The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан

Clay, no man has ever yet succeeded in bleeding me. And shall I let myself be bled as if I were a chamois among these innocent mountains? Perish the thought!” Then he reflected a little in silence. “Sey,” he mused on, at last, “the question is, are they innocent? Do you know, I begin to believe there is no such thing left as pristine innocence anywhere. This Tyrolese Count knows the value of a pound as distinctly as if he hung out in Capel Court or Kimberley.”

      Things dragged on in this way, inconclusively, for a week or two. We bid down; the lawyers stuck to it. Sir Charles grew half sick of the whole silly business. For my own part, I felt sure if the high well-born Count didn’t quicken his pace, my respected relative would shortly have had enough of the Tyrol altogether, and be proof against the most lovely of crag-crowning castles. But the Count didn’t see it. He came to call on us at our hotel—a rare honour for a stranger with these haughty and exclusive Tyrolese nobles—and even entered unannounced in the most friendly manner. But when it came to L. s. d., he was absolute adamant. Not one kreutzer would he abate from his original proposal.

      “You misunderstand,” he said, with pride. “We Tyrolese gentlemen are not shopkeepers or merchants. We do not higgle. If we say a thing we stick to it. Were you an Austrian, I should feel insulted by your ill-advised attempt to beat down my price. But as you belong to a great commercial nation—” he broke off with a snort and shrugged his shoulders compassionately.

      We saw him several times driving in and out of the schloss, and every time he waved his hand at us gracefully. But when we tried to bargain, it was always the same thing: he retired behind the shelter of his Tyrolese nobility. We might take it or leave it. ’Twas still Schloss Lebenstein.

      The lawyers were as bad. We tried all we knew, and got no forrarder.

      At last Charles gave up the attempt in disgust. He was tiring, as I expected. “It’s the prettiest place I ever saw in my life,” he said; “but, hang it all, Sey, I won’t be imposed upon.”

      So he made up his mind, it being now December, to return to London. We met the Count next day, and stopped his carriage, and told him so. Charles thought this would have the immediate effect of bringing the man to reason. But he only lifted his hat, with the blackcock’s feather, and smiled a bland smile. “The Archduke Karl is inquiring about it,” he answered, and drove on without parley.

      Charles used some strong words, which I will not transcribe (I am a family man), and returned to England.

      For the next two months we heard little from Amelia save her regret that the Count wouldn’t sell us Schloss Lebenstein. Its pinnacles had fairly pierced her heart. Strange to say, she was absolutely infatuated about the castle. She rather wanted the place while she was there, and thought she could get it; now she thought she couldn’t, her soul (if she has one) was wildly set upon it. Moreover, Césarine further inflamed her desire by gently hinting a fact which she had picked up at the courier’s table d’hôte at the hotel—that the Count had been far from anxious to sell his ancestral and historical estate to a South African diamond king. He thought the honour of the family demanded, at least, that he should secure a wealthy buyer of good ancient lineage.

      One morning in February, however, Amelia returned from the Row all smiles and tremors. (She had been ordered horse-exercise to correct the increasing excessiveness of her figure.)

      “Who do you think I saw riding in the Park?” she inquired. “Why, the Count of Lebenstein.”

      “No!” Charles exclaimed, incredulous.

      “Yes,” Amelia answered.

      “Must be mistaken,” Charles cried.

      But Amelia stuck to it. More than that, she sent out emissaries to inquire diligently from the London lawyers, whose name had been mentioned to us by the ancestral firm in Unter den Lauben as their English agents, as to the whereabouts of our friend; and her emissaries learned in effect that the Count was in town and stopping at Morley’s.

      “I see through it,” Charles exclaimed. “He finds he’s made a mistake; and now he’s come over here to reopen negotiations.”

      I was all for waiting prudently till the Count made the first move. “Don’t let him see your eagerness,” I said. But Amelia’s ardour could not now be restrained. She insisted that Charles should call on the Graf as a mere return of his politeness in the Tyrol.

      He was as charming as ever. He talked to us with delight about the quaintness of London. He would be ravished to dine next evening with Sir Charles. He desired his respectful salutations meanwhile to Miladi Vandrift and Madame Ventvorth.

      He dined with us, almost en famille. Amelia’s cook did wonders. In the billiard-room, about midnight, Charles reopened the subject. The Count was really touched. It pleased him that still, amid the distractions of the City of Five Million Souls, we should remember with affection his beloved Lebenstein.

      “Come to my lawyers,” he said, “tomorrow, and I will talk it all over with you.”

      We went—a most respectable firm in Southampton Row; old family solicitors. They had done business for years for the late Count, who had inherited from his grandmother estates in Ireland; and they were glad to be honoured with the confidence of his successor. Glad, too, to make the acquaintance of a prince of finance like Sir Charles Vandrift. Anxious (rubbing their hands) to arrange matters satisfactorily all round for everybody. (Two capital families with which to be mixed up, you see.)

      Sir Charles named a price, and referred them to his solicitors. The Count named a higher, but still a little come-down, and left the matter to be settled between the lawyers. He was a soldier and a gentleman, he said, with a Tyrolese toss of his high-born head; he would abandon details to men of business.

      As I was really anxious to oblige Amelia, I met the Count accidentally next day on the steps of Morley’s. (Accidentally, that is to say, so far as he was concerned, though I had been hanging about in Trafalgar Square for half an hour to see him.) I explained, in guarded terms, that I had a great deal of influence in my way with Sir Charles; and that a word from me—I broke off. He stared at me blankly.

      “Commission?” he inquired, at last, with a queer little smile.

      “Well, not exactly commission,” I answered, wincing. “Still, a friendly word, you know. One good turn deserves another.”

      He looked at me from head to foot with a curious scrutiny. For one moment I feared the Tyrolese nobleman in him was going to raise its foot and take active measures. But the next, I saw that Sir Charles was right after all, and that pristine innocence has removed from this planet to other quarters.

      He named his lowest price. “M. Ventvorth,” he said, “I am a Tyrolese seigneur; I do not dabble, myself, in commissions and percentages. But if your influence with Sir Charles—we understand each other, do we not?—as between gentlemen—a little friendly present—no money, of course—but the equivalent of say 5 percent in jewellery, on whatever sum above his bid today you induce him to offer—eh?—c’est convenu?”

      “Ten percent is more usual,” I murmured.

      He was the Austrian hussar again. “Five, monsieur—or nothing!”

      I bowed and withdrew. “Well, five then,” I answered, “just to oblige your Serenity.”

      A secretary, after all, can do a great deal. When it came to the scratch, I had but little difficulty in persuading Sir Charles, with Amelia’s aid, backed up on either side by Isabel and Césarine, to accede to the Count’s more reasonable proposal. The Southampton Row people had possession of certain facts as to the value of the wines in the Bordeaux market which clinched the matter. In a week or two all was settled; Charles and I met the Count by appointment in Southampton Row, and saw him sign, seal, and deliver the title-deeds of Schloss Lebenstein. My brother-in-law paid the purchase-money into the Count’s own hands, by cheque, crossed on a first-class London firm where the Count kept an account to his high well-born order. Then he went away with the proud knowledge that he was owner of Schloss Lebenstein. And what to me was more important still, I received next morning