“Welcome once more to France, Monsieur Dunbar!�
“But, Mamma,� put in Monsieur de Courvaux, as young Mr. Brown started and crimsoned to the roots of his tawny hair, “the name of Monsieur is Brown, and he has never before visited our country.�
“Monsieur Brown will pardon me!� Madame de Courvaux rose to her full height and swept the astonished young fellow a wonderful curtsy. “The old are apt to make mistakes. And—there sounds the dressing gong!�
Indeed, the metallic tintamarre of the instrument named began at that instant, and the great room emptied as the chatterers and tea drinkers scurried away. A rosy, civil footman in plain black livery showed Mr. Brown to his room, which was not unreasonably high up, and boasted a dressing cabinet and a bath. As Brown hurriedly removed the smuts of the railway with oceans of soap and water, and got into his evening clothes—much too new and well cut for a tutor—he pondered. As he shook some attar of violets—much too expensive a perfume for a tutor, who, at the most, should content himself with Eau de Cologne of the ninepenny brand—upon his handkerchief, he shook his head.
“I’ll be shot if she didn’t, and plainly too! It wasn’t the confusion of the beastly all-night train journey from Paris. It wasn’t the clatter of French talk, or the delusion of a guilty conscience—decidedly not! The thing is as certain as it is inexplicable! I arrive under the name of Brown at a country house in a country I don’t know, belonging to people I have never met, and the second lady I am introduced to addresses me as Mr. Dunbar. There’s the second gong! I wonder whether there is a governess for me to take in, or whether I trot behind my superiors, who aren’t paid a hundred and fifty pounds a year to teach English?�
And Mr. Brown went down to dinner. Somewhat to his surprise, he was placed impartially, served without prejudice, and conversed with as an equal. The De Courvaux were charming people, their tutor thought—equal to the best-bred Britons he had ever met. His pupils—the freckled boy with hair cropped à la brosse, and the pretty, frank-mannered girl of sixteen—interested him. He was uncommonly obliged to the kind old Duke for his recommendation; the bread of servitude eaten under this hospitable roof would have no bitter herbs mingled with it, that was plain. He helped himself to an entrée of calves’ tongues stewed with mushrooms, as he thought this, and noted the violet bouquet of the old Bordeaux with which one of the ripe-faced, black-liveried footmen filled his glass. And perhaps he thought of another table, at the bottom of which his place had been always laid, and of the grim, gaunt dining-room in which it stood, with the targets and breast-pieces, the chain and plate mail of his—Brown’s—forebears winking against the deep lusterless black of the antique paneling; and, opposite, lost in deep reflection, the master of the house, moody, haggard, gray-moustached and gray-haired, but eminently handsome still, leaning his head upon his hand, and staring at the gold and ruby reflections of the wine decanters in the polished surface of the ancient oak, or staring straight before him at the portrait, so oddly out of keeping with the Lord Neils and Lord Ronalds in tartans and powdered wigs, the Lady Agnes and the Lady Jean in hoops and stomachers, with their hair dressed over cushions, and shepherds’ crooks in their narrow, yellowish hands.... That portrait, of an exquisite girl—a lily-faced, gold-haired, blue-eyed child in the ball costume of 1870—had been the object of Mr. Brown’s boyish adoration. Varolan painted it, Mr. Brown’s uncle—whose name was no more Brown than his nephew’s—had often said. And on one occasion, years previously, he had expanded sufficiently to tell his nephew and expectant heir that the original of the portrait was the daughter of a ducal family of France, a star moving in the social orbit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, married to a Minister of the Imperial Government a few weeks previous to that Government’s collapse and fall.
“I believe the dear old boy must have been in love with her before Uncle Ronald died, and he came in for the family honors,� mused Mr. Brown, and then began to wonder whether he had treated the dear old boy badly or vice versa. For between this uncle and nephew, who, despite a certain chilly stiffness and rigor of mental bearing, often mutually exhibited by relations, were sincerely attached to each other, a breach had opened, an estrangement had occurred. Hot words and bitter reproaches had suddenly, unexpectedly been exchanged, old wrongs flaming up at a kindling word, forgotten grudges coming to light in the blaze of the conflagration....
And so it had come to pass that the son of Lord Hailhope’s younger brother, named Angus after his uncle, had not been thrown, had hurled himself upon his own resources. And the Duke of Atholblair had found him the place of English tutor in the family of Madame de Courvaux.
“It is the only thing that presents itself,� the aged peer had explained, “and therefore, my dear boy, you had better take it until something better turns up.�
For the present. But the future? Mr. Brown wondered whether he and the English grammar and lexicon—the phrase book, dictionary, and the other volumes which constituted his tutorial equipment—were doomed to grow gray and dog’s-eared, drooping and shabby together?