CHAPTER XXI
THE GOLDEN HEART OF RHODA POLLY
I admit that I was gloomy and disappointed as I turned to walk back with Rhoda Polly—disappointed in the turn things had taken, in the ill success of my cherished diplomacy, and especially disappointed in the desertion of Jeanne, who had carried what ought at least to have been a broken heart, to the consolation of a newer and gayer place where doubtless young men abounded, as full of admiration and eagerness to please as I had been—well, any time these last two years.
It did not strike me at the time that I was only a vain young fool, whose corns had been most deservedly trampled upon, and that here was the lesson which of all others would benefit me the most.
It was therefore in a most humbled and chastened frame of mind that I opened out to Rhoda Polly the vexed and difficult problem of Alida. Perhaps it was well that I was still suffering from the rods with which Jeanne had chastised me. For, had I begun on the way towards the Restaurant Félix, when I was rampant and haughty of crest, I might not have made my points so well.
But for once I forgot my silly self, and devoted all my energies to pleading for Alida. I painted her solitary condition, and the unlikelihood that, if she (Rhoda Polly) refused to help her, she would find any other friend of her rank in Aramon.
"Why, of course I will!" cried Rhoda Polly the golden-hearted; "why did it ever get into your stupid old noddle that I would not? And so will the rest—specially mother, who will be the most useful of us all. She has never had any mother, really, this Alida of yours! Oh, of course, your Linn has done her best, but then, you see, she knew she was a princess, and from early association Madame Keller would be little more than a servant. Oh, I shall understand, never fear. Mother will be as grand a dame as she is, and I—well, I shall be the daughter of the Great Emir of the Aramon Small Arms Factory. I wish she had been coming to stay with us—but no, it is better as it is. The Garden Cottage!—Think of it, what a Princess of the Sleeping Woods she will make. We are too noisy. But why did Hugh never tell us? I should have thought he would simply have raved about such a marvel. But he has been as silent as mumchance!"
"Forgive me. I wanted to tell you myself," I said, still humbly; "it was very good of Hugh, but I really could not let anyone else tell you, and it seemed so hard to get hold of you these days—I mean without your fighting tail."
"The fighting tail have gone off to-day to rustle chiffons," cried Rhoda Polly; "but never mind them! Tell me about this Princess from the East. I never thought I should see one, yet I once saw her father, a patch of white on the high promenade at Amboise, the year that Dad took me with him for company. He was bringing out a new carbine for the Cavalry School at Saumur on the Loire. So it was from there that we went one day to see the great man."
Then I told Rhoda Polly about the brown prince of the Khedival house, his visit and the answer he had carried back.
"Of course she could not," she cried, all on fire in a moment. "It would be like imprisonment for life, only far more dreadful."
Rhoda Polly's eyes, unused to untimeous moisture, were at least vague and misty, but that might only be because she was looking into the blue distance towards the Alps of Mont Ventoux.
"Poor precious waif," she said, "if she is wayward and a little difficult—who can wonder? We shall all try hard to make her happy. We will come and pay court to her in the garden."
I explained that a girl who had been a music mistress to the exigent Sous-Préfectoral dames and other ladies of Autun, might not be so difficult to deal with as she seemed to expect. It was only Keller Bey and Linn who, if spoiling had been possible, had spoilt her ever since she came to them as a little child, the charge committed to them by their master, the battle Emir of the Atlas.
"Oh," cried Rhoda Polly, hardly able to curb her feet to a decent walk, "how mean it will be if they stop Keller Bey's money, and that wretch of an old Emir getting so much from the Government. I wish I did not spend every centime of my allowance without ever knowing where it goes to! But at any rate I mean for the future to share with Alida if she will let me."
I explained how from what Keller had told me Alida would have enough to live upon even if they never saw another sixpence of her father's money. Also I described what my father was doing to the Garden Cottage to fit it for their coming.
"Oh, do let me come and help. Ask your father. I should love to! And I should have far more idea than a man. I could get mother to come too, sometimes, though you know how loath she is to move far out of her own house. Still, she could drive over."
Never was there so short a walk as that between the pier above Mère Felix's and the gate of Château Schneider. Rhoda Polly was so eager that she would have gone right across the river there and then, and climbed the hill to Garden Cottage, if I had not insisted on delivering her to her mother, and generally giving an account of my stewardship.
Before going in, however, I warned her that the secret of Alida the Princess must be kept. It was only for herself. To the rest of the family she must be Mademoiselle Keller, the daughter of Keller Bey and his wife Linn.
The need to keep so great a matter secret seemed to damp the girl's enthusiasm for a moment, but almost instantly she caught me by the hand in her impulsive boyish way.
"I promise," she said, "and you are quite right. It was splendid of you to tell me. I am so grateful for that."
"Of course I told you, Rhoda Polly. Who else could I have told?"
She meditated a little, finger on lip before speaking.
"Do you know it is rather a pity not to tell mother," she said at last. "She does not interfere, but she moderates and eases off the hard places. She has a great deal of influence in a quiet way—more than any-one—and she would never tell a soul. I really think that it would do Alida more good than anything else to have mother on our side from the first. We are all trumpeters like father (except perhaps Hugh, who is not like any of our brood), but it is mother who tells the trumpets when to stop sounding."
I assured Rhoda Polly that she could do as she thought best in the matter. Mrs. Deventer was all she said and more. She possessed, besides, a pleasant quality of motherhood that glinted kindly through her spectacles. Then, of course, Rhoda Polly knew best. All that I wanted to avoid was having the secret which had been entrusted to me being battered about in the daily brawls of the Deventer family—still less did I wish that it should get abroad to set talking the commonplace gossips of the town.
"Ah, mon ami," said Rhoda Polly, "you need not fear my mother. She knows the secrets of every one of us, I think—except perhaps Hugh's, who is too young to have any—and yet when we girls come to confide some tremendous fact to each other, we are astonished to find that mother has known it all the time."