CHAPTER XII
DICK COURTLANDT’S BOY
Presently the servants brought out the tea-service. The silent dark-skinned Sikh, with his fierce curling whiskers, his flashing eyes, the semi-military, semi-oriental garb, topped by an enormous brown turban, claimed Courtlandt’s attention; and it may be added that he was glad to have something to look at unembarrassedly. He wanted to catch the Indian’s eye, but Rao had no glances to waste; he was concerned with the immediate business of superintending the service.
Courtlandt had never been a man to surrender to impulse. It had been his habit to form a purpose and then to go about the fulfilling of it. During the last four or five months, however, he had swung about like a weather-cock in April, the victim of a thousand and one impulses. That morning he would have laughed had any one prophesied his presence here. He had fought against the inclination strongly enough at first, but as hour after hour went by his resolution weakened. His meeting Harrigan had been a stroke of luck. Still, he would have come anyhow.
“Oh, yes; I am very fond of Como,” he found himself replying mechanically to Mrs. Harrigan. He gave up Rao as hopeless so far as coming to his rescue was concerned. He began, despite his repugnance, to watch Nora.
“It is always a little cold in the higher Alps.”
“I am very fond of climbing myself.” Nora was laughing and jesting with one of the English tennis players. Not for nothing had she been called a great actress, he thought. It was not humanly possible that her heart was under better control than his own; and yet his was pounding against his ribs in a manner extremely disquieting. Never must he be left alone with her; always must it be under circumstances like this, with people about, and the more closely about the better. A game like this was far more exciting than tiger-hunting. It was going to assume the characteristics of a duel in which he, being the more advantageously placed, would succeed eventually in wearing down her guard. Hereafter, wherever she went, there must he also go: St. Petersburg or New York or London. And by and by the reporters would hear of it, and there would be rumors which he would neither deny nor affirm. Sport! He smiled, and the blood seemed to recede from his throat and his heart-beats to grow normal.
And all the while Mrs. Harrigan was talking and he was replying; and she thought him charming, whereas he had not formed any opinion of her at all, nor later could remember a word of the conversation.
“Tea!” bawled the colonel. The verb had its distinct uses, and one generally applied it to the colonel’s outbursts without being depressed by the feeling of inelegance.