“Mrs. Botherby, my dear Countess,” returned D’Almayne, who began to think his charming friend must be slightly insane, “Mrs. Botherby—the Honourable Mrs. Botherby—is the lady who obtained for me the pleasure of rendering you this slight service.”
“Quelle drôle de chose. I shall not know some Mrs. Bodairebie no veres,” was the astounding reply.
“But—but—” stammered D’Almayne, as an idea occurred to him sufficiently alarming to surprise him out of his usual sang froid, “excuse me—but surely you are the Countess Bertha von Rosenthal?”
A peal of silvery laughter was the only reply the unhappy exquisite was at first able to obtain; but, as soon as she could recover herself, the mysterious lady began: “Milles pardons! I am so rude to make a laugh at you, but I am so gay I alvays must laugh ven I see a ridiculous thing in front of—bah—vot you call before me. Mon cher Monsieur, you have, I know not how, tumbled into a delusion. I am not at all zie Countess Bertha von Rosenthal, but zie Countess Bertha Hasimoff, en route to stay viz my friend, Lady St. Clare, in Park Lane, London, till my hosband shall capture zie permission of die Czar to leave Petersburg and transport himselfs after me.”
Coverdale, Alice, and the Countess Hasimoff, glanced first at D’Almayne, then at one another, and then—but if they were heartless enough to laugh consumedly, we will draw a veil over such unfeeling conduct.
CHAPTER XX.—THE MORNING OF THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER.
THE first of September! No wonder if we were a covey of partridges what we should think about the first of September, and how, generalizing from that idea, we should feel towards the race of men,—sons of guns, as in partridge parlance we should, doubtless, metaphorically term them! We wonder from what point we should regard pointers (disappointers, as a witty friend of ours called a couple of “wild young dogs” who ran in upon their game, and cheated him of a promising shot), or how we should look upon a setter making a “dead set” at us! Reasoning by analogy, and not supposing partridges to be better Christians than Christians themselves, we fear we should consider sportsmen (the very name is an addition of insult to injury) greater brutes than their four-footed allies; and that the idea of standing fire (either kitchen or gun), the notion of the roasting we must undergo after we have been plucked,—of the way in which we should be cut up by a set of blades, who are, after all, ready enough to pick our brains, and avail themselves of our merry-thoughts, would put us in such a flutter that it would be a mercy if we were not to show the white feather, and refuse to die game after all.
Such, however, were by no means the sentiments with which Harry Coverdale looked forward to the first of September. On the contrary, although he endeavoured to disguise the fact from his wife, and indeed from himself, as far as in him lay, the truth was that he was as much delighted at the prospect of a good day’s partridge shooting, as the veriest school-boy released from the drudgery of dictionary and grammar. Markum, that trustworthy custodian of game, and original specimen of a polite letter-writer, who had been safely re-instated in his office, and received such handsome presents of baby-linen and other infantry accoutrements that the illustrious “little stranger,” who had wisely postponed his arrival till the evil day had departed, bid fair to be clothed in a style befitting the heir-apparent to a dukedom rather than to a double-barrelled gun—Markum reported that although the hares and pheasants (which he persisted in calling peasants) had suffered some diminution from the practice of the dishonest steward, yet that he’d never “in all his born days seen such a blessed sight o’ partridges.” Stimulated by this information, and by the recollection that on the preceding first of September he had been kicking his heels and cursing his evil fortune, as he performed quarantine in a red-hot port of the Mediterranean, Harry—having greatly amused Alice by the earnest zeal with which, on the 31st of August, he examined and re-examined his “Joe Manton,” and the exact and stringent orders he gave in regard to the feeding of his dogs, than which the most fastidious invalid could not have been more delicately and precisely dieted—awoke at four o’clock on the eventful morning, and, without disturbing Alice, who was sleeping as calmly as a child, rose and dressed himself in a thoroughly workmanlike shooting costume. Having accomplished this feat without waking Alice, he wrote on a bit of paper, “Good morning and good-bye, dearest. As I intend to have a glorious day of it, do not expect me till near dinner-time, when I hope to return with a full bag and an awful appetite. Yours, ever, H. C.,” and placing it on his wife’s dressing-table, stole on tiptoe to the door, closed it noiselessly after him; and when, three hours afterwards, Alice opened her eyes, he was striding through stubble on the farther side of the estate, having bagged four brace of birds and a well-conditioned and respectable Jack hare.