly be expected to have reached him. Sir Tancred ground his teeth, and then he laughed.
Tinker made a circuit, and came down to the sea, where he found Elsie playing with two little English girls staying at Arcachon with their mother. At once she deserted them for him, and when he had withdrawn her to a distance, he said, "I've hit on a way of getting them married."
"No! Have you? You are clever!" she cried with the ungrudging admiration she always accorded him.
"Clever? It only wants a little common-sense," said Tinker with some disdain.
"I shall be glad."
"So shall I. It'll be a weight off my mind, don't you know?" said Tinker with a sigh.
"I'm sure it will," said the sympathetic Elsie.
"It must be awfully nice to be in love," she added with conviction.
"Now, look here," said Tinker in a terrible voice, "if I catch you falling in love, I'll—I'll shake you!"
"But—but, I may be in love—ever so much, for anything you know," said Elsie somewhat haughtily.
"You are not," said Tinker sternly. "Your appetite is all right. Don't talk any more nonsense, but come along, we've got to get ready for the picnic."
At half-past eleven the two children went on board the Petrel, a little steam yacht of a shallow draught adapted to the shoals of the Gulf, which Septimus Rainer had hired from a member of the Bordeaux Yacht Club. They found Dorothy and Sir Tancred already on board, and were told that a cablegram from New York had given her father, his secretaries, and the telegraph office of Arcachon a day's work, and prevented him from coming with them. Tinker had known this fact all the morning, but he did not say so. His manner to his father showed a serene unconsciousness of any cloud upon their relations.
The Petrel was soon crossing the Gulf in an immensely important way, at her full speed of eight knots an hour. In pursuance of his policy Tinker took Elsie forward, and left Dorothy and his father to entertain one another on the quarter-deck. The two children amused themselves very well talking to Alphonse, the steersman, and Adolphe, the engineer, thick-set, thick-witted men, who combined the picturesqueness of organ-grinders with the stolidity of agriculturalists; Nature had plainly intended them for the plough, and Circumstance had pitched them into seafaring.
An hour's steering brought them across the Gulf. They landed, and made their déjeuner at a little auberge, or rather cabaret, affected by fishermen, and the folk of the Landes, off grey mullet, fresh from the Bay of Biscay, grilled over a fire of pine-cones, with a second course of ring-doves roasted before it.
After their coffee Tinker suggested that they should cross over to the strip of sand which at that point separates the Gulf from the Bay, and the others fell in with his humour. They crossed over and landed in the yacht's dinghy. Tinker insisted on taking two rugs, though both Dorothy and his father objected that the sand was quite dry enough to sit on. However, when they came to the beach of the Bay, Sir Tancred spread them out, and he and Dorothy sat on them. The two children wandered away, and presently Elsie found herself holding Tinker's hand, and running hard through the pines towards the landing-place.
In answer to Tinker's hail, Alphonse fetched them aboard in the dingey, and the honest, unsuspecting mariners accepted his instructions to take them for a cruise, and come back later for his father and the lady, without a murmur. But no sooner was the Petrel under weigh, than he strode to the middle of the quarter-deck, folded his arms, scowled darkly in the direction of his father and Dorothy, so heedless of their plight, and growled in his hoarsest, most piratical voice:
"Marooned! Marooned!"
Slowly he paced the deck, with arms still folded, casting the piercing glances of a bird of prey across the waters; then of a sudden he roared once more with the true piratical hoarseness, "All hands on deck to splice the main brace!"
Alphonse and Adolphe did not understand his nautical English; but when Elsie came from the cabin with a bottle of cognac and two glasses, their slow, wide grins showed a perfect comprehension. Tinker gave them the cognac, and took the wheel. Then he became absorbed in steering, and sternly rejected all further consideration of his gift; he would have neither hand nor part in hocussing French agriculturalists posing as mariners.
But for all his absorption in his steering, and his care to look past them as they sat in more than fraternal affection on the deck, with the bottle between them, it was somehow forced on him, probably by the noise they made, that they proceeded from a gentle cheerfulness through a wild and songful hilarity, broken by interludes in which either described to the other with eloquent enthusiasm the charms of the lass who loved him best, to a tearful melancholy, from which they were rapt away into a sodden and stertorous slumber.
At the third snore Tinker turned to Elsie, who sat by him looking rather scared by the changing humours of the agricultural mariners, and said with a sardonic and ferocious smile, "The ship is ours."
At once they divested themselves of the hats of civilisation, and tied round their heads the red handkerchiefs proper to their profession; then he gave her the wheel, and going to the cabin, came back with a black flag neatly embroidered in white with a skull and crossbones, Dorothy's work, and sternly bade an imaginary quartermaster run up the Jolly Roger. Then, as quartermaster, he ran up that emblem of his dreadful trade himself; became captain once more, and, with folded arms and corrugated brow surveyed it gloomily. Then he went down to the engine-room, put the yacht on half-speed, and, as well as he could, stoked the fires.
For the next three hours the Petrel forgot all the innocent traditions of her youth as a pleasure boat, and traversed the Gulf of Arcachon a shameless, ravening pirate, while Captain Hildebrand, the Scourge of the Spanish Main, issued curt, sanguinary orders to an imaginary but as blood-dyed a gang of villains as ever scuttled an Indiaman. The Jolly Roger and three or four blank shots from the little signal gun drove three panic-stricken fishing boats from their fishing-ground as fast as oars and sails could carry them, to spread abroad a legend of piracy in the Gulf which would last a generation.
It was nearly sunset before Captain Hildebrand returned to the serious consideration of his business as Cupid's ally. Then he set the Petrel going dead slow, ran her gently on to a sandbank, and let fall the anchor, which was hanging from her bows. This done, again a pirate, he looked at the recumbent and still stertorous Alphonse and Adolphe with cold, cruel eyes, and said, "It's time these lubbers walked the plank."
