The Admirable Tinker Part 13

There is nothing so wounding as the truth, and Courtnay knew that he was weak about the hair; he never could bring himself to keep it properly cropped; it was so glossy. His florid face became quickly florider, and he cried, "You impudent young dog!"

"Do not speak to me until you've been introduced. You're always forcing your acquaintance upon someone, Roland Maca.s.sar," said Tinker.

It was again the wounding truth; and Courtnay sprang up and dashed for him. Tinker bolted round a group of shrubs, Courtnay after him.

Finding him unpleasantly quick on his feet Tinker bolted into the shrubs. Courtnay plunged after him right into a well-grown specimen of the flowering cactus. It brought him up short. He began to swear, and though he could have sworn with equal fluency and infelicity in French, German, or Italian, in the depth of his genuine emotion he returned to the tongue of his boyhood, and swore in English. When he came out of the shrubs, adorned on one side of his face and both hands with neat little beads of blood, he found that Claire had risen from her seat, and was looking shocked, surprised, and worst of all, disgusted. He did not mend matters much by mixing his apologies with threats of vengeance on Tinker; but his temper, once out of control, was not easily curbed. He made a most unfortunate impression on her; the beads of blood scarcely excited her pity at all.

Meanwhile Tinker had taken advantage of his pursuer's meeting with the cactus to leave the terrace swiftly. He went back to the Hotel des Princes, and took out Blazer for a walk, and as he walked, his seraph-like face glowed with the pleasantest complacency. Blazer did not like Monte Carlo at all; for him there was no sport and little exercise in it; Tinker liked it very much. He had made many friends in it, and enjoyed many amus.e.m.e.nts, the chief a pleasant, perpetual war against the heavy, liveried guardians of the gambling rooms. It was his opinion that people came to Monte Carlo to gamble; it was the opinion of the Societe des Bains de Mer de Monte Carlo that children ought not to be admitted to the tables. They a.s.serted their opinion; and Tinker a.s.serted his, with the result that his bolt into the Salles de Jeu and his difficult extrication from them by the brawny, but liveried officials was fast becoming one of the events of the day.

Sometimes Tinker would make his bolt from the outermost portal; sometimes, with the decorous air of one going to church, he would join the throng filing into the concert room, and bolt from the midst of it.

The process of expulsion was always conducted with the greatest courtesy on either side; for his bolt had become an agreeable variety in the monotonous lives of the guardians; they never knew when or in what fashion it would come next.

Now he had another occupation, the shadowing of Mr. Arthur Courtnay.

That florid Adonis never grew used to hearing a gentle voice singing softly:

"Get your hair cut! Get your hair cut!"

or,

"Oh, Tatcho! Oh, Tatcho!

Rejoice, ye bald and weary men!

You'll soon be regular hairy men!

Sing! Rejoice! Let your voices go!

Sprinkle some on your cranium!

What, ho! Tatcho!"

The poetry was vulgar; but long ago his insight into the heart of man had taught Tinker to attack the vulgar with the only weapon effective against them, vulgarity.

Sooner or later, whether he was walking, or sitting with Claire, those vulgar strains would be wafted to Mr. Arthur Courtnay's ears, and they injured his cause. They kept alive in the girl's mind an uneasy doubt whether her father was right in a.s.serting Arthur Courtnay to be one of the nicest fellows he had ever met, a veritable gentleman of the old school, an opinion founded on the fact that Courtnay was the only man who had ever given two hours' close attention to his views on Protection.

But, for all this lurking doubt, Courtnay's influence over her was growing stronger and stronger. He was forever appealing to her pity by telling her of the hard and lonely life he had lived since his father, a poor gentleman of good family, had died in exile at Boulogne.

Really, his father, a stout but impecunious horse-dealer of the name of Budgett, certainly in exile at Boulogne owing to a standing difference with the bankruptcy laws of his country, was alive still. But Arthur was very fond of himself, and once in the mood of self-pity, he could invent pathetic anecdote after pathetic anecdote of his privations which would have touched the heart of a hardened grandmother, much more of a susceptible girl. She fell into the way of calling him "King Arthur" to herself.

He devoted himself to winning her with an unrelaxing energy, for she had forty thousand pounds of her own.

But he cared very little for her, and sometimes he found his love-making hard work. She was not the type of girl whom he admired; her delicacy irritated him; he preferred what the poet has called "an armful of girl," buxom and hearty. Often, therefore, when she had gone to bed, he would refresh himself by a vigorous flirtation with Madame Seraphine de Belle-ile, a brisk and vivacious young widow, who affected always gowns of a peculiarly vivid and searching scarlet. And this self-indulgence proved in the end the ruin of his fine scheme of establishing himself in life on a sound monetary basis.

Tinker was about to get into bed one evening, and found himself slow about it. His conscience was worrying him about some duty left undone, and he could not remember what the duty was. Of a sudden his terrible omission flashed into his mind: in his patient application to the task of shadowing and annoying Mr. Arthur Courtnay he had forgotten his daily bolt into the gambling rooms. Reluctant, but firm, he slipped on his pumps and went downstairs. Four minutes later the feverish gamblers in the Salles de Jeu were gratified by the sight of a seraph-like child in blue silk pyjamas who flew gaily round the tables pursued by two stout and joyfully excited Southern Europeans in livery.

The pursuit was lively, but short, for Tinker ran into the arms of a wily croupier who had slipped from his seat, and unexpectedly joined the chase. He was handed over to his pursuers and conducted from the rooms, amidst the plaudits of the gamblers. He bade good-night to his liveried friends on the threshold of the Casino, congratulating them on their increasing efficiency in "Le Sport," and warm, but happy with the sense of one more duty done, he strolled into the gardens to cool.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The pursuit was lively, but short.]

He was noiseless in his pumps, and coming quietly round a clump of shrubs, he caught Mr. Arthur Courtnay in the act of trying to kiss Madame de Belle-ile with a fervour only justified by the most romantic attachment.

"Oh!" said Tinker reproachfully; and even more reproachfully he began to sing:

"Coupez vos cheveux! Coupez vos cheveux!"

With an execration which was by no means muttered, Mr. Arthur Courtnay sprang up. Tinker darted away, and Courtnay followed. They pelted through the gardens, Courtnay gaining; but as he pa.s.sed a couple of gendarmes standing in front of the Casino, Tinker yelled: "Gare le voyou! Gare le voyou!" Instinctively the gendarmes flung themselves before Courtnay, and his impetus brought the three of them to the ground with some violence.

With one fleeting glance behind, Tinker scudded on to the hotel, and once safely in his room abandoned himself without restraint to convulsions of inextinguishable delight. When he recovered his habitual calm, he saw that Fortune had given him a weapon with which he might save his cousin.

Mr. Arthur Courtnay and the gendarmes picked themselves up; he made his explanations, and wisely compensated them for the bruises they had received in his fall. Then giving no more thought to Madame de Belle-ile, who sat awaiting him eagerly, he returned gloomily to his hotel, reflecting on the carelessness which had delivered him into the hands of an indefatigable imp of mischief. The upshot of his reflection was a resolve to press his wooing to an immediate conclusion. The next day and the day after, therefore, he redoubled his lamentations that the smallness of his means prevented him from going, as his natural honesty dictated, straight to Claire's father, and asking for her hand, and protested that he dare not risk the loss of her, which would work irreparable havoc in his life. It was only another step to suggest that, once they were married, her father's strong liking for him would soon bring about their forgiveness. He pressed and pressed these points, pausing at times to declare the vastness of his affection for her, until at last, against her better judgment, and in spite of a lurking distrust of him, of which she could not rid herself, she yielded to his persistence and the overwhelming influence of his stronger personality, and consented to elope with him.

Two days later, as Tinker, Sir Tancred, and Lord Crosland were at dejeuner, Claire and Courtnay pa.s.sed them on their way to the gardens.

"I shouldn't wonder if those two ran away together," said Lord Crosland; and his cheerful face fell gloomy.

"They have the air," said Sir Tancred coolly.

"Look here, you ought to interfere, don't you know? You ought, really," said Lord Crosland, who had fallen under the fascination of Claire's fresh charm.

"Why don't _you_?" said Sir Tancred.

"Well," said Lord Crosland uncomfortably, "I did go to Sir Everard, and tell him to keep an eye on Courtnay; and he as good as told me to go to--Jericho."

"Just like b.u.mpkin," said Sir Tancred contemptuously. "I'll bet you a fiver they bolt to-night--by the train _des decaves_."

"I don't want to bet about it," said Lord Crosland very gloomily.

Their talk made Tinker thoughtful. It would have been easy enough to settle the matter by revealing Courtnay's injudicious display of affection towards Madame de Belle-ile, but that was not Tinker's way.

He had a pa.s.sion for keeping things in his own hands, and a pretty eye for dramatic possibilities. Besides, he had taken a great dislike to Courtnay, and was eager to make his discomfiture signal.

At half-past four in the afternoon he knocked at the door of Madame de Belle-ile's suite of rooms, and her maid conducted so prominent a figure in Monte Carlo society straight to her mistress.

Madame de Belle-ile, having just changed from a bright scarlet costume into a brighter, was taking her afternoon tea before returning to the tables.

"Bonjour, Monsieur le Vaurien," she said with a bright smile. "Have you at last succeeded in gambling?"

"No; it would be no pleasure to me to gamble unless your bright eyes were shining on the table," said Tinker with a happy recollection of a compliment he had overheard.

"Farceur! Va!" said the lady with a pleased smile.

"I came to ask if you would like to sup with Mr. Courtnay to-night?"

said the unscrupulous Tinker.

"Ah, le bel Artur!" cried the lady. "But with pleasure. Where?"

"Oh, in the restaurant of the hotel," said Tinker.

The lady's face fell a little; she would have preferred to sup in a less public place, one more suited to protestations of devotion.

"At about eleven?" she said.

"At half past," said Tinker. "And I think he'd like a note from you accepting--it--it would please him, I'm sure. He--he--could take it out, and look at it, you know." It was a little clumsy; but, though he had thought it out carefully, it was the best that he could do.

"You think so? What a lot we know about these things!" said Madame de Belle-ile with a pleased laugh; and she went forthwith to the ecritoire, and in ten minutes composed the tenderest of billets-doux.

Tinker received it from her with a very lively satisfaction, and after a few bonbons, and a desultory chat with her, escorted her down to the Casino.