An Uncrowned King Chapter 2 Part 4

After this hospitable intimation, the travellers held back no longer, and speedily found themselves established in most comfortable quarters, for the landlord was delighted not to be compelled to turn away such promising guests from his door. Nothing was too good for them, and they went to bed well content, after commissioning the host to procure horses in the morning for their intended ride to Château Temeszy.

In the morning, then, they started on this last stage of their journey, leaving Wright at the hotel with the luggage until it could be sent for, and bidding a grateful farewell to the O’Malachy, who was smoking a wonderful cigar on the balcony over the door. The ride was a long one, and the roads very bad, but Caerleon had brought a map of the district in his pocket, and with its aid they succeeded in finding their way. But when they reached the castle disappointment awaited them. Everything was shut up, and the only person in authority was an aged steward, who informed them that Count Temeszy Gyula (putting the surname first in true Hungarian fashion) was in Paris, and the rest of the family at Vienna. The English gentlemen might inspect the castle and the stables while a meal was being prepared for them, the best possible at such short notice, but the old man could not venture to invite them to take up their quarters in the house without instructions from his master. It was also possible that the Count’s foresters might organise a wolf-hunt one day for the strangers’ benefit, but it would still be best for them to return to Janoszwar until Count Gyula could be communicated with.

“I didn’t know that we were such suspicious-looking characters,” grumbled Cyril after lunch, as they mounted their horses to retrace their weary way.

“And we shall have to quarter ourselves upon the O’Malachy again,” responded Caerleon. “That’s what I hate. It looks such a shabby thing to do.”

But when they reached the hotel they found their rooms ready, and the landlord and Wright expecting them.

“The old gentleman up-stairs tell us to look out for you, my lord,” said the latter to his master. “’E said as you’d most likely be comin’ back about this time.”

“Did the O’Malachy know that Temeszy was away when we started?” asked Caerleon of Cyril as they sat at dinner.

“Don’t know,” said Cyril. “Perhaps he thought you looked as though a ride would do you good. He seems a decent enough old chap, anyhow. His wife is a Scythian lady, Wright tells me.”

“Oh, by the bye, that reminds me,” said Caerleon; “we must call to-morrow. I’ll tell Wright to hunt up our visiting-cards, and we’ll do the thing in style.”

But Caerleon and his brother were not destined to make the acquaintance of the O’Malachy’s family in the orthodox fashion they had contemplated, for in the morning, as they breakfasted, they heard excited voices outside their door. They had just decided that it would not do to pay their call until the afternoon, and that the morning might profitably be spent in climbing one of the mountains which surrounded the little town, and Cyril, who was not devoid of curiosity, thought that the present would be a good opportunity of consulting the landlord as to the best way to take. Opening the door, therefore, he stepped out casually, to find the landlord, his wife, and the servants engaged in an animated colloquy with a very handsome lady in an elaborate dressing-gown, who was standing on the outer stair and talking French and German alternately.

“You tell me that she is gone?” she was saying. “But no! I say it is impossible. She would be terrified.”

“There is no danger, madame,” suggested the landlord, soothingly; “and no doubt the gracious young lady knows this.”

“No danger!” cried madame, vivaciously. “When there may at this very moment be wolves, brigands, avalanches, menacing my child? What though she does think she is safe? Her very confidence may be her greatest danger. She must be followed—rescued—immediately.”

“I assure you, madame, that mademoiselle is perfectly safe,” repeated the landlord. Madame wrung her hands.

“My excellent man, how can you understand a mother’s feelings? I tell you my daughter must be rescued. If there is no one else, I will go myself, although I have never walked a mile in my life, and the Herr Oberst is quite helpless with his gout.”

“It is unnecessary for madame to incommode herself,” said the landlord, sulkily. “If she insists upon it, two of the men shall go, although it is absolutely impossible to spare them from the farm.”

“Naturally I insist upon it,” returned madame. “What is your farm to me? The men shall be paid. Send them off at once. If only there was some friend near who might help us!”

“Pardon me, madame,” said Caerleon, coming forward. He had been listening in bewilderment to the colloquy over Cyril’s shoulder, and picking up snatches of what was said. “I think I have the honour of addressing Madame O’Malachy? Can my brother and I be of any assistance to you?”

“My dear sir,” said madame, with a charming smile, “I am ashamed to trouble you, but you would confer the greatest possible favour on my husband and myself if you would be so good as to help us. My daughter is a headstrong child, and she has started off early this morning to visit the sick daughter of a huntsman in the mountains. To ask you to give up your own concerns on account of the whim of a foolish girl is too bad, and yet I have no one else to send.”

“We shall be delighted if we can be of any use,” said Caerleon. “Do I understand that you would like us to meet Mademoiselle O’Malachy and bring her home? We were intending to spend the morning in the mountains, so that we shall not even need to change our plans.”

“Monsieur is too good,” returned Madame O’Malachy. “I am desolated to be obliged to incommode him in this way, but my daughter has always lived in the country with her godmother, and knows nothing of the dangers which beset a young girl alone.”

“Still, madame,” put in Cyril, “one can have nothing but admiration for the philanthropic instinct which has prompted mademoiselle to set out by herself to relieve a sick girl.”

“You are too amiable, monsieur,” said madame. “My daughter is dévote, what you call ‘religious,’ and this characteristic makes a great deal of trouble for herself and for other people. But behold me only half-dressed!” and madame became suddenly aware that her abundant dark hair, scarcely yet tinged with grey, was coiled negligently in a loose knot on her neck; “pardon me, gentlemen, and remember my anxiety. Pray scold my daughter well when you find her. Au revoir!” and she retreated up-stairs.

“Pleasant woman, Madame O’Malachy,” Caerleon remarked to Cyril when they had obtained directions from the landlord as to the exact situation of the huntsman’s cottage, and had started on their walk, “but I can’t quite make her out.”

“Can’t you?” said Cyril. “I can. I’ve met too many of her before.”

“She seemed so very anxious and excited,” went on Caerleon, pursuing his own train of thought, “and yet she doesn’t appear to care much for her daughter.”

“Not a scrap!” said Cyril, emphatically. “Rather hates her than otherwise, I should say, from her tone. Fact is, either she particularly wants the hotel to herself to-day, or she wishes to throw one of us, presumably you, into the society of the young lady. Well, forewarned is forearmed.”

“But it couldn’t have been all humbug. She wouldn’t have shown up in that costume if she hadn’t been really anxious.”

“That costume!” said Cyril. “I’m as sure as that I’m here that every hair of that coil was arranged with an eye to its effect on us.”

“But she came down in a dressing-gown.”

“Yes, but what kind of dressing-gown? When a Scythian lady, and still more a Sarmatian,—and there’s a good deal more of the Sarmatian than the Scythian about our fair friend,—shows up in a dressing-gown, you may be pretty sure that it’s a court-dress rather differently made. Madame knows how to dress her part to the letter.”

Caerleon only grunted in answer to this, and they went on in silence for some time. The path was steep, and Cyril found that climbing took all the breath he had to spare.

“How much farther now to the top?” he asked at last, when they reached a sheltered nook in the hillside where a few pine-trees nestled.

“A good two miles yet,” said Caerleon, looking back on the way they had come.

“Then I give in,” said Cyril, resolutely, sitting down on a rock. “I’m about done, and I shall leave the further chase of this young person to you. Ten to one but she’ll come down some other way when you are gone on to the hut, and I shall get hold of her first and give her a good lecture.”

“Lecture a strange girl?”

“Rather! I shall say, ‘My young friend, to try and thrust your schoolmistress’s views on papa and mamma is not religion, but self-will, and to emphasise them by running off like this is not heroic, but bad-tempered.’”

“All right; I wish you luck. If mademoiselle has a tongue anything like her mamma’s, you will be pretty well pulverised by the time I come back. Well, I’m off. See you again in an hour.”