Set in Silver
He came after me and said I'd dropped something. So I had. It was a
rose. I was going to disclaim it, with all the haughty grace of a
broomstick, when suddenly I remembered that it was my _carte
d'identite_, so to speak. The Dragon had prescribed it in his last
letter to Madame de Maluet about meeting Ellaline. As there might be
difficulty in recognition if she came to the station with a chaperon as
strange to him as herself, it would be well, he suggested, that each
pinned a red rose on her dress. Then he would look out for two ladies
with two roses.
I couldn't make myself into two ladies with two roses, but I must be one
lady with one rose, otherwise the Dragon and I might miss each other,
and he would go out to Versailles to see what the dickens was the
matter. Then the fat would be in the fire, with a vengeance!
You see, I had to say "Yes" to the rose, because there wasn't time to
call at a florist's and try to buy another red label before going on to
the Gare de Lyon. I put out my hand with a "thank you" that sounded as
if it needed oiling, but, as if on second thought the silly idiot asked
if he might keep the flower for himself. "It looks like an English
rose," said he, with a glance which transferred the compliment to me.
"Certainly not--sir," said I. "I need it myself."
"If that's all, you might let me give you a whole bunch to make up for
it," said he.
Then I said, "Go away," which mayn't have been elegant, but was to the
point. And I walked on with long steps toward the place where there were
cabs. But quite a short man is as tall as a tall girl, and his steps
were as long as mine.
"I say," said he, "you needn't be so cross. What's the harm, as long as
we're both English, and this is Paris?"
"I'm not English," I snapped. "If you don't go away I'll call a
gendarme."
"You will look a fool if you do. A great tall girl like you," said he,
trying to be funny. And it did sound funny. I suppose I must have been
pretty nervous, after all I'd gone through with Ellaline, for I almost
giggled, but I didn't, quite. On the contrary, I marched on like a
war-cloud about to burst, and proved my non-British origin by addressing
a cabman in the Parisian French I've inherited from you. I hoped that
the boy couldn't understand, but he did.
"Mademoiselle, I have to go to the Gare de Lyon, too," he announced,
"and it would be a very friendly act, and show that you forgive me, if
you'd let me take you there in a taxi-motor, which you'll find much
nicer than that old Noah's ark you're engaging."
"I don't forgive you," I said, as I mounted into the alleged ark. "Your
only excuse is that you're not grown up yet."
With that Parthian shot I ordered my _cocher_, who was furtively
grinning by this time, to drive on as quickly as possible.
Of course the horrid child from Surbiton or somewhere didn't have to go
to the Gare de Lyon; but evidently he regarded me as his last hope of an
adventure before returning to his native heath or duckpond; so,
naturally, he followed in a taxi-motor, whose turbulent,
goodness-knows-what-horse-power had to be subdued to one-half-horse
gait. I didn't look behind, but I felt in my bones--my funny bones--that
he was there. And when I arrived at the Gare de Lyon so did he.
The train I'd come to meet was a P. and O. Special, or whatever you call
it, and it wasn't in yet, so I had to wait.
"Cats may look at kings," said my gay cavalier.
"Cads mayn't though," said I. Perhaps I ought to have maintained a
dignified silence, but that _mot_ was irresistible.
"You _are_ hard on a chap," said he. "I tell you what. I've been
thinking a lot about you, mademoiselle, and I believe you're up to some
little game of your own. When the cat's away the mice will play. You've
got rid of your friend, and you're out for a lark on your own. What?"
Oh, wouldn't I have loved to box his ears! But this time I was dignified
and turned my back on him. Luckily, the train came puffing into the
station, and he ceased to bother me actively, for the time; but the
worst is to follow.
Now I think I've got to the part of my story where the Dragon ought to
appear.
Suddenly, as the train stopped, that platform of a Paris railway station
was turned into a thoroughly English scene. A wave from Great Britain
swept over it, a tall and tweedy wave, bearing with it golf clubs and
kitbags and every kind of English flotsam and jetsam. All the passengers
had lately landed from the foreignest of foreign parts, coral strands,
and that sort of remote thing, but they looked as incorruptibly,
triumphantly British, every man, woman, and child of them (except a
fringe of black or brown servants), as if they had strolled over from
across Channel for a Saturday to Monday in "gay Paree." One can't help
admiring as well as wondering at that sort of ineradicable, persistent
Britishness, can one? I believe it's partly the secret of Great
Britain's success in colonizing. Her people are so calmly sure of their
superiority over all other races that the other races end by believing
it, and trying to imitate their ways, instead of fighting to maintain
the right to their own.
That feeling came over me as I, a mere French and American chit, stood
aside to let the wave flow on. Everyone looked so important, and unaware
of the existence of foreigners, except porters, that I was afraid my
particular drop of the wave might sail by on the crest, without noticing
me or my red rose. I tried to make myself little, and the rose big, as
if it were in the foreground and I in the perspective, but the
procession moved on and nobody who could possibly have been the Dragon
wasted a glance on me.
Toward the tail end, however, I spied two men coming, followed by a
small bronze figure in "native" dress of some sort. One of the two was
tall and tanned, and thirty-five or so. The other--I had a bet with
myself that he was my Dragon. But it was like "betting on a certainty,"
which is one of the few things that's dull and dishonest at the same
time. Some men are born dragons, while others only achieve dragonhood,
or have it thrust upon them by the gout. This one was born a dragon, and
exactly what I'd imagined him, or even worse, and I was glad that I
could conscientiously hate him in peace.
The other man had the walk so many Englishmen have, as if he were
tracking lions across a desert. I quite admire that gait, for it looks
brave and un-self-conscious; but the old thing labelled "Dragon" marched
along as if trampling on prostrate Bengalese. A red-hot Tory, of
course--that went without saying--of the type that thinks Radicals
deserve hanging. In his eyes that stony glare which English people have
when they're afraid someone may be wanting to know them; chicken-claws
under his chin, like you see in the necks of elderly bull dogs; a
snobbish nose; a bad-tempered mouth; age anywhere between sixty and a
hundred. Altogether one of those men who must write to the _Times_ or go
mad. Dost like the picture?
Both these men, who were walking together, looked at me rather hard; and
I attributed the Dragon's failure to stop at the Sign of the Rose to the
silly vanity which forbade his wearing "specs" like a sensible old
gentleman. Accordingly, with laudable presence of mind, I did what
seemed the only thing to do.
I stepped forward, and addressed him with the modest firmness Madame de
Maluet's pupils are taught in "deportment lessons." "I beg your pardon,
but aren't you Sir Lionel Pendragon?"
"I am Lionel Pendragon," said the other man--the quite young man.
Mother, you could have knocked me down with the shadow of a moth-eaten
feather!
They both took off their travelling caps. The real Dragon's was in
decent taste. The Mock Dragon's displayed an offensive chess-board
check.
"Have you come to say--that Miss Lethbridge has been prevented from
meeting me?" asked the real one--the R. D., I'll call him for the
moment.
"I am----" It stuck in my throat and wouldn't go up or down, so I
compromised--which was weak of me, as I always think on principle you'd
better lie all in all or not at all. "I suppose you don't recognize me?"
I mumbled fluffily.
"What--it's not possible that you're Ellaline Lethbridge!" the R. D.
exclaimed, in surprise, which might mean horror of my person or a
compliment.
I gasped like a fish out of water, and wriggled my neck in a silly way,
which a charitable man, unaccustomed to women, might take for schoolgirl
gawkishness in a spasm of acquiescence.
Instantly he put out his hand and wrung mine extremely hard. It would
have crunched the real Ellaline's rings into her poor little fingers.
"You must forgive me," he said. "I saw the rose"--and he smiled a
wonderfully agreeable, undragonlike smile, which put him back to
thirty-two--"but I was looking out for a very different sort
of--er--young lady."
"Why?" I asked, losing my presence of mind.
"I--well, really, I don't know why," said he.
"And I was looking for a very different sort of man," I retorted,
feeling idiotically schoolgirlish, and sillier every minute.
He smiled again then, even more nicely than before, and followed the
example I had set. "Why?" he inquired.
Unlike him, I did know why only too well. But it was difficult to
explain. Still, I had to say something or make things worse. "When in
doubt play a trump, or tell the truth," I quoted to myself as a precept;
and said out aloud that, somehow or other, I'd thought he would be old.
"So I am old," he said, "old enough to be your father." When he added
that information, he looked as if he would have liked to take it back
again, and his face coloured up with a dull, painful red, as if he'd
said something attached to a disagreeable memory. That was what his
expression suggested to me; but as I know for a fact that he has not at
all a nice, kind character, I suppose in reality what he felt was only a
stupid prick of vanity at having inadvertently given his age away. I
nearly blurted out the truth about mine, which would have got me into
hot water at once, as Ellaline's hardly nineteen and I'm practically
twenty-one--worse luck for you.
By this time the Mock Dragon had walked slowly on, but the brown image
in "native" dress had glued himself to the platform near by, too
respectful to be aware of my existence. While I was debating whether or
no the last speech called for an answer, the R. D. had a sudden thought
which gave him an excuse to change the subject.
"Where's your chaperon?" he snapped, with a flash of the eye, which was
his first betrayal of the hidden devil within him.
"She was called away to visit a relative," I answered, promptly; because
Ellaline and I had agreed I was to say that; and in a way it was true.
"You didn't come here alone?" said he.
"I had to," said I.
"Then it's a monstrous thing that Madame de Maluet should have let you,"
he growled. "I shall write and tell her so."
"Oh, don't, please don't," I begged, you can guess how anxiously. "She
really _couldn't_ help it, and I shall be so sorry to distress her." He
was still glaring, and desperation made me crafty. "You wouldn't refuse
the first thing I've asked you?" I tried to wheedle him.
I hoped--for Ellaline's sake, of course--that I should get another
smile; but instead, I got a frown.
"Now I begin to realize that you are--your mother's daughter," said he,
in a queer, hard tone. "No, I won't refuse the first thing you ask me.
But perhaps you'd better not consider that a precedent."
"I won't," said I. He'd been looking so pleased with me before, as if
he'd found me in a prize package, or won me in a lottery when he'd
expected to draw a blank; but though he gave in without a struggle to my
wheedling, he now looked as if he'd discovered that I was stuffed with