MY SISTER’S SUSPICIONS—HEROES OF THE ARGO—MY SISTER DETERMINES TO COME WITH US AS CHAPERON TO MISS RYBOT

From now right on to Christmas I lived in a constant hurry and ferment of excitement; for not only was I full of every sort of preparation for our adventure, but every day brought me nearer “The French Horn” and my seeing dear Lucy once more. By the second week in December I had at last got our party of six together; to which number, for the present, at any rate, by Mr. Brentin’s advice, it was determined to limit it. If it were to be done at all, he said, six could easily do it, and by adding more we were only increasing the danger of the affair leaking out and the people at the tables being forewarned and forearmed; neither of which, though more particularly the latter, did we at all desire.

Directly the party was complete, I informed Mr. Brentin, and by his directions gave them all a rendezvous at “The French Horn” for Christmas. He wished to see us all together he said, and take our measure; not that he doubted I had chosen the right sort, but rather that he might consider what post should be assigned to each—who should lead the van and who should guard the rear, and who, if necessary, should form the reserve and direct the shell-throwing on the Casino in case of our capture.

Meantime I had been so busy running over the country, interviewing and persuading, and by many being point-blank refused, that I had quite neglected my sister, Mrs Rivers, and Medworth Square; and whether it was she suspected something from my continued absence, or something had leaked out through Parker White, I never could quite discover; but, at any rate, she one day sent for me to come to tea, and attacked me at once to know what I was doing and why I never came to the house.

From very early days my sister Muriel has been my confidante in everything. My father I scarcely remember, beyond the fact that he always wore a white waistcoat and smelt of sherry when he kissed me, and my dear mother died in Jubilee year—a very sad year, notwithstanding the universal illuminations and rejoicings, for me; so to Muriel I have always carried all my troubles and griefs, and no better sister for that sort of work could any man wish for.

Particularly has she always been the sympathetic recipient of my love-affairs, with the single exception of my affair with Lucy; for though Muriel isn’t in the least a snob, yet I don’t suppose she would have been best pleased to learn of her only brother’s attachment to an innkeeper’s daughter, of however old a family. So all she knew was that the Mabel Harker business was at an end, and was naturally wondering how my vagrant heart was being employed meantime; questions on which subject, however, I had always managed to shirk.

Directly we were alone in the Medworth Square morning-room, she opened fire on me.

“Frank has been asking what has become of you lately, Vincent,” she said—“what have you been doing with yourself?”

“I’ve been seeing a good deal of some Americans at the ‘Victoria,’ and a good deal in and out of town.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing of any importance. How’s Mollie?”

“You can go and see Mollie afterwards. Now, look here, Vincent, you’re up to something, and I mean to know what it is. I can’t have my only brother drifting into a scrape, without doing my best to keep him out of it. You’d better make a clean breast. I shall be sure to find out.”

I’d half a mind to tell her a downright fib and stop her importunities that way; but I’d the instinct she knew something of the fact, and was well aware that, if she weren’t told all, would set her prig of a husband to work; and then our enterprise would as likely as not be nipped in the bud by being made public property.

So, on the whole, I judged it best to tell her exactly what we were doing and were going to do, taking care only to bind her over to the completest secrecy, which, once she had given her word, I knew she would die sooner than break.

She was half amused, half frightened, and at first wholly incredulous.

“But who on earth have you found to join you in such a cracked scheme?” she asked. “I didn’t know you’d so many desperate lunatics among your acquaintances.”

“Well, there’s Arthur Masters and Bob Hines, to begin with; you know them.”

“I don’t think I know Mr. Hines, do I? Who is he?”

“Oh, he was at Marlborough with me, and now keeps a boys’ school at Folkestone.”

“A nice instructor of youth, to go on an expedition of this kind,” laughed my sister.

“That’s exactly what he’s afraid of; he says if he’s caught, it’ll be the end of his business and he’ll have to break stones.”

“Then why does he go?”

“Well, you see, he’s very much in want of a gymnasium for his boys, and I’ve promised to build him one out of the swag, if he’ll join us.”

“Tempted and fallen!” said my sister. “Really, Vincent, you’re a Mephistopheles. And who else?”

“Harold Forsyth, of the Devon Borderers.”

“Is that the little man who always looks as if he was bursting out of his clothes with overeating?”

“I dare say.”

“But I thought he was engaged to be married. What’s the young lady about, to let him go?”

“Well, the fact is,” said I, “the young lady turns out to be a wrong un, and is now chasing him about with a writ for breach of promise in her glove, like a cab-fare.”

“So he’s off to escape that?” said my sister. “You’re a nice lot. Any one else?”

“Teddy Parsons, in my militia.”

“He’s a poor creature,” my sister observed. “I shouldn’t take him; why, all he can do is play the banjo and walk about Southport in breeches and gaiters!”

“Yes, but he’s an old friend, and I want to do him a good turn.”

“You’ve odd notions of doing people a good turn,” Muriel laughed.

“The fact is,” I said, “he’s rather in a hole about a bill of his that’s coming due. He’s gone shares with one of our fellows in the regiment in a steeple-chaser and given him a bill to meet the expenses of training and the purchase; and as the bill’s coming due and he’s mortally afraid of his father—”

“You undertake to meet the bill, on the condition he joins you. I see. And has that been the best you can do? Who’s the sixth?”

“Mr. Brentin, who’s bought the yacht; the American at the ‘Victoria.’”

“Well, all I can say is,” said my sister, after a pause, “you’re rather a lame crew. Why, Teddy Parsons alone is enough to ruin anything!”

“Yes, I know,” I groaned, “but what is one to do? I’ve been all over the country seeing men, but they’re all much too frightened. We’re an utterly scratch lot, I know, but Brentin and I must do the best we can with the material and trust to luck.”

“That you most certainly will have to do,” said my sister, with conviction.

“Why can’t you come with us,” I urged, “and be the mascot of the party? We must have some one of the kind, if only to chaperon Miss Rybot.”

“Dear me, who’s Miss Rybot?”

“Arthur Masters’s young woman, without whom he won’t stir.”

Now my sister Muriel is like a good many other highly respectable Englishwomen: she is a most faithful wife and devoted mother, but she doesn’t care in any particular degree about her husband, and is only too glad to welcome anything in the way of honest excitement, if only to break the monotony of home life. And here was excitement for her, indeed, and, properly regarded, of the most irreproachably honest description.

It flattered, too, her love of adventure, for which she had never had much outlet in Medworth Square. Where we Blackers get our love of adventure from, by-the-way, I don’t quite know, unless it be from my mother’s father, who fought at Waterloo, and died a very old gentleman, a Knight of Windsor; but we certainly both of us have it very strongly, as all good English people should.

To cut a long story short, for I must really be getting on, my sister finally agreed to come, if only as chaperon to Miss Rybot. Like the rest of us, she had never been to Monte Carlo, having been hitherto forbidden by her husband; but now she said she would insist, and allege as a reason the necessity of her presence for keeping her only brother from ruining himself at the tables.

So I was delighted to hear of her plucky resolve, particularly as it at once got rid of the difficulty of Miss Rybot’s chaperon—since Brentin had made up his mind not to take his wife, but send her down to Rochester while he was away, and keep her fully employed there, in Charles Dickens’s country.

I kissed my sister, promising to come back to dinner, and meantime went up in the nursery, where I found my niece Mollie seated by the fire, wrapped in a grimy little shawl, reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales.