"You betcher."
"I am delighted to hear you say so, my dear boy. You know how much your sympathy means to me. Marry her, you suggest?"
"You betcher."
"But here is the difficulty. My butler wants to marry her, too."
"The butler at your castle?"
"You betcher. It is a grave problem."
Stanwood knitted his brows. He was thinking the thing out.
"You can't both marry her."
"Exactly." This clear-sightedness delighted Lord Shortlands. An old head on young shoulders, he felt. "You have put your finger on the very core of the dilemma. What do you advise?"
"Seems to me the cagey move would be to fire the butler."
"Impossible. When I spoke of him as 'my' butler, I used the word loosely. His salary is paid by my daughter Adela. Firing butlers is her prerogative, and she guards it jealously."
"Gee, that's like it is with me and Augustus Robb. Well, then, you'll have to cut him out."
"Easier said than done. He is a man of terrific personal attractions. His profile alone ... The only thing that gives me hope is that he bets."
"Would he know anything good for Kempton Park next Friday?"
"Most unlikely. He seems to pick nothing but losers. That is why the fact that he is a betting man causes me to hope. He squanders his money, and Alice disapproves."
"Who's Alice?"
"The cook."
"The cook at your castle? The cook we've been talking about?"
"That very cook. She wants a steady husband. And she thinks me steady."
"She does?"
"I have it from a reliable source."
"Then you're set. It's in the bag. All you've got to do is keep plugging away and giving her the old personality. I think you'll nose him out."
"Do you, my dear boy? You are certainly most comforting. But unfortunately there is one very formidable obstacle in my path. She won't marry anyone who cannot put up two hundred pounds to buy a public house."
"Ah? So the real trouble is dough?"
"You betcher. In this world," said Lord Shortlands weightily, "the real trouble is always dough. All through my life I have found that out. And mine has been a long life. I'm fifty-two today."
Stanwood started as if a chord in his soul had been touched. He threw back his head and began to sing in a booming bass:
He broke off abruptly and pressed both hands to his temples. Too late he realized that the whole enterprise of throwing his head back and singing old music-hall ballads, however apposite, was one against which his best friends would have warned him.
"If you'll excuse me," he said, rising, "I think I'll just go to the washroom and put my head under the cold tap. Have you ever had that feeling that someone is driving white-hot rivets into your bean?"
"Not in recent years," said Lord Shortlands with a touch of wistfulness. "As a young man—"
"Ice, of course, would be better," said Stanwood, "but you look so silly ordering a bucket of ice and sticking your head in it. But maybe cold water will do something."
He tottered out, hoping for the best, and Lord Shortlands, allowing his lower jaw to droop restfully, gave himself up to meditation.
He thought of Mrs. Punter, and wondered how she was enjoying herself with her relatives at Walham Green. He thought of Terry, and hoped she would buy a nice hat. He thought of ordering another McGufTy Special, but decided that it was not worth the effort. And then suddenly he found himself thinking of something else, something that sent an icy chill trickling down his spine and restored him to a sobriety which could not have been more complete if he had been spending the morning drinking malted milk.
Had he been wise, he asked himself, had he been entirely prudent in confiding to that charming young fellow who had just gone out to put his head under the tap the secret of his love? Suppose the thing were to come to Adela's ears?
A look of glassy horror came into Lord Shortlands' eyes. Perspiration bedewed his forehead, and the word "Crikey!" trembled on his lips. From the very inception of his wooing he had been troubled by the thought of what the deuce would happen if Adela ever got to hear of it.
Then Reason reassured him. The young fellow and he were just ships that pass in the night. They had met and spoken, and now they would part, never to meet again. There could be no possibility of the other ever coming into Adela's orbit. He had been alarming himself unnecessarily.
Comforted and relieved, but feeling an imperative need for an immediate restorative, he turned, with the purpose of establishing communication with Aloysius McGuffy, and found that he was being scrutinized by a pair of extraordinarily good-looking twins, who on closer inspection coalesced into one extraordinarily good-looking young man in a grey suit, who had come in unperceived and taken a seat at the adjoining table. And to his surprise this young man now rose and approached him with outstretched hand.
"How do you do?" he said.
6
Lord Shortlands blinked.
"How do you do," he replied cautiously. Sixteen years ago he had once been stung for five by an agreeable stranger who had scraped acquaintance with him in a bar, and he could not forget that he had at this moment nearly twelve pounds on his person. "Be on the alert, Claude Percival John Delamere," he was saying to himself.
"I have not got my facts twisted?" the other proceeded. "You are Lord Shortlands?"
Though still wary, the fifth earl saw no harm in conceding this. He said he was, and the young man said he had been convinced of it; he, the fifth earl, having changed very little since the old days; looking, in fact, or so it seemed to him, younger than ever.
Lord Shortlands, though continuing to keep a hand on the money in his pocket, began to like this young man.
"You don't remember me. You wouldn't, of course. It's a long time since we met. Your son Tony brought me to Beevor for the summer holidays once, when we were boys together. Cardinal is the name."
"Cardinal?"
"I mentioned that on the phone this morning, if you remember, but nothing seemed to stir. Nice running into one another like this. How is Tony?"
"He's all right. Cardinal? Out in Kenya, growing coffee and all that. Cardinal?" said Lord Shortlands, his McGuffy-Specialized brain at last answering the call. "Why, you're the chap who's in love with my daughter Terry."
The young man bowed.
"I could wish no neater description of myself," he said. "It cuts out all superfluities and gets right down to essentials. One of these days I shall be President of the United States, but I am quite content to live in history as the chap who was in love with your daughter Terry. It must be a very wonderful thing to have such a daughter."
"Oh, decidedly."
"Makes you chuck the chest out more than somewhat, I should imagine?"
"You betcher."
"I'm surprised you don't go around singing all the time. It was a great relief to me when you told me she was still doing her hair the same way. It would be madness to go fooling about with that superb superstructure. And yet I don't know. I doubt whether any rearrangement of the tresses could destroy their charm. The first time I saw her, she had them down her back in pigtails, and I remember thinking the effect perfect."