“Thanks for the pretty flowers,” she cried eagerly. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a nice orchestra here in the hotel.”
Her face fell a little.
“Well, we can start here—”
They went down to the almost-deserted grill, where a few scattered groups of diners swooned in midsummer languor, and only half a dozen Americans arose with the music and stalked defiantly around the floor. Hallie and Corcoran danced. She was surprised to find how well he danced, as all tall, slender men should, with such a delicacy of suggestion that she felt as though she were being turned here and there as a bright bouquet or a piece of precious cloth before five hundred eyes.
But when they had finished dancing she realized that there were only a score of eyes—after dinner even these began to melt apathetically away.
“We’d better be moving on to some gayer place,” she suggested.
He frowned.
“Isn’t this gay enough?” he asked anxiously. “I rather like the happy mean.”
“That sounds good. Let’s go there!”
“It isn’t a café—it’s a principle I’m trying to learn. I don’t know whether your father would want—”
She flushed angrily.
“Can’t you be a little human?” she demanded. “I thought when father said you were born in the Ritz you’d know something about having a good time.”
He had no answer ready. After all, why should a girl of her conspicuous loveliness be condemned to desolate hotel dances and public-bus excursions in the rain?
“Is this your idea of a riot?” she continued. “Do you ever think about anything except history and monuments? Don’t you know anything about having fun?”
“Once I knew quite a lot.”
“What?”
“In fact—once I used to be rather an expert at spending money.”
“Spending money!” she broke out. “For these?”
She unpinned the corsage from her waist and flung it on the table. “Pay the check, please. I’m going upstairs to bed.”
“All right,” said Corcoran suddenly, “I’ve decided to give you a good time.”
“How?” she demanded with frozen scorn. “Take me to the movies?”
“Miss Bushmill,” said Corcoran grimly, “I’ve had good times beyond the wildest flights of your very provincial, Middle-Western imagination. I’ve entertained from New York to Constantinople—given affairs that have made Indian rajahs weep with envy. I’ve had prima donnas break ten-thousand-dollar engagements to come to my smallest dinners. When you were still playing who’s-got-the-button back in Ohio I entertained on a cruising trip that was so much fun that I had to sink my yacht to make the guests go home.”
“I don’t believe it. I—” Hallie gasped.
“You’re bored,” he interrupted. “Very well. I’ll do my stuff. I’ll do what I know how to do. Between here and Amsterdam you’re going to have the time of your life.”
III
Corcoran worked quickly. That night, after taking Hallie to her room, he paid several calls—in fact he was extraordinarily busy up to eleven o’clock next morning. At that hour he tapped briskly at the Bushmills’ door.
“You are lunching at the Brussels Country Club,” he said to Hallie directly, “with Prince Abrisini, Countess Perimont and Major Sir Reynolds Fitz-Hugh, the British attaché. The Bolls-Ferrari landaulet will be ready at the door in half an hour.”
“But I thought we were going to the culinary exhibit,” objected Mrs. Bushmill in surprise. “We had planned—”
“You are going,” said Corcoran politely, “with two nice ladies from Wisconsin. And afterwards you are going to an American tea room and have an American luncheon with American food. At twelve o’clock a dark conservative town car will be waiting downstairs for your use.”
He turned to Hallie.
“Your new maid will arrive immediately to help you dress. She will oversee the removal of your things in your absence so that nothing will be mislaid. This afternoon you entertain at tea.”
“Why, how can I entertain at tea?” cried Hallie. “I don’t know a soul in the place—”
“The invitations are already issued,” said Corcoran.
Without waiting for further protests he bowed slightly and retired through the door.
The next three hours passed in a whirl. There was the gorgeous landaulet with a silk-hatted, satin-breeched, plum-colored footman beside the chauffeur, and a wilderness of orchids flowering from the little jars inside. There were the impressive titles that she heard in a daze at the country club as she sat down at a rose-littered table; and out of nowhere a dozen other men appeared during luncheon and stopped to be introduced to her as they went by. Never in her two years as the belle of a small Ohio town had Hallie had such attention, so many compliments—her features danced up and down with delight. Returning to the hotel, she found that they had been moved dexterously to the royal suite, a huge high salon and two sunny bedrooms overlooking a garden. Her capped maid—exactly like the French maid she had once impersonated in a play—was in attendance, and there was a new deference in the manner of all the servants in the hotel. She was bowed up the steps—other guests were gently brushed aside for her—and bowed into the elevator, which clanged shut in the faces of two irate Englishwomen and whisked her straight to her floor.
Tea was a great success. Her mother, considerably encouraged by the pleasant two hours she had spent in congenial company, conversed with the clergyman of the American Church, while Hallie moved enraptured through a swarm of charming and attentive men. She was surprised to learn that she was giving a dinner dance that night at the fashionable Café Royal—and even the afternoon faded before the glories of the night. She was not aware that two specially hired entertainers had left Paris for Brussels on the noon train until they bounced hilariously in upon the shining floor. But she knew that there were a dozen partners for every dance, and chatter that had nothing to do with monuments or battlefields. Had she not been so thoroughly and cheerfully tired, she would have protested frantically at midnight when Corcoran approached her and told her he was taking her home.
Only then, half asleep in the luxurious depths of the town car, did she have time to wonder.
“How on earth—? How did you do it?”
“It was nothing—I had no time,” said Corcoran disparagingly. “I knew a few young men around the embassies. Brussels isn’t very gay, you know, and they’re always glad to help stir things up. All the rest was—even simpler. Did you have a good time?”
No answer.
“Did you have a good time?” he repeated a little anxiously. “There’s no use going on, you know, if you didn’t have a—”
“The Battle of Wellington was won by Major Sir Corcoran Fitz-Hugh Abrisini,” she muttered, decisively but indistinctly.
Hallie was asleep.
IV
After three more days Hallie finally consented to being torn away from Brussels, and the tour continued through Antwerp, Rotterdam and The Hague. But it was not the same sort of tour that had left Paris a short week before. It traveled in two limousines, for there were always at least one pair of attentive cavaliers in attendance—not to mention a quartet of hirelings who made the jumps by train. Corcoran’s guidebooks and histories