"Nay," said Edward, "there are chords even in a piano-tuner's breast—chords which, too roughly touched, will turn and rend the smiter."
"Good gracious!" said Miss Davenant, "I believe the man's insane."
"Withdraw that harsh expression," he pleaded. And then, without warning, the situation ceased to amuse him. Here he was, swimming in the deep, smooth waters of diplomacy, and suddenly diplomacy seemed a sticky medium. He would[68] have liked Miss Davenant to be a man—a man in green-silk Georgian coat and buckled shoes; himself also gloriously Georgian, in murray-colored cut velvet, with Mechlin at wrists and throat. Then they could have betaken themselves to the bowling-green and fought it out with ringing rapiers, by the light of the lantern held in the landlord's trembling fingers. Or at dawn, in the meadow the red wall bounded, there could have been measured pacings—a dropped handkerchief, two white puffs drifting away on the chill, sweet air, and Edward Basingstoke could have handed his smoking pistol to his second and mounted his horse—Black Belial—and so away to his lady, leaving his adversary wounded slightly ("winged," of course, was the word). Thus honor would have been satisfied, and Edward well in the lime-light. But in this little box of an overfurnished room, by the light of an ill-trimmed paraffin-lamp, to rag an anxious aunt. . . . He withdrew himself slowly from diplomacy—tried to find an inch or two of dry truth to stand on.
[68]
"Well, why don't you say something?" asked the anxious aunt.
"I will," said Mr. Basingstoke. "Madam, I have to ask your pardon for an unpardonable liberty. I have deceived you. I am not what you think. I am not a piano-tuner, but an engineer."
[69]
[69]
"But you said you were. . . ."
"Pardon me. I said there were chords in the breasts of piano-tuners."
"But if you aren't, how did you know there was one?"
This riposte he had not anticipated. Frankness had its drawbacks—so small a measure of it as he had allowed himself. He leaped headlong into diplomacy again.
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