In Brief Authority, F. Anstey [latest novels to read .txt] 📗

anything pigeons say—it's generally love-talk; and very foolish at that."

"They weren't making love. They were talking about the Count. The first pigeon said, 'The Count has come here again. I have just seen his big coach in the courtyard,' and the second pigeon said, 'There is nothing in that.'"

"Well, one of them had some sense, anyway!" remarked the Fairy.

"Ah, but wait. 'Indeed there is something,' said the other bird. 'There is a big sack in the coach, and I know what is inside the sack, too.' 'And what may that be?' the second one asked. 'All I can tell you,' said the first, 'is that, if the Princess only knew as much about it as I do, there wouldn't be any marriage!' They flew away after that, but I've been wondering ever since whether he mayn't have murdered somebody."

"If he had," said the Fairy, "he wouldn't be very likely to bring the body out to lunch with him. You shouldn't be so uncharitable, my child. And, as for birds, I should have thought you knew what busy-bodies they are, and what scandals they make out of nothing at all."

"Then you think it's all right?" said Daphne, relieved. "But all the same, I can't trust the Count."

"Nobody asks you to. I don't trust him myself, if it comes to that. But, whatever he may or may not be is no affair of yours or mine. Princess Edna will find out in time what a mistake she has made."

"If only she doesn't find it out too late!" said Daphne.

"She'll have herself to thank, whatever happens. I shan't interfere again. I'm tired of trying to help anyone. I never get anything but ingratitude for it."

CHAPTER XIV BAG AND BAGGAGE

The Court Godmother returned to the Throne-room. She had not attached much importance to what Daphne had told her, but, even if she had, she would have belittled it in her extreme desire to avoid any action that might entail inconvenience to herself.

In the Throne-room, Count Rubenfresser had just been announced.

"Yes, Duchess," said Queen Selina, in answer to an astonished inquiry. "That is dear Edna's fiancé. A fine young man, is he not?"

"Heavens! I should think he was! I should call him a giant myself," replied the Duchess bluntly.

"I told you he was rather tall. I think he's grown since his engagement. How do you do, my dear Ruprecht? Come and be introduced to my old friend the Duchess of Gleneagles, who is so very anxious to make your acquaintance."

"I don't much care about knowing old women," said the Count, who had no great love for his future mother-in-law, and had become much less deferential of late.

"But this one's a Duchess, Ruprecht!" whispered the agonised Queen. "Edna, my love, perhaps you had better——" and eventually he submitted with a slight scowl to be led up and presented by his fiancée.

"I hear I am to congratulate you—er—Count Fresser," said the Duchess. "You are certainly a fortunate man to have won a Princess."

"Not more fortunate than she," he replied. "She wanted a Superman, as she calls it. I am doing all I can to become one."

"If she isn't satisfied with you as you are, she must be hard to please."

"She is satisfied enough," he said. "Now it is for her to please me. She knows that by this time—don't you, Edna?"

"Yes, Ruprecht dear, yes," said Edna, hastily. "Of course I do. This is how he's taken to bullying me, Duchess," she added lightly. "Don't you think it's too bad of him?"

"It seems a little early to begin. You shouldn't allow it."

"Oh, but I like him to!" said Edna, pressing the Count's great arm.

"In that case, my dear," said the Duchess, "you have every prospect of a happy future!"

A blast from the silver trumpets here proclaimed that luncheon was served.

"Lunch, at last, eh?" said King Sidney, bustling up to the Duchess. "Permit me to offer your Grace my arm. Clarence, my boy, you take in her ladyship here. Selina, my love, if you will lead the way with the Marshal."

The Count followed with Edna, and the Fairy Vogelflug arrived in time to bring up the rear with Princess Ruby.

"It's a most extraordinary thing," said the King, after they had sat down to lunch in the hall with the malachite columns, "a most extraordinary thing, that, when we have company like this, there should be no more than six pages to wait on us! We generally have at least a dozen. What's become of all the rest of you?" he asked a page.

"I cannot say, sire," answered the boy. "They were waiting in the courtyard to receive His Excellency the Count, but have not yet returned."

King Sidney told the Court Chamberlain to send for them at once, but the messenger returned with the information that the missing pages were nowhere to be seen.

"Must have run off before I arrived," said the Count, laughing boisterously. "Played truant, the young rascals!"

The Fairy, however, recollected Daphne's story of the sack, and was seized with suspicion. Was it possible that the royal pages—? If so, she felt something ought to be done—though not by her. She was too cautious an old person to take unnecessary risks, and decided to employ a deputy.

"Ruby, my child," she whispered to the little Princess, who was sitting next to her, "I believe the Count has brought a present for you. It's in a sack in his coach. Ask him what it is."

"I don't want to know," objected Ruby, "I wouldn't take any present from him—except Tützi, perhaps."

"I may be wrong," said the Court Godmother, "perhaps it isn't for you after all. But I'm sure it would make him very uncomfortable if you asked him, before everybody, what he happens to have in that sack of his."

"If I was sure of that," said Ruby, "I'd ask him like a shot!"

"You may depend on it. And more than that, Lady Daphne is particularly anxious to know."

"Oh, if Miss Heritage wants me to, all right!" said Ruby. "I say, Count Rubenfresser," she called across the table, "I want to ask you something."

"If it's a riddle, little Princess," replied the Count, with his mouth full, "I give it up beforehand."

"It isn't a riddle. It's this: What have you got inside that sack?"

"Sack?" said the Count blankly. "I don't understand. I have no sack here."

"I don't mean here. I mean the sack that's inside your coach."

"Ruby, my dear," interposed her mother, "you mustn't be so inquisitive. It's very rude."

"I know he has got a sack there, Mummy," insisted Ruby, "and I do want to know what he's got in it."

"Hear me rag my precious brother-in-law," said Clarence aside to Lady Muscombe. "A sack, eh?" he said aloud. "What do you bring a sack out to lunch for—scraps?"

"For shame, Clarence!" cried Edna.

"It's not a sack, as it happens," said the Count sulkily. "It's a long bag—and what I use it for is entirely my own business."

"I don't know so much about that," retorted Clarence. "With such a lot of plate in the Palace!"

"Clarence!" cried Edna again. "This is too outrageous of you!"

"Much!" put in Lady Muscombe. "As if the Count couldn't bring his clubs with him if he's going on to golf somewhere!" she said to Clarence in an undertone. "And of course he'd want a very long case for them! You really must behave more decently!"

"I mean having this out with the beggar," he replied. "Count, her ladyship suggests that you may have golf clubs in that bag of yours. Is that so?"

"And if I have," said the Count. "Why shouldn't I?"

"Because you don't play golf. No one does here—now, and I'll take my oath you can't tell a brassey from a putter. You never owned a set of clubs in your life!"

"Really, my boy!" said King Sidney nervously. "A scene like this! Before our guests! It won't do, you know. Drop it!"

"Yes," said Lady Muscombe, laying her pretty but slightly over-manicured fingers on Clarence's sleeve. "You're only making everybody uncomfortable. Talk to me instead!"

"Presently," he said. "If you really have got golf clubs, Count, I should like to have a look at them after lunch."

"I never said I had got those things," replied the Count, with a wonderful command over his temper. "And if you want to know what is in the bag, I don't mind telling you—only a few pumpkins from my own gardens."

"You mean to say you make such pets of your bally pumpkins that you take 'em out driving with you? That's such a likely story!"

"Clarence," said the Queen, "I will not have poor Ruprecht badgered like this. If he chooses to carry pumpkins with him—as we do gold sometimes—and distribute them to deserving persons, it is so much the more to his credit."

"He'd get 'em buzzed back at his head pretty soon, if he did!" replied the impenitent Clarence. "He's not exactly the object of general adoration in these parts, as he jolly well knows.... Anything upset you, Marchioness?" he inquired of Lady Muscombe, who was giggling with a quite un-peeress-like lack of restraint.

"Nothing," she said faintly. "Only the—the pumpkins. You really are rather a funny Royal Family, you know!"

"I'm sorry to make myself unpleasant, Mater," said Clarence, returning to the charge. "But I can't swallow those pumpkins. I want the sack brought in so that we can satisfy ourselves what there is in it." The Court Chamberlain, in the hope that the contents, whatever they might be, would at least serve to compromise the Count, instantly despatched one of the pages to fetch the bag.

"Baron," said the Queen angrily, "it is for Us to give orders—not you!"

"Your Majesty must pardon my presumption," he said, as the pages had already obeyed him. "I was merely carrying out the wishes of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince."

"I shall die if this goes on much longer! I know I shall!" gasped Lady Muscombe.

"Ha!" cried Clarence, as the pages staggered in with a huge distended sack. "Leave it alone, I'll open it myself."

"Surely not without asking the owner's permission?" said the Duchess, who had hitherto witnessed the scene in silent and dignified amazement.

"You can open it if you like!" said the Count, with a confident smile. "And then you will see what a fuss you have made about nothing."

Clarence cut the cord, and opened the sack. The moment he did so his jaw fell. "I own up," he said. "I was wrong. They are pumpkins!"

"And if you are a gentleman, Clarence," cried Edna, "you will apologise to Ruprecht at once!"

"There may be something else underneath," he said, lifting a pumpkin suspiciously in both hands. "Hullo! My hat! What's this I've got hold of?" he exclaimed, as the vegetable suddenly developed, the moment it was clear of the sack, into one of the chubbiest of the royal pages. "Very odd!" he remarked, as he set the boy down. "Let's have the lot out." He tilted the sack, and as each pumpkin rolled out upon the sardonyx pavement, a bewildered page sprang up in its stead.

"Quite a clever trick!" said Lady Muscombe. "Even Maskelyne and Devant couldn't beat that!"

"After all, it wasn't so very much of a change!" was Ruby's comment.

"What do you boys mean by playing at being pumpkins in this way?" demanded King Sidney. "I must have an explanation of this. Speak out, one of you!"

"If it please you, sire," said the first page, sinking on one knee, "When His Excellency the Count arrived he invited us to get inside the sack, at the bottom of which he told us we should find sweetmeats. And we crawled in—and I don't remember any more till I fell out just now."

"Just count these boys, Baron, will you?" said the King. "The whole dozen correct? Good. And now, sir," he added, turning to the Count, "I should like to hear what you have got to say."

"Allow me, sire," interrupted Marshal Federhelm, as Count Ruprecht seemed content to smile blandly. "His Excellency no doubt intended to afford your Majesties a little harmless diversion."

"That was all," said the Count. "This is a magic sack which has the property of turning anything inside it into whatever its owner wishes. I thought it might amuse you."

"Liar!" struck in Clarence. "You wouldn't have said a word about it but for Ruby! You meant to take those pumpkins—I mean pages—away with you. You know you did! I don't know what the Guv'nor and Mater think of it—but I consider myself it was a confounded liberty!"

"Well, well," said the King, "it was a mistake no doubt. But there's been no harm done, so perhaps we'd better leave it at that—for the present, you know, for the present."

But the Court Chamberlain could not allow such an opportunity to escape him. "Forgive me, sire," he said eagerly, "but your