A slight perspiration bedewed my brow; – I said in a strained and tenor voice not my own, but over-modulated and quite sexless: "Thusis, I am gratified that the slight medicinal tonic of which you have partaken in moderation has restored you to your normal condition of mental and bodily vigor. I trust that the natural alarm you experienced at encountering me in the dark, has now sufficiently subsided to enable you to return to your culinary duties. Allow me to suggest an omelette for luncheon… I thank you."
The girl's bewildered eyes rested on me so sweetly, so inquiringly, that I knew I must pull myself together at once or never. But when I evoked the image of that damned Admiral he was grinning.
"Thusis," I said hoarsely, "you do look like that girl in my photograph. I – I can't help it – b-but you do!"
At that her perplexed expression altered swiftly and that bewitching smile flashed in her gray eyes.
"Good heavens," I exclaimed, "you look more like her than ever when you smile! Don't you know you do?"
Instantly the hidden laughter lurking in the curled corners of her mouth rippled prettily into music.
"Oh, Lord," I said, "you are 'The Laughing Girl' or her twin sister!"
"And you," she laughed, "are so much funnier than you realize, – so delightfully young to be so in earnest! You consider the world a very, very serious place of residence, – don't you, Mr. O'Ryan? And life a most sober affair. And I am afraid that you also consider yourself quite the most ponderous proposition upon this tottering old planet. Don't you?"
Horrified at her levity I tried to grasp the amazing fact that my cook was poking fun at me. I could not compass the idea. All I seemed to realize was that I stood in my cellar confronting a slender laughing stranger by candle-light – an amazingly pretty girl who threatened most utterly to bewitch me.
"I'm sorry! – are you offended?" she asked, still laughing, and her dark-fringed eyes very brilliant with mischief. – "Are you very angry at me, Mr. O'Ryan?"
"Why do you think so?" I asked, wincing at her mirth.
"Because I suppose I know what you are thinking."
"What am I thinking?"
"You're very, very angry with me and with yourself. You are saying to yourself in pained amazement that you have no business in a cellar exchanging persiflage with a presumptuous servant! You are chagrined, mortified! You are astonished at yourself – astounded that the solemn, dignified, distinguished Cabalero Don Michael O'Ryan y Santiago de Chile y Manhattanos – "
I turned red with surprise and wrath – and then slightly dizzy with the delicious effrontery of her beauty which daring had suddenly made dazzling in the candle-light.
For a minute my brain resembled a pin-wheel; then I pulled myself together, but not with the aid of the Admiral. No! The Admiral made me sick. In my sudden rush of exhilaration I derided him.
"Thusis," said I, when I recovered power of speech, "there's just one thing to do with you, and that is to kiss you for your impudence."
"Your own cook! Oh, shocking! Oh, Señor! Oh Don Michael – "
– "And I'm going to do it! – " said I solemnly.
"Remember the seriousness of life!" she warned me, retreating a step or two as I set all my bottles upon the ground. "Remember the life-long degradation entailed by such an undignified proceeding, Don Michael."
That was too much. She saw trouble coming, turned to escape what she had unloosed: and I caught her near the cellar stairs.
Then, under the lifted candle, I saw her face pale a little, change, then a flush stain the white skin to her throat.
"Don't do that," she said, still smiling, but in a quiet and very different voice. "I invited it by my silly attitude; – I know it perfectly well. But you won't do it – will you, Mr. O'Ryan?"
"You deserve it, Thusis."
"I know I do. But don't."
My arms slipped from her. I released her. She was still smiling faintly.
"Thank you," she said. "I'm sorry I offered you provocation. I don't know why you seem to tempt me to – to laugh at you a little – not unkindly. But you are so very young to be so solemn – "
"I tell you I will kiss you if you repeat that remark again!"
It was on the tip of her tongue to retort that I dared not: I saw defiance in her brilliant eyes. Something in mine, perhaps, made her prudent; for she suddenly slipped past me and fled up the stairs.
Half way up she turned and looked back. There was an odd silence for a full minute. Then she lifted the candle in mocking salute:
"I defy you," she said, "to tell Mr. Smith what you've been about down here in the cellar with your cook!" I said nothing. She mounted the stairs, her head turned toward me, watching me. And, on the top step:
"Try always to remember," she called back softly, "that the world is a very, very solemn and serious planet for a ponderous young man to live in!"
I don't remember how long after that it was before I picked up my bottles and went out to the fountain where Smith sat awaiting me. I don't know what he saw in my face to arouse his suspicion.
"You've been in the kitchen again!" he exclaimed.
I placed the bottles on the grass without noticing the accusation.
"What was it this time – business as usual?" he inquired sarcastically.
"I have not been in the kitchen," said I, "although I did transact a little business with my cook." I did not add: – "business of making an outrageous ass of myself."
As I drew the first cork I was conscious of Smith's silent and offensive scrutiny. And very gradually my ears revealed my burning guilt under his delighted gaze.
Calm, but exasperated, I lifted my brimming glass and bowed politely to Smith.
"Go to the devil," said I.
"A rendezvous," said he.
And we drank that friendly toast together.
IV
MODUS VIVENDI
Smith's luggage and mine, and my other effects – trunks, boxes, and crates – arrived very early the next morning: and several large, sweating Swiss staggered up the stairs with the impedimenta until both they and their job were finished.
When I left New York, not knowing how long this business of my ridiculous inheritance might detain me in Switzerland, I packed several trunks with clothing and several crates with those familiar and useful – or useless – objets-d'art which for many years had formed a harmless and agreeable background for my more or less blameless domestic career in New York.
Rugs, curtains, furniture, sofa-pillows, books, a clock mantel set, framed and unframed pictures and photographs including the O'Ryan coat-of-arms – all this was the sort of bachelor stuff that Smith and I disinterred from the depths of trunks, crates, and boxes, and lugged about from corner to corner trying effects and combinations.
Before we had concluded our task I think he had no opinion at all of me as an interior decorator. Which revealed considerable insight on his part. And although I explained to him that interior decorators became so fed up on gorgeous and sumptuous effects that they themselves preferred to live amid simpler surroundings reminiscent of the Five and Ten Cent Store, he remained unconvinced.
"It's like a lady-clerk in a candy shop," I insisted. "She never eats the stuff she sells. It's the same with me. I am surfeited with magnificence. I crave the humble what-not. I long for the Victorian. I need it."
He gazed in horror at a framed picture of my grandfather the Admiral.
"Oh God," he said,