The Bronze Bell | Page 7

the stable without me; I've been very thoughtless." She
caught up her riding-skirt and started down the path with Amber
trudging contently beside her. "However," she considered demurely,
"I'm not at all sorry, really; it's quite an experience to have a notability
at a disadvantage, even if only for a few minutes."
"I wish you wouldn't," he begged in boyish embarrassment. "I'm not a
notability, really; Quain's been talking too much. I'll get even with him,
though."

"That sounds so modest that I almost believe I've made a mistake about
your identity. But I've no doubt you're right; Mr. Quain does exaggerate
in praise of his friends. Very likely it is as you insist, and you're only an
ordinary person, after all. At least, you would be if stray babus didn't
make you mysterious presents."
"So long as there is that to hold your interest in me, I'm content," he
told her, diverted. "How much longer shall you stay at Tanglewood,
Miss Farrell?"
"Unhappily," she sighed, "I must leave on the early train to-morrow, to
join the Rolands in New York."
"You don't want to go?"
"I'm half an American, Mr. Amber. I've learned to love the country
already. Besides, we start immediately for San Francisco, and it'll be
such a little while before I'll be in India."
"You don't care for India?"
"I've known it for less than six years, but already I've come to hate it as
thoroughly as any exiled Englishwoman there. It sits there like a great,
insatiable monster, devouring English lives. Indirectly it was
responsible for my mother's death; she never recovered from the illness
she contracted when my father was stationed in the Deccan. In the
course of time it will kill my father, just as it did his father and his elder
brother. It's a cruel, hateful, ungrateful land--not worth the price we pay
for it."
"I know how you feel," he said with sympathy. "It's been a good many
years since I visited India, and of course I then saw and heard little of
the darker side. Your people are brave enough, out there."
"They are. I don't know about Government; but its servants are loyal
and devoted and unselfish and cheerful. And I don't at all understand,"
she added in confusion, "why I should have decided to inflict upon you
my emotional hatred of the country. Your question gave me the

opening, and I forgot myself."
"I assure you I was thoroughly shocked, Miss Farrell."
"You should have been--surprised, at least. Why should I pour out my
woes to you--a man I've known not fifteen minutes?"
"Why not, if you felt like it? After all, you know, we're both of us
merely making talk to--ah--to cover our interest in one another."
She paused momentarily to laugh at his candour. "You are outspoken,
Mr. Amber! It's very pretty of you to assert an interest in me; but why
should you assume that I--"
"You said so, didn't you?"
"Wel-l ... yes, so I did."
"You can change your mind, of course."
"I shan't, honestly, until you turn stupid. And you can't do that until you
stop having strange adventures. Will you tell me something?"
"If I can."
"About the man who wouldn't acknowledge knowing you? You
remember saying three people had been mistaken about your identity
this afternoon."
"No, only one--the babu. You're not mistaken--"
"I knew you must be David Amber the moment I heard you speaking
Urdu."
"And the man at the station wasn't mistaken--unless I am. He knew me
perfectly, I believe, but for reasons of his own refused to recognise
me."
"Yes--?"

"He was an English servant named Doggott, who is--or once was--a
valet in the service of an old friend, a man named Rutton."
She repeated the name: "Rutton? It seems to me I've heard of him."
"You have?"
"I don't remember," she confessed, knitting her level brows. "The name
has a familiar ring, somehow. But about the valet?"
"Well, I was very intimate with his employer for a long time, though
we haven't met for several years. Rutton was a strange creature, a man
of extraordinary genius, who lived a friendless, solitary life--at least, so
far as I knew; I once lived with him in a little place he had in Paris, for
three months, and in all that time he never received a letter or a caller.
He was reticent about himself, and I never asked any questions, of
course, but in spite of the fact that he spoke English like an Englishman
and was a public school man, apparently, I always believed he had a
strain of Hungarian blood in him--or else Italian or Spanish. I know
that sounds pretty broad, but he was enigmatic--a riddle I never
managed to make much of. Aside from that he