| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: Off Sandy Hook and other stories
Author: Dehan, Richard
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Off Sandy Hook and other stories" ***
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
OFF SANDY HOOK
AND OTHER STORIES
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE MAN OF IRON
ONE BRAVER THING (THE DOP DOCTOR)
BETWEEN TWO THIEVES
THE HEADQUARTER RECRUIT
THE COST OF WINGS
OFF SANDY HOOK
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
RICHARD DEHAN
_Author of “One Braver Thing” (“The Dop Doctor”), “The Man of Iron,”
“Between Two Thieves,” etc._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1915, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages_
[Illustration: _September, 1915_]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
OFF SANDY HOOK 1
GEMINI 15
A DISH OF MACARONI 31
“FREDDY & C^{IE}” 44
UNDER THE ELECTRICS 60
“VALCOURT’S GRIN” 68
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FAIREST 81
THE REVOLT OF RUSTLETON 95
A DYSPEPTIC’S TRAGEDY 107
RENOVATION 119
THE BREAKING PLACE 133
A LANCASHIRE DAISY 143
A PITCHED BATTLE 154
THE TUG OF WAR 164
GAS! 180
AIR 193
SIDE! 205
A SPIRIT ELOPEMENT 219
THE WIDOW’S MITE 230
SUSANNA AND HER ELDERS 241
LADY CLANBEVAN’S BABY 264
THE DUCHESS’S DILEMMA 276
THE CHILD 287
A HINDERED HONEYMOON 295
“CLOTHES—AND THE MAN—!” 308
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA 317
OFF SANDY HOOK
AND OTHER STORIES
OFF SANDY HOOK
On board the Rampatina liner, eleven days and a half out from Liverpool,
the usual terrific sensation created by the appearance of the
pilot-yacht prevailed. Necks were craned and toes were trodden on as the
steamer slackened speed, and a line dexterously thrown by a
blue-jerseyed deck-hand was caught by somebody aboard the yacht. The
pilot, not insensible to the fact of his being a personage of note,
carefully divested his bearded countenance of all expression as he
saluted the Captain, and taking from the deck-steward’s obsequiously
proffered salver a glass containing four-fingers of neat Bourbon whisky,
concealed its contents about his person without perceptible emotion, and
went up with the First Officer upon the upper bridge as the relieved
skipper plunged below. The telegraphs clicked their message—the
leviathan hulk of the liner quivered and began to forge slowly ahead,
and an intelligent-looking, thin-lipped, badly-shaved young man in a
bowler, tweeds, and striped necktie, introduced himself to the Second
Officer as an emissary of the Press.
“Mr. Cyrus K. Pillson, _New York Yeller_.... Pleased to know you, sir,”
said the Second Officer; “step into the smoke-room, this way.
Bar-steward, a brandy cocktail for me, and you, sir, order whatever you
are most in the habit of hoisting. Whisky straight! Now, sir, happy to
afford you what information I can!”
“I presume,” observed the young gentleman of the Press, settling himself
on the springy morocco cushions and accepting the Second Officer’s
polite offer of a green Havana of the strongest kind, “that you have had
a smooth passage, considerin’ the time of year?”
“Smooth....” The Second Officer carefully reversed in his reply the
Pressman’s remark: “Well, yes, the time of year considered, a smooth
passage, I take it, we _have_ had.”
“No fogs?” interrogated the young gentleman, clicking the elastic band
of a notebook which projected from his breast-pocket.
“Fogs?... No!” said the Second Officer.
“You didn’t chance,” pursued the young gentleman of the Press, taking
his short drink from the steward’s salver and throwing it contemptuously
down his throat, “to fall in with a berg off the Bank, did you?”
“Not a smell of one!” replied the Second Officer with decision.
“Ran into a derelict hencoop, perhaps?” persisted the young gentleman,
concealing the worn sole of a wearied boot from the searching glare of
the electric light by tucking it underneath him, “or an old lady’s
bonnet-box? ... or a rubber doll some woman’s baby had lost overboard?
No?” he echoed, as the Second Officer shook his head. “Then, how in
thunder did you manage to lose twenty feet of your port-rail?”
“Carried away,” said the Second Officer, offering the young Press
gentleman a light.
“No, thanks. Always eat mine,” said the young Press gentleman
gracefully.
“Matter of taste,” observed the Second Officer, blowing blue rings.
“I guess so; and I’ve a taste for knowing how you came,” said the young
Pressman, “to part with that twenty foot of rail.”
“Carried away,” said the Second Officer.
“I kin see that,” retorted the visitor.
“It was carried away,” said the Second Officer, “by an elephant.”
“A pet you had running about aboard?” queried the Pressman, with
imperturbable coolness.
“A passenger,” returned the Second Officer, with equal calm.
There was a snap, and the Pressman’s notebook was open on his knee. The
pencil vibrated over the virgin page, when a curious utterance, between
a wail, a cough, and a roar, made the hand that held it start.
“Yarr-rr! Ohowgh! Yarr!” The melancholy sound came from without, borne
on the cool breeze of a late afternoon in March, through the open
ventilators.
“Might that,” queried the young gentleman of the Press, “be an
expression of opinion on the part of the elephant?”
“Lord love you, no!” said the Second Officer. “It’s the leopard.” He
added after a second’s pause: “Or the puma.”
“Do you happen to have a menagerie aboard?” inquired the Pressman,
making a note in shorthand.
“No, sir. The beasts—elephants, leopards, and a box of cobras—are
invoiced from the London Docks to a wealthy amateur in New York State.
Not an iron king, or a corn king, or a cotton king, or a pickle king, or
a kerosene king,” said the Second Officer, with a steady upper lip, “but
a chewing-gum king.”
“If you mean Shadland C. McOster,” said the Pressman, “my mother is his
cousin. They used to chew gum together in school recess, sir, little
guessing that Shad would one day soar, on wings made of that article, to
the realms of gilded plutocracy.”
“I rather imagine the name you mention to be the right one,” said the
Second Officer cautiously, “but I won’t commit myself. The beasts
shipped from Liverpool are intended as a present for the purchaser’s
infant daughter on her fifth birthday.”
“Yarr-rr! Ohowgh! Ohowgh!” Again the coughing roar vibrated through the
smoke-room. Then the chorus of “Hail Columbia!” rose from the promenade
deck, where the lady passengers were assembled ready to wave starred and
striped silk pocket-handkerchiefs and exchange patriotic sentiments at
the first glimpse of land.
“It’s not what I should call a humly voice, that of the leopard,”
observed the Pressman, controlling a slight shiver.
“Children have queer tastes,” said the Second Officer. “And it’s as well
Old Spots is lively, as Bingo’s dead.”
“Bingo?” queried the Pressman.
“Bingo was the elephant,” said the Second Officer, passing the palm of
his brown right hand over his upper lip as the Pressman made a few rapid
notes. “And if the particulars of the deathbed scene are likely to be of
any interest to you—why, you’re welcome to ’em!”
“You’re white!” said the Pressman warmly, licking his pencil. “What did
your elephant die of?”
“Seasickness!” said the Second Officer calmly.
“I’ve seen a few things worth seeing—myself,” said the Pressman
enviously, “but not a seasick elephant.”
“With a professional lady-nurse in attendance,” said the Second Officer;
“all complete from stem to stern, in her print gown, white apron,
fly-away cap-rigging, and ward shoes.”
The Pressman grunted, but not from lack of interest. Doubled up in the
corner of the smoke-room divan, his notebook balanced on his bulging
shirt-front, he made furious notes. The Second Officer waited until the
pencil seemed hungry, and then fed it with a little more information.
“When that girl came aboard at Liverpool with her mackintosh and holdall
and little black shiny bag,” he went on, “I just noticed her in a
passing sort of way as a fresh-colored, tidy-looking young woman, rather
plump in the bows, and with an air as though she meant to get her full
money’s worth out of her eleven-pound fare. But our cheap tariff had
filled the passenger-lists fairly full, and I’d a long score of things
to attend to. A special derrick had had to be rigged to sling the
elephant’s cage aboard, and a capital one it was, of sound Indian teak
strengthened with steel—must have cost a mint of money. We stowed it,
after a lot of sweat and swearing, on the promenade deck, abaft the
funnels, bolting it to rings specially screwed in the deck, passing a
wire hawser across the top, which was made fast to the port and
starboard davits, and rigging weather-screens of double tarpaulin to
keep Bingo warm and dry. The other beasts we shipped under the lee of
the forward cabin skylight; and I’d just got through the job when a
quiet ladylike voice at my elbow says:
“‘If you please, officer, with regard to my patient, I wish to know——’
“‘Ask the purser, ma’am,’ I said, rather snappishly, for I was hot and
worried ... ‘or the head-stewardess.’
“‘I have asked them both,’ says the voice in a calm, determined way,
‘and have been referred to you.’
“‘Well, what is it?’ says I.
“‘By mistake,’ says the young lady—for a young lady she was, and a
hospital nurse besides, neatly rigged out in the usual uniform—‘by
mistake I have had allotted to me a bedroom on the ground-floor, so far
from my patient that I cannot possibly hear him should he call me in the
night. And,’ she went on, as the breeze played with her white silk
bonnet-strings and the wavy little kinks of soft brown hair that framed
her forehead, ‘and I want you to move me to the upper floor at once.’
“‘You mean the promenade deck, madam,’ says I, smoothing out a grin,
though I’m well enough used to the odd bungles land-folks make over
names of things at sea.”
The flying pencil stopped. The Pressman looked up, turning his shortened
cigar between his teeth.
“When do we come to the elephant?” he asked.
“We’re at him now,” said the Second Officer. “‘You mean the promenade
deck,’ says I. ‘Does your patient occupy one of the cabins on the port
or the starboard side, and may I ask his number and name?’ Then she
smiled at me brightly, her eyes and teeth making a sort of flash
together. ‘He doesn’t have a cabin,’ says she; ‘he sleeps in a cage. My
patient is Bingo, the elephant!’”
“Great Pierpont Morgan!” ejaculated the Pressman. His previously flying
pencil became almost invisible from the extreme rapidity with which he
plied it. Drops of perspiration broke out upon his sallow forehead.
“Glory!” he cried. “And not another man thought it worth while to run
out and tackle this wallowing old tub but me!”
“I touched my cap,” went on the Second Officer, “keeping down as
professionally as I could the surprise I felt.... ‘Do I understand,
madam,’ I asked, ‘that you are the elephant’s nurse?’ And at that she
nodded with another bright smile, and told me that she was Nurse Amy, of
St. Baalam’s Nursing Association, London, specially engaged by the
American gentleman who had bought the elephant——”
“Shadland C. McOster,” prompted the Pressman, without looking up.
“To attend to the animal on the voyage. It was understood that if the
principal patient’s condition permitted, Nurse Amy was to pay the
leopards such attentions as they were capable of appreciating, but there
was no pressure on this point.”
“Ohowgh!” coughed the voice outside. “Yarr! Ohowgh!”
“He smells the land, I guess,” said the Pressman.
“Or the niggers,” suggested the Second Officer. “You ought to have heard
Bingo when we were three days out from the Mersey.... We’d had a fair
wind and a smooth sea at first, and nothing delighted the ladies and
children on board like feeding him with apples, and nuts, and biscuits,
and things prigged from the saloon tables. The sea-air must have
sharpened the beast’s appetite, I suppose, for that old trunk of his was
snorking round all day, and the Purser, who was naturally wild about it,
said he must have put away hogsheads of good things in addition to his
allowance of hay, and bread, and beetroot, and grain, and cabbages, and
sugar——”
“Was he ca’am in temper?” asked the Pressman.
“Mild as milk.... As kind a beast as ever breathed; and elephants do a
lot of breathing,” said the Second Officer. “The ladies and gentlemen in
the upper-deck cabins used to complain about his snoring in the night;
but as Nurse Amy said, there are people who’d complain about anything.
And some of ’em didn’t like the smell of elephant—which, I’ll allow,
when you happened to get to wind’ard of Bingo, was—phew!”
“Pooty vociferous?” hinted the Pressman.
“Until,” went on the Second Officer, “Nurse Amy took to washing him with
scented soap.”
The pencil stopped. The Pressman looked up with circular eyes.
“Scented——”
“Soap,” said the Second Officer. “No expense was to be spared—and we’d
several cases of a special toilet and complexion article on board. By
the living Harry! if you’d seen that elephant standing up over his
morning tub of hot water, swabbing away at himself with a deck-sponge
Nurse Amy had soaped for him, and then squirting the water over himself
to rinse off the soap, you’d have believed in the intelligence of
animals. The sight drew like a pantomime.... But by the sixth day out
Bingo had given up all interest in his own appearance. The weather was
squally, a bit of a sea got up, hardly a passenger put in an appearance
at the saloon tables, and Bingo only shook his ears when the bugle blew,
and turned away from his morning haystack and mound of cabbages with
disgust. Nurse Amy got him to eat some biscuits and drink a bucket of
Bovril, but you could see he was only doing it to oblige her. ‘Oh, come,
cheer up!’ she said in a brisk, professional way. ‘You’ll get your
sea-legs on directly and the officer says we’re having a wonderfully
smooth passage, considering the time of the year.’ But Bingo only
sighed, and two tears trickled out of his little red eyes, as he swayed
from side to side. ‘He’ll be worse before he’s better,’ says I; for
somehow I was generally about when Nurse Amy was looking after her big
charge. ‘He’ll be worse before he’s better,’ _and he was_.”
The Pressman’s face was streaked and shiny, his hair lay glued to his
brow. The pencil went on, devouring page after page.
“Nurse Amy, luckily for her patient, was not upset by the pitching of
the vessel, for it blew half a gale steady from the sou’-west, and the
old _Centipede_ dipped her nose pretty frequently. Nurse was as busy as
a bee endeavoring by every means she could devise or adopt from the
suggestions of the stewardesses, who showed a good deal of interest in
her and her charge, to alleviate the sufferings of Bingo. I have seen
that little woman stand for an hour on the wet planking, holding a
six-foot deck-swab soaked with eau-de-Cologne to Bingo’s forehead....”
The Pressman jotted down, breathing heavily. “Deck-swab soaked in
eau-de-Cologne....” he muttered. “Must have cost slathers of money, I
reckon——”
“No expense was to be spared,” the Second Officer reminded him gently.
“As for the brandy, Martell’s Three Star, he must have put away a dozen
bottles a day.”
“No blamed wonder his head ached!” said the Pressman, moistening his own
dry lips.
“Except an occasional bucket of arrowroot with port wine and a tin or so
of cuddy biscuits, the animal would take no other nourishment whatever,”
continued the Second Officer. “As he grew weaker and weaker, it was
touching to see the way in which he clung to Nurse Amy.”
“Clung to her?” the Pressman wrote, marking the words for a headline.
“Fact,” said the Second Officer. “He would put his trunk round her
waist, and lay his head on her shoulder as she stood on a ladder lashed
against the side of his cage. And he would hang out his forefoot to have
his pulse felt, quite in a Christian style. Then when Nurse Amy wanted
to take his temperature, the docile brute would curl up his fire-hose—I
mean his trunk—and open his mouth, so that the instrument might be
comfortably placed under his tongue.”
“By gings, sir, this story is going to knock corners off creation!”
gasped the Pressman, pausing to wipe his face with a slightly smeary
cuff. “An elephant that understood the use of the therm—blame it! that
beast robbed some man of a fortune when he passed in his checks!”
“We lost so many of the ordinary kind of instrument in this way,” went
on the Second Officer, almost pensively, “that at last Nurse Amy was
obliged to fall back upon the large thermometer and barometer combined
that usually hung in the first saloon. But it recorded, to our sorrow,
no improvement. The mercury steadily sank, and it became plain to Nurse
Amy’s professional eye that her patient was not long for this world.”
“Say, do you believe elephants have souls?” queried the Pressman. The
Second Officer deigned no reply.
“She could not leave him a moment; he trumpeted so awfully when he saw
her quit his side. I forgot to tell you that from the moment he first
felt himself attacked by sea-sickness his bellows of rage and agony were
frightful to hear. The other animals became excited by them; they roared
and snarled without cessation.”
“Raised general hell,” said the Pressman, “with trimmings.” But he wrote
down with a sign that meant leaded spaces and giant capitals:
“PANDEMONIUM IN MID-OCEAN!”
“Nobody on board got a wink of sleep,” said the Second Officer—“that is,
unless the devoted Nurse Amy was by the sufferer’s side. Towards the
end, when, exhausted by days and nights of arduous nursing, the devoted
girl had retired to her deck-cabin to snatch a few moments of
much-needed rest, the entire crew vied with each other in efforts to
pacify Bingo, without the slightest effect. When they tried to put his
feet in hot water he mashed the ship’s buckets like so many
gooseberries, and shot the Purser down with half a trunkful of hot
cocoa, which had been offered as a last resource. But on Nurse Amy’s
appearing he grew pacified, and from that moment until the end the
heroic woman never left his side. I begged her to consider herself and
those dear to her,” said the Second Officer, with a little tremble in
his voice, “but she only smiled—a worn kind of smile—and said that duty
must be considered first. I won’t deny it,” said the Second Officer,
openly producing a very white pocket-handkerchief and unfolding it. “I
kissed that woman’s hand as though she had been the Queen.” He concealed
his face with the handkerchief and coughed rather loudly.
“The Rude Shellback Touched to the Quick,” wrote the Pressman. “He Sheds
Tears.” “Get on with the death-scene, sir, if you don’t object!” he
said, breathing through his nose excitedly. “If that elephant asked for
a minister, I’d not be surprised!”
“He did make his will, after a fashion,” said the narrator. “You see,
during the convulsive struggles I have described, when he broke off his
right tusk—didn’t I mention that?”
“No!” denied the Pressman.
“He broke it, anyhow, right off short, as a boy might snap a carrot,”
said the Second Officer. “There it lay, among the litter, in the bottom
of his cage. He had suddenly ceased trumpeting, and a deathly silence
had fallen on all creation, one would have said. The vessel still rolled
a bit, but the wind had fallen, and the sun was going down like a blot
of fire, on the——”
“Western horizon,” wrote the Pressman.
“Nurse Amy, from her ladder, still rendered the last offices of human
kindness to the sinking animal, sponging his forehead with ice-water and
fanning him with a bellows. As she whispered to me that the end was
near, Bingo opened his eyes. With an expiring effort he lifted the
broken tusk from the bottom of the cage, dropped it on the deck at his
faithful Nurse’s feet, uttered a heavy groan, threw up his trunk, sank
gently forward upon his massive knees, and died!”
“The editor of the opposition paper will do another die when he runs his
eye over the _Yeller_ to-morrow morning,” said the Pressman, joyfully
smacking the rubber band round the filled notebook. “And the port-rail
got carried away when you yanked the body overboard?”
“We couldn’t stuff him,” said the Second Officer with a sigh. “As for
preserving him in spirits, we hadn’t enough spirits left to think of it.
We rigged a special derrick, and heaved Bingo overboard, carrying away,
as you have guessed, the port-rail in the operation. As Bingo’s
tremendous carcass rose and floated buoyantly away to leeward, back and
head well above the water, and the two great ears resting flat upon the
surface like gigantic lily-pads, Nurse Amy uttered a faint cry and
swooned in my arms.”
“Some folks get all the luck!” commented the Pressman, who, having
filled his book, was now jotting down notes upon his left cuff.
“You’ve not much to complain of, it strikes me!” observed the Second
Officer, with a glance at the crammed notebook.
“I guess that’s true!” said the Pressman, with a sigh of satisfaction.
“Now, all I want is a photograph or a sketch of that splendid heroine of
a girl, and the honor of shaking her hand, and telling her she deserves
to be an American—and I’d not trade places with the President.”
The Second Officer appeared to be struggling with some emotion. The
muscles of his mouth worked violently. He reddened through the red, and
suspicious moisture shone in his eyes. One by one the members of the
silent but not unappreciative audience of male passengers that had
gradually gathered within earshot of the Second Officer and his victim,
manifested the same symptoms. And glancing for the first time at those
listening faces, and observing the identical expression stamped upon
each, the Pressman, encircled by wet, crinkled eyes, and
cheerfully-curled-back lips, fringed with teeth in all stages of
preservation, grasped the conviction that he had been had. And at this
crucial moment the hatch-door of the smoke-room rolled back in its brass
coamings, and a pointed gray beard and kindly keen eyes, sheltered by
the peak of a gold-laced cap, appeared in the aperture.
“New York Harbor, gentlemen,” said the Captain genially. “We’re running
into the docks now, and the Custom House officers will board us
directly.... I shouldn’t wonder,” he continued, as the majority of the
occupants of the smoke-room one by one glided away, “if the newspapers
made a story out of our missing port-rail!”
“Permit me to introduce myself as a reporter of the _N’York Yeller_,”
said the young gentleman in tweeds, as he rose and touched his hat.
“Perhaps, sir, you would favor me with the facts in connection with the
occurrence?”
“Haven’t you had it from Murchison? Why, Murchison——” the Captain was
beginning, when with a choking snort the Second Officer rushed from the
smoke-room. “Though there’s nothing to tell, Mr. Reporter, worth
hearing. A derrick-chain broke at Southampton Docks, and a case of
agricultural machine-parts did the damage. We temporarily repaired with
some iron piping, and a length of wire hawser; but, of course, it shows
badly, and suggests——”
“A collision!” said a smiling stranger.
“Or an elephant,” said another.
“Yarr!” proclaimed the horrible voice outside. “Ohowgh! Yarr!”
“I understand,” said the Pressman with an effort, “that the elephant
emanated from the teeming brain of Mr. Murchison. But the leopard—there
is a leopard, I surmise, if hearing goes for evidence?”
The Captain’s excellent teeth showed under his gray mustache. “That
noise, you mean?” he exclaimed.... “Oh, that’s one of our electric
air-pumps, for forcing air into the lower-deck storage chambers, you
know. She’s out of gear, and lets us know it in that way. Must have her
seen to at New York. Take a drink, won’t you? Come, gentlemen, order
what you please.”
“Whisky, square,” murmured the Pressman, as the long, smooth glide of
the liner was checked, the engines throbbed and stopped, and the dull
roar of the docks pressed upon listening ears. He drank, and as the
fluid traversed the usual channel, his eye grew brighter.... “Say,
Captain,” he asked, “do you know where your Second Officer was raised?”
“Murchison comes, I believe, from Yorkshire,” said the Captain. “Hey,
Murchison, isn’t that the place?”
“I am not acquainted with the geology of Yorkshire,” observed the
Pressman, as he passed the Second Officer on his way to the smoke-room;
“but the soil grows good liars! So long!”
GEMINI
AN EMBARRASSMENT OF CHOICE
To Captain Galahad Ranking, grilling over his Musketry-Instructorship at
Hounslow one arid July, came a square lilac envelope, addressed in a
sprawling hand, with plenty of violet ink. The missive smelt of Rhine
violets. It bore a monogram, the initials “L. K.” fantastically
intertwined, and was, in fact, an invitation from his affectionate
cousin Laura, dated from a pleasant country mansion situate amid green
lawns and blushing rose-gardens on the Werkshire reaches of the Thames.
Laura was not Galahad’s cousin by blood, but by marriage. Laura was the
still young and attractive widow of Thomson Kingdom, once a stout man on
the Stock Exchange, remarkable for a head of very upright gray hair and
a startling taste in printed linen. Pigs and peaches were his pet
hobbies, and the apoplectic seizure from which he never rallied was
induced by a weakness in “the City” caused by unprecedentedly heavy
selling-orders from a nervous north-eastern European capital, about the
time of the _entente cordiale_. So the bloom was barely off Laura’s
crêpe, and the new black gloves purchased by Galahad to grace his
kinsman’s obsequies had not done duty at another funeral. The scrawly
postscript to her letter said: “I want to consult you _very
particularly_, in the _most absolute confidence_, upon a matter
affecting my _whole future_.”
Galahad Ranking, Junior Captain, Fourth Battalion Royal Deershire
Regiment, wrinkled up his freckled little countenance into queer
puckers, and rubbed his bristly cinnamon-colored hair, already getting
thin on the summit of his skull, as he puzzled the brain within that
receptacle as to the possible meaning of Laura’s impassioned appeal. He
was a small man, whose demure and spinster-like demeanor led new
acquaintances to ask him plumply how on earth he had managed to get his
D.S.O.
“There were chances,” he would reply to these querists, “to be had out
there,” waving his hand vaguely in the direction of South Africa, “and I
saw one of them and took it—that’s all.”
Others might pump him more successfully to the effect that he—Galahad
Ranking—was a poor devil of a militiaman attached to the Royal
Deershires; that a small detachment of that well-known territorial
regiment, garrisoned in a beastly small tin-pot fort on the Springbok
River, Eastern Transvaal, were by Boers besieged; that relief was
urgently necessary; and that “one of the fellows went and brought up
Kitchener.” Said fellow admitted upon further cross-examination to have
been himself. But for such details as that the bringing up involved a
six-mile run in scorching sun over tangled bush veldt, crossing the
enemy’s lines, being sniped at by Boer sharpshooters and chased by Boer
pickets, the curious must refer to despatches. Stampeding Army mules
would not trample the truth out of the man.
He wrung half-hearted leave of absence from the powers that were, and
his orderly packed the battered tin suit-case and the Gladstone bag that
had spent three days at the bottom of a water-hole, and, having had its
numerous labels soaked off, bore a painfully leprous appearance.
He found Laura’s omnibus automobile, with its luggage tender, waiting at
Cholsford Junction, and smiled his dry little smile, mentally comparing
the dimensions of the vehicle with the size of the guest. The suit-case
and the Gladstone bag made a poor show; but there were other things to
come: huge packages from the Stores, and a sea-weedy hamper from Great
Fishby, and some cases of champagne with the label of a first-class
Regent Street firm. “Poor Kingdom’s wine-merchants!” Ranking said to
himself, and he blinked in a bewildered way at a bandbox of mammoth
proportions and three dressmakers’ boxes of stout cardboard with tin
corners, their covers bearing the flourishing signature of Babin _et
Cie_. Because, you know, Laura’s bereavement was so very recent, and
bachelors of Galahad’s type have a somewhat exaggerated notion of the
extent to which conjugal mourners are expected to bewail themselves.
However, even a widow requires clothes. This handsome concession to
feminine idiosyncrasy made, Galahad ousted Laura’s chauffeur from the
driving-seat, and, assuming the steering-wheel, was reaching for the
starting-lever when the chauffeur stopped him with—
“Beg pardon, sir, but there’s a gentleman to fetch.”
“A visitor to The Rodelands?” Galahad asked, with furrows of surprise
forming below his hat-brim.
The mechanic, a gloomy young man in a gold-banded cap, with a weakness
for wearing waterproofs in the driest weather, replied, without a
groom’s alertness or a groom’s civility:
“It’s a gentleman staying at Eyot Cottage....” Adding, as Galahad
faintly recalled the creeper-covered cot in question, modestly perched
on the edge of a marshy lawn running down to the river, and usually let
by the landlord of the local hotel to honeymooning couples: “And we
usually give him a lift.”
As the chauffeur spoke, the gentleman emerged from the dim, echoing
archway through which the down platform disgorged. The stranger was
young—Galahad, who was middle-aged, saw that at a glance—and fair, while
Galahad was sandy. He wore a suit of gray tweeds too short in the
sleeves and trouser-legs, and his cherubically pink countenance, adorned
with large, round, china-blue eyes and a little flaxen mustache, was
carried at an altitude which would have been disconcerting to a
Lifeguardsman of six feet high, and was simply maddening to Galahad, who
could only be categorized as small. We are all human, and Galahad was
secretly gratified to observe that the young giant’s shoulders boasted a
graceful droop, and that his chest was somewhat narrow.
“Hullo, Watson!” observed the tall young gentleman, condescendingly; and
Watson smiled faintly and actually touched his cap as the new-comer
favored Galahad with a long and round-eyed stare.
“I believe you are coming with us?” said Galahad, raising his hat with
punctilious politeness.
“Not inside, thanks,” was the long-legged young stranger’s reply. He
stared harder than ever, and Watson murmured in Galahad’s ear that the
gentleman usually drove.
“Does he?” ejaculated the astonished Galahad.
A man may hold the rank of captain in one of his Majesty’s territorial
Regiments, and yet be shy; may have earned the right to adorn his thorax
with the D.S.O., and yet be bashful; may be a more than efficient
instructor in Musketry, and yet shrink from the gratuitous schooling of
underbred youth in the amenities of good breeding. In less time than it
takes to relate it, Galahad was stowed in the omnibus body of the
“Runhard” where, a very little kernel in a very roomy shell, he rattled
about as the familiar landscape reeled giddily by at the will and
pleasure of the long-legged young gentleman, who might be described as
the kind of driver that takes risks. A peculiarly steep and curving hill
announced by signboards lettered, in appropriate crimson, “Dangerous!”
afforded facilities for the exercise of his peculiar talent which
temporarily deprived the inside passenger of breath.
The river lay at the bottom of the hill, and the dwelling of Mrs.
Kingdom, described in the local guide as “an elegant riparian villa,”
sat in its green meadows and sunny croquet lawns and rose-trellised
gardens, on the other side.
The automobile swirled in at the lodge-gates, stopped, and Galahad got
out, welcomed by the joyful barking of Dinmonts, fox-terriers, pugs, and
poodles.
Knee-deep in dogs, the little man responded to the respectful greeting
of Laura’s butler, a meek, gray-faced, little, elderly personage with a
frill of white whiskers akin to the hirsute adornments of the rare
variety of the howling ape. Then the drawing-room door swung open,
letting out an avalanche of Pomeranians and some Persian cats; Laura
rose from a sofa and advanced with a gushful greeting. Her outstretched
hands were grasped by Galahad; he was tinglingly conscious that her
widow’s weeds were eminently becoming.
“Dear Captain Ranking, how sweet of you to run down!” Laura cooed. The
flash of admiration in Galahad’s weary gray eyes gave her sugared
assurance that she was looking her best; his ardent squeeze confirmed
the look.
“You used to call me by my Christian name,” he was saying, with a little
undulating wobble of sentiment in his voice. Then his glance went past
Mrs. Kingdom, and his lean under-jaw dropped. The long-legged gentleman
in gray tweed, who had driven, or rather hustled, him from the station,
was sitting on the sofa in a suit of blue serge. No, Galahad was not
mistaken. There were the long legs, the champagne-bottle shoulders, the
china-blue eyes, and the little flaxen mustache. He did not look so
pink, that was all. And when Laura, with a nervous giggle, introduced
him as Mr. Lasher, he began getting up from the sofa as though he never
would have done.
“How do?” he said, when his yellow head had soared to the ceiling.
“Met you before,” said Galahad with some terseness. “And you frightened
me abominably by the way you scorched down Penniford Hill.”
The long-legged young man stared with circular blue eyes. Laura burst
into a peal of rippling laughter, which struck Galahad as being forced
and beside the point.
“My dear Galahad,” Mrs. Kingdom cried, “you must have met Brosy! This is
Dosy,” she added, as though all were now clear, and welcomed with a
perfect _feu de joie_ of giggles the entrance of the veritable and
original young man in gray tweeds who had driven the automobile, and now
came strolling into the drawing-room. Then she introduced the pair
formally to Captain Ranking as Mr. Theodosius and Mr. Ambrose Lasher,
and rustled away to pour out tea, leaving Galahad in a jaundiced frame
of mind. For one thing, he hated to be mystified; for another, being an
ordinary, though heroic, human being, he had taken at the first moment
of encounter a singularly ardent and sincere dislike to the
“long-legged, blue-eyed young bounder,” as he mentally termed Mr. Brosy
Lasher; and the discovery that the object of his loathing existed in
duplicate was not a welcome one. He was dry, stiff, and jerky in his
responses to the loud and patronizing advances of the two Lashers.
Fortunately the twin young gentlemen accepted as admiration, what was,
in fact, the opposite sentiment. They had been used to a good deal of
this since the first moment of their simultaneous entrance upon this
mundane stage, and they were twenty-six.
“It is so sad,” Laura said in confidential aside to Galahad. “They have
lost both parents, and have hardly a penny in the world.” She raised and
crumpled her still pretty eyebrows with the old infantile air of appeal.
“Two such delightful boys, and so handsome! ... though to my eye Brosy’s
nose is less purely Greek in outline than Dosy’s. And they were educated
at a public school, with every advantage that a rich man’s sons might
naturally expect. But, of course, you recognized the _cachet_ of Eton at
once?”
“I notice,” said Ranking drily, “that they both leave the lower button
of their waistcoats undone, and call men whom they don’t like ‘scugs.’”
His quiet eye dwelt with dubious tenderness upon the Messrs. Lasher, who
were romping with the dogs upon the sofas, and devouring cake and
strawberries with infantile greed. “I have heard of the Eton manner, of
course,” he added, “and I meet a good many Eton-bred men; but I can’t
say that these young fellows have any—any special characteristics in
common with—ah—those.”
“They belong to a grand old family,” Laura continued, with an air of
proprietorship that puzzled Galahad. “The Lashers of Dropshire, you
know—quite historical. And their father ran through everything before
they came of age. So thoughtless, wasn’t it? And now they are looking
round for an opening in life, and really, they tell me, it is dreadfully
difficult to find.”
“I rather imagined as much,” said Galahad, making a little point of
sarcasm all to himself, and secretly smiling over it.
“I wonder if you could suggest anything; you are always so helpful,”
Laura went on. “That they must be together, of course, goes without
saying. And that, of course, increases the difficulty. But nobody could
be so inhuman as to part twins.” Her lips quivered, and her eyes grew
misty with unshed tears.
“My dear Laura,” expostulated the puzzled Galahad, “you talk as though
these two young men were six years old instead of six-and-twenty.”
“How changed you are!” Laura blinked away a tear. “You used to
understand me so much better in the old days. _Of course_, they are
grown up, that is plain to the meanest capacity. But they have such
boyish, charming, confiding natures.... Toto will bite, Brosy, if you
hold him in the air by the tail!... that a woman like myself.... If you
would like some more cherry cake, Dosy, do ring the bell!... a woman
like myself, married at eighteen to a man true and noble if you will,
but incapable of awakening the deeper chords of passion and.... Of
course, you are both going to dine here and help me to entertain Captain
Ranking!... denied the happiness of being a mother”—Laura drooped her
eyes and bit her lip, and blushed slightly—“must naturally find their
company a _great resource_. And the distant cousin with whom they are
staying, a Mrs. Le Bacon Chalmers, who has taken Eyot Cottage for the
summer months, _knows this_ and _lends_ them to me as _often_ as I
like.”
“Upon my word, she is uncommonly kind!” said Galahad, with emphasis
stronger than Laura’s italics.
“Yes, isn’t she?” responded Laura, whose sense of humor was obscured by
predilection. “They ride and drive the horses, and give Holt and the
gardeners advice, and they exercise the automobiles, and run the
electric launch about, and play tennis and croquet——”
“And the devil generally!” were the words that Galahad bit off and
gulped down.
He was very quiet at dinner, sitting in the deceased Kingdom’s place at
the foot of the table. And Dosy and Brosy were very loud and very large,
though looking, it must be confessed, exceedingly well in evening garb.
They made themselves very much at home upon Laura’s right and left hand,
recommending certain dishes to each other, criticizing more, ravaging
the bonbons, reveling in the dessert, calling, with artless airs of
connoisseurship, for special wines laid down by the noble man who yet
had not known how to awaken the deeper chords of passion.
“Gad! what a pair of hawbucks!” Galahad mentally ejaculated as the
servants ran about like distracted ants, and Laura and Laura’s
inseparable though elderly companion-friend, Miss Glidding, vied with
each other in encouraging Theodosius and Ambrose to renewed attacks upon
the strawberries and peaches.
Left alone with Dosy and Brosy, he submitted to be patronized, offered
cigars he had chosen, recommended to try liqueurs with whose liverish
and headachy qualities he had been acquainted of old.
They walked with the ladies in the dewy rose-gardens after dinner, and
as Galahad paused to light a cigar, behold, he was left alone. Laura
with Brosy, Miss Glidding (who looked her best by bat-light) with Dosy,
had vanished in the shadowy windings of the trellis-walks and arcades.
And Captain Ranking, shrugging his shoulders, picked a half-seen
Niphetos, glimmering among the wet, shining leaves, and walked back to
the smoking-room, wondering why on earth Laura had dragged him down
where he seemed least to be wanted. What was the matter “affecting her
whole future” upon which she required advice? His heart gave a sickening
little jog as he realized that the future of Dosy, or possibly of Brosy,
might also be involved. True, Laura was thirty-nine; but what are years
when the heart is young? Galahad asked himself, as peal after peal of
the widow’s laughter broke the silence of the scented night. Other
mental interrogations fretted his aching brain. What must the servants
not have thought and said? What would the neighbors say? What would the
County think of such sportive, not to say frivolous, conduct on the part
of a widow but recently emancipated from weepers, whose handkerchiefs
were still bordered with the inch-deep inky deposit of conjugal woe?
Kingdom was an easy-going, level-headed man, Galahad admitted, biting at
one of the deceased’s Havanas and frowning; “but he would have raised
the Devil over this. Possibly he’s doing it.”
The portrait of Mr. Kingdom over the mantelshelf of the smoking-room
seemed to scowl confirmatively. The servants were all in bed, the
promenaders in the garden showed no signs of returning. Galahad shrugged
his little shoulders, and went away to bed in a charming, drum-windowed,
chintz-hung bower over the front porch. And just as his little cropped
head plumped down on the pillow it was electrically jolted up again.
Laura was saying good-night in the porch to one—or was it both?—of the
infernal twins. And before the hall-door clashed they had promised to
come over to lunch to-morrow. Confound them! it was to-morrow now.
One has only to add that when, after exhausting watches, slumber visited
Galahad’s eyelids, the twins in maddening iteration played dominoes
throughout his dreams, to convince the reader that they had thoroughly
got upon his nerves.
Laura, looking wonderfully fresh and young in a lace morning _négligé_
of the peek-a-boo description, poured out his coffee at breakfast and
sympathized with him about the headache he denied. Then, shaded by a
fluffy black-and-white sunshade, the widow led Galahad out into the
sunny garden to a tree-shaded and sequestered nook where West Indian
hammocks hung, and, installing herself in one of these receptacles,
invited her husband’s cousin to repose himself in another.
Lying on your back, counting ripening plums dangling from green branches
above, oscillating at the bidding of the lightest breeze, liable to
upset at the slightest movement, it is difficult to be indignant and
sarcastic; but Galahad was both.
“Adopt these young men as sons, my dear Laura! Are there no parentless
babies in the local workhouse that would better supply the need you
express of having something to cherish and love?” exclaimed Galahad.
He sat up with an effort and stared at Laura. Laura rocked, prone amid
cushions, knitting a silk necktie of a tender hue suited to a blonde
complexion.
“Workhouse babies are invariably ugly, and unhealthy into the bargain,”
she pouted.
“Some orphan child from a Home, that is pretty to look at and has had
the distemper properly,” suggested Galahad.
“I don’t want an orphan from a Home,” objected Laura. “Besides, it
wouldn’t be a twin.”
“There are such things as twin orphans, my dear Laura,” protested
Galahad.
But Laura was firm.
“Dosy and Brosy are very, very dear to me,” she protested, a little
pinkness about the eyelids and nostrils threatening an impending
tear-shower. “They came into my life,” she continued poetically, “at a
time of sorrow and bereavement, and the sunshine of their presence drove
the dark clouds away. Of course, they are too old, or, rather, not young
enough, to be really my sons,” she continued, “but they might have been
poor Tom’s.”
“If poor Tom had fathered a brace of bounders like those,” burst out
Galahad, “poor Tom would have kicked himself—that’s all I know—kicked
himself!” he repeated, fuming and climbing out of his hammock.
“Pray don’t be coarse,” entreated Laura—“and abusive,” she added, as an
afterthought. “Of course, as poor Tom’s trustee and executor, I am bound
to make a show of consulting you, though my mind is really made up, and
nobody can prevent my doing what I like with my own income. I shall
allow the boys five hundred a year each for pocket money,” she added
with a pretty maternal air. “And Dosy shall go into the Diplomatic
Service, and Brosy——”
“You have broached the adoption plan to them then?” gasped Galahad.
Laura bowed her head. “And this relative with whom I gather they are now
staying,” he continued, “is she agreeable to the proposed arrangement?”
“Mrs. Le Bacon Chalmers? She couldn’t prevent it if she wasn’t!”
retorted Laura, “as the boys are of age. But, as it happens, she thinks
the plan an ideal one.”
“That proves the value of her judgment, certainly. And the County? Will
your friends and neighbors also think the plan an ideal one?” demanded
Galahad.
“My friends and neighbors,” said Laura, loftily, “will think as I do, or
they will cease to be my friends.”
Galahad, usually punctiliously well-mannered, whistled long and
dismally. “Phew! And when you have alienated every soul upon your
visiting list, what will you do for society?”
“I shall have the boys,” said Laura, with defiant tenderness.
“And when the ‘boys,’ as you call them, marry?” insinuated Galahad.
Laura sat up so suddenly that all her cushions rolled out of the
hammock. “If this is how you treat me when I turn to you for advice——”
she began.
“Laura,” said Galahad firmly, “you don’t want advice.” He held up his
lean brown hand and checked her, as she would have spoken. “Nor do you
require twin sons of six feet three. What you want is——” He was going in
his innocence to say “a sincere and candid friend,” and prove himself
the ideal by some plain speaking, but Laura fairly brimmed over with
conscious blushes.
“How—how can you?” she said, in vibrating tones of reproach, devoid of
even a shade of anger. “So soon, too! As if I did not know what was due
to poor Tom——”
The toot of a motor-horn, the scuffle of the engine, the dry whirr of
the brake as the locomotive stopped at the avenue gate, broke in upon
her heroics.
“Here are the boys,” she cried rapturously, and, indeed, hopped out of
the hammock with the agility of girlhood as the long-legged,
yellow-haired twins came stalking over the grass. She held out her hands
to them with a pretty maternal gesture.
“Dosy pet, Brosy darling,” she babbled, “come and kiss Mummy! We have
been telling all our little plans to Uncle Galahad, and Uncle quite
agrees.”
“No! Does he, though?” was the simultaneous utterance of the long-legged
twins. They twirled their yellow mustaches, stooped awkwardly and
“kissed Mummy,” as Galahad uttered a yell of frenzied laughter, and,
throwing himself recklessly into his recently-vacated hammock, shot out
upon the other side.
He went back to Hounslow that day. Dosy and Brosy dutifully accompanied
him to the station, and exchanged a fraternal wink when his train
steamed out.
“What an infatuation!” he groaned. In his mind’s eye he saw the County
grinning over the childless widow and her adopted twins. As for Dosy and
Brosy, they would have what in America is termed “a soft snap.” Powerful
jaws had both the young gentlemen, wide and greedy gullets. Still, with
his mind’s eye Galahad saw their foolish, affectionate, sentimental
benefactress gnawed to the bare bone. Day by day he anticipated a letter
of shrill astonishment from his cotrustee, and when it came, hinting at
mental weakness and the necessity of restraint, he flamed up into
defense of Laura so hotly as to surprise himself.
And then, before anything decisive had been done with regard to the
settlement—before Brosy and Dosy had taken up their quarters for good
beneath the roof of their adopted parent—a change befell, and Galahad
received an imploring note from Mrs. Kingdom soliciting his instant
presence upon “an urgent matter.”
“She has thought better of it,” said Galahad to himself, as he obeyed
the summons. “Her native good sense”—you will realize that the man must
have been genuinely in love to believe in Laura’s native good sense—“has
come to her aid!” And in his mind’s eye he beheld the long, narrow backs
of the twins walking away into a dim perspective.
It was September. Dosy and Brosy were shooting the widow’s partridges,
and Galahad found her alone. She was pleased and excited, with an air of
one who with difficulty keeps the cork in a bottle of mystery; and when
she clasped her hands round Galahad’s arm and told him what a true, true
friend he was! he felt absurdly tender, as he begged her to confide her
trouble to him.
“I have made such a dreadful discovery,” Laura gasped, dabbing her eyes
with a filmy little square of cambric edged with the narrowest possible
line of black, “about the—about the boys.”
Galahad strove to compose his features into an expression of decent
regret.
“Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Theodosius Lasher.... I rather anticipated that
you—that possibly there were discoveries to be made.” He turned his
weary gray eyes upon Laura, and pulled at one wiry end of his little
gingery mustache. “Have they done anything very bad?” he asked, and his
tone was not uncheerful.
“Bad!” echoed Laura, with indignant scorn. “As though two young men
gifted with natures like theirs”—she had left off calling them “boys,”
Galahad noticed—“so lofty, so noble, so unselfish—and yes, I will say
it, so pure!—could possibly be guilty of any bad or even doubtful
action. But you do not know them, and you are prejudiced; you must admit
you are prejudiced when you hear the—the truth.” The cork escaped, and
the secret came with it in a gush. “It is this: I cannot be a mother to
Dosy and Brosy; they, poor dears, cannot be my sons. I had not the least
idea of their true feeling with regard to me, nor had they, until quite
recently.” She swallowed a little sob and dabbed her eyes again. “Oh,
Galahad, they are madly in love with me, both of them. What, what am I
to do?”
“Send them to the devil, the impudent young beggars!” snorted Galahad.
And, striding up and down between the trembling china-tables with
clenched fists and angry eyes, he said all the things he had longed to
say about folly, and madness and infatuation.
A woman will always submit with a good grace to masculine upbraiding
when she has reason to believe the upbraider jealous. Laura bore his
reproaches with saintly sweetness.
“They have behaved in the most honorable way, poor darlings!” she
protested, “though the realization of the true nature of their feelings
towards me, of course, came as a terrible shock. The deeds of settlement
had been drawn up. We planned, as soon as everything had been sealed and
signed, that the dear boys were to come and live here. I had furnished
their bedrooms exactly alike, and fitted up the smoking-room with twin
armchairs, twin tobacco-tables, and so on, when the blow fell.” She
deepened her voice to a thrilling whisper. “Dosy, looking quite pale and
tragic, asked for an interview in the conservatory; Brosy begged for a
private word in the pavilion at the end of the upper croquet-lawn. And
then,” said Laura, shedding abundant tears, “I knew what I had done. It
did occur to me that I might—might marry Brosy and adopt Dosy as my son,
or marry Dosy and regard Brosy as an heir. But no, it could not be. Dosy
proposed to take poison, or shoot himself, in the most unselfish way;
and Brosy suggested going in for a swim too soon after breakfast, and
never rising from a dive again. But neither could endure to live to see
me the bride of the other,” sobbed Laura.
“And as this is England, and not Malabar,” uttered Galahad, dryly, “the
law is against your marrying both.”
“Why, of course, my dear Galahad,” cried Laura innocently, scandalized
and round-eyed.
The man who really loved her looked at her and forgave her foolishness.
She had set the County buzzing with the tale of her absurd infatuation;
she had compromised her dignity by the tragic follies of the past few
months; there was but one way of gagging the scandalmongers and
regaining lost ground, one way of getting out of the _impasse_. Galahad
pointed out that way, as Laura entreated him to suggest something.
“Why not marry me?” he said bluntly.
“Oh, Galahad!” cried Laura, bright-eyed and quite pleasantly thrilled.
“And then we can both adopt the boys.”
“Whether they embrace that idea or not,” said Galahad, with his arm
round the long-coveted waist, “remains to be seen. But I promise you, if
occasion should arise, that I will act as a father to them.”
He went out, in his new parental character, to look for Dosy and Brosy
and break the joyful news. His freckled little face was beaming with
smiles, his usually weary gray eyes were alight; he smiled under his
bristly little mustache as he selected a stout but stinging Malacca cane
from the late Thompson Kingdom’s collection in the hall....
A DISH OF MACARONI
On the occasion of the tenth biennial visit of the Carlo Da Capo Grand
Opera Combination to the musical, if murky, city of Smutchester, the
principal members of the company pitched their tents, as was their wont,
at the Crown Diamonds Hotel, occupying an entire floor of that capacious
caravanserie, whose _chef_, to the grief of many honest British stomachs
and the unrestrained joy of these artless children of song, was of
cosmopolitan gifts, being an Italian-Spanish-Swiss-German. Here _prime
donne_, tenors, and bassos could revel in national dishes from which
their palates had long been divorced, and steaming masses of yellow
polenta, _knüdels_, and _borsch_, heaped dishes of sausages and red
cabbage, ragouts of cockscombs and chicken-livers, veal stewed with
tomatoes, frittura of artichokes, with other culinary delicacies strange
of aspect and garlicky as to smell, loaded the common board at each
meal, only to vanish like the summer snow, so seldom seen but so
constantly referred to by the poetical fictionist, amidst a Babel of
conversation which might only find its parallel in the parrot-house at
the Zoo. Ringed hands plunged into salad-bowls; the smoke of cigarettes
went up in the intervals between the courses; the meerschaum-colored
lager of Munich, the yellow beer of Bass, the purple Chianti, or the
vintage of Epernay brimmed the glasses; and the coffee that crowned the
banquet was black and thick and bitter as the soul of a singer who has
witnessed the triumph of a rival.
For singers can be jealous: and the advice of Dr. Watts is more at
discount behind the operatic scenes, perhaps, than elsewhere. For women
may be, and are, jealous of other women; and men may be, and are,
jealous of men, off the stage; but it is reserved for the hero and
heroine of the stage to be jealous of one another. The glare of the
footlights, held by so many virtuous persons to be inimical to the
rosebud of innocence, has a curiously wilting and shriveling effect upon
the fine flower of chivalry. Signor Alberto Fumaroli, _primo uomo_, and
possessor of a glorious tenor, was possessed by the idea that the chief
soprano, De Melzi, the enchanting Teresa—still in the splendor of her
youth, with ebony tresses, eyes of jet, skin of ivory, an almost
imperceptible mustache, and a figure of the most seductive, doomed ere
long to expand into a pronounced _embonpoint_—had adorned her classic
temples with laurels which should by rights have decked his own. The
press-cuttings of the previous weeks certainly balanced in her favor.
Feeble-minded musical critics, of what the indignant tenor termed
“provincial rags,” lauded the Signora to the skies. She was termed a
“springing fountain of crystal song,” a “human bulbul in the rose-garden
of melody.” Eulogy had exhausted itself upon her; while he, Alberto
Fumaroli, the admired of empresses, master of the emotions of myriads of
American millionairesses, he was fobbed off with half a dozen
patronizing lines. Glancing over the paper in the saloon carriage, he
had seen the impertinent upper lip of the De Melzi, tipped with the
faintest line of shadow, curl with delight as she scanned each accursed
column in turn, and handed the paper to her aunt (a vast person
invariably clad in the tightest and shiniest of black satins, and
crowned with a towering hat of violet velvet adorned with once snowy
plumes and crushed crimson roses), who went everywhere with her niece,
and mounted guard over the exchequer. Outwardly calm as Vesuvius, and
cool as a Neapolitan ice on a hot day, the outraged Alberto endured the
triumph of the women, marked the subterranean chuckles of the stout
Signora, the mischievous enjoyment of Teresa; pulled his
Austrian-Tyrolese hat over his Corsican brows, and vowed a wily
_vendetta_. His opportunity for wreaking retribution would come at
Smutchester, he knew. Wagner was to be given at the Opera House, and as
great as the previous triumph of Teresa de Melzi in the rôle of
Elsa—newly added by the soprano to her _repertoire_—should be her fall.
_Evviva!_ Down with that fatally fascinating face, smiling so
provokingly under its laurels! She should taste the consequences of
having insulted a Neapolitan. And the tenor smiled so diabolically that
Zamboni, the basso, sarcastically inquired whether Fumaroli was
rehearsing _Mephistofole_?
“Not so, dear friend,” Fumaroli responded, with a dazzling show of
ivories. “In that part I should make a _bel fiasco_; I have no desire to
emulate a basso or a bull.... But in this—the rôle in which I am
studying to perfect myself—I predict that I shall achieve a dazzling
success.” He drew out a green Russia-leather cigarette case, adorned
with a monogram in diamonds. “It is permitted that one smokes?” he
added, and immediately lighted up.
“It is permitted, if I am to have one also.”
The De Melzi stretched a white, bejeweled hand out, and the seething
Alberto, under pain of appearing openly impolite, was forced to comply.
“No, I will not take the cigarette you point out,” said the saucy _prima
donna_, as the tenor extended the open case. “It might disagree with me,
who knows? and I have predicted that in the part of Elsa to-morrow night
at Smutchester _I_ shall achieve a ‘dazzling success.’” And she smiled
with brilliant malice upon Alberto Fumaroli, who played Lohengrin. “They
are discriminating—the audiences of that big, black, melancholy
place—they never mistake geese for swans.”
“_Ach_, no!” said the Impresario, looking up from his tatting—he was
engaged upon a green silk purse for Madame Da Capo, a wrinkled little
doll of an old lady with whom he was romantically in love. “They will
not take a _dournure_, some declamation, and half a dozen notes in the
upper register _bour dout botage_. Sing to them well, they will be ready
to give you their heads. But sing to them badly, and they will be ready
to pelt yours. Twenty years ago they did. I remember a graceless
impostor, a _ragazzo_ (foisted upon me for a season by a villain of an
agent), who annoyed them in _Almaviva_.... _Ebbene_! the elections were
in progress—there was a _dimonstranza_. I can smell those antique eggs,
those decomposed oranges, now.”
“Heart’s dearest, thou must not excite thyself,” interrupted Madame; “it
is so bad for thee. Play at the poker-game, _mes enfants_,” she
continued, “and leave my good child, my beloved little one, alone!”
Saying this, Madame drew from her vast under-pocket a neat case
containing an ivory comb, and, removing the fearfully and wonderfully
braided traveling cap of the Impresario, fell to combing his few
remaining hairs until, soothed by the process, Carlo, who had been
christened Karl, fell asleep with his head on Madame’s shoulder; snoring
peacefully, despite the screams, shrieks, howls, and maledictions which
were the invariable accompaniment of the poker-game.
The train bundled into Smutchester some hours later; a string of cabs
conveyed the Impresario, his wife, and the principal members of his
company to the Crown Diamonds Hotel. Before he sought his couch that
night the revengeful Alberto Fumaroli had interviewed the _chef_ and
bribed him with the gift of a box of regalias from the cedar
smoking-cabinet of a King, to aid in the carrying-out of the _vendetta_.
Josebattista Funkmuller was not a regal judge of cigars; but these were
black, rank, and oily enough to have made an Emperor most imperially
sick. Besides, the De Melzi had, or so he declared, once ascribed an
indigestion which had ruined, or so she swore, one of her grandest
_scenas_, to an omelette of his making, and the cook was not unwilling
that the haughty spirit of the _cantatrice_ should be crushed. His
complex nature, his cosmopolitan origin, showed in the plan Josebattista
Funkmuller now evolved and placed before the revengeful tenor, who
clasped him to his bosom in an ecstasy of delight, planting at the same
time a huge, resounding kiss upon both his cheeks.
“It is perfection!” Fumaroli cried. “My friend, it can scarcely fail! If
it should, _per Bacco_! the Fiend himself is upon that insolent
creature’s side! But I never heard yet of his helping a woman to resist
temptation—_oh, mai!_ it is he who spreads the board and invites Eve.”
And the tenor retired exultant. His sleeping-chamber was next door to
that of the hated _cantatrice_. He dressed upon the succeeding morning
to the accompaniment of _roulades_ trilled by the owner of the lovely
throat to which Fumaroli would so willingly have given the fatal
squeeze. And as Fumaroli, completing his frugal morning ablutions by
wiping his beautiful eyes and classic temples very gingerly with a damp
towel, paused to listen, a smile of peculiar malignancy was only partly
obscured by the folds of the towel. But when the tenor and the soprano
encountered at the twelve o’clock _déjeuner_, Fumaroli’s politeness was
excessive, and his large, dark, brilliant eyes responded to every glance
of the gleaming black orbs of De Melzi with a languorous, melting
significance which almost caused her heart to palpitate beneath her
Parisian corsets. Concealed passion lay, it might be, behind an
affectation of enmity and ill-will.
“_Mai santo cielo!_” exclaimed the stout aunt, to whom the _cantatrice_
subsequently revealed her suspicions, “thou guessest always as I myself
have thought. The unhappy man is devoured by a grand passion for my
Teresa. He grinds his teeth, he calls upon the saints, he grows more
bilious every day, and thou more beautiful. One day he will declare
himself——”
“And I shall lose an entertaining enemy, to find a stupid lover,”
gurgled Teresa. She was looking divine, her dark beauty glowing like a
gem in the setting of an Eastern silk of shot turquoise and purple,
fifty yards of which an enamored noble of the Ukraine had thrown upon
the stage of the Opera House, St. Petersburg, wound round the stem of a
costly bouquet. She glanced in the mirror as she kissed the black nose
of her Japanese pug. “Every man becomes stupid after a while,” she went
on. “Even Josebattista is in love with me. He sends me a little note
written on _papier jambon_ to entreat an interview.”
“My soul!” cried the stout aunt, “thou wilt not deny him?”
The saucy singer shook her head as Funkmuller tapped at the door. One
need not give in detail the interview that eventuated. It is enough that
the intended treachery of Fumaroli was laid bare. His intended victim
laughed madly.
“But it is a _cerotto_—what the English call a nincompoop,” she gasped,
pressing a laced handkerchief to her streaming eyes. “If the heavens
were to fall, then one could catch larks; but the proverb says nothing
about nightingales.”
She tossed her brilliant head and took a turn or two upon the hotel
sitting-room carpet, considering.
“I will keep this appointment,” said she.
“_Dio!_ And risk thy precious reputation?” shrieked the aunt.
“Chi sa? Chi sa?
Evviva l’opportunita!”
hummed the provoking beauty. And she dealt the cook a sparkling glance
of such intelligence that he felt Signor Alberto would never triumph.
Relieved in mind, Josebattista Funkmuller took his leave.
“I will return the King’s cigars,” he said, as he pressed his
garlic-scented mustache to the pearly knuckles of the lady.
“Bah!” said she, “they were won in a raffle at Vienna.”
The door closed upon the disgusted _chef_, and reopened ten minutes
later to admit a waiter carrying upon a salver a pretty three-cornered
pink note with a gold monogram in the corner. The writer entreated the
inestimable privilege of three minutes’ conversation with Madame de
Melzi in a private apartment in the basement of the hotel. He did not
propose to visit the _prima donna_ in her own rooms, even under the wing
of her aunt, for it was of supreme importance that tongues should not be
set wagging. Delicacy and respect prevented him from suggesting an
interview in the apartments occupied by himself. On the neutral ground
of an office in the basement the interview might take place without
comment or interruption. He was, in fact, waiting there for an answer.
The answer came in the person of the singer herself, charmingly dressed
and radiant with loveliness.
“Fie! What an underground hole! The window barred, the blank wall of an
area beyond it!” Her beautiful nostrils quivered. “_Caro mio_, you have
in that covered dish upon the table there something that smells good.
What is under the cover?”
“Look and see!” said the cunning tenor, with a provoking smile.
“I am not curious,” responded Teresa, putting both hands behind her and
leaning her back against the door. “Come, hurry up! One of your three
minutes has gone by, the other two will follow, and I shall be obliged
to take myself off without having heard this mysterious revelation. What
is it?” She showed a double row of pearl-hued teeth in a mischievous
smile. “Shall I guess? You have, by chance, fallen in love with me, and
wish to tell me so? How dull and unoriginal! A vivacious, interesting
enemy is to be preferred a million times before a stupid friend or a
commonplace adorer.”
“_Grazie a Dio!_” said the tenor, “I am not in love with you.” But at
that moment he was actually upon the verge; and the dull, dampish little
basement room, floored with kamptulicon warmed by a grudging little
gas-stove, its walls adorned with a few obsolete and hideous prints, its
oilcloth-covered table, on which stood the mysterious dish, closely
covered, bubbling over a spirit lamp and flanked by a spoon, fork, and
plate—that little room might have been the scene of a declaration
instead of a punishment had it not been for the De Melzi’s amazing
nonchalance. It would have been pleasant to have seen the spiteful
little arrow pierce that lovely bosom. But instead of frowning or biting
her lips, Teresa laughed with the frankest grace in the world.
“Dear Signor Alberto, Heaven has spared you much. Besides, you are of
those who esteem quantity above quality—and, for a certain thing, I
should be torn to pieces by the ladies of the Chorus.” She shrugged her
shoulders. “Well, what is this mysterious communication? The three
minutes are up, the fumes of a gas fire are bad for the throat—and I
presume you of all people would not wish me to sing ‘Elsa’ with a veiled
voice, and disappoint the dear people of Smutchester, and Messieurs the
critics, who say such kind things.”
Alberto Fumaroli’s brain spun round. Quick as thought his supple hand
went out; the wrist of the coquettish _prima donna_ was imprisoned as in
a vise of steel.
“_Ragazza!_” he gnashed out, “you shall pay for your cursed insolence.”
He swung the _cantatrice_ from the door, and Teresa, noting the
convulsed workings of his Corsican features, and devoured by the almost
scorching glare of his fierce eyes, felt a thrill of alarm.
“_Oimè!_ Signor,” she faltered, “what do you mean by this violence?
Recollect that we are not now upon the stage.”
A harsh laugh came from the bull throat of the tenor.
“By mystic Love
Brought from the distance
In thy hour of need.
Behold me, O Elsa!
Loveliest, purest—
Thine own
Unknown!”
he hummed. But his Elsa did not entreat to flow about his feet like the
river, or kiss them like the flowers blooming amidst the grasses he
trod. Struggling in vain for release from the rude, unchivalrous grasp,
an idea came to her; she stooped her beautiful head and bit Lohengrin
smartly on the wrist, evoking, instead of further music, a torrent of
curses; and as Alberto danced and yelled in agony, she darted from the
room. With the key she had previously extracted she locked the door; and
as her light footsteps and crisping draperies retreated along the
passage, the tenor realized that he was caught in his own trap. Winding
his handkerchief about his smarting wrist, he bestowed a few more hearty
curses upon Teresa, and sat down upon a horsehair-covered chair to wait
for deliverance. They could not possibly give “Lohengrin” without
him—there was no understudy for the part. For her own sake, therefore,
the De Melzi would see him released in time to assume the armor of the
Knight of the Swan. _Ebbene!_ There was nothing to do but wait. He
looked at his watch, a superb timepiece encrusted with brilliants. Two
o’clock! And the opera did not commence until eight. Six hours to spend
in this underground hole, if no one came to let him out. Patience! He
would smoke. He got over half an hour with the aid of the green
cigarette-case. Then he did a little pounding at the door. This bruised
his tender hands, and he soon left off and took to shouting. To the
utmost efforts of his magnificent voice no response was made; the part
of the hotel basement in which his prison happened to be situated was,
in the daytime, when all the servants were engaged in their various
departments, almost deserted. Therefore, after an hour of shouting,
Fumaroli abandoned his efforts.
What was to be done? He could take a _siesta_, and did, extended upon
two of the grim horsehair chairs with which the apartment was furnished.
He slept excellently for an hour, and woke hungry.
Hungry! _Diavolo!_ with what a raging hunger—an appetite of Gargantuan
proportions, sharpened to the pitch of famine by the bubbling gushes of
savory steam that jetted from underneath the cover of the mysterious
dish still simmering over its spirit-lamp upon the table! He knew what
that dish contained—his revenge, in fact. Well, it had missed fire, the
_vendetta_. He who had devised the ordeal of temptation for Teresa found
himself helpless, exposed to its fiendish seductions. Not that he would
be likely to yield, _oh mai!_ was it probable? He banished the idea with
a gesture full of superb scorn and a haughty smile. Never, a thousand
times never! The cunning Teresa should be disappointed. That evening’s
performance should be attacked by him as ever, fasting, the voice of
melody, the sonorous lungs, supported by an empty frame. _Cospetto!_ how
savory the smell that came from that covered dish! The unhappy tenor
moved to the table, snuffed it up in nosefuls, thought of flinging the
dish and its contents out of window—would have done so had not the
window been barred.
“After all, perhaps she means to keep me here all night,” he thought,
and rashly lifted the dish-cover, revealing a vast and heaving plain of
macaroni, over which little rills of liquid butter wandered. Parmesan
cheese was not lacking to the dish, nor the bland juices of the sliced
tomato, and, like the violet by the wayside, the modest garlic added its
perfume to the distracting bouquet. Fumaroli was only human, though, as
a tenor, divine. He had been shut up for four hours, fasting, in company
with a dish of macaroni.... Ah, Heaven! he could endure no longer.... He
drew up a chair, grasped fork and spoon—fell to. In the act of finishing
the dish, he started, fancying that the silvery tinkle of a feminine
laugh sounded at the keyhole. But his faculties were dulled by vast
feeding; his anger, like his appetite, had lost its edge. With an effort
he disposed of the last shreds of macaroni, the last trickle of butter;
and at seven o’clock a waiter, who accidentally unlocked the door of the
basement room, awakened a plethoric sleeper from heavy dreams.
“To the Opera House,” was the listless direction he gave the driver of
his hired brougham; as one in a dream he entered by the stage-door, and
strode to his room.
The curtain had already risen upon grassy lowlands in the neighborhood
of Antwerp. Henry, King of Germany, seated under a spreading canvas oak,
held court with military pomp. Frederic of Telramond, wizard husband of
Ortrud, the witch, had stepped forward to accuse Elsa of the murder of
her brother, Gottlieb; the King had cried, “Summon the maid!” and in
answer to the command, amidst the blare of brass and the clashing of
swords, the De Melzi, draped in pure white, followed by her ladies, and
looking the picture of virginal innocence, moved dreamily into view:
“How like an angel!
He who accuses her
Must surely prove
This maiden’s guilt.”
Ah! had those who listened to the thrilling strains that poured from
those exquisite lips but guessed, as Elsa described the appearance of
her dream-defender, her shining Knight, and sank upon her knees in an
ecstasy of passionate prayer, that the celestial deliverer was at that
moment gasping in the agonies of indigestion!
“Let me behold
That form of light!”
entreated the maiden; and amidst the exclamations of the eight-part
chorus the swan-drawn bark approached the bank; the noble, if somewhat
fleshy, form of Alberto Fumaroli, clad from head to foot in silvery
mail, stepped from it.... With lofty grace he waved his adieu to the
swan, he launched upon his opening strain of unaccompanied melody....
Alas! how muffled, how farinaceous those once clarion tones!... In
labored accents, amid the growing disappointment of the Smutchester
audience, Lohengrin announced his mission to the King. As he folded the
entranced Elsa to his oppressed bosom, crying:
“Elsa, I love thee!”
“She-devil, you have ruined me!” he hissed in the De Melzi’s ear.
“My hope, my solace,
My hero, I am thine!”
Teresa trilled in answer. And raising her love-illumined, mischievously
dancing eyes to her deliverer, breathed in his ear: “Try pepsin!”
“FREDDY & C^{IE}”
It is always a perplexing question how to provide for younger sons, and
the immediate relatives of the Honorable Freddy Foulkes had forfeited a
considerable amount of beauty sleep in connection with the problem.
“My poor darling!” the Marchioness of Glanmire sighed one day, more in
sorrow than in anger, when the Honorable Freddy brought his charming
smile and his graceful but unemployed person into her morning-room. “If
you could only find some congenial and at the same time lucrative post
that would take up your time and absorb your spare energy, how grateful
I should be!”
“I have found it,” said the Honorable Freddy, with his cherubic smile.
He possessed the blonde curling hair and artless expression that may be
symbolical of guilelessness or the admirable mask of guile.
“Thank Heaven!” breathed his mother. Then, with a sense that the
thanksgiving might, after all, be premature, she inquired: “But of what
nature is this post? Before it can be seriously considered, one must be
certain that it entails no loss of caste, demands nothing derogatory in
the nature of service from one who—I need not remind you of your
position, or of the fact that your family must be considered.”
She smoothed her darling’s silky hair, which exhaled the choicest
perfume of Bond Street, and kissed his brow, as pure and shadowless as a
slice of cream cheese, as the young man replied:
“Dearest mother, you certainly need not.”
“Then tell me of this post. Is it anything,” the Marchioness asked, “in
the Diplomatic line?”
“Without a good deal of diplomacy a man would be no good for the shop,”
admitted Freddy; “but otherwise, your guess is out.”
Doubt darkened his mother’s eyes.
“Don’t say,” she exclaimed, “that you have accepted a Club
Secretaryship? To me it seems the last resource of the unsuccessful
man.”
“It will never be mine,” said Freddy, “because I can’t keep accounts,
and they wouldn’t have me. Try again.”
“I trust it has nothing to do with Art,” breathed the Marchioness, who
loathed the children of canvas and palette with an unreasonable
loathing.
“In a way it has,” replied her son, “and in another way it hasn’t. Come!
I’ll give you a lead. There is a good deal of straw in the business for
one thing.”
“You cannot contemplate casting in your lot with the agricultural
classes? No! I knew the example of your unhappy cousin Reginald would
prevent you from adopting so wild a course ... but you spoke of straw.”
“Of straw. And flowers. And tulles.”
“Flowers and tools! Gardening is a craze which has become fashionable of
late. But I cannot calmly see you in an apron, potting plants.”
“It is not a question of potting plants, but of potting customers,” said
Freddy, showing his white teeth in a charming smile.
A shudder convulsed Freddy’s mother. Freddy went on, filially patting
her handsome hand:
“You see, I have decided, and gone into trade. If I were a wealthy cad,
I should keep a bucket-shop. Being a poor gentleman, I am going to make
a bonnet-shop keep me. And, what is more—I intend to trim all the
bonnets myself!”
There was no heart disease upon the maternal side of the house. The
Marchioness did not become pale blue, and sink backwards, clutching at
her corsage. She rose to her feet and boxed her son’s right ear. He
calmly offered the left one for similar treatment.
“Don’t send me out looking uneven,” he said simply. “If I pride myself
upon anything, it is a well-balanced appearance. And I have to put in an
hour or so at the shop by-and-by.” He glanced in the mantel-mirror as he
spoke, and observing with gratification that his immaculate necktie had
escaped disarrangement, he twisted his little mustache, smiled, and knew
himself irresistible.
“The shop! Degenerate boy!” cried his mother. “Who is your partner in
this—this enterprise?”
“You know her by sight, I think,” returned the cherub coolly. “Mrs.
Vivianson, widow of the man who led the Doncaster Fusiliers to the top
of Mealie Kop and got shot there. Awfully fetching, and as clever as
they make them!”
“That woman one sees everywhere with a positive _procession_ of young
men at her heels!”
“That woman, and no other.”
“She is hardly——”
“She is awfully _chic_, especially in mourning.”
“I will admit she has some style.”
“_Admit_, when you and all the other women have copied the color of her
hair and the cut of her sleeves for three seasons past! I like that!”
Freddy was growing warm.
“When you accuse me of imitating the appearance of a person of that
kind,” said Lady Glanmire, in a cold fury, “you insult your mother. And
when you ally yourself with her in the face of Society, as you are about
to do, you are going too far. As to this millinery establishment, it
shall not open.”
“My dear mother,” said Freddy, “it has been open for a week.”
He drew a card from an exquisite case mounted in gold. On the pasteboard
appeared the following inscription in neat characters of copperplate:—
FREDDY & C^{IE}
COURT MILLINERS,
11, CONDOVER STREET, W.
“Freddy and Company!” murmured the stricken parent, as she perused the
announcement.
“Mrs. V. is company,” observed the son, with a spice of vulgarity; “and
uncommonly good company, too. As for myself, my talents have at last
found scope, and millinery is my _métier_. How often haven’t you said
that no one has such exquisite taste in the arrangement of flowers——”
“As you, Freddy! It is true! But——”
“Haven’t you declared, over and over again, that you have never had a
maid who could put on a mantle, adjust a fold of lace, or pin on a toque
as skillfully as your own son?”
“My boy, I own it. Still, millinery as a profession? Can you call it
_quite_ manly for a man?”
“To spend one’s life in arranging combinations to set off other women’s
complexions. Can you call that womanly for a woman? To my mind,” pursued
Freddy, “it is the only occupation for a man of real refinement. To
crown Beauty with beauty! To dream exquisite confections, which shall
add the one touch wanting to exquisite youth or magnificent middle-age!
To build up with deft touches a creation which shall betray in every
detail, in every effect, the hand of a genius united to the soul of a
lover, and reap not only gold, but glory! Would this not be Fame?”
“Ah! I no longer recognize you. You do not talk like your dear old
self!” cried the Marchioness.
“I am glad of it,” replied Freddy, “for, frankly, I was beginning to
find my dear old self a bore.” He drew out a watch, and his monogram and
crest in diamonds scintillated upon the case. His eye gleamed with proud
triumph as he said: “Ten to twelve. At twelve I am due at Condover
Street. Come, not as my mother, if you are ashamed of my profession, but
as a customer ashamed of that bonnet” (Lady Glanmire was dressed for
walking), “which you ought to have given to your cook long ago. Unless
you would prefer your own brougham, mine is at the door.”
The vehicle in question bore the smartest appearance. The Marchioness
entered it without a murmur, and was whirled to Condover Street. The
name of Freddy & Cie. appeared in a delicate flourish of golden letters
above the chastely-decorated portals of the establishment, and the
plate-glass window contained nothing but an assortment of plumes,
ribbons, chiffons, and shapes of the latest mode, but not a single
completed article of head apparel.
The street was already blocked with carriages, the vestibule packed, the
shop thronged with a vast and ever-increasing assemblage of women,
amongst whom Lady Glanmire recognized several of her dearest friends.
She wished she had not come, and looked for Freddy. Freddy had vanished.
His partner, Mrs. Vivianson, a vividly-tinted, elegant brunette of some
thirty summers, assisted by three or four charming girls, modestly
attired and elegantly _coiffée_, was busily engaged with those would-be
customers, not a few, who sought admission to the inner room, whose pale
green _portière_ bore in gold letters of embroidery the word _atelier_.
“You see,” she was saying, “to the outer shop admission is _quite_ free.
We are charmed to see everybody who likes to come, don’t you know? and
show them the latest shades and shapes and things. But consultation with
Monsieur Freddy—we charge five shillings for that. Unusual? Perhaps. But
Monsieur Freddy is Monsieur Freddy!” And her shrug was worthy of a
Parisienne. “Why do you ask? ‘Is it true that he is the younger son of
the Duke of Deershire?’ Dear Madame, to _us_ he is Monsieur Freddy; and
we seek no more.”
“A born tradeswoman!” thought Lady Glanmire, as the silver coins were
exchanged for little colored silk tickets bearing mystic numbers. She
moved forward and tendered two half-crowns; and Freddy’s partner and
Freddy’s mother looked one another in the face. But Mrs. Vivianson
maintained an admirable composure.
And then the curtains of the _atelier_ parted, and a young and pretty
woman came out quickly. She was charmingly dressed, and wore the most
exquisite of hats, and a murmur went up at sight of it. She stretched
out her hands to a friend who rushed impulsively to meet her, and her
voice broke in a sob of rapture.
“Did you ever see anything so _sweet_? And he did it like magic—one
scarcely saw his fingers move!” she cried; and her friend burst into
exclamations of delight, and a chorus rose up about them.
“_Wonderful!_”
“_Extraordinary!_”
“_He does it while you wait!_”
“_Just for curiosity, I really must!_”
And a wave of eager women surged towards the green _portière_. Three
went in, being previously deprived of their headgear by the respectful
attendants, who averred that it put Monsieur Freddy’s taste out of gear
for the day to be compelled to gaze upon any creation other than his
own. And then it came to the turn of Lady Glanmire.
She, disbonneted, entered the sanctum. A pale, clear, golden light
illumined it from above; the walls were hung with draperies of delicate
pink, the carpet was moss-green. In the center of the apartment, upon a
broad, low divan, reclined the figure of a slender young man. He wore a
black satin mask, concealing the upper part of his face, a loose,
lounging suit of black velvet, and slippers of the same with the
embroidered initial “F.” Round him stood, mute and attentive as slaves,
some half-dozen pretty young women, bearing trays of trimmings of every
conceivable kind. In the background rose a grove of stands supporting
hat-shapes, bonnet-shapes, toque-foundations, the skeletons of every
conceivable kind of headgear.
Silent, the Marchioness stood before her disguised son.
He gently put up his eyeglass, to accommodate which aid to vision his
mask had been specially designed, and motioned her to the sitter’s
chair, so constructed that with a touch of Monsieur Freddy’s foot upon a
lever it would revolve, presenting the customer from every point of
view. He touched the lever now, and chair and Marchioness spun slowly
around. But for the presence of the young ladies with their trays of
flowers, plumes, gauzes, and ribbons, Freddy’s mother could have
screamed. All the while Freddy remained silent, absorbed in
contemplation, as though trying to fix upon his memory features seen for
the first time. At last he spoke.
“Tall,” he said, “and inclined to a becoming _embonpoint_. The eyes
blue-gray, the hair of auburn touched with silver, the features, of the
Anglo-Roman type, somewhat severe in outline, the chin——A hat to suit
this client”—he spoke in a sad, sweet, mournful voice—“would cost five
guineas. A Marquise shape, of broadtail”—one of the young lady
attendants placed the shape required in the artist’s hands—“the brim
lined with a rich drapery of chenille and silk.... Needle and thread,
Miss Banks. Thank you....” His fingers moved like white lightning as he
deftly wielded the feminine implement and snatched his materials from
the boxes proffered in succession by the girls. “Black and white tips of
ostrich falling over one side from a ring of cut steel,” he continued in
the same dreamy tone. “A knot of point d’Irlande, with a heart of
Neapolitan violets, and”—he rose from the divan and lightly placed the
beautiful completed fabric upon the Marchioness’s head—“here is your
hat, Madame. Five guineas. Good-morning. Next, please!”
Emotion choked his mother’s utterance. At the same moment she saw
herself in the glass silently swung towards her by one of the
attendants, and knew that she was suited to a marvel. She made her exit,
paid her five guineas, and returned home, embarrassed by the discovery
that there was an artist in the family.
One thing was clear, no more was to be said. The _Maison Freddy_ became
the morning resort of the smart world; it was considered the thing to
have hats made while Society waited. True, they came to pieces easily,
not being copper-nailed and riveted, so to speak; but what poems they
were! The charming conversation of Monsieur Freddy, the half-mystery
that veiled his identity, as his semi-mask partially concealed his fair
and smiling countenance, added to the attractions of the Condover Street
_atelier_.
Money rolled in; the banking account of the partners grew plethoric; and
then Mrs. Vivianson, in spite of the claims of the business upon her
time, in spite of the Platonic standpoint she had up to the present
maintained in her relations with Freddy, began to be jealous.
“Or—no! I will not admit that such a thing is possible!” she said, as
she looked through some recent entries in the day-book of the firm. “But
that American millionairess girl comes too often. She has bought a hat
every day for three weeks past. Good for business in one way, but bad
for it in another. If he should marry, what becomes of the _Maison
Freddy_?”
She sighed and passed between the curtains. It was the slack time after
luncheon, and Freddy was enjoying a moment’s interval. Stretched on his
divan, his embroidered slippers elevated in the air, he smoked a
perfumed cigarette surrounded by the materials of his craft. He smiled
at Mrs. Vivianson as she entered, and then raised his aristocratic
eyebrows in surprise.
“Has anything gone wrong? You swept in as tragically as my mother when
she comes to disown me. She does it regularly every week, and as
regularly takes me on again.” He exhaled a scented cloud, and smiled
once more.
“Freddy,” said Mrs. Vivianson, going direct to the point, “this little
speculation of ours has turned out very well, hasn’t it?”
“Beyond dreams!” acquiesced Freddy. She went on:
“You came to me a penniless detrimental, with a talent of which nobody
guessed that anything could be made. I gave this gift a chance to
develop. I set you on your legs, and——”
“_Me voici!_ You don’t want me to rise up and bless you, do you?” said
Freddy, with half-closed eyes. “Thanks awfully, you know, all the same!”
“I don’t know that I want thanks, quite,” said Mrs. Vivianson. “I’ve had
back every penny that I invested, and pulled off a bouncing profit. Your
share amounts to a handsome sum. In a little while you’ll be able to pay
your debts.”
“I shall never do that!” said Freddy, with feeling.
“Marry, and leave me—perhaps,” went on Mrs. Vivianson. A shade swept
over her face, her dark eyes glowed somberly, the lines of her mouth
hardened.
“Keep as you are!” cried Freddy, rebounding to a sitting position on the
divan.
“Where’s that new Medici shape in gold rice-straw and the amber _crêpe
chiffon_, and the orange roses with crimson hearts?” His nimble fingers
darted hither and thither, his eyes shone, and his cheeks were flushed
with the enthusiasm of the artist. “A tuft of black and yellow cock’s
feathers, _à la Mephistophele_,” he cried, “a topaz buckle, and it is
finished. You must wear with it a _jabot_ of yellow _point d’Alençon_.
It is the hat of hats for a jealous woman!”
“How dare you!” cried Mrs. Vivianson. But Freddy did not seem to hear
her—he was rapt in the contemplation of the new masterpiece; and as he
rose and gracefully placed it on his partner’s head, Miss Cornelia
Vanderdecken was ushered in. She was superbly beautiful in the
ivory-skinned, jetty-locked, slender American style, and she wore a hat
that Freddy had made the day before, which set off her charms to
admiration.
She occupied the sitter’s chair as Mrs. Vivianson glided from the room,
and Freddy’s blue eyes dwelt upon her worshipingly. To do him justice,
he had lost his heart before he learned that Cornelia was an heiress.
Now words escaped him that brought a faint pink stain to her ivory
cheek.
“Ah!” he cried impulsively, “you are ruining my business.”
“Oh, why, Monsieur Freddy? Please tell me!” asked Miss Vanderdecken,
with naïve curiosity.
“Because,” said Freddy, while a bright blush showed beyond the limits of
his black satin mask, “you are so beautiful that it is torture to make
hats for other women—since I have seen you.”
There was a pause. Then Miss Cornelia’s silk foundations rustled as she
turned resolutely toward the divan.
“I can’t return the compliment,” she said, “by telling you that it is
torture to me to wear hats made by any other man since I have seen you,
for other men don’t make hats, and I can’t really see you through that
thing you wear over your face. But——”
Her voice faltered, and Freddy, with a gesture, dismissed his lady
assistants. Then he removed his mask. Their eyes met, and Cornelia
uttered a faint exclamation.
“Oh my! You’re just like him!”
“Who is he?” asked Freddy.
“I can’t quite say, because I don’t know,” returned Cornelia; “but all
girls have their ideals, from the time they wear Swiss pinafores to the
time they wear forty-eight inch corsets; and I won’t deny”—her voice
trembled—“but what you fill the bill. My! What _are_ you doing?”
For Freddy had grasped his materials and was making a hat. It was of
palest blush tulle, with a crown of pink roses, and an aigrette of
flamingo plumes was fastened with a Cupid’s bow in pink topaz.
“Love’s first confession,” the young man murmured as he bit off the last
thread, “should be whispered beneath a hat like this.” And he gracefully
placed it on Cornelia’s raven hair.
Mrs. Vivianson, her ear to the keyhole of a side door, quivered from
head to foot with rage and jealousy. Time was when he, a penniless,
high-bred boy, had implored her to marry him. Now—her blood boiled at
the remembrance of the half hint, the veiled suggestion she had made,
that they should unite in a more intimate partnership than that already
consolidated. With her jealousy was mingled despair. As long as Freddy
and his hats remained the fashion, the shop would pay, and pay royally.
There had as yet occurred no abatement in the onflow of aristocratic
patronage. To avow his identity—never really doubted—to become an
engaged man, meant ruin to the business. The blood hummed in her head.
She clung to the door-handle and entered, as Freddy, with real grace and
eloquence, pleaded his suit.
“And you are really a Marquis’s second son, though you make hats for
money?” she heard Cornelia say. “I always guessed you had real old
English blood in you, from the tone of your voice and the shape of your
finger-nails, even when you wore a mask. And it seemed as though I
couldn’t do anything but buy hats. I surmised it was vanity at the time,
but now I guess it was—love!”
“My dearest!” said Freddy, bending his blonde head over her jeweled
hands. “My Cornelia! I will make you a hat every day when you are
married. Ah! I have it! You shall wear one of mine to go away in upon
the day we are wed, the inspiration of a bridegroom, thought out and
achieved between the church door and the chancel. What an idea for a
lover! What an advertisement for the shop!” His blue eyes beamed at the
thought.
But Cornelia’s face fell.
“I don’t know how to say it, dear, but we shall never be married. Poppa
is perfectly rocky on one point, and that is that the man I hitch up
with shall never have dabbled as much as his little finger in trade.
‘You have dollars enough to buy one of the real high-toned sort,’ he
keeps saying, ‘and if blood royal is to be got for money, Silas P.
Vanderdecken is the man to get it. So run along and play, little girl,
till the right man comes along.’ And I know he’ll say you’re the wrong
one!”
Freddy’s complexion, grown transparent from excess of emotion and lack
of exercise, paled to an ivory hue. His sedentary life had softened his
condition and unstrung his nerves. He adored Cornelia, and had looked
forward to a lifetime spent in adorning her beauty with bonnets of the
most becoming shapes and designs. Now that a coarse Transatlantic
millionaire with soft shirt-fronts and broad-leaved felt hats might step
in and shatter for ever his beautiful dream of union, bitter revulsion
seized him. He feared his fate. What was he? The second son of a poor
Marquis, with a particularly healthy elder brother. He looked upon the
chiffons, the flowers and the feathers that surrounded him, and felt
that the hopes of a heart reared upon so frail a basis were insecure
indeed. Then his old blood rallied to his heart, and he rose from the
divan and clasped the now tearful Cornelia to his breast.
“Go, my dearest,” he said, “tell all to your father—plead for me. Do not
write or wire—bring me his verdict to-morrow. Meanwhile I will compose
two hats. Each shall be a masterpiece—a swan-song of my Art. One is to
be worn if”—his voice broke—“if I am to be happy; the other if I am
fated to despair. Go now, for I must be alone to carry out my
inspiration.”
And Cornelia went. Then Freddy, sternly refusing to receive any more
customers that day, set himself to the completion of his task. Before
very long both hats were actualities. Hat Number One was an Empire shape
of dead-leaf beaver, the crown draped with dove-colored silk, a spray of
sere oak-leaves and rue in front, a fine scarf of black lace, partly to
veil the face of the wearer, thrown back over one side of the brim and
caught with a clasp of black pearls set in oxidized silver. It breathed
of chastened woe and temperate sadness, and was to be worn if Papa
Vanderdecken persisted in refusing to accept Freddy as a suitor.
But Hat Number Two! It was of the palest blue guipure straw, draped with
coral silk and Cluny lace. In front was a spray of moss rosebuds and
forget-me-nots, dove’s wings of burnished hues were set at either side.
It was the very hat to be worn by a bringer of joyful news, the ideal
hat under which might be appropriately exchanged the first kiss of
plighted passion. Upon it Freddy pinned a fairy-like card, white and
gold-edged.
“If I am to be happy, wear this,” was written upon it; and upon a buff
card attached to the hat of rejection he inscribed: “Wear this, if I am
to be unhappy.” Then he closed the large double bandbox in which he had
packed the hats, breathed a kiss into the folds of the silver paper,
and, ringing the bell, bade a messenger carry the box to the hotel at
which Cornelia Vanderdecken was staying, and where, millionairess though
she was, she was still content to dress with the help of a deft maid and
the adoration of a devoted companion. Then the exhausted artist fell
back on the divan. Cornelia was to come at twelve upon the morrow.
“Then I shall learn my fate,” said Freddy. He drove home in his
brougham, and passed a sleepless night. The fateful hour found him again
upon his divan, surrounded by the materials of his craft, waiting
feverishly for Cornelia.
The curtains parted. He started up at the rustling of her gown and the
jingling of her bangles. Horror! she wore the somber hat of sorrow,
though under its shadow her face was curiously bright.
She advanced toward Freddy. He reeled and staggered backward, raised his
white hand to his delicate throat, and fell fainting amongst his
cushions. Cornelia screamed. Mrs. Vivianson and her young ladies came
hurrying in. As the stylish widow noted Cornelia’s headgear, her eyes
flashed and joy was in her face. Then it clouded over, for she knew that
Papa Vanderdecken had been coaxed over, and Freddy was an accepted man.
My reader, being exceptionally acute, will realize that the jealous
woman had changed the tickets on the hats.
“Not that it was much use,” she avowed to herself, as she entered with
smelling-salts and burnt feathers to restore Freddy’s consciousness.
“When he revives, she will tell him the truth.” But Freddy only regained
consciousness to lose it in the ravings of delirium. He had an attack of
brain fever, in which he wandered through groves of bonnet shops,
looking unavailingly for Cornelia. And then came the crisis, and he woke
up with an ice-bandage on, to find himself in his bedroom at Glanmire
House, with the Marchioness leaning over him.
“Mother, my heart is broken,” said the boy—he was really little more.
“The world exists no more for me. Let me make my last hat—and leave it.”
“Oh, Freddy, don’t you know me?” gasped Cornelia in the background; but
the repentant woman who had brought about all this trouble drew the girl
away.
“Even good news broken suddenly to him in his weak state,” said Mrs.
Vivianson in a rapid whisper, “may prove fatal. I have a plan which may
gradually enlighten him.”
“I trust you,” said Cornelia. “You have saved his life with your
nursing. Now give him back to me!”
“Hush!” said Mrs. Vivianson.
She had rapidly dispatched a messenger to Condover Street, and now, as
Freddy again opened his eyes and repeated his piteous request, the
messenger returned. Then all present gathered about the bed, whose
inmate had been raised upon supporting pillows. It was a queer scene as
the shaded electric light above the bed played upon Freddy’s pallid
features, showing the ravages of sickness there. “Now!” said Mrs.
Vivianson. She placed the milliner’s box upon the bed, and Freddy’s
feeble fingers, diving into it, drew forth a spray of orange blossoms
and a diaphanous cloud of filmy lace.
“Black—not white!” Freddy gasped brokenly. “It is a mourning toque that
I must make. Let Cornelia wear it at my funeral.”
“Cornelia will not wear it at your funeral, Freddy,” said Mrs.
Vivianson, bending over him; “for she is going to marry you, not to bury
you.” And, drawing the tearful girl to Freddy’s side, she flung over her
beautiful head the bridal veil, and crowned her with a wreath of orange
blossoms. And as, with a feeble cry, Freddy opened his wasted arms and
Cornelia fell into them, Mrs. Vivianson, her work of atonement
completed, pressed the offered hand of Freddy’s mother, and hurried out
of the room and out of the story. Which ends, as stories ought, happily
for the lovers, who are now honeymooning in the Riviera.
UNDER THE ELECTRICS
A SHOW-LADY IS ELOQUENT
“Really, my dear, I think the man has gone a bit too far. Writes a
play with a fast young lady in the Profession for the heroine—and
where he got his model from I can’t imagine—and then writes to the
papers to explain, accounting for her past being a bit off
color—_twiggez-vous?_—by saying she isn’t a Chorus-lady, only a
Show-lady.
“Gracious! I’m short of a bit of wig-paste, my pet complexion-color No.
2. Any lady present got half a stick to lend? I want to look my special
best to-night: _somebody in the stalls_, don’tcherknow! Chuck it
over!—mind that bottle of Bass! I’m aware beer is bad for the liver, but
such a nourishing tonic, isn’t it? When I get back to the theater, tired
after a sixty-mile ride in somebody’s 20 h.p. Gohard—_twiggez?_—a
tumbler with a good head to it makes my dear old self again in a twink.
“Half-hour? That new call-boy must be spoke to on the quiet, dears. Such
manners, putting his nasty little head right into the show-ladies’
dressing-room when he calls. I suggest, girlies, that when we’re all
running down for the general entrance in the First Act—and that
staircase on the prompt side is the narrowest I ever struck—I suggest
that when we meet that little brute—he’s always coming up to give the
principals the last call—I suggest that each girl bumps his head against
the wall as she goes by! That’ll make twenty bumps, and do him lots of
good, too!
“Miss de la Regy, dear, I lent you my blue pencil last night. Hand it
over, there’s a good old sort, when you’ve given the customary languish
to your eyes, love. What are you saying? Stage-Manager’s order that
we’re not to grease-black our eyelashes so much, as some people say it
looks fair hideous from the front? Tell him to consume his own smoke
next time he’s in a beast of a cooker. Why don’t he tell _her_ to mind
her own business?—I’m sure she’s old enough! What I say is, I’ve always
been accustomed to put lots on mine, and I don’t see myself altering my
usual make-up at this time o’ day. Do you? Not much?—I rather thought
so. What else does he say?—he’ll be obliged if we’ll wear the chin-strap
of our Hussar busbies down instead of tucked up inside ’em? What I say
is—and I’m sure you’ll agree with me, girls—that it’s bad enough to have
to wear a fur hat with a red bag hangin’ over the top, without marking a
young lady’s face in an unbecoming way with a chin-strap. Also he
insists—what price him?—he _insists_ on our leavin’ our Bridgehands down
in the dressing-room, and not coming on the stage with ’em stuck in the
fronts of our tunics, in defiance of the Army Regulations? Rot the
Regulations, and bother the Stage-Manager! How _she_ must have been
nagging at him, mustn’t she?—because he _can_ be quite too frightfully
nice and gentlemanly when he likes. I will speak up for him that much.
Not that I ever was a special favorite—I keep myself to myself too much.
Different to some people not so far off. _Twiggez?_ I’ve my pride,
that’s what I say, if I am a Show-girl!
“Thirty-five shillings a week, with _matinées_—you can’t say it’s much
to look like a lady on, can you now? No, but what a girl with taste and
clever fingers, and a knack of getting what she wants at a remnant
sale—and the things those forward creatures in black cashmere _Princess_
robes try to shove down a lady-customer’s throat are generally the
things she could buy elsewhere new for less money—not but that a girl
with her head screwed on the right way can turn out in first-class style
for less than some people would think, and get credit in _some quarters
we know of_—this is a beastly, spiteful world, my dear—for taking
presents right and left.
“Now, who has been and hung my wig on the electric light? If the person
considers that a practical joke, it shows—that’s what I say!—it shows
that she’s descended from the lowest circles. I won’t pretend I don’t
suspect who has been up to her little games again, and, though I should,
_as a lady_, be sorry to behave otherwise, I must caution her, unless
she wishes to find her military boots full of prepared chalk one o’
these nights, to quit and chuck ’em.
“Quarter of an hour! That _was_ clever of you, Miss Enderville dear, to
shut that imp’s head in the door before he could pop it back again.
Well, there! if you haven’t got another diamond ring!... Left at the
stage-door office, addressed to you, by a perfect stranger, who hasn’t
even enclosed a line.... Perhaps you’ll meet him in a better land, dear;
he seems a lot too shy for this one. Not that I admire the
three-speeds-forward sort of fellow, but there is such a thing as being
too backward in coming up to the scratch—twig?
“I ought to know something about that, considering which my life was
spoiled—never you mind how long ago, because dates are a rotten
nuisance—by one of those hang-backers who want the young woman—the young
lady, I should say—to make all the pace for both sides. It was during
the three-hundred night run of——There! I’ve forgotten the name of the
gay old show, but Miss de la Regy was in it with me—one of the Tall
Eleven, weren’t you, Miss de la Regy dear? And we were Anchovian
Brigands in the First Act—Sardinian Brigands, did you say? I knew it had
something to do with the beginning of a dinner at the Savoy—and Marie
Antoinette gentlemen in powdered wigs and long, gold-headed canes in the
Second, and in the Final Tableau British tars in pink silk fleshings,
pale blue socks, and black pumps, and Union Jacks. I remember how I
fancied myself in that costume, and how frightfully it fetched _him_.
“Me keeping my eyes very much to myself in those days, new to the
Profession as I was, I didn’t tumble to the fact of having made a
regular conquest till a girl older than me twigged and gave me a
hint—then I saw him sitting in the stalls, dear, if you’ll believe
me!—dash it! I’ve dropped my powder-puff in the water-jug!—with his
mouth wide open—not a becoming thing, but a sign of true feeling.
“He was fair and pale and slim, with large blue eyes, and lovely linen,
and a diamond stud in the shirt-front, and a gardenia in the buttonhole
was good form then, and the white waistcoats were twill. To-day his
waistcoat would be heliotrope watered silk, and his shirt-front
embroidered cambric, and if he showed more than an inch of platinum
watch-chain, he’d be outcast for ever from his kind. Bless you! men
think as much of being in the fashion as we do, take my word for it,
dear.
“He kept his mouth open, as I’ve said, all through the evening, only
putting the knob of his stick into it sometimes—silver knobs were all
the go then—and never took his eyes off me. ‘You’ve made a victim,
Daisy,’ says one of the girls as we did a step off to the chorus, two by
two, ‘and don’t you forget to make hay while the sun shines!’ I thanked
her to keep her advice to herself, and moved proudly away, but my heart
was doing ragtime under my corsets, and no mistake about it. When we ran
downstairs after the General Entrance and the Final Tableau, I took off
as much make-up as I thought necessary, and dressed in a hurry, wishing
I’d come to business in a more stylish get-up. And as I came out between
the swing-leaves of the stage-door, I saw _him_ outside in an overcoat
with a sable collar, a crush hat, and a white muffler. Dark as the light
was, he knew me, and I recognized him, his mouth being ajar, same as
during the show, and his eyes being fixed in the same intense gaze,
which I don’t blush to own gave me a sensation like what you have when
the shampooing young woman at the Turkish Baths stands you up in the
corner of a room lined with hot tiles and fires cold water at you from
the other end of it out of a rubber hose.
“‘Well, have you found his name out yet, Daisy, old girl?’ was the
question in the dressing-room next night. I felt red-hot with good
old-crusted shame, when I found out that it was generally known he’d
followed me down Wellington Street to my ’bus—not a Vanguard, but a
gee-gee-er in those days—and stood on the splashy curb to see me get in,
without offering an utterance—which I dare say if he had I should have
shrieked for a policeman, me being young and shy. No, I’d no idea what
his name was, nor nothing more than that he looked the complete swell,
and was evidently a regular goner—_twiggez?_—on the personal charms of
yours truly.
“If you’ll believe me, there wasn’t a line or a rosebud waiting for me
at the stage-door next night, though he sat in the same stall and stared
in the same marked way all through the evening. Perhaps he might for
ever have remained anonymous, but that the girl who dressed on my left
hand—quite a rattlingly good sort, but with a passion for eating pickled
gherkins out of the bottle with a fork during all the stage waits and
intervals such as I’ve never seen equaled—that girl happened to know the
man—middle-aged toff, with his head through his hair and a pane in his
eye—who was in the stall next my conquest the night before. She applied
the pump—_twiggez?_—and learned the name and title of one I shall always
remember, even though things never came to nothing definite betwixt
us—twig?
“He was a Viscount—sable and not musquash—the genuine article, not dyed
or made up of inferior skins; blow on the hairs and hold it to the
light, you will not see the fatally regular line that bears testimony to
deception. Lord Polkstone, eldest son of the Earl of ——. Well, there, if
I haven’t been and forgotten his dadda’s title! Rolling in money, and an
only boy. It was less usual then than now for a peer to pick a
life-partner among the Show-girls, but just to keep us bright and
chirpy, the thing was occasionally done—twig? And there Lord Polkstone
sat night after night, _matinée_ after _matinée_, in the same place in
the stalls, with his mouth open and his large blue eyes nailed upon the
features of yours truly. Whenever I came out after the show, there he
was waiting, but it went no farther. Pitying his bashfulness, I might—I
don’t say I would, but I _might_—have passed a ladylike remark upon the
weather, and broken the ice that way. But every girl in my room—the Tall
Eleven dressed in one together—every girl’s unanimous advice was, ‘Let
him speak first, Daisy.’ Then they’d simply split with laughing and have
to wipe their eyes. Me, being young and unsophis—I forget how to spell
the rest of that word, but it means jolly fresh and green—never
suspected them of pulling my leg. I took their crocodileish advice, and
waited for Lord Polkstone to speak. My dear, I’ve wondered since how it
was I never suspected the truth! Weeks went by, and the affair had got
no farther. Young and inexperienced as I was, I could see by his eye
that his was no Sunday-to-Monday affection, but a real, lasting devotion
of the washable kind. Knowing that, helped me to go on waiting, though I
was dying to hear his voice. But he never spoke nor wrote, though
several other people did, and, my attention being otherwise taken up, I
treated those fellows with more than indifference.
“I remember the Commissionaire—an obliging person when not under the
influence of whisky—telling me that what he called a rum party had left
several bouquets at the stage-door—no name being on them, and without
saying who for—which seemed uncommonly queer. Afterward it flashed on
me—but there! never mind!
“If I had ever said a word to that dear when his imploring eyes met
mine, and lingered on the curb when I heard his faithful footsteps
following me to my ’bus, the mask would have fallen, dear, and the
blooming mystery been brought to light. But it shows the kind of girl I
was in those days, that with ‘Good-evening,’ ready on the tip of my
tongue, I shut my mouth and didn’t say it. If I had, I might have been a
Countess now, sitting in a turret and sewing tapestry, or walking about
a large estate in a tailor-made gown, showing happy cottagers how to do
dairy-work.
“That’s my romance, dear—is there a drop of Bass left in that bottle?
I’ve a thirst on me I wouldn’t sell for four ‘d.’ Spite and malice on
the part of some I shall not condescend to accuse, helplessness on his
part—poor, devoted dear!—and ignorance on mine, nipped it in the bud;
and when he vanished from the stalls—didn’t turn up at the
stage-door—appearing in the Royal Box, one night I shall never forget,
with two young girls in white and a dowager in a diamond fender, I knew
he’d given up the chase, and with it all thoughts of poor little downy
Me.
“We were singing a deadly lively chorus about being ‘jolly, confoundedly
jolly!’ and I stood and sang and sniveled with the black running off my
eyes. For even to my limited capacity, and without the sneering whispers
of a treacherous snake-in-the-grass, whose waist I had to keep my arm
round all the time, me playing boy to her girl, first couple proscenium
right, next the Royal Box, where he sat with those three women—I could
see how I’d lost the prize. One glance at Lord Polkstone—prattling away
on his fingers to the best-looking of those two girls, neither of ’em
being over and above what I should call passable—one glance revealed the
truth.
“He was deaf and dumb!—and I had been waiting a week of Sundays for him
to speak out first. Hugging my happy love and my innocent hope to my
heart of hearts—there’s an exercise in h’s for any person whose weakness
lies in the letter—I’d been waiting for what couldn’t never come. Why
hadn’t he have wrote? That question I’ve often asked myself, and the
answer is that none of them who could have told Lord Polkstone my name
could understand the deaf and dumb alphabet.
“Oh! it was a piercing shock—a freezing blow I’ve never got over, dear,
nor never shall. He married that girl in white, that artful thing who
could understand his finger language and talk back.
“Think what a blessing I lost in a husband who could never contradict or
shout at me. And I feel I could have been an honor to the Peerage, and
worn a coronet like one born to it. I’ll stand another Bass, dear, if
you’ll tell the dresser to fetch it; or will you have a
brandy-and-Polly? You’ve hit it, dear, the girls were shocking spiteful,
but I was jolly well a lot too retiring and shy. I’ve got over the
weakness since, of course, and now I positively make a point of speaking
if one of ’em seems quite unusually hangbacky.
“‘Who knows,’ I say to myself, ‘perhaps he’s deaf and dumb!’”
“VALCOURT’S GRIN”
The lovely and high-born relict of a decrepit and enormously wealthy
commoner, she had sustained her husband’s loss with a becoming display
of sorrow, and passed with exquisite grace and discretion through the
successive phases of the toilet indicative of connubial woe. From a
lovely chrysalis swathed in crape she had changed to a dove-colored
moth; the moth had become a heliotrope butterfly, on the point of
changing its wings for a brighter pair, when the post brought her a
letter from one of her dearest friends. It bore the Zurich postmark, and
ran as follows:
“HOTEL SCHWERT,
“APPENBAD,
“_June 18th._”
“I wonder, dear, whether you would mind being troubled with Val for a
day? He is coming up from Seaton next Thursday on dentist’s leave, and
one does not care that a boy of sixteen—one can consider Val a boy
without stretching the imagination overmuch—should be drifting
anchorless in town. You will find him grown and developed.... You see, I
take it for granted, in my own rude way, that you have already said
‘Yes’ to my request.... The views here are divine—such miles of
eye-flight over the Lake of Constance and the Rhine Valley! To quote
poor Dynham, who suffered much from the whey-cure, ‘every prospect
pleases, and only man is bile.’ Kiss Val for me. My dear, the thought of
his future is a continual anxiety. The title to keep up, and an income
of barely eight thousand pounds.... ‘Marry him,’ you will say; but to
whom? American heiresses are beginning to have an exorbitant idea of
their own value, and then Val’s is an open, simple nature—_unworldly to
a degree!_ Not that I, his mother, could wish him otherwise, but—you
will understand and sympathize, I know! And boys are so easily molded by
a woman who has charm! If you could drop a word here and there,
calculated to bring him to a sense of the responsibility that rests upon
his young shoulders, the _duty_ of restoring the diminished fortunes of
his house by a _really sensible_ marriage.... I have dinned and dinned,
but I fear without much result.
“Ever yours,
“G. D. E. V. T.
“Please address Val, ‘Care of Rev. H. Buntham, Seaton College, near
Grindsor.’—G.
“Buntham is the house-master. V. says he ‘_understands the fellows
thoroughly_.’ Such a tribute, I think, to a tutor _from_ a boy.—G.”
So a dainty monogrammed and coroneted note, on heliotrope paper, with a
thin but decided bordering of black, was sent off to the Marquis of
Valcourt, and Valcourt’s hostess in prospective consulted a male
relative over the luncheon-table as to the most approved methods of
entertaining a schoolboy.
“Heaps of indigestible things to eat—sweet for choice—and a box at the
Gaiety if there’s a _matinée_; if not, the Hippodrome. But who’s the
boy?” asked the male relative.
“Lord Valcourt, Geraldine’s eldest.”
The male relative pursed up his lips into the shape of a whistle, and
helped himself to a cutlet in expressive silence.
“Geraldine is devoted to him. He seems to have a delightful nature, to
be quite an ideal son!”
“That young—that young fellow!”
“You have met him, haven’t you?”
“I have had that privilege. I was one of the house-party at Traye last
September.”
“Geraldine asked me, but of course it was out of the question....”
“Of course, poor Mussard’s death—quite too recent,” murmured the male
relative, taking green peas.
Poor Mussard’s charming relict drooped her long-lashed, brown eyes
pensively, and the transparent lace, that covered the hiding-place of
the heart that had been wrung with presumable anguish eighteen months
before, billowed under the impulse of a little dutiful sigh.
“What a prize for some lucky beggar with a big title and empty pockets!”
reflected the male relative, who happened to be a brother, and could
therefore contemplate dispassionately. “Thirty—and looks
three-and-twenty _en plein jour_, without a pink-lined sunshade.” Aloud
he said: “So you are to entertain Valcourt—Tuesday, I think you said?”
“Thursday. It would be dear of you to come and help me,” murmured Mrs.
Mussard plaintively.
“It would afford me delight to do so,” returned the male relative
unblushingly, “had I not unfortunately an engagement to see a man about
a fishing-tour in Norway.”
“Tiresome! I know so little about modern schoolboys!” murmured Mrs.
Mussard.
“The less you know about ’em, my dear Vivienne, the better.”
“Having been a boy yourself,” the speaker’s sister responded, with
gentle acerbity, “you are naturally prejudiced. But, going by
Geraldine’s account, Valcourt is not the ordinary kind of boy at all.
Indeed, I have promised her to take him in hand, and impart a few _viva
voce_ lessons in _savoir faire_ and worldly wisdom.”
“_Have you?_ By Jove, Vivie, you’ve taken something upon yourself!
‘Angels rush in where demons fear to tread....’ I’m mulling the
quotation, but in its perfect state it isn’t complimentary. May Valcourt
profit by your instructions on Thursday!”
Thursday came, and with it Valcourt. He was pleasing to view; a
clean-limbed, broad-shouldered, straight-featured, pink-and-white
specimen of the well-bred English youth of sixteen, with fair hair
brushed into a silky sweep above a wide, ingenuous brow; sleepy
gray-green eyes, with yellow and blue reflections in them, reminding the
beholder of tourmaline; well-kept hands, pleasing manners, and a wide,
innocent grin of the cherubic-angelic kind, never more in evidence than
when Valcourt was engaged in some pursuit neither angelic nor cherubic.
Mrs. Mussard, at first sight, was conscious of a brief maternal
inclination to kiss him. Geraldine’s boy was, she said to herself, “a
perfect duck!” She subdued the osculatory impulse, shook hands with the
boy cordially, and hoped the dentist had not hurt him.
“No, thanks awfully,” said Valcourt, with his cherubic grin. The teeth
revealed were exceedingly white and regular.
“But you had gas, of course?” proceeded his hostess.
“When I have teeth out I generally do,” said Valcourt carefully. “They
always give you half a guinea extra allowance for gas, so most of the
fellows ask to have it.” He touched his waistcoat pocket meditatively as
he spoke, and smiled, or rather grinned, again so seraphically that Mrs.
Mussard longed to tip him a ten-pound note. She gave her young guest a
sumptuous luncheon, and, not without serious misgivings, commanded the
butler to produce the exhilarating beverage of champagne.
“A little sweet, isn’t it?” said Valcourt critically.
“I thought that you—that is——” Mrs. Mussard crumpled her delicate
eyebrows in embarrassment, and the butler permitted himself the shadow
of a smile.
“Ladies like sweet wine,” remarked Valcourt. He refused liqueur with
coffee, but considered Mrs. Mussard’s cigarettes “rather mild.”
“I—I don’t usually smoke that brand,” his hostess explained. “I—I
ordered them on purpose for——” She broke off, in sheer admiration of
Valcourt’s beautiful grin.
The _matinée_ for which she had secured a stage-box did not commence
until three. “Time for a little chat in the drawing-room,” she thought,
and ran over in her mind a list of the things dear Geraldine would have
wished her to say. She bade the boy sit in the opposite angle of her pet
sofa, upholstered in shimmering lily-leaf green, billowed with huge
puffy pillows of apricot-yellow, covered with cambric and Valenciennes.
She thought the harmony well completed by Valcourt’s sleek fair head and
inscrutable tourmaline eyes, and wished for the first time that poor
dear Mussard had left an heir. Vague as the yearning was, it imparted a
misty softness to her brown eyes, and caused the corners of her delicate
lips to quiver. She drew a little nearer to Valcourt, and laid her white
jeweled hand softly upon the muscular young arm, firm and hard beneath
an uncommonly well-cut sleeve.
“My dear Valcourt,” she began.
“Your eyes are brown, aren’t they?” asked Valcourt.
“I believe they are,” murmured Mrs. Mussard. “My dear boy, I trust
that——”
Valcourt shut his own sleepy tourmaline eyes and sniffed, a long
rapturous sniff. “Mother uses attar of violets. It’s her pet scent.
Jolly, but not so nice as yours. What is it?” He sniffed again. “I can’t
guess. ’Mph! I give it up. I know!” The sleepy tourmaline eyes opened,
large and round and bright, the cherubic-angelic smile suffused his
features. “Why, it comes from your hair!”
“People have said that before. Oh! never mind my hair!” Mrs. Mussard was
not displeased, nevertheless. “Tell me how you progress at School. You
know your mother is my dearest friend. I should so much like you to
remember that and confide in me, _almost_ as you confide in her!”
A solemn, innocent expression came over Valcourt’s face.
“All right,” he said, after a pause, during which he seemed to be
listening to choirs of angels chanting to the accompaniment of celestial
harps. “I’ll tell you things just exactly as I tell ’em to mother!”
“You dear!” exclaimed the impulsive young widow, and kissed him. The
smooth elastic skin, brownish-pink as a new-laid egg, and dotted with
sunny little freckles, grew pinker under the velvet violence of the
lady’s lips. Valcourt turned the other cheek, with his cherub’s smile,
and less warmly, because more consciously, his mother’s dearest friend
saluted that also.
“Now,” he said, in his boyish voice, “what did you want me to tell you
about School? I’m not a sap at books, and I don’t spend all my time in
getting up my muscles. I’m just an ordinary kind of fellow.... I say,
how pretty your nails are!”
He took up one of Mrs. Mussard’s exquisitely manicured hands, and,
holding it to the tempered sunlight that stole through the lace blinds,
noted with appreciative, if infantile, interest the pearly hues and rosy
inward radiances, the nicks and dimples of the wrist and the delicate
articulations of the fingers. Then, with a droll, half-mischievous
twinkle of the tourmaline eye that was next the fair widow, he bent his
sleek, fair head and rubbed his cheek against the pretty hand
caressingly.
“Silly boy!” breathed Mrs. Mussard.
“I believe I am an awful ass sometimes,” agreed Valcourt composedly.
“Who says so?”
“My tutor and heaps of other fellows, and the Head—not that he says so,
but he looks as if he thought it!” said Valcourt.
“Does the Head see a great deal of you?” asked Mrs. Mussard, drawing
away her hand and grasping at a chance of improving the languishing
conversation. Then as Valcourt, with a grave air of reserve, nodded in
reply, “I am _so glad_!” breathed Mrs. Mussard gushingly; “because, at
your age, impressions received must sink in deeply. And to be brought in
contact with a personality so marked must be impressive, mustn’t it?”
she concluded, rather lamely.
“I suppose so,” agreed Valcourt, examining the pattern of the carpet. He
looked a little sulky and a little bored, and for sheer womanly desire
of seeing the illuminations rekindled Mrs. Mussard gave him her hand
again.
“You are going into the Guards, aren’t you, by-and-by?” she queried.
“If I can get through,” said Valcourt, playing with her rings and
smiling. “I’m in the Army Class, mathematics and swot generally. But I
think our family’s too old or something to produce brainy fellows. Cads
are cleverer, really, than we are.”
His tone took a reflection of the purple, his finely-cut profile looked
for an instant hard as diamond and exquisite as a cameo.
Mrs. Mussard, sympathizing, said to herself: “After all, why _should_ he
be clever?”
“Still, when one hasn’t much money,” she began, reminiscent of the
Duchess’s entreaty.
“We’re beastly poor, of course,” admitted Valcourt. “But as to clothes
and horses and shootin’, tradespeople will tick a fellow till the cows
come home, and the millionaire manufacturers who buy or rent fellows’
forests and moors and rivers and things are always glad to get the
fellow himself to show with ’em; and the keepers and gillies and chaps
take care that he gets the best that’s going generally. And so he does
himself pretty well all round.”
“That sort of thing is too—undignified!” said Mrs. Mussard, “and too
uncertain. A man of rank and title must have a solid backing, a definite
_entourage_. You must marry, and marry well.”
“Mother always talks like that!” said Valcourt. “I think,” he added,
“she has somebody in her eye for me!”
“Who is she?” asked Mrs. Mussard sharply.
“I’m not quite sure,” said Valcourt, his tourmaline eyes narrowing as he
smiled his angelic smile. “Dutch Jewess, perhaps,” he added simply,
“with barrels of bullion and a family all nose.”
“Horrible!” cried Mrs. Mussard, shuddering.
“Her brother’s in the Fifth,” let out Valcourt. “We call him ‘Hooky
Holland.’ Their father was secretary to the Klaproths and made heaps of
cash—‘cath’ Hooky calls it. He never talks about anything but ‘cath,’
and fellows punch him for it.” Valcourt doubled his right hand
scientifically, thumb well down, and glanced at it with modest
appreciation ere he resumed: “He has lots of it, too, Hooky, and lends
at interest—pretty thick interest—to fellows who get broke at Bridge or
baccarat!”
“Oh-h! You don’t play baccarat at school, surely! Such an awfully
gambling game!” expostulated Valcourt’s hostess.
“We go to school to be educated, you see,” said Valcourt, in a slightly
argumentative tone, “for what Buntham calls ‘the business of life,’ and
cards are part of a fellow’s life, aren’t they? So they ought, instead
of being forbidden, to form part of what Old Cads calls the curriculum.
We call Buntham ‘Cads’ because he calls us cads when we do anything that
upsets him. He’s a nervous beggar, and gets a good deal of upsetting. My
dame says he weighs himself at the end of every term, and makes a note
of the pounds he’s lost since the beginning. When I go to Sandhurst she
thinks he’ll pick up a bit,” explained Valcourt with his angelic grin.
“I hope your dame is a nice, motherly old person!” breathed Mrs.
Mussard.
“She’s nice—quite,” said Valcourt, “and awfully obliging. I don’t know
about being old—unless you’d call thirty-three old.” Mrs. Mussard
started slightly. “When I have a cold she makes me jellies and things.
Awfully good things! And I give her concert tickets, and sometimes we go
on the river and have strawberries and cream. Lots of our fellows tell
her their love affairs.”
“Do you?”
“And some of ’em are in love with her,” went on Valcourt.
Mrs. Mussard breathed quickly. Never before had she realized what perils
environ the young of the opposite sex, even with the chaste environment
of school bounds. In her agitation she laid her hand on Valcourt’s
shoulder. “I hope—you do not fancy yourself in love with her,” she
uttered anxiously.
“Not much catch!” said Valcourt, with the composure of forty. “I got
over that in my second year.”
“Silly boy!” Mrs. Mussard very gently smoothed down a lock at the back
of his head, which erected itself in silky defiance above its fellows.
“When love comes to you, Valcourt,” she went on, with a vivid
recollection of the utterances of the inspired authoress of _The Bride’s
Babble Book_, “you will find out what it _really_ means. It is a great
mystery, my dear boy, a sacred and solemn unveiling of the heart——”
She stopped, for Valcourt had turned his face up toward hers, gently
smiling, and revealing two neat rows of milky white teeth. His
tourmaline eyes had an odd expression.
“Did you speak, dear?” his fair Gamaliel asked. For the impression upon
her was that he had uttered two words, and that they were, “Hooky’s
sister!”
But Valcourt shook his head. “I was only thinking. A fellow like me ...
has got to take what comes ... the best he can get ... and the better it
is, so much the better for him, don’t you see? If he don’t like what he
gets, he doesn’t go about grousing. He generally pretends he’s suited;
and _she_ pretends; and they get into a groove—or they get into the
newspapers,” said Geraldine’s unworldly babe. “Beastly bad form to get
into the newspapers. I never mean to.”
Mrs. Mussard listened breathlessly.
“I shall have a rattling time,” said Valcourt, in his soft, cooing
voice, “till Hooky’s sister grows up, and mother presents her, and then
I shall marry her, I suppose.”
“Dearest boy, I hope not!” exclaimed Mrs. Mussard. “Someone more
suitable _must_ be found,” she continued, rapidly putting all the
moneyed girls of her acquaintance through a mental review. “Why should
you not marry beauty and birth as well as a banking account? The three
things are sometimes associated.”
“German princes pick up girls of that kind,” said Valcourt, his elbows
upon his knees, and his round young chin cupped in his hands, “and
Austrian archdukes. But why need it be a girl?” he went on, pressing up
the smooth young skin at his temples with his finger-tips, so as to
produce the effect of premature crows’-feet. “I don’t like girls—all red
wrists and flat waists. Why shouldn’t it be a woman, say a dozen years
older—an awfully pretty woman, rich, and in the best set, who’d show me
the ropes? I’m a jolly ass in some things. I shall come no end of
croppers when I go into society, unless there’s somebody to give me the
needful tip.”
Mrs. Mussard sat very upright. She looked at Valcourt; the hand with
which she had smoothed his hair remained suspended in mid-air until she
recollected it and laid it over its companion in her lap.
“Most young fellows beginning life go to other men’s wives for advice,”
said Valcourt. “Why shouldn’t I go to my own?”
Mrs. Mussard’s chiseled scarlet lips moved as though she had echoed,
“Why not?”
“They—the chaps I’m talking of—are wild about ’em—the other men’s wives.
Yet nearly all of the women are old enough to be their mothers.”
“Their grandmothers, sometimes,” said Mrs. Mussard unkindly.
“Then why shouldn’t I marry a woman who’s only old enough to be my
aunt—a young aunt! I’d make a Marchioness of her, don’t you know! and
she’d make—she could make anything she liked of me!” said Valcourt,
turning his cherub smile and tourmaline eyes suddenly on Mrs. Mussard.
“_You_ could!” The lovely widow started violently, and flushed from the
string of pearls encircling her pretty throat to the little gold
hair-waves that crisped at her blue-veined temples. “You _know_ you
could!” murmured Valcourt. The strong young arm in the well-cut sleeve
intercepted the retreating movement that would have placed the lovely
widow in the uttermost corner of the sofa. The remonstrance upon
Vivienne’s lips was stifled by a kiss, given with eloquence and
decision, though the lips that administered it were soft, and unshaded
by even the rudiments of a mustache. “I’m seventeen the end of this
term, and five feet nine in my socks,” said Valcourt, a little
breathlessly, for the kiss had not been one-sided; “and—and you’re
simply awfully pretty. Marry me—I shall be of age before you know
it—and——”
“You dreadfully presuming boy!” There were tears in the lovely eyes of
the late Mr. Mussard’s lovely widow; an unwonted throbbing in the region
of her bodice imparted a tremor to her voice that added to its charm. “I
shall write to your mother!”
“Do!” said Valcourt, with his angelic smile. “She’ll be awfully pleased!
I wonder the idea didn’t occur to her instead of to me, for she’s
awfully clever, and I’m rather an ass.... Five o’clock!” he exclaimed,
as the delicate chime of a Pompadour clock upon the mantelshelf
announced the hour.
“And you have missed the _matinée_!” said Mrs. Mussard.
“I preferred this!” said Valcourt, getting up. She had no idea of his
being taller than herself until she found the tourmaline eyes looking
down into hers. “Good-bye, and thank you, Mrs. Mussard,” said the
boyish, ringing voice. “I’ve had an awfully pleasant day.”
Their hands met and lingered.
“Don’t call me Mrs. Mussard any more; my—my name is Vivienne,” she said
in a half-whisper.
“Jolly! Hooky’s sister’s is Bethsaba,” said Valcourt. He made a quaint
grimace, as though the word tasted nasty, and Vivienne gave a little,
musical, contented laugh. “And I may come again, mayn’t I?”
“This week,” nodded Mrs. Mussard.
“I’ll say it’s my tooth,” explained Geraldine’s guileless offspring.
He reached the door, the handle turned, when Mrs. Mussard beckoned, and
Valcourt came back.
“I should like to ask you,” she began hesitatingly—“not that it matters
to me; but _still_, in your _own interests_—— And you know your mother
is my dearest friend!” ... Valcourt stood with the beautiful grin upon
his face, and Mrs. Mussard found the thing more difficult to say than
she had imagined. “Where did you—who taught you to make love like—like
that?—at your—at your age.... I—it is——” Valcourt made no reply in
words, but the expression upon his face became more celestial than
before. “I hope kissing is not a feature of the curriculum. But,
understand clearly,” said Mrs. Mussard, with that unusual tremor in her
charming voice, “that you are not for the future to kiss anybody but
me!” And as the door closed on Valcourt’s heavenly grin and tourmaline
eyes, she sat down to write a letter to Geraldine.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE FAIREST
If not absolutely a nincompoop, Gerald Delaurier Gandelish, Esq., of
Swellingham Mansions, Piccadilly, Undertherose Cottage, Sunningwater,
Berks, and Horshundam Abbey, Miltshire, was undoubtedly a type of the
_genus homo_ recently classified by a distinguished K.C. as soft-minded
gentlemen. Strictly educated by a private clerical tutor under the eye
of pious parents of limited worldly experience and unlimited prejudices,
it was not to be expected that Gerry, upon their dying and leaving him
in undisputed command of a handsome slice of the golden cheese of
worldly wealth, should not immediately proceed to make ducks and drakes
of it. He essayed to win a name upon the Turf; and when I remind you
that, at a huge price, the youth became possessor of that remarkable
Derby race-horse, Duffer, by Staggers out of Hansom Cab, from whom
eighteen opponents cantered away in the Prince’s year of ’90, leaving
the animal to finish the race at three lengths from the starting-post, I
have said all. Gerry dabbled “considerable,” as our American relatives
would say, in stocks, and started a _café chantant_ on the open-air
Parisian plan, which was frequented only by stray cats and London
blacks, and has since been roofed in and turned into tea-rooms. Sundry
other investments of Gerry’s resulted in the enrichment of several very
shady persons, and a consequent, and very considerable, diminution in
the large stock of ready money with which Gerry had started his career.
But though the edges of the slice of golden cheese had been a good deal
nibbled, the bulk of it remained, and Gerry’s Miltshire acres, strictly
entailed and worth eighty thousand pounds, with another twenty thousand
in Consols, and about half as much again snugly invested in Home Rails,
made him a catch worth angling for in the eyes of many mothers.
We have termed Gerry “soft-minded.” He was also soft-hearted, soft-eyed,
soft-voiced, soft-haired, soft-skinned, and soft-mannered—the kind of
youth women who own to years of discretion like to pet and bully, the
kind of man schoolgirls call a “duck.” True, his neckties aroused
indignation in the breasts of intolerant elderly gentlemen, the patterns
of his tweeds afforded exquisite amusement to members of the Household
Brigade, and his jewelry could not be gazed at without winking by the
unseasoned eye; but, despite these drawbacks, Gerry was a gentleman.
Without the stamp of a public school or a select club, without the tone
of the best society—for, with the exception of a turfy baronet or so and
a couple of sporting peers, Gerry knew nobody who was anybody—Gerry was
decidedly a gentleman, whose progress to the dogs was arrested, luckily
for the young prodigal, when he fell in love with the famous burlesque
actress, Miss Lottie Speranza, of the Levity Theater.
Of theaters and theatrical people Gerry may be said to have known little
or nothing until the enchanting Lottie blazed upon his field of vision.
Gerry’s worthy parents, strict moralists both, had considered the
theater as the temple of Satan, and had exacted from their only child a
solemn promise that he would never enter one. This promise Gerry had
actually kept, contenting himself with the entertainments offered by the
music halls, which his father had omitted to stigmatize and his mother
knew not of. But at the close of a festive dinner, given by Gerry to a
select party of “pals,” in a private room at the Levity Restaurant, when
a brief, lethargic slumber obscured the senses of the youthful host, the
brilliant idea of conveying him to a box in the theater upstairs
occurred to one of his guests, and was forthwith carried out. Emerging
from a condition of coma, Gerry found himself staring into a web of
crossing and intersecting limelights of varying hues, in which a
dazzling human butterfly, entangled, was beating quivering wings. The
butterfly had lustrous eyes, encircled with blue rims, a complexion of
theatrical red and white, and masses of golden hair. Her twinkling feet
beat out a measure to which Gerry’s pulses began to dance madly. He sent
the goddess an invitation to supper, which was promptly declined. He
forwarded a stack of roses, which were not acknowledged, and a
muff-chain, turquoise and peridot, which were returned to the address
upon his card. He felt hurt but happy at these rebuffs, which proved to
him that Miss Speranza was above reproach; and when a bosom friend of
his own age hinted that the prudish fair one was playing the big game,
and advised him to try her with a motor-car, Gerry promptly converted
the bosom friend into a stranger by the simple process of asking him to
redeem a few of his I O U’s. This got about, and caused Gerry’s other
friends to turn sharp round corners, or jump into hansoms when they saw
Gerry coming. Gerry hardly missed them, though the man who could have
afforded an introduction to his charmer would have been welcomed with
open arms. He occupied the same box at the Levity nightly now, and made
up, in its murkiest corner, a good deal of the nightly rest of which his
clamant passion deprived him. But he awakened, as by instinct, whenever
Miss Speranza tripped upon the stage; and the large-eyed, vacuous,
gorgeously-attired beauties who “went on” with the Chorus—the Lotties,
Maries, Daisies, Topsies of the noble houses of Montague, Talbot, De
Crespigny, and Delamere,—would languidly nudge each other at the
passionately prolonged plaudits of a particular pair of immaculate white
gloves, and wonder semi-audibly what the man saw in Speranza, dear, to
make such a bloomin’ silly fuss about?
Gerry had occupied his watch-tower at the Levity for six weeks or so,
and was beginning to deteriorate in appetite and complexion (so powerful
are the effects of passion unreturned), when Undertherose Cottage at
Sunningwater, a charming Thames-side residence of the bijou kind, with
small grounds and a capacious cellar, a boat-house, and a house-boat, a
pigeon-cote and a private post-box, became suddenly vacant. The tenant,
a lady of many charms and much experience, who had passed over to Gerry
with the property, returned to her native Paris to open a bonnet-shop;
and Gerry, as he wandered over the dwelling with the sanitary engineer
and decorator, who had _carte blanche_ to do-up the place, found himself
strolling on the tiny lawn (in imagination) by the visioned side of the
enchantress who had enthralled him, supping (also in imagination) with
the same divine creature in the duodecimo oak dining-room, and smoking a
cigarette in her delightful company upon the balcony of the boudoir.
Waking from these dreams was a piquant anguish. Gerry indeed possessed
the cage, one of the most ideal nests for a honeymooning pair
imaginable; but in vain for the airy feminine songster might the
infatuated fowler spread nets and set springs.
“If we didn’t live in this confoundedly proper twentieth century,”
thought disconsolate Gerry, “a chappie might hire a coach and eight,
bribe a few bruisers to repress attempts at rescue, snap her up
respectfully as she came out at the stage door, and absquatulate—no!
abduct’s the word. Not that I’d behave like a brute; I’d marry her
to-morrow if she’d only give me a chance to ask her. Marquises do that
sort of thing, and their families come round a bit and bless the young
people. She must have shown the door to dozens of ’em.” He sighed, for
where the possessor of a ripe old peerage had failed, how could Gerald
Gandelish, Esq., hope to triumph? “And she’s so awfully proper and
standoffish, too,” he reflected. He wondered how many years it had taken
those privileged persons whom the lady permitted to rank as her friends
to attain that enviable distinction. “I’ve never met a man who could, or
would, introduce me,” he added, pulling his mustache, which from happily
turning up at the corners had recently acquired a decided tendency to
droop. “Seemed to shy at it, somehow; and so I shall take the
initi—what-you-call—myself. She shall know from the start that my
intentions are honorable, and, hang it! the name’s a good one....
There’s been a Gandelish of Horshundam ever since Henry the Eighth
hanged the abbot and turned out the monks, and put my ancestor Gorbred
in to keep the place warm. Gorbred was His Majesty’s principal purveyor
of sack and sugar, ‘and divers dainty cates beside,’ as the Chronicle
has it, and must have given the Tudor unlimited tick, I gather. Anyhow,
if four centuries of landlording don’t make a tradesman a gentleman,
they ought to; and I can’t see——”
Gerry climbed into his “Runhard” thirty horse-power roadster, pulled
down the talc mask of his driving cap to preserve his eyes and
complexion, and ran back to town. That night, as he quitted his box at
the conclusion of the Levity performance (you will remember the
phenomenal run of _The Idiot Girl_ in 19—!), he turned up his coat
collar with the air of a man resolved to do or die, and boldly plunged
into the little entry leading to the stage door. The bemedaled military
guardian of those rigid portals, who had absorbed several of Gerry’s
sovereigns without winking, regarded him with a glazed eye and a stiff
upper lip.
“Would you kindly——” began Gerry.
But the stage-doorkeeper paid no heed, busily engaged as he was in
delivering letters from a rack on the wall, lettered S, into the hands
of a slight little woman in a rather shabby tweed ulster and plain felt
hat. Gerry’s heart jumped as he recognized his own handwriting upon one
of the envelopes.... Surely the tiny tin gods had favored him! The
little woman in the ulster and the plain felt hat must be lady’s maid to
the brilliant Speranza. As she thrust the letters into her pockets,
nodded familiarly to the commissionaire, and came out of the stage-door
office, Gerry, his heart in his mouth and his hat in his hand, stood in
her way.
“Miss—Madam——” he began. “If I might ask you——”
“What’s that?” shouted the commissionaire. As the little woman stepped
quickly backwards, Cerberus emerged, purple and growling, from his den
and reared his huge body as a barrier before her. “Annoying the lady,
are ye?” he roared, with a fine forgetfulness of Gerry’s sovereigns.
“Wait till I knock your mouth round to the back of your head, you
kid-gloved young blaggyard, you! Wait till——”
“Be quiet, O’Murphy!” said the little woman in a tone and with an accent
which raised her to the level of lady’s companion in Gerry’s estimation.
And as the crestfallen O’Murphy retreated into his den, she said,
turning a plain little clever face, irradiated by a pair of brilliant
eyes, upon the crimson Gerry, “Did you wish to speak to me?”
“I certainly do, if you are any relative—or a member of the household—of
Miss Speranza,” Gerry stuttered.
There was a flash of eyes and teeth in the plain, insignificant face.
“Oh, yes,” said the little woman, “I live with Miss Speranza.”
Gerry’s tongue grew large, impeding utterance, and his palate dried up.
Of all creatures upon earth this little tweed-ulstered woman, in the
well-worn felt hat with the fatigued feather, seemed to him the most to
be envied.
“You—you’re lucky,” he said lamely, and blushed up to the roots of his
hair, and down to the tips of his toes.
“I’ve known her ever since she knew herself,” said the little companion.
“We were girls together.” Gerry could have laughed in her middle-aged
face, but he only handed her his card. “Oh yes,” she said after she had
glanced at it. “I seem to know the name. You have written to her,
haven’t you?”
“Sev-several times,” acquiesced Gerry hoarsely. “I have ta-taken the
privilege.”
“A great many other young gentlemen have taken it too,” observed Miss
Speranza’s companion.
Then, as the swing doors behind her opened to let out a blast of hot air
and several grimy stage carpenters, and the swing doors before her
parted to let in a blast of cold air as the men shouldered out, “Excuse
me,” she said, and shivered, and moved as though to pass. “It is very
cold here, and the brougham is waiting.”
“Beggin’ pardon!” said O’Murphy, looking out of his hole, “the groom
sent his jooty, an’ the pole av a ’bus had gone clane through the back
panel av the broom in a block off the Sthrand.... The horse kicked wan
av his four shoes off, an’ they’ve gone back wid themselves to the
stables to get the landau an’ pair——”
“Call a hansom,” said the plain little woman. “I—we can’t wait here all
night!”
As O’Murphy saluted and went outside, she stepped into his vacant hutch,
and Gerry daringly followed.
“If I might venture to offer,” he began. “My cab—place disposal—Miss
Speranza—too much honored——” He trailed off into a morass of polite
intentions, rudimentarily expressed. The little companion maintained a
preoccupied air; she was probably expecting her mistress, Gerry thought,
but the conviction was no sooner formed than banished.
“You are very kind,” she said, “but Miss Speranza cannot avail herself
of your offer. She sometimes leaves quite early, and by the private
door, and, as it happens, I am going home alone.”
“Oh!” cried Gerry earnestly, “if you knew how awfully I want to speak to
you, you would let me drive you there—wherever it is!”
Tears stood in the soft eyes of the somewhat soft-headed young man, and
the heart of the little lady in the ulster was softened, for she looked
upon him with a smile, saying:
“Here comes O’Murphy to say my hansom is waiting.... You may drive with
me part of the way, and say what you have to say, if it is so very
important,” she said, with a brilliant gleam of mockery in her
remarkable eyes.
Need one say that the enamored Gerry jumped at the proposal, and they
went out into the plashy night together.
“Give the driver the address, O’Murphy,” ordered the little ulstered
woman. “Jump in!” she said to Gerry, and, presto! they were rattling
together up a stony thoroughfare leading from the roaring midnight
Strand, which in the present year of grace presents a smooth face of
macadam.
“Will you have the glass down?” said Gerry.
“Too warm!” cried the little ulstered woman. “Now, what have you to
say?”
“How this trap rattles!” shouted Gerry. “One can hardly hear oneself
speak. But with regard to Miss Speranza——”
“I suppose the pith of the matter is—you are in love with her?” shrieked
the little woman.
“Madly!” bellowed Gerry. “Been so for weeks. Hold up, you brute!” This
to the cab-horse, a dilapidated equine wreck, which had stumbled.
“Oh, you boys! You’re all alike!” cried his companion.
“Mine is a man’s love,” roared Gerry. “I would lay the world at her
feet, if I had it; and I want you to tell her so.” The rattling of the
crazy cab nearly drowned his accents. “Oh! what do you think she will
say?” he bellowed, his lips close to the little woman’s ear.
“She would say—Oh! _do_ you think this man is sober?” screamed the
little woman. “I mean the driver,” she added, meeting Gerry’s indignant
glare.
“I don’t think he is too drunk to drive,” yelled Gerry. “Tell me, if you
have a heart,” he howled, “have I any chance _with her_?”
“Ah! we’re off the cobblestones now!” said his companion, leaning back
with an air of relief.
“And you can answer my question,” pressed Gerry. “I—I needn’t explain my
views are honorable—straight as a fellow’s can be. Love like mine is——”
“So dreadfully greasy!” commented his companion anxiously, as the
debilitated steed recovered himself with difficulty at the end of a long
slide.
“When I have been sitting, night after night, in that box looking at
her, thinking of her, worshiping her, by George!” went on Gerry, “she
must have sometimes noticed me, and said to herself——”
“I _knew_ he would go down!” cried the little woman, clutching Gerry’s
arm, as the steed disappeared and the shaft-ends bumped on the asphalt.
“Let’s get out!”
“Don’t be alarmed, lydy,” said a hoarse voice, through the trap
overhead, as the panting steed heaved and struggled to regain his hoofs.
“’E won’t do it agen this journey. One fall is ’is allowance, an’ ’e
never goes beyond.”
“And we’re quite close to Pelgrave Square,” said Gerry.
“How do you know Miss Speranza lives in Pelgrave Square?” said his
companion with a keen look.
“Because I’ve seen photogravings of her house in an illustrated
interview,” replied Gerry.
“Ah, of course,” said the little lady, with a thoughtful smile. The
steed, bearing out his driver’s recommendation, was now jogging along
reassuringly enough. “And did the portraits remind you of no one?” she
added, with another of those flashing smiles that invested her little
fatigued features with transient youth.
“They weren’t half beautiful enough for her,” said Gerry fervently. Then
a ray of light broke upon him, and he jumped. “You—you’re a little bit
like her!” he exclaimed. “What a blind duffer I am! I’ve been taking you
for her companion, and all the while you’re a relative.”
“Yes, I am a relative,” nodded the little lady.
“Her aunt!” hazarded Gerry.
“Her mother!” said the little lady, with a dazzling flash of eyes and
teeth. “How stupid you were not to guess it before!”
“I’ve said nothing, madam, that I should not, I trust,” remarked Gerry,
with quite a seventeenth-century manner. “And, therefore, when I entreat
you to allow me an interview with your daughter, I trust you will not
refuse to grant my—my prayer.”
“Hear the boy!” cried the little woman, with a trill of laughter, as the
cab pulled up before a large lighted house in a large darkish square.
“Well,” she added, “I think I can promise you that Lottie will see you
at least for a minute or two to-morrow. Not here—at the theater, seven
o’clock sharp. Lend me a pencil and one of your cards.” She scribbled a
word or two on the bit of pasteboard, paid the cab in spite of Gerry’s
protestations, and ran lightly up the solemn doorsteps, turned to the
enraptured young man standing, hat in hand, below, waved her hand,
plunged a Yale key into the keyhole—and instantly vanished from view.
Behind Gerry’s shirt-front throbbed tumultuous delight. To have driven
in a cab with _her_ mother—talked of _her_, told his tale of love—albeit
with interruptions—and won the promise of an interview at seven sharp
upon the morrow.... Unprecedented fortune! incomparable luck! Did Time
itself cease he would not fail to keep the tryst with punctuality. He
caught a passing cab, drove home to his Piccadilly chambers, and went to
bed so blissfully happy that he spent a wretchedly bad night. The card
he kept beneath his pillow; and true to the promise made by the mother
of the enchantress of his soul—when, punctually to the stroke of seven,
Gerry, dressed with the most excruciating care, and clammy with
repressed emotion, presented himself at the stage door of the Levity—the
scrawled hieroglyphics on the blessed piece of pasteboard admitted him
behind the scenes. Led by a smartly-aproned maid, he climbed stairs, he
crossed the stage, was jostled by baize-aproned men in paper caps, and
begged their pardon. He followed his guide down a short passage, fell up
three steps—and knocked with his burning brow against the door—her door!
A voice he knew said, “Come in!” and in he went, to find, not the
adored, the worshiped Lottie, but the little plainish lady of the
previous night, sitting at a lace-veiled dressing-table, attired in a
Japanese gown.
“Oh, I say!” murmured Gerry.
“Ah! there you are!” The little lady looked at him over her shoulder,
and nodded kindly. “Don’t be too disappointed at not finding Lottie
here,” she said cheerfully; “she won’t be long.”
“I’m so awfully obliged for all your kindness,” said Gerry, sheepishly
smiling over a giant bouquet.
“You shall be really grateful to me one of these days, I promise you,”
said the little lady. “Let my maid take that haysta—that bouquet, and
sit down, do!”
Gerry took the indicated chair beside the dressing-table, and noted, as
he sucked the top of his stick, how pitilessly the relentless radiance
of the electric light accentuated the worn lines of the little lady’s
face and the gray streaks in her still soft and pretty brown hair.
“Cheer up!” she said, turning one of her flashing smiles upon him as he
sadly sucked his stick. “You won’t have long to wait for Lottie!”
“No!” said Gerry rather vacuously.
“No!” said Lottie’s mother, pulling off some very handsome rings and
hanging them upon the horns of a coral lobster that adorned the
dressing-table. “She takes about twenty minutes to make up.” Her pretty,
white, carefully-manicured fingers busied themselves, as she talked,
with various little pots and bottles and rolls of a mysterious substance
of a pinky hue, not unlike the peppermint suck-stick of Gerry’s youth.
“And are you as much in love with her to-day,” she continued, “as you
were last night?”
“So much in love,” said Gerry, uncorking himself, “that to call her my
wife I would sacrifice everything.”
“To _call_ her your wife?” The little lady pushed her hair back from her
face, twisted it tightly up behind, and pinned it flat with a relentless
hairpin.
“To make her my wife,” Gerry amended, with a healthy blush.
“Ah!” said the little lady, who had covered her entire countenance,
ears, and neck with a shiny mask of pinkish paste. “A word makes such a
difference.” She dipped a hare’s-foot into a saucer of rouge, and with
this compound impartially, as it seemed to Gerry, incarnadined her
cheeks and chin. “Of course,” she went on, dipping a disemboweled
powder-puff into a pot of French chalk and deftly applying it, “you are
aware that she possesses in years the advantage of yourself.”
“I am twenty-three,” said Gerry proudly.
“She owns to more than that!” said the lovely Lottie’s mother. She had
reddened her mouth, hitherto obliterated by the paste, into an alluring
Cupid’s bow, and darkened in, above her wonderfully brilliant eyes, a
pair of arch-provoking eyebrows. Now, as some inkling of the fateful
revelation in store clamped Gerry’s jaws upon his stick and twined his
legs in a death-grip about the supports of his chair, she rapidly, with
a blue pencil, imparted to those brilliant eyes the Oriental languor,
the divinely alluring, almond-lidded droop that distinguished Lottie’s,
seized a tooth-brush, dipped it into a bottle, apparently of liquid
soot, rapidly blackened her eyelashes, indicated with rose-pink a dimple
on her chin, groped for a moment in a cardboard box that stood upon the
ledge of her toilet table, produced a golden wig of streaming tresses,
dexterously assumed it, pulled here, patted there, twisted a
brow-tendril into shape—and turning, shed upon the paralyzed Gerry the
smile that had enchained his heart.
“I told you Lottie would not be long,” said Lottie, “and I’ve made up
under twenty minutes. You dear, silly, honorable, romantic boy, don’t
stare in that awful way. Twenty-three indeed! And I told you I owned to
more! I ought to, for I have a son at Harrow, and a daughter of
seventeen besides.... Do try and shut your mouth. Why, you poor dear
goose, I was making my bow to the boys in the gallery when you were
playing with a Noah’s Ark. Shake hands, and go round in front and see me
do my piece, as usual. I’ve got used to that nice fresh face of yours up
in Box B, and applause is the breath of my nostrils, if I am old enough
to be your mother. Leave your flowers; my girl at home has got quite to
look out for them—and be off with you, because this”—she indicated the
French chalk—“has got to go farther!” She gave Gerry her pretty hand and
one of the brilliant smiles, as he blundered up from his chair, gasping
apologies.
“Come and lunch with us to-morrow. You know my address, and I’ve told
the Professor all about you. You’ll like the Professor—my husband. One
of the best, though his wife says it. And the children——”
“Can I come in, mother?” said a clear voice outside.
“All right, pet!” called back Gerry’s late goddess, and a girl of
seventeen came into the room. She was all that Gerry had dreamed.... His
frozen blood began to thaw, and his tongue found words. Here was the
ideal.
“But her name isn’t Lottie!” said his dethroned goddess, with a twinkle
of the wondrous eyes. “However, you’re coming to lunch to-morrow, aren’t
you?”
“With the greatest pleasure,” said Gerry. And as he went round to his
box he carefully obliterated the name from the portrait cherished in his
bosom for so many weeks, with the intention of filling it in with
another to-morrow.
THE REVOLT OF RUSTLETON
A new-comer joined the circle of attentive listeners gathered round the
easiest of all the easy-chairs in the smoking-room of the Younger Sons’
Club. The surrounded chair contained Hambridge Ost, a small, drab,
livery man, with long hair and drooping eyelids, who, as cousin to Lord
Pomphrey, enjoyed the immense but fleeting popularity of the moment.
Everyone panted to hear the details of the latest Society elopement
before the newspapers should disseminate them abroad. And Hambridge was
not unwilling to oblige.
“The first inkling of the general trend of affairs, dear fellow,” said
Hambridge, joining his long, pale finger-tips before him, and smiling at
the new-comer across the barrier thus formed, “was conveyed to me by an
agitated ring at the telephone in my rooms. Bucknell, my man, hello’ed.
To Bucknell’s astonishment the ring-up came from 000, Werkeley Square,
the town mansion of my cousin, Lord Pomphrey, which he knew to be in
holland covers and the care of an ex-housekeeper. And Lady Pomphrey was
the ringer. When I hello’ed her, saying, ‘Are you there, Annabella? So
glad, but how unexpected; thought you were all enjoying your _otium cum_
down at Cluckham-Pomphrey’—my cousin’s country-seat in Slowshire, dear
fellow—such a verbal flood of disjointed sentences came hustling over
the wire, so to speak, that I felt convinced, even in the act of rubbing
my ear, which tickled confoundedly, that something was quite absolutely
wrong somewhere. Pomphrey—dear fellow!—was my first thought; then the
Dowager—the ideal of a fine old Tory noblewoman of ninety-eight, who may
drop, so to put it, any moment, dear creature, relieving her family of
the charge of paying her income and leaving the Dower House vacant for
Lord Rustleton, my cousin’s heir and his—ahem!—bride. Knowing that
Rustleton was to lead the Hon. Celine Twissing to the altar of St.
George’s, Hanover Square, early in the Winter season, it occurred to me,
so to put it, that the demise of the Dowager could not have occurred at
a more auspicious moment. Thank you, dear fellow, I _will_ smoke one of
your particular Partagas, since you’re so good.”
Four men struck vestas simultaneously as Hambridge relieved the nicotian
delicacy of its gold-and-scarlet cummerbund. Another man supplied him
with an ash-tray. Yet another pushed a footstool under his pampered
patent-leathers. Exhaling a thin blue cloud, the Oracle continued:
“Amidst my distracted relative’s fragmentary utterances I gleaned the
name of Rustleton. Hereditary weak heart—circulation as limited as that
of a newspaper which on strictly moral grounds declines to report
Divorce Cases—and a disproportionate secretion of bile, so to put it,
distinguishes him, dear fellow, from, shall I say, mortals less favored
by birth and of lower rank. A vision of a hatchment over the door of
000, Werkeley Square—of the entire population of the county assisting at
his obsequies, dear fellow—volted through my brain. I seized my hat, and
rushed from my chambers in Ryder Street. An electric hansom had
fortunately pulled up in front of ’em. I jumped in. ‘Where to?’ asked
the chauffeur. ‘To a broken-hearted mother,’ said I, ‘000, Werkeley
Square, and drive like the dooce!’”
Hambridge cleared his throat with some pomp, and crossed his little legs
comfortably. Then he went on:
“Like the Belgian sportsman, who, in missin’ a sittin’ hare, shot his
father-in-law in the stomach, mine was an effort not altogether wasted.
All the blinds of the house were down, and the hysterical shrieks of
Lady Pomphrey echoin’ through practically a desert of rolled-up carpets
and swathed furniture, had collected a small but representative crowd
about the area-railings. I leaped out of the motor-cab, threw the
chauffeur the legal fare, and bein’ admitted to the house by an
hysterical caretaker, ascended to my cousin’s boudoir, the sobs and
shrieks of the distracted mother growing louder as I went. Dear fellows,
when Lady Pomphrey saw me, heard me saying, ‘Annabella, I must entreat
you as a near relative to calm yourself sufficiently to tell me the
worst without delay, or to direct me to the nearest person who can
supply authentic information,’ the floodgates of her sorrow were opened
to such an extent that—possessing a constitution naturally susceptible
to damp—I have had a deuce of a cold ever since.
“Lord Rustleton—always a nervous faddist, though the dearest of
fellows—Rustleton had suddenly broken off his engagement to the Hon.
Celine Twissing, only child and heiress of Lord Twissing of Hopsacks,
the colossal financier figurehead, as I call him, of the Brewing Trade.
Naturally, the young man’s mother was crushed by the blow. The marriage
was to have been solemnized at the opening of the Winter Season—the
trousseau was nearly ready, and the cake—a mammoth pile of elaborate
indigestion—was bein’ built up in tiers at Guzzards’. The presents
(includin’ a diamond and sapphire bangle from a Royal source) had come
in in shoals. Nothing could be more confoundedly inopportune than
Rustleton’s decision. For all her muscularity—and she is an unpleasantly
muscular young woman—you’d marry her yourself to-morrow did you get the
chance, dear fellow. _Vous n’êtes pas dégoûté._
“But Rustleton’s a difficult man—always was. His personal appearance
ain’t prepossessin’, but he is Somebody, and looks it; d’ye foller me?
You feel at once that a long line of ancestors, more or less
distinguished, must have handed down the bilious tendency from father to
son. Originally—which goes to prove that first impressions are the
stronger—Lady Pomphrey tells me he could not stand Celine Twissing,
wouldn’t have her for nuts, or at any price; but after the disaster to
the steam yacht _Fifi_—run down by a collier at her moorings in
Southampton Water, you recollect, when by pure force of muscle Miss
Twissing snatched Lord Rustleton from a watery grave, so to put it—he
seemed to cave in, as it were, and the engagement was formally
announced. I thought his eye unsteady and his laugh hollow, when, with
the rest of the family, I proffered my insignificant congratulations. On
that occasion, dear fellow, he gave me two fingers instead of one, which
amounts to a grip with him, and whispered to the effect that there was
no use in cryin’ over spilled milk—a familiar saw which has sprung to my
own lips at the most inopportune moments.
“Celine was undoubtedly in love. Her being in love, so to put it, added
immensely to Rustleton’s discomfort. For the New Girl is, as well as a
muscular being, a strenuous creature, omnivorous in her appetite for
mental exercise, and from the latest theories in physics to the morality
of the newest Slavonic novelist Rustleton was expected to range with her
hour by hour. Her mass of knowledge oppressed him, her inexhaustible
fund of argument exhausted him, her fiery enthusiasm reduced him to a
condition of clammy limpness which was—I may say it openly—painful to
witness. A backward Lower boy and an impatient Head Master might have
presented such a spectacle. Thank you, I will take a Vermouth, since you
are so kind. But the boy, in getting away for the holidays, had the
advantage of Rustleton, poor fellow!”
Hambridge waited till the Vermouth came, and, sipping the tonic fluid,
continued:
“These details, I need not say, were not culled from Lady Pomphrey, but
extracted from Rustleton, who had rushed up to town and gone to earth at
his Club, to the consternation of the few waiters who were not taking
holidays at the seaside. Little by little I became master of the facts
of the case, which was one of disparity from the outset. From the
muscular as from the intellectual point Celine Twissing had always
overshadowed her _fiancé_. But Celine’s intimate knowledge of the mode
of conduct necessary—I quote herself—to sane living and clear thinking
positively appalled him. Rustleton began the day with hot Vichy water,
dry toast, weak tea, and a tepid immersion. _She_, Miss Twissing,
commenced with Indian clubs, a three-quarter-mile sprint in sweaters,
coffee, eggs, cold game-pie, ham, jam, muffins, and marmalade. Did she
challenge the man, to whom she was soon to pledge lifelong obedience at
the altar, to a single at lawn-tennis, she quite innocently served him
twisters that he could only follow with his eye, and volleyed balls that
infallibly hit it. At croquet she was a scientist, winning the game by
the time Lord Rustleton had got through three hoops, and coming back to
stand by his side and goad him to silent frenzy by criticism of his
method. She is a red-hot motorist, and insisted upon taking Rustleton,
wrapped in fur coats, and protected by goggles, as passenger in the back
seat of her sixty-horse-power ‘Gohard’ when she competed in the
Crooklands Circular Track One Thousand Mile Platinum Cup Race, for
private owners only, professional drivers barred; and upon my honor, I
believe she would have pulled up the winner and heroine of the hour had
not the racing diet of bananas, meat jujubes, and egg-nog created such a
revolt in Rustleton’s system, poor fellow, that at the sixth hour of the
ordeal he was borne, almost insensible, and bathed in cold perspiration,
from the _tonneau_ to a neighboring hotel.
“To anxiety, in combination with exploding tires, I attribute the fact
of Miss Twissing’s finishing as Number Four. Dear fellow, since you are
so good as to insist, I _will_ put that cushion behind the small of my
back. Lumbago, in damp weather, is my particular bane. Thankee!”
Hambridge drew forth a spotlessly white handkerchief, flourished it, and
trumpeted.
“Now we come to the crux, dear fellows. The Admirable Twissing, as many
call her, not content with bein’ an acknowledged expert in salmon
fishin’ and a darin’ rider to hounds, set her heart on Rustleton’s being
practically the same. With a light trout-rod and a tin of worms he _has_
occasionally amoosed himself on locally-preserved waters; mounted on an
easy-goin’ cob, he is, so to put it, fairly at home. Scotch and
Norwegian rivers now, shall I say, claimed him as their sacrifice;
highly-mettled hunters—the Hopsacks stables are famous—took five-barred
gates and quickset hedges with him; occasionally even bolted with him,
regardless of his personal predilections. In the same spirit his
betrothed bride compelled him to fence with her; instructed him, at
severe physical expense to himself, in the rules of jiu-jitsu. The final
straw was laid upon the camel’s back when she insisted on his putting on
the gloves with her, and standing up for half an hour every morning to
be scientifically pummeled.”
The listeners’ mouths screwed themselves into the shape of
long-expressive whistles. Glances of profound meaning were exchanged.
One man said, with a gulp of sympathy, “_Poor_ beggar!”
“And so the worm turned,” said Hambridge Ost, running his forefinger
round inside the edge of his collar. “Smarting from upper-cuts
administered by the woman who was destined ere long to become the wife
of his bosom, flushed from having his head in Chancery, gravely
embarrassed by body-blows, dazzled by stars and stripes seen as the
result of merciless punches received upon the nose, Rustleton summoned
all his courage to the effort, and declined to take any more lessons.
Miss Twissing, to do her justice, was thunderstruck.
“‘Oh!’ she said, her lips quivering—like a hurt child’s, according to
Rustleton—‘and you were coming on so _capitally_—we were getting on so
well. You are really gaining a knowledge of good boxing principles, you
were actually benefiting by our light little friendly spars.’ Rustleton
felt his nose, which was painfully swollen. ‘Of course, you could never,
never become a first-rater. Your poor little muscles are too rigid. You
haven’t the strength to hit a print of your knuckles into a pound of
butter, but you might come to show form enough to funk a big duffer,
supposing he went for you under the impression that you were as soft as
you look. But, of course, if you mean what you say’—she pulled her
gloves off and threw them into a corner of the gymnasium at Hopsacks
specially fitted up for her by a noted firm—‘there they go. I’ll read
the Greek Anthologists with you instead, or’—her eyes brightened—‘have
you ever tried polo?’ she asked. ‘We have some trained ponies in the
stable, and the largest croquet-lawn could be utilized for a ground, and
I’ll wire to the County Players for clubs and a couple of members to
teach us the rules of the game. You’ll like that?’
“‘I’m dashed if I shall!’ were the actual words that burst, so to put
it, from Rustleton. Celine drew herself up and looked him over, from the
feet upwards, as though she had never, so he says, seen him before. Five
feet five—his actual height—gave her an advantage of five inches and a
bit over. He begged her to be seated, and, standing before her in as
dignified an attitude as it is possible to assume in a light suit of
gymnasium flannels, with sawdust in your hair and a painfully swollen
nose, he broke the ice and demanded his release from their engagement,
saying that he felt it incumbent on him to live his own life in his own
way, that Celine crushed, humiliated, and oppressed him by the mere
vigor of her intellect and the exuberance of her physical
personality—with considerably more to the same effect.
“She looked up when Rustleton, almost breathless, reached a full stop.
‘You give me your word of honor that there is no other woman in the
case,’ she murmured; ‘I _can_ stand your not loving me, I _can’t_ your
loving somebody else better.’ As Rustleton gave the required
denial—scouted the bare idea—a tear ran down her cheek and dropped on
her large powerful arms, which were folded upon her bust—really amazing,
dear fellow, and one of her strong points. ‘That settles it,’ she
uttered. ‘It’s understood, all’s off between us; you are free. And there
is a through express to London at 3:25. But I’m afraid I must detain you
a moment longer.’ She rang the bell, and told a servant to tell
Professor Pudsey she was wanted in the gym. ‘Tell her to come in
sparring kit, and be quick about it,’ were her actual words.
“Until the Professor appeared, Miss Twissing chatted quite pleasantly
with Rustleton. The Professor was a large, flat-faced woman, of
remarkable muscular development, with her hair coiled in a tight knob at
the back of her head, her massive form attired in a thin jersey, short
serge skirt, long stockings, and light gymnasium shoes. ‘Let me
introduce my friend and resident instructress in boxing, fencing, and
athletics,’ says Celine, ‘and one of the best, so to put it, that ever
put a novice through his paces. Celebrated as the wife and trainer of
the late Ponto Pudsey, Heavy-weight Champion of England, and holder of
the Hyam’s Competition Belt three seasons running until beat by Bat
Collins at the International Club Grounds in ’92. Pudsey dear’—she
turned to the Professor—‘you know my little way when I’ve had a
set-back. Instead of playing _le diable à quatre_ and being disagreeable
and cantankerous all round, I simply send for you and say, as I say now,
“Put up your hands, and do your best; I warn you I’m going in for a
regular slugging match under the rules of the Amateur Boxing
Association. Three rounds—the first and second of three minutes’ length,
the third of four minutes’. This gentleman will act as time-keeper, and
pick up whichever of us gets knocked out. He has plenty of time before
he catches the express to town—and the lesson will be good for him.”’
She and the Professor shook hands, and, with heads erect, mouths firmly
closed, eyes fixed, left toes straight, bodies evenly balanced, left
arms workin’ loosely, rights well across mark, and so forth, started
business in the most thorough-goin’ way. Such a bout of
fisticuffs—accordin’ to Rustleton—you couldn’t behold outside the
American prize-ring.”
“By—Jingo!” ejaculated one of the listeners.
“They led off in a perfectly scientific manner at the head, guarded and
returned, retreated and advanced, ducked, feinted, countered, and
cross-countered,” said Hambridge Ost, “until Rustleton grew giddy.
Terrific hits were given and taken before he could command himself
sufficiently to call ‘Time,’ the Professor with a black eye, Celine with
a cut lip, both of ’em smilin’ and self-possessed to an astonishin’
degree; went in again at the end of the brief breathin’ space, and
fairly outdid the previous round. When a smashin’ knock-out on the point
of the jaw finally floored the Professor and she failed to come up to
time, leavin’ Miss Twissing mistress of the gory field, Celine nodded
significantly to Rustleton, and said, as she rolled down her sleeves,
‘That would have been for _you_, Russie, old boy, if there had been
another woman in the case. As there isn’t—goodbye, and good luck go with
you! I’m going to put dear old Pudsey to bed, and plaster this cut lip
of mine.’”
“I like that girl!” declared the man who had said “By Jingo!” “A
rattling good sort, I call her. But a punch-bag would have done as well
as the Professor, I should have thought.” He tugged at his mustache and
wrinkled his forehead thoughtfully. “A damaged lip is so fearfully
disfiguring. Has it quite healed?”
“I know nothing of Miss Twissing,” said Hambridge, settling his necktie,
“and desire to know nothing of that very unfeminine young person, who, I
feel sure, would have been as good as her word and pounded Rustleton
into a human jelly, had she been aware that there actually existed, if I
may so put it, an adequate feminine reason for the dear fellow’s—shall I
say, change of mind?”
“Of course,” said the man who had been anxious about Miss Twissing’s
lip, “the little bounder—beg pardon! Of course, Rustleton was telling a
colossal howler. As all the world knows, or will know when the
newspapers come out to-morrow, there was another woman in the case.”
“Petsie Le Poyntz,” put in another voice, “of the West End Theater.
Petsie of the lissom—ahem!—limbs, of the patent mechanical
smile—mistress of the wink that convulses the gallery, and inventor of
the kick that enraptures the stalls. Petsie, who has won her way into
what Slump, of the _Morning Gush_, calls the ‘peculiar favor of the
British playgoer,’ by her exquisite and spontaneous rendering of the
ballad, ‘Buzzy, Buzzy, Busy Bee,’ sung nightly and at two _matinées_ per
week in _The Charity Girl_. Petsie, once the promised bride of a
thriving young greengrocer, now——”
“Now, Viscountess Rustleton,” said Hambridge Ost. “Don’t forget that,
dear fellow, pray. I can conceive, even while I condemn my cousin’s
ill-considered action in taking to his—shall I say bosom? yesterday
morning at the Registrar’s—a young lady of obvious gifts and obscure
parentage without letting his family into the secret—that he found her a
soothing change from Miss Twissing. No Greek, no athletics, no
strenuousness of any kind. An appearance distinctly pleasing, even off
the boards, a certain command of repartee of the ‘You’re another’ sort,
an agreeable friskiness varied by an inclination to lounge languidly—and
there you have Petsie, dear fellow. The weddin’ breakfast took place at
the Grill Room of the Savoy Hotel, the extra-sized table, number three,
at the east upper end against the glass partition havin’ been specially
engaged by the management of the West End Theater. That, not bein’ an
invited guest, I ascertained from the waiter who usually looks after me
when I lunch there. The _menu_ was distinctly a good ’un. _Hors
d’œuvres_ ... a bisque, follered by _turban de turbot_.... Birds with
bread-cream sauce, chipped potatoes, tomatoes stuffed, and a corn salad.
Chocolate _omelette soufflée_—ices in the shape of those corrugated musk
melons with pink insides, figs, and nectarines. Of course, a claret
figured—Château-Nitouche; but, bein’ a theatrical entertainment, the Boy
washed the whole thing down. The name of the liqueur I did not get hold
of.”
“_Parfait Amour_, perhaps?” said a feeble voice, with a faint chuckle.
“As I have said, I failed to ascertain,” returned Hambridge Ost, with a
dry little cough. “But as Lord Pomphrey, justly indignant with his heir
for throwing over Miss Twissing, with whose hand goes a colossal
fortune, has practically reduced his income to a mere”—he elevated his
eyebrows and blew a speck of cigar-ash from his coat-sleeve—“_that_—the
stirrup-cup that sped my cousin and his bride upon their wedding journey
was certainly not, shall I say, _Aqua d’Oro?_”
There was a faint chorus of applause. Hambridge, repressing all sign of
triumph, smoothed his preternaturally sleek head and uncrossed his
little legs preparatory to getting out of his chair. The circle of
listeners melted away; the man who had said “By Jingo!” straightened his
hat carefully, staring at the reflection of a distinctly good-looking
face in the mantel-glass.
“If she had known—if that girl Celine Twissing had known—the game that
bilious little rotter meant to play, he’d have had his liqueur before
his soup, and it would have been punch—not Milk Punch or Turtle Punch,
but the real thing, with trimmings.” He arranged a very neat mustache
with care. “Sorry she got her lip split,” he murmured; “hope it’s healed
all right.... Waiter, get me a dozen Sobranie cigarettes. It’s a pity, a
confounded pity, that the only man who is really able to appreciate that
grand girl Celine Twissing happens to be a younger son. But, anyhow, I
can have a shot at her, and I will.”
A DYSPEPTIC’S TRAGEDY
“He is a constant visitor,” observed Lady Millebrook.
“And a constant friend,” said Mrs. Tollebranch. A delicate flush mantled
on her otherwise ivory cheek, her great gray eyes, famed for their
far-away, saintly expression, shone through a gleaming veil of tears.
With the lithe, undulating movement so characteristic of her, she
crossed the velvety carpets to the window, and, lifting a corner of her
silken blind, peeped out over her window-boxes of jonquils as the
hall-door closed, and a well-dressed man with a slight stoop and a worn,
dyspeptic countenance went slowly down the doorsteps and got into his
cab. As though some subtle magnetic thrill had conveyed to him the
knowledge that fair eyes looked on his departure, he glanced up and
bowed, for one moment becoming a younger man, as a temporary glow
suffused his pallid features. Then the cab drove off, and Mrs.
Tollebranch, slipping her hand within the arm of Lady Millebrook, drew
her back to her cosy seat within the radius of the fire-glow, and rang
for tea.
“I did not have it up while poor Cadminster was here,” she explained.
“The sight of Sally Lunn is horrible to him, and he is positively
forbidden tea.”
“They say,” said Lady Millebrook, nibbling the Sally Lunn, “that he
lives upon gluten biscuits, lean boiled mutton, and white fish, washed
down by weak Medoc, mixed with hot water.”
“It is true,” returned her friend.
“And yet he dines out. I meet him comparatively often at other people’s
tables,” said Lady Millebrook. “And here—invariably.” Her eyebrows wore
the crumple of interrogation.
“The servants have orders to pass him over,” explained Mrs. Tollebranch,
sipping her tea. “If Jerks or Wilbraham were to offer him a made dish,
one, if not both of them, would be instantly dismissed.”
“My dear Clarice! Friendship is friendship.... But Jerks and
Wilbraham.... Such invaluable servants! You cannot mean what you say!”
“I do mean it,” nodded Mrs. Tollebranch. “Oh, Bettine!” she murmured,
clasping Lady Millebrook’s hand, “don’t look so surprised. If you only
knew how much that man has sacrificed for me!”
“If there is anything upon which I pride myself,” observed Lady
Millebrook, “it is my absolute lack of curiosity. And yet people are
always telling me their secrets—the most intimate, the most important!
‘Bettine,’ they say, ‘you are a Grave!’ ... So I am; it is quite true. A
thing once repeated in my hearing is buried for ever! We have not known
each other very long, it is true, but you must have discovered that I am
absolutely reliable! Talking of sacrifices, there are so many sorts. Now
perhaps in your gratitude for this service rendered you by Lord
Cadminster, you overrate. Perhaps it is really not so great as you
imagine! Perhaps...! But I am not curious in the least!”
“Would it surprise you to hear,” queried Mrs. Tollebranch, “that
Cadminster, two years ago, was _perfectly healthy!_ Not the cadaverous
dyspeptic he is now; not the semi-invalid, but a robust, healthy,
fresh-colored man of the out-of-doors, hardy English type?”
Lady Millebrook elevated her eyebrows. “Dear me,” she observed. “How
very odd! And now—you know his horrid _soubriquet_—‘The Boiled Owl.’ He
has earned it _since_, of course.”
“He had a splendid appetite once,” continued Mrs. Tollebranch, “an iron
constitution—a perfect digestion. He gave them all three to save a
woman’s honor. Oh! Bettine, can you guess who the woman was?”
“I never hazard guesses about my friends,” said the inexorable Lady
Millebrook. “But I feel, somehow, that she may have been you?”
“I was weak,” admitted Mrs. Tollebranch, clasping her friend’s hand with
agitated jeweled fingers. “But not wicked, Bettine. Promise me to
believe that!”
“I never promise,” said Bettine, “but no one could look at you and doubt
that ... whatever you might do, would be the outcome of irresistible
impulse, _not_ the result of deliberate—ahem! My dearest, you interest
me indescribably,” she cried, “and if I were the _least bit_ inclined to
curiosity, I am sure I should implore you to go on.”
“You shall hear the story of Cadminster’s Great Sacrifice, Bettine,”
said Mrs. Tollebranch, “and when you have heard, you will regard him——”
“As Bayard and all the other heroes of chivalry rolled into one, and
dressed by a Bond Street tailor,” interrupted Lady Millebrook, with a
glow of impatience in her fine dark eyes. “I think you mentioned two
years ago?” she added, settling a little stray lock of her friend’s
silken blonde hair, and sinking back among her cushions.
“Two years ago,” murmured Mrs. Tollebranch, “Willibrand became bitten
with the Golf Spider. He is as wild about the game to-day,” she added,
“as ever.”
“There is a proverb, ‘Once a golfer, always a golfer,’” put in Lady
Millebrook. “I believe that to play the game successfully requires a
vast amount of thought and judgment, which insensibly diverts a man’s
mind from less harmless topics, and that it entails an invigorating and
healthy action of the arms and legs, soothing to the nervous system, and
improving in its effect upon the temper. Were I asked by any married
woman of my acquaintance whether she should encourage her husband in his
devotion to golf, or dissuade him from it, I should advise her to
encourage the fad. The game, unlike others, can be played all the year
round, in sunshine, rain, or snow.”
“Willibrand used to play it in the snow,” put in Mrs. Tollebranch, “with
red balls. It was when we were spending March at Tobermuirie two years
ago, that——”
“That Lord Cadminster performed the chivalrous action which resulted for
him in the permanent loss of his digestion? Well?”
“Tobermuirie is the bleakest spot in North Britain,” began Mrs.
Tollebranch, returning the teacups to the tray, and touching the
electric bell in a manner which conveyed the intimation that she would
not be at home to any caller for the next quarter of an hour. “The
castle is one of the oldest inhabited residences in Europe, and, I
verily believe, the coldest. If you would like to find out for yourself
how easily a northern gale can penetrate walls ten feet thick in the
thinnest places, come to us in July.”
“I shall make a point of it!” said Lady Millebrook, cuddling down into
her warm, scented lair of cushions.
“Of course, the male division of the house-party was made up of golfing
enthusiasts,” went on Mrs. Tollebranch. “Major Wharfling, Sir Roger
Balcombe, Cadminster, who was as keen as Willibrand in those days, three
Guardsmen, and D’Arsy Pontoise.”
“By the way, what has become of Pontoise?” queried Lady Millebrook. “One
never meets him now as one used.”
“He scarcely ever leaves Paris, I believe,” returned Mrs. Tollebranch,
rather constrainedly. “Since his reconciliation with the Duc, his
great-uncle, and his marriage with Mademoiselle De Carapoix, who I have
heard is a very strict Catholic and humpbacked——”
“Besides being a great heiress.... Of course, he is kept well within
bounds. But what a fascinating creature Pontoise used to be. Bubbling
with life, effervescing with spirits. Sadly naughty, too, I fear, for
the names of at least half a dozen pretty married women used to be mixed
up with his in all sorts of scan.... My dearest, I beg your pardon!”
“I, at least, was not wicked—only weak!” said Clarice, with icy dignity.
“And as to there being five others——”
“My sweet, it was the vaguest hearsay. Nothing certain, except that
Pontoise spoke perfect English and was a veritable Apollo! I can imagine
the rigors of imprisonment in a Border castle in March to have been
ameliorated by the fact of his being a guest under its aged roof. Did he
play golf?”
Mrs. Tollebranch rose and took a dainty screen of crimson feathers from
the high mantelshelf.
“He tried to learn,” she explained, holding the screen so as to shield
her delicate complexion from the glowing heat of the log fire. “But the
game baffled him. To play it properly, I believe, the mind must be dead
to all other interests——”
“And Pontoise’s mind was unusually alive at that particular moment to
things outside the sphere of golf,” mused Lady Millebrook. “Golf is a
game for husbands, not for——” Her red lips closed on the unuttered word.
“Don’t say, ‘lovers’!” implored Clarice. “From beginning to end,
Bettine, it was nothing but a flirtation. I will own that I
was—attracted, almost fascinated. I had never met a human being whose
nature was of so many colors ... whose soul....” She broke off.
“I have been informed on good authority,” observed Lady Millebrook,
“that whenever Pontoise meant mischief he invariably talked about his
soul. But do go on!
“Of course, you played golf also; and as one of the great advantages
connected with the game is that you can choose your own partner, I may
presume that Pontoise made acquaintance with it under your auspices, and
that when he landed himself in the jaws of some terrific sand-bunker,
you were at hand to help him out.”
“As his hostess, it was rather incumbent upon me,” explained Mrs.
Tollebranch, “to make myself of use. Willibrand and Sir Roger Balcombe
termed him a duffer; Major Wharfling is nothing but a professional,
Cadminster and the Guardsmen were hard drivers all. And as Bluefern had
made me a golfing costume which was a perfect dream——”
“You completed the conquest of Pontoise. I quite understand!” said
Bettine. “In that frock, armed with a long spoon. I quite grasp it.”
“The golf course is very open at Tobermuirie,” went on Clarice, playing
with the feather fan.
“But there are hillocks, and bumps and boulders, and things behind which
Pontoise managed to get in a good many references to his soul. I grasp
_that_ also,” observed Lady Millebrook.
“He did mention his soul,” admitted Mrs. Tollebranch. “He said that it
had always been lonely, thirsting for the sympathy of a sister-spirit
until——”
“Until he met you!”
“He did say as much. And he explained how, in sheer desperation of ever
meeting the affinity, the flame for whom the spark of his being had been
originally kindled, a man may drift into all kinds of follies, even gain
the name of a libertine and a _roué_.”
“Quite true.”
“He has such wonderful eyes, like moss agates, and his profile is like
the Hermes of Praxiteles, or would be but for the waxed mustache and
crisp, golden beard. And there is a vibrating _timbre_ in his voice that
goes to the very heart. One could not but be sorry for him.”
“I am sure you were very sorry indeed. But Pontoise, as one knows of
him, would not long be content with that. Your heartfelt pity, and the
tip of your little finger to kiss....” Lady Millebrook’s sleepily dark
eyes smiled cynical amusement. “Those things are the _hors d’œuvres_ of
flirtation. Soup, fish, made-dishes, roast, and sweets invariably
succeed, with black coffee and a subsequent indigestion.”
Clarice avoided the glance of this feminine philosopher.
“Pontoise was always respectful,” she said, with a little note of
defiance in her voice. “He never forgot what was due to me save once,
when——”
“When it was borne in upon him too strongly what he owed to himself. And
then he kissed you, and you were furiously angry.”
“Furious!” nodded Clarice, brushing her round chin with the edge of the
crimson screen. “I vowed I would never speak to him again.”
“And how long did you keep that oath?” asked Bettine.
“We met at dinner in the evening, and of course one has to be civil. And
when I went to bed, and he handed me my candlestick,” said Mrs.
Tollebranch—“for gas is only laid as high as the first floor of the
castle, and the electric light has never been heard of—he slipped a note
into my hand. It implored my pardon, and declared that unless I would
meet him in the golf-house on the links next day before lunch, and
receive his profound apologies, he would terminate an existence which my
well-deserved scorn had rendered insupportable. He spoke of the—the——”
Clarice hesitated.
“The kiss,” put in Lady Millebrook, “and——”
“Said he had dared, in a moment of insanity, to desecrate the cheek of
the purest woman breathing with lips that ought to be branded for their
criminal presumption. He could never atone, he ended, but he could never
forget.”
“And asked you in the postscript to meet him in the golf-house. I quite
understand,” observed Lady Millebrook. “Of course, you didn’t go?”
Clarice’s lovely gray-blue eyes opened. Her sensitive lips quivered.
“Oh! but I am afraid....” She heaved a little regretful sigh over her
past folly. “That is where I was weak, Bettine. I went. Oh, don’t
laugh!”
“My child, this is hysteria,” explained Lady Millebrook, removing the
filmy handkerchief from her lovely eyes. “Well—you went. You popped your
head into the lion’s mouth—and somehow or other Cadminster played the
_deus ex machina_, and got it out for you again.”
“The golf-house was a queer shanty, with a tarred roof,” said Mrs.
Tollebranch retrospectively. “It held a bunker of coals, and stands for
clubs, and a fireplace, and a folding luncheon-table, and camp-stools,
and hampers. We used to lunch outside when it didn’t rain or snow, and
inside when it did. Well, when Willibrand and Sir Roger Balcombe, Major
Wharfling, the Guardsmen, and Cadminster were quite out of sight,
Pontoise and I somehow found ourselves back at the golf-house. I was
cold, and there was a fire there, and he looked so handsome and so
miserable as he stood bare-headed by the door, waiting for me to enter,
that——”
“The fly walked in. And then the spider——”
“He disappointed me, I will own,” said Clarice, with a little gulp.
“After all his penitent protestations! I have never trusted men with
agate-colored eyes since, and I never will. They have only one idea of
women, and that is—the worst. But when I ordered him to let go my hands
and get up from his knees, something in my face or voice seemed to tell
him that I was really, really, in earnest, and he obeyed me, and moved
suddenly away as I went to the door. The latch rattled as I lifted my
hand, the door opened; Cadminster stood there, white from head to foot,
for a sudden blizzard had swept down from the hills, and the links were
four inches deep in snow. Oh! I shall never forget how tactful he was!
‘You have got here before the rest of us!’ he said, quite in a cheery,
ordinary way. ‘Lucky for you! Tollebranch and the others are coming
after me as hard as they can pelt, and we shall have to put out the
“House Full” boards in a minute.’ And he began to rattle out the flaps
of the luncheon-table, and get out things from the hamper, and then he
looked at me, and said, as he lifted the lid from a great kettle of
Irish stew that had been simmering over the fire, ‘Suppose you were to
take the ladle and give this mess a bit of a stir, Mrs. Tollebranch! The
fire will burn your face, I’m afraid, but what woman wouldn’t sacrifice
her complexion in the cause of duty?’ Oh, Bettine, I could have blessed
Cadminster as I seized that iron ladle, for seeming so natural and at
ease. And then—almost before I had begun to stir the stew—while I was
bending over the pot, Willibrand and the other men came in. What
followed I can never forget!”
“Now we come to Cadminster’s great act of heroism?” interrogated Lady
Millebrook.
“Willibrand came in stamping the snow off,” went on Mrs. Tollebranch.
“So did all the other men. Willibrand sniffed the odor of the oniony
stew with rapture. All the other men sniffed too.”
“The tastes of the male animal are extraordinarily simple,” observed
Lady Millebrook, “in spite of the elaborate pretense carried on and kept
up by him, of being a gourmand and a _connoisseur_. The coarsest dishes
are those which appeal most irresistibly to his palate, and when I find
it necessary for any length of time to chain Millebrook to his home, I
order a succession of barbaric _plats_. By the time we have reached
tripe and onions, served as an _entrée_, there is not a more
domesticated husband breathing. But pray continue.”
“They all assembled round the stewpot,” went on Clarice, “and watched
with absorbed interest the operation of turning its steaming contents
into the dish that awaited them. Cadminster and Willibrand undertook
this duty. Well——”
“Well?”
“Just as they heaved up the steaming cauldron, Willibrand called out,
‘Hulloa, what the deuce is that?’ His hands were occupied—he could not
get at his eyeglass,” said Mrs. Tollebranch, “and so he peered and
exclaimed, while I leaned over his shoulder and glanced into the
stewpot. There, floating upon the surface of the muttony, oniony,
carroty, potatoey mass, was”—she shuddered—“the letter Pontoise had
given me with my candlestick on the preceding night!”
“My _dear_, how awful!” gasped Lady Millebrook.
“I had had it in my pocket,” explained Mrs. Tollebranch, “when I arrived
at the golf-house. When I began to stir the stew I found the handle of
the ladle too hot to be pleasant, and I pulled out my handkerchief to
wrap round it.”
“Whisking Pontoise’s effusion out with it! How reckless not to have
burned it!” cried Lady Millebrook.
“Imagine my feelings!” said Clarice. “There was the letter in the
stewpot. As the contents were turned by Cadminster into the dish, I lost
sight of the envelope beneath a greasy avalanche of fat mutton and
vegetables. I remembered that Pontoise had referred to that unlucky
kiss; I recalled Willibrand’s unfortunate tendency to outbursts of
jealous rage without reason; I shuddered at the thought of the amount of
reason that envelope contained. Self-control abandoned me—my brain spun
round, I thought all lost ... and then—I caught Cadminster’s eye. There
was encouragement in it—and hope. ‘Trust to me,’ it said, ‘I will save
you!’”
“And——?”
“We sat down to table, and that stew was distributed, in large portions,
to all those men. Cadminster assumed control of the ladle. He gravely
asked me whether I cared about stew, and I gasped out something—what I
don’t know, but I believe I said I didn’t. When the words were out, I
knew that I had lost my only chance—that Cadminster had intended to help
me to that fatal envelope. My fate hung in the balance as he filled
plate after plate.... Who would get my letter in his gravy, amongst his
vegetables? What would happen then? Would it be rendered illegible by
grease, or would it not? I scarcely breathed, the suspense was so
awful!” said Mrs. Tollebranch, clutching Lady Millebrook’s sleeve. “And
then—Relief came. I grasped that man’s heroic motive—I understood the
full nobility of his nature when——”
“When Cadminster helped himself to the letter! But, good heavens! you
don’t mean to tell me,” cried Lady Millebrook, “that he _ate_ it?”
“He did, he did!” cried Mrs. Tollebranch, throwing herself into her
friend’s sympathetic embrace. “Now you know why I call him a Bayard, and
look upon him as my truest, noblest friend. Now you know....”
“Why he is a cadaverous dyspeptic! Of course. That document must have
completely wrecked his constitution.”
“It has,” interrupted Clarice, with a little shower of tears.
“I shall never say again,” remarked Lady Millebrook, as she took an
affectionate leave of her dearest friend but four, “that Romance and
Chivalry have no existence in these modern times. To jump into a den
full of lions and things to get a lady’s bracelet or save a lady’s glove
may sound finer, though I am not sure. But to eat another man’s
love-letter, envelope and all, to save a woman’s reputation ... there is
the true ring of heroism about it, the glow that ennobles an ordinary,
commonplace action into something superb. And, unless I mistake,
Pontoise invariably penned his amatory effusions upon the very stiffest
of parchment wove.... Darling, Lord Cadminster must dine with us....
Next Thursday; I will not take No!” ended Lady Millebrook; “and he may
rely upon it that if either Jedbrook or Mills presume to offer him
anything rich or oleaginous, either or both of them will be dismissed
next day!”
RENOVATION
The hands of the Dresden clock upon the white travertine mantelshelf of
Lady Sidonia’s boudoir pointed to the small hours. There was a discreet
knock at the door. The maid, a pale, pretty young woman, who was
wielding the hair-brush, laid the weapon down, and answered the knock.
“Who is it, Pauline?” asked Pauline’s mistress, with her eyes upon the
mirror, which certainly framed a picture well worth looking at.
“Her Grace’s maid, my lady, asking whether you are too tired for a
chat?”
“Say that I shall be delighted, and give me the blue Japanese kimono
instead of this pink thing. Will my hair do? Because, if it needs no
more brushing, you can go to bed.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
The door opened; trailing silks swept over the carpet....
“I can’t kiss you through all this brown-gold silk,” said the Duchess’s
voice. “Stop, though! You shall have it on the top of your head.” And
the kiss descended, light as a puff of thistle-down. “I kiss Cull there
sometimes, when I want him to be in a good temper. He says it thrills
right down to the tips of his toes.... You’re smiling! I guess you think
the stock of thrills ought to be exhausted by this time—three years
since we stood up together on the deck of Cluny F. Farradaile’s anchored
airship, a posse of detectives from Blueberry Street guarding the ends
of the fore and aft cables, where they were anchored three hundred feet
below in the grounds of the N’York Æther Club, just to prevent any one
of the dozens of Society girls who’d tried their level best to catch
Cull and failed, from coming along with a bowie and cutting ’em.... You
remember the pars. in all the papers, headed, ‘A Marriage Made in
Heaven,’ I guess?”
“Of course, of course,” said the Duchess’s hostess and dearest friend.
“My invention,” said her Grace, “and mighty smart, I reckon. I’d always
said I’d be married in a real original way—and I was. The only drawback
to the affair was that she pitched—I mean the airship—and the Minister,
and Cull, and Poppa, and the inventor—that’s Cluny F. Farradaile—were
taken poorly before the close of the cer’mony. As for my sex, I’m proud
to say that Amurrican women can rise superior even to air-sickness when
Paris frocks are in question. But when they wound us down we were glad
enough to get back to dry land. We found a representative of the Customs
waiting for us, by the way; and if Poppa hadn’t gone to law about it,
and proved that we were really fixed on to the States by our cables,
we’d have had to plank down the duty on every jewel we’d got on. Say,
pet, I’m perishing for a smoke!”
The Duchess was supplied with cigarettes. Pauline placed upon a little
table the materials that “factorize,” as the Duchess would have said,
towards the composition of cognac and soda, and glided out.
“Now I call that a real pretty, meek-looking creature,” said her Grace,
blowing a little flight of smoke rings in the direction of the door. “If
she’s as clever as she’s nice, Siddie, you’ve got a treasure!”
“She _is_ a good maid,” responded Lady Sidonia. “For one thing, she
knows a great deal about the toilette, and on the subject of the
complexion she’s really quite an authority. She knows something of
massage, too—on the American system—for, though an English girl, she has
lived in your country——”
“Oh!” said the Duchess, with an accent of interest. “Has she, indeed?”
“She’s reasonable, too,” went on the maid’s mistress; “and not a limpet
in the way of sticking to one mode of doing the hair and refusing to
learn any other. Then she can _wave_——”
“It is an accomplishment,” said the Duchess thoughtfully. “Now, my woman
either frizzes you like a Fiji, or leaves you dank and straight like a
mermaid. Why does hair never wave naturally—out of a novel? It’s a
question for a Convention. And men—dear idiots!—are such believers in
the reality of ripples. There! I’ve been implored over and over again
for ‘just that little bit with the wave in it’ to keep in a
locket—hundreds and hundreds of times. I guess Cull’s wiser now; but
once you’ve seen your husband’s teeth in a tumbler, you’ve entered into
a Conjugal Reciprocity Convention: ‘Believe in me—not as much of me as
really belongs to me, but as much as you see—and I’ll return the
compliment!’ Yes, I guess I’ll take some S. and B. It’s an English
accomplishment, and I’ve mastered it thoroughly. We Amurricans rinse out
with Apollinaris or ice-water, which isn’t half so comforting,
especially in trouble.”
And the Duchess heaved a butterfly’s sigh, which scarcely stirred her
filmy laces, and smoothed her prettiest eyebrow with one exquisite
finger-tip.
“Trouble!” exclaimed her friend. “My dear, you’re the happiest of women.
Don’t try to persuade me that you’ve got a silent sorrow!”
“Not exactly a silent one, because I’m going to confide in you; but
still it is a sorrow.” The Duchess confided one hand to her dearest
friend’s consoling clasp, and wiped away a tear with a minute
handkerchief that would not have dried half a dozen. “Perhaps Amurrican
blood is warmer than English; but, anyhow, our family affections are
vurry much more strongly developed over in the States than yours are
here. And I had a letter from Momma by yesterday’s mail that would have
melted a heart of rock.” She dried a second tear. “If Momma lives till
the end of Creation,” she said, “she will never, never get over it. And
I don’t wonder!”
“Darling, if it would really do you any good to tell me——” breathed Lady
Sidonia.
“I tell all my friends,” said the Duchess with a sigh; “and they’re
invariably of one opinion—that Momma was cruelly victimized.”
“She is——”
“Call her forty, dear. It would be just cruel to say anything more.
People call me lovely and all those things,” said the Duchess candidly,
“and I allow they’re correct. Well, compared with what Momma was at my
age, I’m real ordinary.”
“Oh!”
“Frozen fact! And you can grasp the idea that when—in spite of every
effort—Momma began to lose her figure and her looks, she felt it!”
“Every woman must!”
“But the more she felt it, the more she seemed to expand.... Grief runs
to fat, I do believe,” said the Duchess. “Of course, Poppa’s allowance
to Momma being liber’l—even for a Corn King—she had unlimited funds at
her disposal. To begin with, she rented a medical specialist.”
“Who dieted her?”
“My dear, for a woman accustomed to French cookery, and with the
national predilection for cookies and candy, it must have been——”
“Torture!”
“One gluten biscuit and the eye of a mutton cutlet for dinner. Think of
it! Beef-juice and dry toast for breakfast, ditto for supper. And she
used to skip—a woman of that size, too—for hours! And her trainers came
every morning at five o’clock, and they’d make her just put on a sweater
and take her between them for a sharp trot round Central Park, just as
if she’d been a gentleman jockey sworn to ride at so many stone for a
Plate. And the number of stone Momma got off——”
“She _got_ them off?”
“I guess she got them off,” said the Duchess. “Poppa talked of having an
elegant tombstone set up in Central Park to commemorate the greater
portion of a wife buried there! then he gave up the notion. And then
Momma made handsome presents to her specialist and her trainers, and
contracted with the cleverest operator in N’York to make a face.”
“To make a face?” repeated Lady Sidonia.
“To make a face for Momma that matched her youthful figure,” said the
Duchess composedly. “My! the time that man took in creating a surface to
work on! She slept for a fortnight with her countenance covered with
slices of raw veal.”
“Horrible!” shuddered the listener.
“And the massaging and steaming that went on!”
“I can imagine!”
“The foundations being properly laid——” continued the Duchess, lighting
another cigarette.
Lady Sidonia went into a little uncontrollable shriek of laughter. “As
though ... she had been a house!... Ha, ha, ha!”
“My dear,” returned the Duchess, shaking her beautiful head, “the terms
employed in the contract were precisely those I have quoted.... The
specialist laid the foundations, and carried the contract out. Momma’s
appearance delighted everyone, except Poppa, who has old-fashioned
notions, and complained of feeling shy in the presence of a stranger.
Fortunately their Silver Wedding eventuated just then, and his
conscience—Poppa’s conscience is, for a corn speculator’s, wonderfully
sensitive—ceased to annoy him.”
“And your mother?”
“Momma wore her new face for six months with the greatest satisfaction,”
said the Duchess. “Of course, she had to lay up for repairs pretty
often, but the specialist was there to carry them out. Unluckily, he
contracted a severe chill in the N’York winter season and died. His wife
put his tools and enamels and things in his coffin. She said she knew
business would be brisk when he got up again, and she didn’t wish any
other speculator to chip in before him.” The Duchess sighed. “Then came
Momma’s great trouble.”
“There was no other operator to—take up the—the contract?” hinted Lady
Sidonia.
“There were dozens,” said the Duchess, “and Momma tried them all. My
dear, you may surmise what she looked like.”
“A heterogeneous mingling of styles.”
“It was impossible to conjecture,” said the Duchess confidentially, “to
what period the original structure belonged. By day Momma resorted to a
hat and voile.”
“Even in the house?”
“Even in the house. By night—well, I guess you’ve noticed that a human
work of art, illuminated by electric light, isn’t seen under the most
favorable conditions.”
“There is a pitiless accuracy!”
“An unmerciful candor about its revelations. After one unusually
brilliant reception, Momma retired from society and took to
spiritualism. She persevered until she had materialized that demised
face-specialist, and extracted some definite raps in the way of advice.”
“And what did he advise?”
“He suggested, through the medium, that Momma should apply to the
Milwaukee Mentalists.”
“A Society of Faith Healers?”
“‘Occult Operatists,’ they call themselves on the prospectuses. As for
the cult of the Society,” said the Duchess pensively, “one might call it
a mayonnaise of Freemasonry, Theosophy, Hypnotism, Humbug, and Hoodoo.
But the humbug, like salad oil in the mayonnaise, was the chief
ingredient.” The Duchess stopped to draw breath.
“And into this vortex Mrs. Van Wacken was drawn?” sighed Lady Sidonia.
“Sucked down and swallowed,” said the Duchess, who had been Miss Van
Wacken. “They undertook to make Momma right over again, brand new, by
prayer and faith and—a mentally electrified bath. For which treatment
Momma was to pay ten thousand down.”
“Pounds!” shrieked the horrified Lady Sidonia.
“Dollars,” corrected the Duchess.
“In advance?” cried the listener.
“In advance, after a demonstration had been given which was practically
to satisfy Momma that the Milwaukee Mentalists were square,” said the
Duchess. “My word! when I remember how they bluffed that poor darling—I
should want to laugh, if I didn’t cry.” She dried another tear.
“Do go on!” entreated her friend.
“The High Priestess of the Community was a woman,” went on the Duchess,
“just as cool and ca’am and cunning as they make ’em.”
“I guessed as much,” said Lady Sidonia.
“It takes a woman to know and work on another woman’s weak points,”
rejoined the Duchess. “The High Priestess pretended to be in
communication with a spirit. ‘The Mystikos,’ they called him, and he
resided, when he was at home, in a crystal ball; but bullion was the
real totem of the tribe. Well—but it’s getting late——”
“I shall not sleep a _wink_ until I have heard the _whole story_,” said
Lady Sidonia.
“And Cull and your husband are comparing notes about their wives in the
smoking-room,” said the Duchess.
“Well, the Theologa——”
“The—the—what?”
“The Theologa—that was the professional title of the High
Priestess—whose or’nary name was Mrs. Gideon J. Swale,” her Grace went
on, “talked a great deal to Momma, and made some passes over her, and
got the poor dear completely under her thumb. Momma wasn’t the only
victim, you must know. There were four other ladies, all wealthy, and
each one, like Momma, the leader of a fashionable society set——”
“And—no longer young?”
“And past their first bloom,” amended the Duchess. “And each of ’em had
agreed to plank down the same sum in cold dollars.”
“Fifty thousand in all,” said Lady Sidonia with a sigh. She could have
done so much with fifty thousand dollars, even though American money was
such beastly stuff. “Worth——”
“Worth riskin’ a term in a N’York State prison for—I guess so!” said the
Duchess. “Well, Momma and the other ladies signed on to the terms, and
went through a cer’mony of purification—which included learnin’ a kind
of catechism used in admittin’ a new member into the Occult Operatists’
Community—an’ several hymns. That was to make them worthy to receive the
Revelation from the Mystikos, I guess. At least, the Theologa——”
“Mrs. Gideon J. Swale?”
“The same. The Theologa said so. In a week or so—durin’ which period
they lived at the house of the Community—chiefly on nuts an’
spring-water——”
“For which entertainment they paid——” Lady Sidonia hinted.
“Delmonico rates!” said the Duchess. “Well, it was settled that the
Demonstration was to come off, with the Mystikos’ consent.”
“What sort of——”
“Demonstration? Cur’us,” said the Duchess, “and inter_est_ing. There was
a woman—a Mrs. Gower, English by birth, Amurrican naturalized—who was to
be the Subject. She was a widow—her husband having met his death in an
explosion at an oil-gas producin’ factory. Stoker to the gas-generator
he was, and his wife had brought him his dinner—fried steak in a tin
pail—when the hull kitboodle blew up. Husband was killed—wife was saved,
though so scarred and disfigured about the face as to be changed from a
pretty woman into a plain one.”
“And she—this scarred, disfigured woman—was to be made pretty again by
the Occult Operatists?” hazarded Lady Sidonia.
“Guessed it first time,” nodded the Duchess. “The cer’mony took place in
a temple belonging to the Community, all painted over red and yellow
triangles and things like T-squares. At the upper end was an altar,
raised on three steps, and on this was the ground glass ball in which
the Mystikos lived when he wasn’t somewhere else, and an electric light
was fixed over it, so that it just dazzled your eyes to look at. Below
the altar was a seat for the Theologa, and, you bet, Mrs. Gideon J.
Swale came out strong in the costume line. Momma was reminded of Titiens
in _Norma_, she said.”
“I want to hear about the Demonstration,” pleaded Lady Sidonia
plaintively.
“My! you’re in a hurry,” said the Duchess. “But it was to be brought off
in a bath—if you must know!”
“A _bath_?”
“A bath that was full of water and boiled herbs, and had been properly
incanted over by the Theologa,” explained the Duchess. “There were
incense-burners all round, and not far off a kind of tent of white
linen, all over red triangles and T’s. And the five candidates for
renovation—I mean Momma and the other ladies—sat on a form, in bloomers,
each with a little purse-bag containing bills for ten thousand dollars,
and her heart full of hope and joy.”
“_Oh!_ go on,” cried Lady Sidonia.
“The temple was circular, something like the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt
Lake City,” said the Duchess, “and the Occult Operatives—a round hundred
of ’em—occupied the forms, to assist with the prayers and hymn-singin’.
Of course, the proceedings began with a hymn sung in several different
keys. I surmise the effect was impressive.”
Lady Sidonia elevated her eyebrows.
“Momma said it was wailful, and made her feel as though live clams were
crawling up and down her back. But then the bloomers may account for
that,” said the Duchess, “and I guess the temple registers were out of
order. Then—the lights were suddenly turned out!”
“O-oh!” shivered Lady Sidonia.
“Except the electric stars over the Mystikos’ crystal ball,” went on the
Duchess, “so that all the light in the temple seemed to come from the
altar. Momma said that made her feel those crawling clams worse than
ever.”
“Could one see plainly what was going on?” asked Lady Sidonia.
“It was a religious kind of dimness,” said the Duchess, “but most
everything showed plainly. For instance, when the hideous woman who was
to be the Subject of the Demonstration came out of the linen tent in a
suit of bloomers like Momma’s and the others, she appeared to be plain
enough. Do you keep a cat, dear?” whispered the Duchess.
“Why? No!” said Lady Sidonia.
“I thought I heard a scratching at the door,” explained the Duchess,
with her mouth close to Lady Sidonia’s ear. “Don’t open it.... I’d
rather—— Where was I?”
“The Subject was in bloomers,” said Lady Sidonia.
“Oh, well! Momma and the other ladies were asked to look at her
earnestly, to fix her features in their minds, so that they couldn’t but
recognize her again if they saw her. She was a slight woman, Momma said,
about thirty-five, and but for her scarred face would have been pretty,
with her pale complexion, brown wavy hair, and large gray eyes with
black lashes.... She had one peculiarity about the left hand, which no
one who ever saw it could forget. What are you listening for?”
“_I_ hear something at the door,” faltered Lady Sidonia in a nervous
undertone.
“Fancy. You don’t keep a cat. Well, the Subject went up to the altar and
knelt, and the Theologa—Mrs. Gideon J. Swale—invoked the Mystikos in a
solemn kind of conjuration, and the crystal ball on the altar began to
hop up and down.”
“No!”
“Fact! Then it rose right off the altar and hung suspended in the air,
and the hymn broke out worse than ever, and the Theologa led the Subject
down the altar steps and put her into the bath.”
“Well?” gasped Lady Sidonia.
“The Theologa threw incense on the burners round the bath, and perfect
clouds rose up all round it, completely hiding the Subject,” explained
the Duchess.
“Then she——”
“She began to scream.”
“To scream?”
“As if she was in absolute agony; and Momma and the four other ladies
nearly fainted off their form, they were so perfectly terrified.”
“And—what happened?”
“There was a scream more piercing than any of the others.”
“Oh!”
“The clouds of incense became so thick that you couldn’t see your hand.”
“And——”
“The Occult Operatives sang more loudly and less in tune than ever, and
the crystal ball kept on jumping up and down. Then the clouds of smoke
cleared away, and the lights went up, and——” The Duchess paused
provokingly.
“Go on, go on!”
“And the Subject got out of the bath.... And she had been ugly and
scarred when she went in, but now she was young and pretty!”
“Impossible!”
“It was the same woman to all appearances, but changed—wonderfully
changed. The same pretty brown hair, the same eyes, gray, with long
curly black lashes, and the same strange malformation of one finger of
the left hand. But no cicatrices, none of the seams and marks that made
the other frightful.”
“The other!”
“Did I say the other?”
“Certainly!”
“Then I guess I let the cat out of the bag.”
“Ah, I begin to understand!”
“I thought you’d tumble.”
“There were two women—exactly alike!”
“No, goosey! One woman younger than the other, and looking exactly like
her, as _she_ looked before the injury to her face.”
“Sisters?”
“No. Mother and daughter.”
“And the change in the bath?”
“Managed with a false bottom and trap exit. The sort of trick one sees
exposed at the Egyptian Hall.”
“And the daughter took the mother’s place?”
“Under cover of the incense—and the singing. The tent held _two_, you
understand.”
“But Mrs. Van Wacken?”
“Momma and the other ladies—once the thing had been proved genuine—were
only too anxious to plank down their money and hop into the wonderful
bath. So they went up to the Theologa, and she blessed them and laid the
five money-bags on the altar, and then——”
“Then——”
“Then all the lights went out,” said the Duchess, “and there was a kind
of stampede, and Momma and the four other ladies found themselves alone
in the temple. The Theologa and the Subject and the hundred members of
the Community who’d sat round on the seats and helped with the hymns
were gone—and the dollar bags had vanished. The doors of the temple were
locked, and Momma and the four other victims had to stop there until the
morning. An express man heard their cries for help, broke in the door,
and took them to an hotel in his wagon. Dear, I’m going to toddle to
by-by!”
“It was an awful—awful swindle,” said Lady Sidonia, as she and the
Duchess kissed good-night.
“And the exposure!” The Duchess shrugged her shoulders. “Momma and the
other ladies wanted it hushed, but the police went into the matter.”
“Were the swindlers arrested?”
“The Theologa was caught at Amsterdam, and extradited. The Community got
off. Nobody could prove any of them had had any of the money. I guess,”
said the Duchess, yawning, “Mrs. Gideon J. Swale knows where it is. But
she’s in prison, now, dear. And I hope she likes it. As for the woman
and her daughter, whose likenesses to each other had been made use of by
Mrs. Gideon—they’re still at large. Good-night.”
“Do tell me,” pressed Lady Sidonia. “That peculiarity of one finger of
the left hand possessed by both mother and daughter—what was it?”
“It was,” said the Duchess, “a double nail.”
“_How_ odd!” said Lady Sidonia. “My maid has the same queer deformity,
and it is the only thing I don’t like about her.... She hates to have it
noticed.”
“I guess she does,” said the Duchess.
“Look at her hand to-morrow,” said Lady Sidonia. “It’s awfully queer.
Don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” said the Duchess. “But she won’t be here to-morrow!”
Lady Sidonia’s eyes opened to their widest extent. “Won’t—_be here_?”
“No. She is the girl who got out of the bath!”
“Good heavens!” cried Lady Sidonia. “How do you——Are you——”
“I had been shown her photograph by the police—recognized her the moment
I saw her,” said the Duchess. “I’m not mistaken any, you may be sure.
But you needn’t trouble about her. She’s gone!”
“Gone!”
“She was listening at the door, and heard the whole story. When _you_
spoke about the cat, she made tracks. She’s clear of this house by now,
you may bet your back teeth. Don’t worry about her,” said the Duchess.
“I’ll send my own maid to you in the morning. Good-night!”
THE BREAKING PLACE
_Being a letter from Miss Tossie Trilbina, of No. 000, Giddingham
Mansions, W., to the Editor of “The Keyhole,” an illustrated Weekly
Journal of Caterings for the Curious._
DEAR SIR,
Since reserve and reticence can be carried too far by a lady, I drop the
present line of explanation, the newspapers having took so kind a
interest in the differences between me and Lord Wretchingham. And if
poets ask what’s in a name, the experience of me and many another young
lady whose talent for the Stage, developed by application and
go-aheadness, not to say good luck—for that there is such a thing must
be plain to the stubbornest person—has made her friends from the
Orchestra—(you’d never guess how the Second Violin can queer you in an
accomp. if you hadn’t experienced it!)—to the highest row in the
Threepenny Gallery at The Druids, or the shilling one at The Troc.—would
answer, _more than people think for_!
My poor dear mother, who has been pretty nearly crazy about the affair,
in that shrinking from publicity which is natural to a lady, told the
young gentleman from _The Keyhole_, who dropped in on her at her little
place at Brixton, to fish and find out for himself why the
marriage-engagement between her daughter and his lordship should have
been broken off on the very verge of the altar.
Of course, I don’t assume his lordship’s proposal wasn’t a compliment to
a young lady in the Profession; but lordly roofs and music halls may
cover vice or shelter virtue, as one of the serio characters so
beautifully said in the autumn show at dear old Drury Lane, the name of
which has slipped me. And I don’t pretend that my deepest and holiest
feelings were not wrenched a bit by me having to say in two words, after
mutual vows and presents of the solemnest kind had been exchanged
between me and Lord Wretchingham: “All is over between you and me for
ever, Hildebrand; and if you possess the mind as well as the manners and
appearance of a gentleman, you will not force me to give you the
definite chuck.”
He went on awfully, grinding the heels of his boots into a brand-new
Wilton carpet, and telling me over and over that I had no heart and
never loved him, concerning which I prefer to keep myself to myself.
There are those that make as much noise when things go wrong with ’em as
a one-and-fourpenny sparking-plug, and there are others that keep
theirselves to theirselves and suffer in silence, of which I hope I am
one. Even supposing my ancestry did not toddle over with Edward the
Conkeror, which they may, for all I know.
It was on the very first night of the production of _The Pop-in-Taw
Girl_, by the Trust or Bust Theatrical Syndicate, at the Hiram P. Goff
Theatre, W., that Lord Wretchingham caught my eye. Musical Comedy is my
strongest weakness, for though a principal boy’s part, with heaps of
changes, and electro-calcium with chromatic glasses for every song and
dance touches the spot, pantomime is not so refined. Perhaps you may
recall the record hits I made in “Freddy’s Flannel Waistcoat Wilted in
the Wash,” and “Lay Your Head on My Shoulder, Dear.” Not that it’s my
habit to refer to my successes, but the street organs alone will rub it
in when you happen to be the idol of the hour.
He sat with his mouth wide open—of course, I refer to Lord
Wretchingham—all the time yours truly was on the stage, and I will say
no gentleman could have a more delicate regard for a young lady’s
feelings than his lordship did in sending a perfect haystack of the most
expensive hothouse flowers addressed to Miss Tossie Trilbina, with a
diamond and turquoise muff-chain twined round the moss handle of the
basket, and not a speck of address on the card for my poor dear mother
to return the jewelry to, her being over and above particular, I have
often thought, in discouraging attentions that only sprang from
gentlemen’s appreciation of the performance, and masked nothing the
smallest objections could be taken to.
She quite warmed to Lord Wretchingham, I will say, when him being
respectfully presented by the Syndicate, and me being recommended fresh
country air by the doctors when suffering from tonsils in the throat,
his lordship placed his motor-car at my disposal. With poor dear mother
invariably in the glass compartment behind, the tongue of scandal could
not possibly find a handle, and her astonishment when she discovered
that Hildebrand regarded me with a warmer feeling than that of mere
admiration gave her quite a turn.
We were formally engaged—me and Lord Wretchingham. We kept the thing so
dark I cannot think how the newspapers managed to get hold of it. But a
public favorite must pay the price of popularity in having her private
affairs discussed by the crowd. My poor dear mother felt it, but there!
what can you do? With interviewers calling same time as the milk, and
Press snap-shotters lurking behind the laurel bushes in the front
garden, is it to be wondered at that Hildebrand’s family were apprised
of our betrothal not only by pars., but by the publication of our
photographs, taken hand-in-hand on my poor dear mother’s doorstep, with
a vine climbing up behind us, Hildebrand’s motor car, an 18.26 h. p.
“Gadabout,” at the bottom of the doorsteps, with the French _chofore
parley-vousing_ away a good one to the three Japanese pugs, and poor
dear mother, looking a perfect lady, at her fancy-work, in the front
parlor window. How the negative was obtained, and how it found its way
into all the Illustrated Papers, and particularly how it got upon the
postcards, I don’t pretend to guess. It’s one of those regular mysteries
you come across in real life.
Hildebrand, or, possibly, as all is over, I should say Lord
Wretchingham’s family, went into perfect fits when the news of our
betrothal leaked out. The Earl of Blandish, his father, raged like a mad
bull; and the Countess, his mother, implored him on her knees to break
the engagement.
“Oh,” she said, with the tears in her eyes, “my own boy,” she said, “do
not, I beg of you,” she said—for, of course, I got it all out of
Hildebrand afterwards—“show yourself to be of so weak and unoriginal a
cast of mind as to follow the example of the countless other young men
of rank and property,” she said, “who have contracted unequal and
unhappy unions with young women on the boards,” she said—and like her
classy cheek! Upon which Lord Wretchingham calmly up and told her that
his word was his bond, and that I had got both; my poor dear mother
having insisted from the beginning that things should be set down in
black and white, which the spelling of irrevokable almost proved a
barrier the poor dear could not tackle, his education having been
neglected at Eton to that extent.
Me and my poor dear mother being—I don’t mind telling you on the
strict—prepared for a struggle with Wretchingham’s family, was more than
surprised when, after a Saturday to Monday of anxious expectancy, a note
on plain paper with a coronet stamped in white from Lady Blandish
informed us that her ladyship had made up her mind to call. And she kept
the appointment as punctual as clockwork, driving up in a taxi, and
perfectly plainly dressed; and when I made my entrance in the dearest
morning arrangement of Valenciennes lace and baby ribbon you ever saw, I
will say she met me like a lady should her son’s intended, and said that
Lord Blandish and her had come to the determination to make the best of
their son’s choice, and invited me down to stay at Blandish Towers, in
Huntshire, when the run of _The Pop-in-Taw Girl_ broke off for the
autumn holidays.
“Oh,” I said, “Lady Blandish,” I said, “of course, I shall be perfectly
delighted,” and let her know how unwilling I felt as a lady to make bad
blood between Lord Wretchingham and his family. “But, of course,” I
said, “my duty to the man who I have vowed to love and honor leaves me
no choice.”
“My dear Miss Tossie Trilbina,” she said, “your sentiments towards
Wretchingham do you the utmost credit,” she said, and I explained to her
that though the surname sounds foreign, there is nothing of the
Italiano-ice-creamo about yours truly.
“Oh!” she said, in that sweetly nasty way that the Upper Ten do seem to
have the knack of, “do not trouble to explain, my dear Miss Trilbina.
Lord Blandish and myself are quite prepared,” she said, “to accept the
inevitable,” she said, and kissed me, and smiled a great deal at my poor
dear mother, who was explaining to her ladyship that her family did not
regard an alliance with the aristocracy as anything but a match between
equals, and that my education had been of the most expensive and classy
kind you can imagine. And smiled herself into her taxi, and motored
away.
That was in the middle of the summer season, and I bespoke my costumes
for my visit to my new relations next day. Of course, I expected a
house-party of really hall-marky, classy swells, and meant to do the
honors and help Lady Blandish to entertain as was my duty bound. And my
shooting and golfing and angling costumes, and motoring get-up and
riding-habit, and tea-gowns and dinner-dresses and ball-confections,
were a fair old treat to see, and did Madame Battens credit.
Wretchingham drove me down in his 18.26 h.p. “Gadabout,” with my
dresser-maid in the glass case behind, and an omnibus motor from the
garage behind us with my dressing-baskets, and I thought of poor dear
mother at home, I don’t mind telling you, when the Towers rose up at the
end of an oak avenue longer than Regent Street, and Wretchingham’s two
sisters came running down the steps to hug their brother and be
presented to their new sister, and the white-headed family butler threw
a glass door open and Wretchingham led me in between six footmen,
bowing, three on each side.
What price poor little me when I heard there wasn’t any House-Party?
Cheap wasn’t the word, with all those costumes in my dress-baskets.
However, I faked myself up in a frock that I really felt was a credit to
a person of my rank and station, and swam down to what her ladyship
called a “quiet family dinner.”
The Earl of Blandish came in, leaning on his secretary’s arm, with a
gouty foot, and did the heavy father, calling me “my dear.” I sat on his
lordship’s right hand, and certainly he was most agreeable, telling me
the black oak carvings in the great hall were by Jacob Bean, and that
the walled garden with a separate division for every month in the year
and a bowling alley in the middle had been made by a lady ancestor of
his who lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was a friend of the
person who wrote Shakespeare.
“Oh!” I said, “I suppose,” I said, “in those days bowls were not
considered a low form of amusement. Though if ever my poor dear mother
and father did have to call words, it would be over his weakness for
bowls and skittles as a waste of time and leading to betting and drink.
And as for Shakespeare, I call it all very well for literary swells with
nothing else to do,” I said, “but what the Halls cater for is the
business gentleman who drops in with a pal to hear the popular favorite
in a ten-o’clock turn over a cigar and a small Scotch. And gardening
never was much in my line,” I said, “though when a child it was my
favorite amusement to grow mustard and cress on damp flannel. Hunting is
my passion,” I said, “and as Wretchingham has told me you keep a
first-class stable of hunters and hacks, besides carriage beasts, I hope
to show your lordship that I shan’t disgrace you,” I said, and asked him
when the next meet would be?
The Earl’s old eyebrows went up to the top of his aristocratic bald
forehead as he said not until October, and then only for cubbing, and
the two girls flushed up red, trying not to laugh, and wriggled in their
chairs, and Lady Blandish said in her nice nasty way that every day
brought innovations, and one might as well ride to hounds in August as
skate on artificial ice in May.
“And if you are fond of sport,” Lord Blandish said, “we could possibly
find you some fishing. Don’t you think so, my dear?” and he looked at
his wife.
“I have my salmoning costume with me,” I said, just to let them know,
“and a rod, and everything. And I suppose Wretchie won’t object,” I
said, giving the poor thing a smile, “to prompt me if I am fluffy in the
business.”
“Dear me!” said Lady Blandish, “how stupid of me not to have explained
before,” she said, “that this is a trouting County and not a salmon
County, and that such trout as there are run very small.” And the two
girls choked again in the most underbred way I ever.
I said I’d fall back on golf, having a killing get-up in my basket, but
there wasn’t a links within miles, Lady Blandish said, and how sorry she
was. All the hot-weather entertainment she had it in her power to offer
me in their quiet country home, she said, was an occasional flower-show,
or County cricket-match, or a garden-party, or a friendly dinner with
people who were not _too_ exacting. In September there would be the
birds, but then I would not be there. It was too unfortunate, she said.
Not that her saying so took me in much.
I thought the top of my head would have come off with yawning that
evening, I really did; and when I remembered that there were three weeks
more of it before me I could have screamed out loud. Me and Wretchingham
went for a spin in his T-cart next morning before lunch, and that drive
settled me in deciding to off it on the next chance.
“Tossie darling,” said the poor dear thing, “it has gratified my father
exceedingly to ascertain,” he said, “that you are fond of the country;
because a condition of the provision he is willing to make for us when
we are married,” he said—and he would have put his arm round my waist
only the trotter shied—“is that we reside at the Dower House,” he said,
“twenty miles from here, and lead a healthy life in accordance with his
views as regards what is appropriate for future land-owners who will one
day hold a solid stake in the County. Of course, you will leave the
Stage forever, my darling,” he said, “as a future Countess of Blandish
cannot figure upon the Lyric Boards,” he said, “without in some degree
compromising her reputation and bringing discredit upon the family of
which,” he said, “she has become a member. My father will allow us two
thousand a year at first,” he said, “which will enable us to keep a
couple of motor-cars and a hack or two, and with an occasional week-end
in Town, I have no doubt,” he said, “that our married life will be,” he
said, “one of ideal happiness for both of us. You observe,” he said,
pointing with his whip straight over the trotter’s ears, “that rather
low-pitched stone building of the Grange description down in that wooded
hollow there? The house is quite commodious,” he said. “You will
appreciate the exceptional garden; and as there is a good deal of arable
land comprised,” he said, “in the estate, I shall take up farming,” he
said, “with enthusiasm.”
“You may take up farming,” I said haughtily, “with enthusiasm, dear old
boy; but what I say is, you will not take it up with yours truly! Do you
suppose in cold blood that Tossie Trilbina is the sort of girl to sit
down in the middle of a ploughed field and lead a life of ideal
happiness with a farming husband in gaiters,” I said, tossing my head,
“telling me how the turnips are looking every evening at dinner, and
taking me up to Town for a week-end,” I said, “every now and then as a
treat? No, Hildebrand,” I said, “clearly understand, much as I regret to
say it, that I am not taking any; and unless the old gentleman can be
brought to see the reason,” I said, “of a flat in Mayfair, all is over
betwixt me and you, and I shall go back to my poor dear mother by
to-night’s express,” I said, “if the lacerated state of your feelings
does not permit,” I said, “of your taking the steering-wheel.”
Of course, the poor dear thing was dreadfully upset, and did his little
best to bring Lord Blandish to weaken on his spiteful old determination;
and Lady Blandish said heaps of nice-sounding nasty things, and the two
girls tried to be sympathetic and not to look as if they were really
ready to jump for joy. But the Earl remained relentless, and Lord
Wretchingham is free. I must now close. Hoping you will accept this
explanation in the spirit in which it is made,
I remain, dear Sir, yours respectfully,
TOSSIE TRILBINA.
A LANCASHIRE DAISY
One of the giant police-constables on duty outside the Cotton Hall,
Smutchester, upon the occasion of the Conference of the National Union
for the Emancipation of Women Workers, was seized with the spirit of
prophecy when he saw Sal o’ Peg’s borne in, gesticulating, declaiming,
carried head and shoulders above an insurging wave of beshawled and
rampant factory-girls.
“Theeaw goes th’ Stormy Pettrill, Tum!” he roared to a fellow guardian
of the public peace. “Neeaw us be sewer to ha’ trooble wi’ theeay——” He
did not add “tykes.”
“Thee mun be misteeawken, mon,” urged Tum, who had newly joined the
Smutchester City Division. “’Tis boh a lil’ feer-feaced gell aw cud
braak between ma finger an’ thoomb lig a staalk o’ celery.” The great
blue eyes of the “lil’ feer-feaced gell” had done execution, it was
plain, and the first speaker, who was a married man, snorted
contemptuously. Sal o’ Peg’s had completely earned the disturbing
nickname bestowed on her. The courts and alleys of the roaring black
city would vomit angry, white-gilled, heavy-shod men and women at one
shrill, summoning screech of hers. The police-constable upon whose
features she had more recently executed a clog war-dance was not yet
discharged from the Infirmary, though the seventeen years and fragile
proportions of his assailant had, for the twentieth time, softened “th’
Beawk” into letting Sal o’ Peg’s off with the option of a fortnight or a
fine, and the threat of being bound over to keep the peace next time, if
she insisted in being “so naughty.”
With these blushing honors thick upon her, Sal o’ Peg’s attended the
Conference, and became, before the close of the presidential address, an
ardent convert to the cause of Female Suffrage. During the debate she
climbed a pillar and addressed the meeting, and when, with immense
difficulty, dislodged from her post of vantage, she took the platform by
storm.
“Why, it’s a child!” chorused the delegates from the different branches
of the Union, whose ramifications extend over the civilized globe, as
the small, slim, light-haired young person in the inevitable shawl,
print gown, and clogs climbed over the brass platform-rail, and, folding
cotton-blouse-clad arms upon a flat, girlish bosom, stood motionless,
composed, even cheerful, in the full glare of the electric chandelier,
and under the full play of a battery of some two thousand feminine eyes.
“Do let the little darling speak,” begged the Honorary Secretary of the
Chairwoman, who, as a native of Smutchester, had her doubts. But Sal o’
Peg’s had not the faintest intention of waiting for permission.
“Ah’m not bit o’ good at long words, gells,” said Sal o’ Peg’s. “Mappen
ah’ll be better ondersteawd wi’oot ’em.”
The thunder of clogs in the body of the hall said “Yes!” She went on:
“Wimmin sheawd ha’ th’ Vote. ’Tis theear roight.” (Tremendous clogging,
mingled with shrieks of “Weel seayd, lass! Gie us th’ Vote!”) She
hitched her shawl about her with the factory-girl’s movement of the
shoulders, and went on. “Yo’ll noan fleg me wi’ yo’re din. Ah’m boh a
lil’ un, boh af ha’ got spunk. If you doubt thot——” A hundred strident
voices from the body of the hall sent back the refrain, “Ask a
pleeceman!” A roar of laughter shook the roof.
“Ought we to interfere?” whispered the Honorary Secretary.
“My dear, why should we?” said a London delegate, leaning forward to
answer. “The girl has got them in the hollow of her hand. A born leader
of women—a born leader. She voices in her untaught speech the heart-cry
of thousands of her dumb and helpless sisters. She——”
The born leader of women continued:
“Ah dunno whoy ah niver thout o’ it before, but ’tis a beawrfeaced
robbery neawt to gie us th’ Vote. Oor feythers has it, an’ sells it fur
braass.” (Screams, shrieks, and clogging.) “Oor heawsbands has it, an’
sells it fur braass.” (Tempestuous applause.) “Oor lads, theay has it,
an’ sells it fur braass. Whoy shouldna’ we ha’ it, an’ sell it for
braass tew?”
The enthusiasm with which this brilliant peroration was received nearly
wrecked the Cotton Hall. No more speeches were heard that night, though
several were delivered in dumb show, and Sal o’ Peg’s awakened upon the
morrow to find her utterances reported in the newspapers. To the sarcasm
of the leader-writer Sal o’ Peg’s was impervious. She “mun goo t’ Lunnon
neixt,” she said, “an’ leawt them tykes at the Hoose o’ Commeawns knaw a
bit” of her mind. She wasn’t afraid of Prime Ministers—not she. She
called at the branch office of the Union twice a day, imperatively
requesting to be forwarded as a delegate to the Metropolis. When her
services were declined with thanks, she harangued the populace from the
doorstep. When politely requested to move on, she broke a window with
one clog, and patted the office-boy violently upon the head with the
other. Then she burst into tears and retired, supported by a dozen or so
of sympathizing comrades of the factory.
“’Tis a beeawrnin’ sheame!” they said, as they fastened up their chosen
representative’s loosened flaxen coils with hairpins of the patent
explosive kind, contributed from their own solid braids. “But donnot
thee fret, Sal o’ Peg’s, us’ll ha’ nah dollygeat but thee, sitha lass!”
And they sent the hat round among themselves with right goodwill. They
were not quite sure what a “dollygeat” was, but thought it was something
that could walk into the House of Commons, defy a Minister to his nose,
dance a clog-dance in the gangway of the Upper House, and receive in
chests and bagsful all the good money that women had been defrauded of
since the masculine voter first plumped for a consideration; of that
they were “as sure as deeawth.”
So Sal o’ Peg’s gave notice at the factory that, being thenceforth
called to figure upon the arena of political life, she could not tend
frames any longer. She bought a black sailor straw hat with a portion of
the subscribed fund, and tied up the most cherished articles of her
wardrobe in a blue-spotted handkerchief bundle. She traveled express to
London, choosing a “smoking third,” as affording atmospherical and
social conditions less remote from her lifelong experience.... The
journey was purely uneventful: a young man of unrestrained amorous
proclivities receiving a black eye, and a young woman who sneered too
openly at the blue-spotted handkerchief bundle suffering the wreck of a
bandbox and sustaining a few scratches. The guard—alas! for the frailty
of man—being all upon the side of the blue eyes and flaxen coils of
hair....
I suppose the reader knows Pelham’s Inn, W. C., where are the
headquarters of the National Union for the Emancipation of Working
Women? There is no padding to the armchairs, cocoanut matting of a
severe and rasping character covers the Committee-room boards; the
Committee inkstand is of the zinc office description (the Committee are
not there to be comfortable—just the reverse). They are busy women of
small spare time and narrow spare means; but when they found Sal o’
Peg’s sitting on the doorstep, they found leisure to be kind. They
looked at the clogs with pity, unaware of the _pas seul_ they had
performed upon the countenance of a policeman still in bandages, and the
great blue eyes yearning out of the small pale face, and the ropes of
fair hair tumbling over the shabby shawl that enfolded the childish
figure of the little factory-girl who had traveled up to London for the
sake of the Cause, won them to practical expression of the sympathy they
felt.
“So different a type to the brawling, violent creature,” they said, “who
nearly caused a riot at the Smutchester Conference. Her one dream is to
see the House of Commons and speak a word in public for her toiling
sisters of the factories.” And those of them who wore glasses found them
dimmed with the dews of sympathetic emotion. It was such a touching
story, they said, of faith and enthusiasm and courage.
It is upon the Records of the Nation that the events I have to relate
took place in the Central Hall of the sacred fane of Westminster between
four and five o’clock in the afternoon, when twenty or thirty ladies,
well-known adherents of the Cause, appeared upon the scene and asked for
Suffrage. It was an act of presumption, almost of treason, bordering on
blasphemy. Still, the arguments that were not drowned were sound. They
were all householders, taxpayers, earners, and owners of independent
incomes one daring female said, and as the drunken husband of her
charwoman possessed a vote, she thought she had a right to have one
also. The Sergeant-at-Arms instantly directed a constable to quell her.
Another audacious creature asked for the Vote Qualified. She demanded
that the Suffrage should indeed be given to women, but only to those
women who should, by passing a viva voce examination on the duties of
citizenship, prove themselves fit to discharge them.... She was listened
to with some attention until she suggested that male voters should be
subjected to a similar weeding-out process; upon which a portly
inspector bore down upon her, clasped her in a blue embrace, and carried
her, protesting loudly, down the hall, amidst demonstrations of intense
excitement. Members cried, “Shame!” Members cried, “Serve her right!”
Passing peers put up eyeglasses and stayed to see the fun. Hustled women
shrieked, “Cowards!” Pushed women cried, “Let us alone!” Punched women
only said, “Owch!” ... It was freely translated “Wretch!” for the
occasion. The middle-aged and advanced in years met the same treatment
as the younger and more excitable.... All were unceremoniously expelled
by the stalwart beings in blue from the sacred precincts where such
inviolable order is habitually maintained, and where all the Proprieties
find their permanent home. Crushed headgear, scattered handbags, and
strange derelict fragments of feminine attire bestrewed the scene of the
one-sided fray; the crowds of sympathizers outside cried, “Boo!” and
waved white flags in defiance as a dozen arrests were made in a dozen
seconds.... And a young woman in a brown plaid shawl and brass-bound
clogs danced with shoutings upon the pavements of St. Stephen’s Porch,
and while her long, light coils of hair came down and her hairpins were
scattered to the winds of Westminster, she asked, in the Lancashire
dialect, for admittance to the Bar of the House; for justice for the
oppression and downtrodden; for the blood of Ministers, Peers, and
Members; and for the viscera of the officials who were their tools. She
told the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come out and bring the Treasury
with him; and when he did not come, she knocked off one policeman’s
helmet and smote another with one of her clogs—_toujours_ those
clogs!—upon the nose. Also she relieved a third of half a whisker, bit
another in the hand, kicked them all in the shins, and generally made
history as six police-constables bore her, shrieking at the full pitch
of excellent lungs, to Blunderbuss Row Police Station.
There were newspaper headlines next day—“Bedlam Let Loose!” “The
Shrieking Sisterhood!” “The Termagant Spirit!” “No Choice but to Use
Force!” The arrested demonstrators were paraded at the police-court; the
damaged policemen made an imposing show. Tears choked the utterance of
Mr. Vincent Squeers, presiding magistrate, as he asked: “Were thee,
indeed, women who had abraded the features, discolored the eyes, bruised
the shins, and plucked the whiskers from the gallant constables who
stood before him? Nay, but Mænads, Bacchantes, priestesses of savage
rites, unsexed Amazons—in two words, emancipated females!” He found a
melancholy relief in imposing a fine that had no precedent in cases of
brawling, or fourteen days’ imprisonment. He should not be surprised to
hear that these hunters after vulgar notoriety preferred to go to
Holloway, to luxuriate on prison fare, enjoy calm, undeserved repose on
straw beds, and clothe their unregenerate limbs with the drab garments
generously provided by the nation.
“But there is one among you,” cried Mr. Vincent Squeers, “who has been
innocently led away by your pernicious example, but whom the spirit of
Justice, that dwells in the bosom of every Englishman, that hovers,
genius-like, above this Bench to-day”—the chief clerk hastily produced a
white handkerchief, and the reporters shook freedom into the flow of
their Geyser pens—“will stretch forth a hand to protect and to aid. I
speak of this simple, artless child....” A police-constable felt his
nose, and another groped for his missing whisker as Sal o’ Peg’s stood
up in the dock. “Lured from her humble home, from her laborious
employment, from her upright-minded, honest associates, by these
immodest and unwomanly women, cast a stranger upon the streets of
London, this simple country blossom, wilting in the atmosphere tainted
by habitual vice and common crime, appeals to the chivalry of every
honest man who ever had a mother”—the chief clerk was carried from the
court in hysterics—“ay, to the pity of every woman who is not bereft of
that heavenly attribute.”
“Sheawt opp, thee donowt owd hosebird!” said Sal o’ Peg’s. “Dosta think
ah niver weur in a teawzle in th’ streeawts or a skirmidge wi’ th’
police afeore? Dustha see th’ pickle theam girt big cheawps is in? If
theay saay theay got theawee scratts an’ sogers fra’ eany wench but Sal
o’ Peg’s, they be leears aw! Sitha? An’ as to yon weumen an’ lasses, yo
ca’ baad neams, I ha’ nowt o’ truck wi’ they. I coom to Lunnon as a
dollygeat fra myseln. Sitha?”
“The child speaks only the roughest dialect of her native Lancashire,”
continued Mr. Vincent Squeers, “which, I own, I am unable to comprehend.
How could the hapless young creature understand the poisonous shibboleth
poured into her ears by the abandoned sisterhood whose leading evil
spirits are now before me? They have denied all knowledge of or
connection with her”—(as indeed they had)—“her who stands here—oh, shame
and utter disgrace!—in the dock of a police court as a result of their
vile and treacherous usage in dragging her from her home. She is
sufficiently punished by this outrage upon that innate modesty which is
as the bloom upon the peach, the—er, ah!—dew upon the daisy. Fined
three-and-sixpence, and I will order that the same be discharged out of
the Court poor-box. The Missionary will now take charge of the poor
young creature, who will, I trust—ah!—be returned to her sorrowing
family in the course of the next twenty-four hours. Good-day, my dear
child—good-day!”
A clog whizzed from the dock and hit the paneling behind the Bench. The
Magistrate looked another way, the constables coughed behind their large
white gloves as Sal o’ Peg’s, weeping bitterly, was led away by the
Court Missionary, a bearded person in rusty black, with a felt
pudding-basin hat and a soiled white necktie. Robbed of the glory of
battle, denied her meed of acknowledgment for doughty deeds achieved,
bereft of her Amazonian reputation, Sal o’ Peg’s felt that life was
“scarcelin’s weath livin’.” And the afternoon newspapers administered
the final blow. Every leader-writer shed tears of pure ink over the
child lured from home, the “daisy with the dew upon it” sprouted in a
dozen paragraphs. Only in Smutchester there was Homeric jest and
uproarious laughter. The girls of the cotton-mills, the policemen of the
Lower Town—these knew their Sal o’ Peg’s, and were loud in their
appreciation of the satiric humor of the London newspapers. The
Missionary did not see his precious charge into the train for
Smutchester; a clergyman’s daughter, who had come into accidentally
compromising relations with an American gentleman’s diamond evening
solitaire and “wad” of bank-notes, urgently required his ministrations.
So a burly police-constable, with one whisker and a sore place on the
denuded cheek, performed the charitable office. In the four-wheeler,
turning into the Euston Road, Sal o’ Peg’s said suddenly:
“Thoo wastna’ sheaved this mearnin’, lad?”
“I ’adn’t no time, for one thing,” said the police-constable sulkily;
“an’ for another, I ’ad to keep this whisker on as evidence that you’d
pulled out the other. And a lot o’ good evidence does when Old
Foxey”—this was the nickname bestowed upon Mr. Vincent Squeers by the
staff of the Court—“’as made up ‘is mind not to listen to it.” He rubbed
the remaining whisker thoughtfully.
“Eh, laad, laad!” cried Sal o’ Peg’s, bursting into tears and falling
upon the neck of the astonished police-constable, “but theaw knows ah
did it. Theaw said sa just neaw. Eh, laad, laad!”
“Are you a-crying?” asked the police-constable, over whose blue tunic
meandered the heavy twists of fair hair which invariably tumbled down
under stress of Sal o’ Peg’s emotion. “Are you a-crying because you’re
sorry you pulled out my whisker, or glad as that you did it? Which?”
Sal o’ Peg’s lifted radiant, tearful blue eyes to the burly
police-constable’s, which were little and piggish, but twinkling with
something more than mere reproof.
“Ah be gleawd,” said Sal o’ Peg’s simply.
“Very well,” said the police-constable, who was not only a man after
all, but a bachelor. He put a large blue arm round the slim little
figure of the war-goddess. “You’ve ’ad my whisker; _I’ll_ ’ave a kiss.”
“Teawk it, laad,” said Sal o’ Peg’s.
Hitherto, in her short but vivid experience of life, policemen had
occupied a different plane, moved in another sphere. They were beings to
dodge, defy, jeer at, and punch when you could get them down. Flowerpots
were kept on window-sills of upper floors expressly for dropping on
their helmets. She had danced upon the upturned face of one, given
another a swollen nose, distributed bites and shin-kicks impartially
among others. This Lunnon one had kissed her for pulling out his
whisker. She looked at him with melting eyes. The hitherto impregnable
bastion of her heart was taken—and by a member of the Force.
“When tha dost sheave, laad, send tha whisker to Ah by peawst. Th’
address be Sal o’ Peg’s, Briven’s Buildin’s, Clog Ceawrt, East Side,
Smutchester!”
“I won’t _send_ it, you pretty little bit o’ frock,” said the enamored
police-constable. “I’ll wait till my next leave an’——”
“Breng it _then_, laad,” sighed Sal o’ Peg’s.
A PITCHED BATTLE
The great Maestro sat at the piano, a small, square instrument. Upon it
were piles of music, a bottle of Rhine wine, half emptied, a cup of
black coffee, a plate of sliced garlic sausage, and a roll of black
bread, peppered outside with aniseed. A bottle of ink was balanced on
the music-desk, a blotted scroll of paper obscured the yellowed
keyboard. As the great composer worked at the score of his new opera, he
breakfasted, taking draughts from the bottle, bites of sausage and
bread, and sips of coffee at discretion. He was a quaint, ungainly
figure, with vivacious eyes, and his ill-fitting auburn wig had served
him, like the right lapel of his plaid dressing-gown, for a pen-wiper
for uncounted years.
The Maestro was not alone in the dusty studio to which so many people,
both of the great and little worlds, sought entrance in vain. An
olive-skinned youth, shabbily dressed in a gray paletot over a worn suit
of black—a young fellow of sixteen, with a square, shaggy black head and
a determined chin, the cleft in which was rapidly being hidden by an
arriving beard—leaned against a music-stand crammed with portly volumes,
his dark eyes anxiously fixed upon the old gentleman at the piano, who
dipped in the ink and wrote, and wrote, and dipped in the ink,
occasionally laying down the pen to strike a chord or two, in seeming
forgetfulness of his visitor.
Suddenly the Maestro’s face beamed with a cheerful smile.
“There, mon cher Gladiali!” He handed the newly-written sheet of music
to the boy, and spread his wrinkled fingers above the keys. “This is the
great aria-solo I spoke of. Sing that at sight—your training should make
such a task an easy one—and let us see what stuff you are made of.
_Allons!_” And he struck the opening chord.
Carlo Gladiali turned pale and then red. He crossed himself hastily,
grasped the sheet of paper, cast his eyes over it anxiously, and,
meeting with a smiling glance the glittering old eyes of the Maestro, he
inflated his deep chest and sang. A wonderful tenor voice poured from
his boyish throat; heart and soul shone in his eyes and thrilled in his
accents. Tears of delight dropped upon the piano-keys and upon the hands
of the composer, and when the last pure note soared on high and swelled
and sank, and the song ceased, the old musician cried: “Thou art a
treasure! Come, let me embrace thee!” and clasped the young singer to
his breast. “Once more, _mon fils_—once more!”
And as he seated himself at the piano, sweeping the plate of sausage
into the wastepaper-basket with a flourish of the large, snuff-stained
yellow silk handkerchief with which he wiped his eyes, the door, which
had been left ajar, was flung open, and a little dark-eyed, fair-haired
girl, who carried a Pierrot-doll, ran quickly into the room.
“Marraine brought me; she is panting up the stairs because she is so fat
and they are so steep. Oldest Papa——” she began; but the Maestro held up
his hand for silence as the song recommenced. More assurance was in
Carlo’s phrasing; the flexibility and brilliancy of his voice were no
longer marred by nervousness. As the solo reached its triumphant close,
the Maestro said, slapping the boy on the back and taking a gigantic
pinch of snuff:
“The Archangel Gabriel might have done better. Aha!” He turned,
chuckling, to the little girl, who stood on one leg in the middle of the
narrow room, pouting and dangling her Pierrot. “_La petite_ there is
jealous. Is it not so?”
“Oldest Papa, you make a very big mistake!” returned the little maiden,
pouting still more. “I am not jealous of anybody in the world—least of
all, a boy like that!” Her dark eyes rested contemptuously on the big,
shy, square-headed fellow in the gray paletot.
“A boy, she calls him!” chuckled the Maestro. “_Ma mignonne_, he is
sixteen—six years older than thyself! Hasten to grow up, become a great
_prima donna_, and he shall sing Romeo to thy Juliette—I predict it!”
“I had rather sing with my cat!” observed the little lady rudely.
Carlo flushed crimson; the Maestro chuckled; and a stout lady who had
followed her, panting, into the room, murmured, “_Oh! la méchante!_”
adding, as the Maestro rose to greet her: “But she grows more
incorrigible every day. This morning she pulled the feathers out of
Coco’s tail because he whistled out of tune.”
The elfin face of the small sinner dimpled into mischievous smiles.
“But that was not being as wicked as the Maestro, who got angry at
rehearsal, and hit the flute-player on the head with his _bâton_, so
that it raised a hump. You told me that yourself, and how the Maestro——”
“Quite true, _petite_; I did fetch him a rap, I promise you, and
afterwards I put bank-notes for a hundred francs on the lump for a
plaster. But come, now, sing to me, and we will give Signor Carlo here
something worth hearing. _Écoutez, mon cher!_”
“Very well, I will sing; but, first, Pierrot must be comfortably seated.
That little armchair is just what he likes!” And, as quick as thought,
the willful little lady tilted a pile of music out of the little
armchair upon the floor. Then she placed Pierrot very carefully in his
throne, and, bidding him be very good and listen, because his _bonne
petite Maman_ was going to sing him something pretty, she tripped to the
piano, and demurely requested the aged musician to accompany her in the
Rondo of “Sonnambula.”
Ah! what a miraculous voice proceeded from that small, willful throat!
Stirred to the depths by the extraordinary power and beauty of the
child’s delivery, Carlo Gladiali listened enthralled; and when the last
notes rippled from the pretty red lips of the now demure little
creature, the big boy, forgetting her rudeness and his own shyness,
started forward, and, sinking on one knee and seizing the small hand of
the child-singer, he kissed it impulsively, crying: “Ah, Signorina, you
were right, a thousand times! Compared with you, I sing like a cat!”
“Oh, no! I did not mean to say that!” the tiny lady was beginning
graciously, when the Maestro broke in:
“You both sing like cherubs and say civil things to one another. One day
you will sing like angels—and quarrel like devils! Please Heaven, you
will both make your _début_ under my _bâton_, and then, if I crack a
flute-player’s head, it will be for joy.”
* * * * *
Ten years had elapsed. Carlo Gladiali had risen to pre-eminence as a
public singer, had attained the prime of his powers and the apogee of
his fame. Courted, fêted, and adored, the celebrated tenor, sated with
success, laden with gifts, _blasé_ with admiration, retained a few
characteristics that might remind those who had known and loved him in
boyhood of the ingenuous, honest, simple Carlo of ten years ago.
Certainly Carlo’s jealousy of the _prima donna_ who should dare to usurp
a greater share of the public plaudits than he himself received was
childish in its unreasonableness, and Othello-like in its tragic
intensity.
At first, he would join in the compliments, and smile patronizingly as
he helped the successful _débutante_ to gather up the bouquets. Then his
admiration would cool; he would tolerate, endure, then sneer, and
finally grind his teeth. He would convey to the audience over one
shoulder that they were idiots to applaud, and wither the triumphant
_cantatrice_ with a look of infinite contempt over the other. He had
been known to feign sleep in the middle of a great soprano aria which,
against his wish, had been encored. He had—or it was malevolently
reputed so—bribed the hotel waiter to place a huge dish of macaroni,
dressed exquisitely and smoking hot, in the way of a voracious contralto
who within two hours was to essay for the first time the arduous rôle of
Brynhild. The macaroni had vanished, the contralto had failed to appear.
Numerous were the instances similar to these recorded of the tenor
Gladiali, and repeated in every corner of the opera-loving world.
But it was in London, where the great singer was “starring” during the
Covent Garden Season of 19—, that the haughty and intolerant Carlo was
to meet his match.
At rehearsal one morning, Rebelli, the famous basso, said to Gladiali,
with a twinkle: “A new ‘star’ has dawned on the operatic horizon. La
Betisi, the pretty little soprano with the fiend’s temper and the
seraph’s voice, has created a furore at Rome and Milan. She will ‘star’
over here in her successful rôles. I have it from the impresario
himself.”
“_Ebbene!_” Carlo shrugged his shoulders and smiled with superb
patronage. “We shall be very glad to welcome the little one.... Artists
should know how to value genius in others.”
“How well you always express things!” said Rebelli, grinning. “She is to
sing Isolina in ‘Belverde’ on the 10th. The Spanish _prima donna_ has
broken her contract. As Galantuomo, you will have an excellent
opportunity of judging of her talents,” he added, as he turned away,
“and scowling at the lady.”
But Carlo did not scowl at first. He was all engaging courtesy and
cordial welcome at the first rehearsal, when he was presented
ceremoniously to a tiny little lady with willful dark eyes, pouting
scarlet lips, and hair as golden as her own Neapolitan sunshine. She
vaguely reminded the tenor of somebody he had seen before.
“The Maestro is coming from Naples to conduct,” he heard Rebelli say.
“He vowed that La Betisi should make her _début_ under no _bâton_ save
his own. Her rôle will be Isolina in his ‘Belverde,’ in which, you know,
she created such a sensation at La Scala.”
“And you, Signor, are to sing the great part of Galantuomo in the
‘Belverde’?” said the Betisi demurely to Gladiali. “This time I will not
say, ‘_I had rather sing with my cat!_’”
Carlo started. Yes; there was no mistaking the willful mouth and the
flashing defiant eyes. The little girl who had sung so divinely in the
Maestro’s dusty room ten years ago was the new operatic “star.” But he
was not jealous of the Betisi as yet. He said the most exquisite
things—as only an Italian can say them—and bowed over her hand.
“The Signorina has fulfilled the glorious promise of her childhood and
the prophecy of the Maestro,” he said. “She who once sang like a cherub
now sings like an angel. I am dying to hear you!” he added.
“Ah!” cried the Betisi with a little trill of laughter, “if you are
dying now, what will you do afterwards?” The speech might have meant
much or nothing, and, though Carlo Gladiali winced a little, he made no
comment.
A few rehearsals later a cloud of snuff enveloped him, and he was
clasped in the arms of a brown great-coat of antique design. Add, above,
a gray woolen comforter and a traveling cap with ear-pieces, and, below,
a pair of green trousers, ending in cloth boots with patent-leather
toecaps, and you have the portrait of the Maestro in traveling costume.
“Heaven be praised, my dear Carlino, that I have lived to see this
day!... Have you renewed acquaintance with my little witch, my enchanted
bird, my drop of singing-water? Embrace, my children; your Maestro
wishes it!”
And Gladiali touched the cheek of Emilia Betisi with his lips. Her
sparkling eyes looked mockingly into his. Then the Maestro, who spoke
not a word of English, scrambled to the conductor’s chair, and commenced
to harangue the musicians who constituted the orchestra in a fluent
conglomeration of several other languages, and the rehearsals of
“Belverde” began.
The new soprano and the new opera made an instantaneous and unparalleled
“hit.” Carlo helped to pick up La Betisi’s bouquets, and made a pretty
speech to her at the final descent of the curtain. But his heart was not
in his eyes or on his lips.
Upon the second representation, he yawned in the middle of Isolina’s
great aria, and he openly sneered at the audience for encoring the song
three times. In the last Act, in the Garden Scene, which offered the
principal opportunity for the display of the new _prima donna’s_ art,
Carlo sucked jujubes, and openly wore one in his cheek while receiving,
as Galantuomo, from the maddened Isolina the most feverish protestations
of love. He noted something more than feigned frenzy in the flaming
black eyes of the Betisi at this juncture, and, somewhat unwisely,
permitted himself to smile. Next moment he received a deep scratch upon
the cheek, which tingled for a moment, then bled copiously, obliging the
tenor to sing the final Romanza with a handkerchief to his face.
“Convey to Signor Gladiali my profoundest apologies,” said the Betisi to
her dresser. “He will really think that he was singing a duet with a
cat! But the next performance goes better.” Her dark eyes gleamed, her
red lips smiled. She thirsted for the second representation.
So did Carlo. He had thought out a few little things calculated to drive
a _cantatrice_ to the pitch of desperation. For instance, at the second
encore of her great song, separated only by a duet from _his_ great song
in the First Act, he would fetch a chair and sit down. Aha!
But—whether his intention had leaked out through Rebelli, to whom in a
moment of champagne he had confided it, or whether the Betisi was in
league with demons, let it be decided—it was she who fetched, not a
chair, but a three-legged stool, and sat down on it in the middle of his
first encore. And so charming an air of patience did she assume, and so
genuine seemed her pity for the deluded public who had redemanded the
song, that Signor Carlo, who wore a strip of black Court plaster on one
cheek, nearly had an apoplexy. He meant to eat jujubes through _her_
great song, but the Betisi was prepared. She produced a box and offered
them to him, singing all the while more brilliantly than she had ever
sung before; and when the house rose at her in rapture and demanded an
encore, she tripped and fetched the three-legged stool and gave it, with
a triumphant curtsey, to the foaming Galantuomo. And the crowded house
roared with delight.
But the punishment of Carlo came in the Second Act. In the celebrated
Garden Scene, where slighted love drives Isolina into temporary madness,
she not only scratched her Galantuomo on the other cheek, but pulled his
wig off. And in the crowning scene, where Isolina reveals herself as the
daughter of the King, and summons the Court to witness the humiliation
of Galantuomo by beating on a gong which is suspended from a tree, came
the Betisi’s great opportunity. Running through the most difficult
passages of the arduous _scena_ with the greatest nonchalance, disposing
of octaves, double octaves, and ranging from _sol_ to _si_-flat in the
violin-clef with the utmost ease, she electrified and enthralled her
hearers; and, in the _gusto_ of singing, when the moment arrived for
striking on the gong previously referred to, she missed the instrument,
and struck the tenor violently upon the nose. The unfortunate organ
attained pantomimic dimensions within the few minutes that ensued
subsequently to the delivery of the blow and previous to the falling of
the curtain, and I have heard was favored by the gallery with a special
call.
“Alas, Signor Carlo, I know not how to express my regret!... I was
carried away...” faltered the Betisi, as with secret triumph and feigned
remorse she looked upon the tenor’s swollen nose.
Carlo gave her a passionate glance over it. As it had enlarged, so had
his heart and his understanding; he saw his enemy beautiful,
triumphant—a Queen of Song. He was conquered and her slave.
“Never mind my nose,” he said generously. “I am beaten, fairly beaten,
and with my own weapons. You are a clever woman, Signora, and a great
singer. Permit me to take your hand.”
“There,” she said, and gave it. “And you, Signor, are a magnificent
artist, though I have sometimes thought you a stupid man. What is it but
stupidity—_Dio!_” she cried, “to be jealous of a woman of whom one is
not even the lover or the husband?”
“Give me the right to be jealous,” said Carlo the tenor. “Make me one
and the other! Marry me, Emilia. I adore you!”
An atmosphere of snuff and mildew enveloped them, as the Maestro, the
date and design of whose evening dress-suit baffled the antiquarian and
enraptured the caricaturist, embraced both the tenor and the soprano in
rapid succession.
“Aha! _Mes enfants_, am I not a true prophet?” he cried. “_Hasten to
grow up_, I said to the little one ten years ago, _and Carlo there shall
one day sing Romeo to thy Juliet_.” He embraced them again. “You sing
like angels—you quarrel like devils! Heaven intended you for one
another. Be happy!” And the Maestro blessed the betrothed lovers with a
sprinkling of snuff.
THE TUG OF WAR
Men invariably termed her “a sweet woman.” Women called her other
things.
What was she like? Of middle height and “caressable,” with a rounded,
supple figure, exquisitely groomed and got up! Her golden hair would
have been merely brown, if left to Nature. It came nearly to her
eyebrows in the dearest little rings, and was coaxed into the loveliest
of coils and waves and undulations. Her eyes were lustrous hazel, her
eyelashes and eyebrows as nearly black as perfect taste allowed. Her
cheeks were of an ivory pallor, sometimes relieved with a faint
sea-shell bloom. Her features were beautifully cut, inclining to the
aquiline in outline. Her voice was low and tender, especially when she
was saying the sort of thing that puts a young fellow out of conceit
with the girl he is engaged to, and makes the married man wonder why he
threw himself away. Why he was such an infuriated ass, by George! as to
beg and pray Clara to marry him ten years ago, and buy a new revolver
when she said it was esteem she felt for him, not love. Why Fate should
ordain just at this particular juncture that he should encounter the one
woman, by jingo! the only woman in the world who had ever really
understood and sympathized with him! It was Mrs. Osborne’s vocation to
make men of all grades, ranks, and ages ask this question. She had
followed her chosen path in life with enthusiasm, let us say, collecting
scalps, with here and there a little shudder of pity, and here and there
a little smart of pain. Fascination, exercised almost involuntarily, was
to her, as to the cobra, the means of life. Not in a vulgar sense,
because the late Colonel Osborne had left his widow handsomely provided
for. But the excitement of the sport, the keen delight of capturing new
victims—bringing the quarry boldly down in the open, or setting
insidious snares, pitfalls, and traps for the silly prey to blunder
into—these joys the huntress knows who sharpens her arrows and weaves
her webs for Man.
I have said—or hinted—that other women did not love Mrs. Osborne.
Knowing, as they did, that the lovely widow frankly despised them, her
own sex responded by openly declaring war. They knew her strength, and
never attacked her save in bands. Yet, strange to say, the invincible
Mrs. Osborne was never so nearly worsted as in a single-handed combat to
which she was challenged by a mere neophyte—“a chit”—as, had she lived
in the eighteenth instead of the twentieth century, the fair widow would
have termed Polly Overshott.
Polly’s real name was Mariana, but, as everyone in the county said,
Polly seemed more appropriate. Sir Giles Overshott had no other child,
and sometimes seemed not to regret this limitation of his family circle.
Lady Overshott had been dead some five years when the story opens, and
Sir Giles was beginning to speak of himself as a widower, which to
experienced ears means much.
The estate of Overshott Foxbrush was a fine one, unencumbered, and
yielding a handsome rent-roll. It was understood that Polly would have
nearly everything. She had consented in the most daughterly manner to
become engaged to the eldest son of a county neighbor, a young gentleman
with whom she was very much in love, Costebald Ianson Smithgill,
commonly known as “Cis” Smithgill, his united initials forming the
caressing little name. He was six feet high, and had a bass voice with
treble inflections, which he was training for a parliamentary career. He
had, until the demise of an elder brother removed him from the service
of his country, held a lieutenancy in the Guards. As to his family, who
does not know that the Smithgills are a family of extreme antiquity,
descended from that British Princess and daughter of Vortigern who drank
the health of Hengist, proffering the Saxon General the mead-horn of
welcome when he first set his conquering foot on British soil? Who does
not know this, knows nothing. The mead-horn is said to be enclosed in
the masonry of the eldest portion of Hengs Hall, the family seat in the
country of Mixshire, where, of course, the scene of our story is laid.
And Polly and Cis had been engaged about two months when Mrs. Osborne
took The Sabines, and was called on by the county, because Osborne had
been the cousin of an Earl, and she herself came of a very good family.
You don’t want any name much better than that of Weng. And Mrs. Osborne
came of the Wengs of Hollowshire.
She took The Sabines for the sake of her health, which required country
air. It was an old-fashioned, square Jacobean house of red brick faced
with stone, and it boasted a yew walk, the yews whereof had been wrought
by some long-moldered-away tree-clipper into arboreal representatives of
the Rape of the Sabines. That avenue was one of the lions of the county,
and every fresh tenant of the place had to bind him or herself, under
fearful penalties, to keep the Sabine ladies and their abductors
properly clipped.
Mrs. Osborne was destitute of the faculty of reverence, Lady Smithgill
of Hengs said afterwards. Because early in June, when she drove over to
call—it would not become even a Smithgill to ignore a Weng of
Hollowshire—upon turning a curve in the avenue so as to command the
house, the lawn, and the celebrated Yew Tree Walk, the new tenant of The
Sabines, exquisitely attired in a Paris gown and carrying a marvelous
guipure sunshade, appeared to view; Sir Giles Overshott was with her,
and the lady and the baronet were laughing heartily.
“Mrs. Osborne _simply shrieked_,” Lady Smithgill said afterwards, in
confidence to a few dozen dear friends; “and Sir Giles was quite
purple—that unpleasant shade, don’t you know?
“It turned out that they were amusing themselves at the expense of The
Sabines. I looked at her, and I fancy I showed my surprise at her want
of taste.
“‘We think a great deal of them in the county,’ I said, ‘and Sir Giles
can tell you how severe a censure would be pronounced by persons of
taste upon the tenant who was so audacious as to deface or so careless
as to neglect them, or even, ignorantly, to make sport of them.’
“At that Sir Charles became a deeper shade, almost violet, and she
uncovered her eyes and smiled. I think somebody has told her she
resembled Bernhardt in her youth.
“‘Dear Lady Smithgill,’ she said, or rather cooed (and those cooing
voices are so irritating!), ‘depend on it, I shall make a point of
keeping them in the most _perfect_ condition. To be obliged to pay a
forfeit to my landlord would be a nuisance, but to be censured by
persons of taste residing in the county, that would be quite
insupportable.’ Then she rang for tea, and there were eight varieties of
little cakes, which must have been sent down from Buszard’s, and a
cut-glass liqueur bottle of rum upon the tray. ‘Do you take rum?’ she
had the audacity to ask me. I did not stoop to decline verbally, but
shook my head slightly, and she gave me another of _those smiles_ and
passed on the rum. Sir Charles brought it me, and I waved it away,
_speechless_, absolutely speechless, at the monstrosity of the idea.
“She overwhelmed me with apologies, of course.
“And both Sir Giles—who, I regret to see, is constantly there—and Sir
Costebald, who has _once_ called—consider her a sweet woman. But—think
me foreboding if you will—I _cannot_ feel that county Society has an
acquisition in Mrs. Osborne.”
“Papa goes to The Sabines rather often,” said Polly Overshott, when it
came to her turn to be the recipient of Lady Smithgill’s confidence. “He
does say that Mrs. Osborne is a sweet woman, and he is helping her to
choose some brougham horses. He says the pair she brought down are
totally unfit for country roads. And as for the rum, she offered it to
me. Colonel Osborne held a post in the Diplomatic Service at Berlin, and
Germans drink it in tea, and I rather like it, though a second cup gives
you a headache afterwards.”
“Mary!” screamed Miss Overshott’s mamma-in-law elect, who had effected
this compromise between Polly and Mariana.
“As regards The Sabines,” Polly went on, “we have bowed down before them
for years and years, and we shall go on doing it, but they are absurd
all the same. So are our lead groups and garden temples at
Overshott—awfully absurd——”
“I suppose you include our Saxon buttress and Roman pavement at Hengs in
the catalogue of absurdities,” said Lady Smithgill icily. “Fortunately,
Sir Costebald is not a widower, or they might stand in some danger of
being swept away. At the present moment, let me tell you, Mary, your
lead figures and garden temples are far from secure. That woman leads
your father by the nose—twines him round her little finger. Cis tells
me——”
“What does Cis know about it?” said Polly, flushing to the temples.
“Cis is a man of the world,” said Lady Smithgill. “But at the same time
he is a dutiful son. He tells everything to his mother. It seems—Cis
personally vouches for the truth of this—that Sir Giles is constantly at
The Sabines—in fact, every day.... He is dressed for conquest, it would
appear.”
“Cis or Papa?” asked Polly, with feigned innocence.
“Sir Giles wears coats and neckties that would be condemned as showy if
worn by a bridegroom,” said Lady Smithgill rapidly. “He is perfumed with
expensive extracts, and his boots must be torture, Cis says, knowing all
one does know of the Overshott tendency to gout. He never removes his
eyes from Mrs. Osborne, laughs to idiocy at everything she says, and
simply _lives_ in the corner of the sofa next her. He monopolizes the
conversation. Nobody else can get in a word, Cis tells me.”
“Since when did Cis begin to be jealous?” said Polly under her breath.
“I did not quite catch your remark,” returned Lady Smithgill. “By the
way, Mary, I hope you will wear those pearls as often as you can. They
require air, sunshine, and exercise.... I contracted my chronic
rheumatic tendency thirty years ago through sitting in the garden with
them on. For days together Sir Costebald’s mother used to _skip_ in them
upon the terrace, but I never went as far as that.”
“The pearls—what pearls?” asked Polly vaguely.
“Dear Mary, when a _fiancé_ makes a gift of such beauty—to say nothing
of its value—and the strings were originally purchased for two thousand
pounds—it is customary for the recipient to exhibit a _little_
appreciation,” Lady Smithgill returned.
“Appreciation!”
“Of course you thanked Cis, my dear. I never doubted that. But there, we
will say no more....”
Polly’s blue eyes flashed. She rose up; she had ridden over to the Hall
alone, and her slight upright figure looked its best in a habit.
“I should like to say a little more.” She put up her hand and unpinned
her hat from her close braids of yellow-gold, and tossed the headgear
into a neighboring chair. “Dear Lady Smithgill, Cis has not given me any
pearls. Perhaps he has sent them to Bond Street to be cleaned——”
“Cleaned! They are in perfect condition.”
“Or—or perhaps he has given them to some one else. I have seen very
little of Cis lately,” Polly ended. “But Papa tells me that he is a good
deal at The Sabines. Papa seemed to find him as much in the way as ...
as Cis found Papa. And—her new kitchenmaid is the sister of our
laundrywoman, and a report reached me that she had lately been wearing
some magnificent pearls.... I thought nothing of it at the time, but
now....”
There was a snorting gasp from Lady Smithgill. All had been made clear.
Her double chin trembled, and her eyes went wild.
“Mary!” she cried.... “I have been blind! My boy—my infatuated boy! That
woman has a positively fiendish power over men.... She will
enslave—ensnare Cis as she has done your father and dozens of others.
Oh! my dear, there are stories.... She is relentless. The Sowersea’s
second son, De la Zouch Sowersea, is now driving a cab in Melbourne, and
the Countess attributes everything to her. At Berlin—where her husband
had a diplomatic appointment, and she learned to offer refined
English-women rum in their tea—there were worse scandals—agitations,
duels! Now my son is in peril. Save him, Mary! Do something before it is
too late!”
“I can hardly drop in at The Sabines—say I have called for my property,
and take Cis and Papa away,” said Polly, her short upper lip quivering
with pain and anger. “But I will think over what is best to be done. In
the meantime do not worry Cis. Leave him to go his way. We need not be
too nervous. He and Papa will keep an eye upon each other,” she ended.
“You know more of this than you have told me,” poor Lady Smithgill
gasped. “There are scandals in the air—people are talking—about my boy
and that woman! Why did she ever come here?” the unhappy lady murmured.
“I said from the first that she would be no acquisition to the county!”
Polly’s cob, Kiss-me-Quick, came round, and Polly took leave. She had
warm young blood in her veins, and an imperious temper of her own, and
to be asked to “do something” to add a fresh access of caloric to the
obviously cooling temperature of one’s betrothed is not flattering. Yes,
she had suspected before; yes, she had known more than she had told the
proprietress of the agitated double chin and the agitated maternal
feelings. Sir Giles had betrayed Cis as unconsciously as he had betrayed
himself. “Really, Poll, I think you ought to keep the young man better
to heel,” he had said. “He means no harm, but Mrs. Osborne is a
dangerously fascinating woman, and a woman of that type possesses
advantages over a girl. And, of course, I don’t suggest anything in the
nature of disloyalty to yourself—Cis is the soul of honor and all that.
But to see an engaged young fellow sitting on footstools, and lying on
the grass at the feet of a pretty woman—who doesn’t happen to be the
_right one_—turning up his eyes at her like a dying duck in a
thunderstorm—by George!—irritates me. He is always in Mrs. Osborne’s
pocket, and one never can get a word with her alone—I mean, nobody is
allowed to usurp her attention for an instant. And here is the key to
the Crackle-Room, since you are asking for it.”
And Sir Giles handed his daughter the key in question, a slim, rusty
implement belonging to the showroom of Overshott, an octagonal boudoir,
periodically dusted and swept by the housekeeper’s reverent hands, but
otherwise untouched, since Lady Barbara Overshott, the friend and
correspondent of Pope and Addison, was found by her distracted husband
sitting stone dead at her spinet before the newly-copied score of the
“Ode on Saint Cecilia’s Day,” which had been sent her with the united
compliments of the author and the composer. The furniture of the boudoir
was of the reign of William and Mary, the walls panelled with pink
lacquer beaded with ormolu, the shelves, brackets and cabinets laden
with priceless specimens of crackle ware—the joy of the connoisseur and
the envy of the collector.
“Thank you,” said Polly, taking the key. “I was anxious to see for
myself how many of Lady Bab’s vases and bowls are left to us.” She
looked very tall and very fair, and rather terrifying as she confronted
Sir Giles. They were in the hall of Overshott, the doors of which stood
wide open to the faint September breeze and the hot September sunshine,
and Sir Giles, who was going to luncheon at The Sabines, was putting on
a thin dust-coat in preparation for the drive. He jumped at the
reference to the crackle.
“I suppose Mrs. Brownlow has told you that I have removed a piece or
two,” he said, bungling with the sleeves of his dust-coat, for lack of
the daughterly hitch at the back of the collar which would have induced
the refractory garment to go on.
“Mrs. Brownlow has told me that a baker’s dozen of bowls and vases and
plaques and teapots—the cream of the collection, in fact,” said Polly,
“are adorning Mrs. Osborne’s drawing-room.”
“Confound it!” said Sir Giles, as he struggled with his garment. “The
crockery isn’t entailed; and if I desire to give a teapot to a friend I
suppose I can do as I like with my own! And—I can’t keep the cart
waiting. Fanchon won’t stand.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Polly, becoming cool as Sir Giles grew warm.
“Only—if you are going on giving teapots to friends, and there is a
hamper of china at this moment under the seat of the cart—I think it
would be advisable to change the name of the Crackle-Room. One might
call it the ‘Plundered Apartment,’ or something equally appropriate.”
“Call it what you choose, my dear.” Sir Giles was now recovering from
the shock of the unexpected onslaught. “I have said the crackle is no
more entailed than Overton Foxshott or the Lowndes Square house—or
anything else that at present I may call my own. If I were a younger
man, I might plunder my mother and disappoint my promised wife for the
pleasure of making a considerable present of jewelry to a woman ten
years my senior. As it is——”
Sir Giles did not finish the speech, but strode angrily out and got into
the cart, and gave Polly a short, gruff “Good-bye,” as he drove away,
leaving that puzzled young woman on the doorsteps.
“‘Plunder my mother and disappoint my promised wife.... Present of
jewelry ... a woman ten years his senior.’... Can Cis have been giving
jewels to Mrs. Osborne?” Polly wondered. The course of her love affair
had run so smoothly that she was at a loss to account for the pain at
her heart and the fever in her veins. Sir Giles’s complaint she
diagnosed correctly. He was jealous ... jealous of Cis! He was angry
with Polly. He had reminded her that he could do as he liked with his
own, that the county might call her an heiress, but the county had no
certain grounds for the assertion. Jealous and angry, the dear, cheery
Dad. Because Cis chose to loll upon the grass at the skirts of a woman
who was his senior by many more years than ten. Polly ordered round
Kiss-me-Quick, and rode over to Hengs Hall, pondering these things in
her mind. Much had been revealed to her, but it was for Lady Smithgill
to lift the last corner of the veil and disclose to Cis’s future wife
the true meaning of Sir Giles’s reference to jewels.
“So Cis gave her the pearls, and Dad has given her the crackle to
recover lost ground. Mrs. Osborne must be a clever woman,” Polly
reflected, as she rode slowly home through the sunset lanes on
Kiss-me-Quick.
“How was it going to end, all this?
“If Dad married Mrs. Osborne, it will be extremely unpleasant to possess
a stepmother who has been made love to by one’s husband. And should Mrs.
Osborne succeed in marrying Cis——” Polly tightened the reins
involuntarily, and Kiss-me-Quick quickened her paces. “Let her, if she
wants him. No; let him if he wants her. But first—oh, first—there will
be a Tug of War! I will not endure to be routed on my own ground by this
designing charlataness,” thought Polly.
In London it might have happened—almost without remark. But here—here in
the open—under familiar pitying, curious eyes.... Never, never, never!
And with each repetition of the word Kiss-me-Quick danced at a cut of
the whip. For Polly was humane, yet human.
The double report of a gun in one of the Heng coppices gave
Kiss-me-Quick an excuse for more dancing, and presently, as Polly
looked, shading her blue eyes with her half-gauntleted right hand, Cis
and a keeper came plainly into view. She pulled up Kiss-me-Quick and
waited, as the young man, leaving his gun with the keeper, crossed the
hot stubbles dangling a brace of birds.
“Why, Polly dear!” He tried to look natural and at ease as he lifted his
leather cap from his crisp brown waves. “If you had told me you thought
of riding over to see the mother, I’d have called for you and brought
you over.”
“It was a sudden idea, Cis,” Polly said, as she gave him her gloved
hand.
“Can you tie these birds on the saddle—or shall I send them over?” asked
Cis, glad of an excuse that made it possible to fix his eyes below the
level of hers. “They’re clean shot,” he added.
“Fasten them on—there’s a strap in the saddle pocket—and I will leave
them at The Sabines as I pass!” said Polly cheerfully.
Cis’s jaw dropped: he turned pale under his sun tan. “Leave them at The
Sabines!” he repeated blankly.
“I thought,” said Polly, bending a cool, amused glance upon her lover’s
perturbed countenance, “that you meant them for Mamma. To be sure, she
is not Mamma yet, but it is a pretty compliment to treat her as though
she were already Papa’s wife—taking the pearls to show her before you
brought them to me! I call it _quite sweet_ of you!” Polly ended.
“I—I!” The young man’s face was an extraordinary study. “I am so glad
you’re pleased,” he stuttered.
“Dad is with her to-day,” went on Polly, stroking Kiss-me-Quick’s glossy
neck with her whip-lash. “He took her over a cargo of crackle china out
of Lady Bab’s room. China is a taste one begins to cultivate at her age,
dear thing, and I suppose they are having a nice, quiet, cosy afternoon,
arranging the pieces. She has her fads, Dad has his, and I am sure they
will get on excellently together. Dear me! how warm you are! Come to tea
to-morrow! Good-bye!”
And Polly rode quickly away. Sore as she was, angry and jealous as she
was, she laughed as the vision of Cis’s hot, astonished, indignant face
rose before her. She laughed again as she turned in at the bridle-gate
of The Sabines. But she was grave and earnest as she dismounted at the
hall-door and followed Ames, the butler, down the long, cool hall to the
drawing-room.
“Miss Overshott.”
The announcement made Sir Giles attempt to get up from the footstool on
which he was sitting, but he did not succeed at the first attempt,
thanks to his rheumatism, and his daughter’s eye lighted on him at once.
“Don’t move, Dad, dearest. Why should you? Oh! Mrs. Osborne!” Polly flew
to the fair widow, who advanced, cool, smiling, and exquisitely clad, to
greet her visitor. “Oh, Mrs. Osborne, I am so—so glad!” Polly seemed
choking with joyful tears as she caught the rounded waist of Melusine in
her strong young embrace, and vigorously kissed the exquisitely powdered
cheeks. “And I may call you Mamma—mayn’t I?”
“Mamma?” echoed Sir Giles, sitting puzzled on the footstool.
“Mamma?” re-echoed Mrs. Osborne in cooing accents of surprise.
“You see, Dad has told me all,” explained Polly, turning beaming,
childlike eyes of happiness upon the embarrassed pair. “Though Cis knew
before I did, and I hardly call that quite fair. But as he is to be your
son, dear Mrs. Osborne—as I am to be your daughter——Why, there is the
crackle arranged upon your cabinets already! How nice it looks! But it
will all be yours, presently, won’t it, Mamma?” Polly gave Mrs. Osborne
another kiss, and then fluttered over to Sir Giles, who sat petrified
upon the footstool, and gave him a couple. “You mustn’t be jealous,” she
said, “you foolish old Dad! And now, Mamma darling, won’t you give me
some tea?”
“Dear Mary, with pleasure!” assented Mrs. Osborne, who knew that her
hand had been forced, and yet could not help admiring the audacity of
the _coup_. As her graceful form undulated to the tea-table, she cast a
glance at Sir Giles, raising her beautifully tinted eyebrows almost to
her golden-brown curls. She gave him credit for being a party to the
plot, while he, poor astonished gentleman, was as innocent as a new-born
babe. In the passing out of a cup of tea she realized that a double game
was no longer possible, and that Polly Overshott had the stronger hand.
“Your father,” she said, as she gave Polly her tea, “has enlisted a
powerful advocate. All was not so settled as you seem to think, dear
Mary, but——” And she sighed, and extended her white hand to Sir Giles,
and helped him up from the footstool; and he was in the act of
gracefully kissing that fair hand as Cis, in riding-dress, pale,
agitated, and breathless from the gallop over, was ushered in.
“Cis!” cried Polly, realizing that the supreme moment of the Tug of War
was now or never. Her eyes were blue fires, her cheeks red ones, as she
moved swiftly and gracefully to her lover and led him forward. “Kiss
Mamma and shake hands with Dad,” she said, and added with a coquetry of
which Cis had never thought her capable: “and then, perhaps, you may
kiss me.” Bewildered, choking with the reproaches, the recriminations
with which he was bursting, and which it need hardly be explained were
intended for Mrs. Osborne’s private ear, the young man obeyed.
“I—I congratulate you both,” he said thickly. Mrs. Osborne had never
felt so little the niceties of a situation in her life. Nonplused,
angry, and perturbed, she looked every hour of her age, despite pink
curtains; and the powder only served to accentuate the suddenly revealed
hollows in her face. Polly, as I have explained, had never worn such an
air of coquetry, of brilliancy, of dare-devil, defiant mastery as she
now displayed. But her final blow was to be dealt—and she dealt it.
“Mamma darling,” she cooed, taking the vacated stool at Mrs. Osborne’s
feet—the stool contested for by both the discomfited wooers—“how cosy we
are here—all together! Won’t you please Dad—and me—and Cis—by bringing
out the pearls!”
“The—pearls!” Mrs. Osborne said. An electric shock went through her; she
turned stabbing eyes upon the speechless Cis. And Sir Giles, studying
her face, made up his mind that he would never marry that woman—not if
Polly did her level best to bring the match about.
While Polly prattled on.
“The pearls, of course. I told Cis I thought it sweet of him to bring
them to show you—as though I were really your daughter, don’t you know.
And if you will fasten them round my neck yourself, I shall think it
sweet of you. Where have you hidden them? Why, I believe you are wearing
them now—to keep them warm for me—under your lace cravat, you dear,
darling thing!”
The affectionate daughter-elect raised a guileless hand and twitched the
jewels into sight.
Mrs. Osborne, ashy pale, and with Medea-like eyes, unfastened the jewels
from her throat.
“Here they are, dear Mary. Take them—and may they bring you all the
happiness I wish you!” said Mrs. Osborne in cooing accents.
Polly could not restrain a little shudder, but she was grave.
“Now Cis and I will go,” she said, when the pearls were fastened round
her neck over the neat white collar. “I am sure you and Dad want to be
alone. Come, Cis dear.”
And she kissed Mrs. Osborne again, and bore Cis—not unwilling, strangely
fascinated by the new Polly so suddenly made manifest—away. They were
riding slowly home to dinner at Overshott Foxbrush, when the sound of
wheels rattling behind them, and Fanchon’s well-known trot, brought a
covert smile to Polly’s lips.
Mrs. Osborne had a headache, Sir Giles explained, and so he had decided
not to remain to dinner.
But father, daughter, and betrothed dined pleasantly at Overshott
Foxbrush. And when the dazzled Cis said good-night to the triumphant
Polly, the valediction was uttered unwillingly with as many repetitions
as there were pearls in the string Miss Overshott wore round her firm
white throat.
There was no gas laid on at Overshott. Bedroom candlesticks were an
unabolished institution. As Sir Giles gave his daughter hers, he spoke.
“You were a little premature in your conclusions, my girl, at The
Sabines to-day. I won’t ask why you played that little comedy, because I
know.... But you played it well ... and I don’t think Cis will kick over
the traces in that direction again. Nor do I think”—the Colonel cleared
his throat rather awkwardly—“that you are going to have Mrs. Osborne for
your second mother. She is too clever—and so are you! Good-night, my
dear!”
GAS!
Mrs. Gudrun’s season at the Sceptre Theatre was drawing to a finish, and
the funds of the Syndicate were in the same condition. Teddy
Candelish—Teddy of the cherubic smile and the golden mustache,
constantly described by the _Theatrical Piffer_ as the most ubiquitous
of acting-managers—sat in his sanctum before an American roll-top desk,
checking off applications for free seats and filing unpaid bills.
Gormleigh, the stage-director, balanced himself on the end of a
saddle-bag sofa, chewing an unlighted cigar; De Hanna, the
representative of the Syndicate, was going over the books at a
leather-covered table, his eyeglasses growing dim in the attempt to read
anything beyond deficit in those neatly kept columns. Mrs. Gudrun
occupied the easiest chair. Her feet, beautifully silk-stockinged and
wonderfully shod, occupied the next comfortable; her silken draperies
were everywhere, and a cigarette was between her finely cut lips. Her
feather boa hung from an electric-globe branch, and her flowery
diaphanous hat, bristling with diamond-headed pins, crowned the domelike
brow of a plaster bust of the Bard of Avon.
“Well,” said the manageress, making smoke-rings and looking at De Hanna,
“there’s no putting the bare fact to bed! We’ve not pulled off things as
we had a right to expect.... We’ve lost our little pot, and come to the
end of our resources, eh?”
“In plain terms,” said De Hanna, speaking through his nose, as he always
did when upon the subject of money, “the Syndicate has run you for all
the Syndicate is worth, and when we pay salaries on Saturday we shall
have”—he did some figuring with a lead pencil on the back of a
millionaire’s request for gratuitous stalls, and whistled
sadly—“something like four hundred and fifty left to carry us through
until the seventeenth.”
“We began with as nice a little nest-egg as any management could wish
for,” said Candelish, dropping a smoking vesta into the waste-paper
basket with fatalistic unconcern. “We thought _The Stone Age_ would pay.
I’d my doubts of a prehistoric drama in five acts and fourteen scenes
that couldn’t be produced under an outlay of four thousand pounds, but
we were overruled.” He veered the tail of his eye round at Mrs. Gudrun.
“You and the Duke were mad about that piece.”
“De Petoburgh saw great possibilities for me in it,” said Mrs. Gudrun,
throwing another cigarette-end at the fireplace and missing it. “That
scene where Kaja comes in dressed in woad for battle, and brains
What’s-his-name with her prehistoric stone ax because he doesn’t want to
fight her, always thrilled him. He said I would be greater than Siddons
in it, and, well—you remember the notices I got in the _Morning
Whooper_. Cluffer did me justice _then_, if he did turn nasty
afterward—the beast!”
“When I met Cluffer in the vestibule on the first night after the third
act,” said Teddy Candelish, “he said he was going home because the
tension of your acting was positively too great to bear. He preferred me
to describe the rest of the play to him, and jotted the chief points on
his cuff before he went. And I grant you the notice was a ripper, but it
didn’t seem to bring people in; and after playing to paper for three
weeks, we had to put up the fortnight’s notice and jam _The Kiss of
Clytie_ into rehearsal.”
“Dad vos a lofely—ach!—a lofely blay!” moaned Oscar Gormleigh, casting
up his little pig’s eyes to the highly ornamental ceiling of the
managerial sanctum. “Brigged from de Chairman in de pekinning, as I told
you, as all de goot blays are.”
“I wish the Germans had stuck to it, I’m sure,” said De Hanna. “It
always appeared to me too much over the heads of ordinary intelligent
playgoers to pay worth a little damn.”
“De dranscendental element——” Gormleigh was beginning, when Mrs. Gudrun
cut him short.
“I never cared for it very much myself; but Bob Bolsover was dead set
upon my giving the public my reading of _Clytie_—and, well, you must
recollect the effect I created in that studio scene. Mullekens came
round afterward, and brought his critic with him, and said that the best
French school of acting must now look to its laurels, and a lot more.
Mullekens is the proprietor of the _Daily Tomahawk_, and so, of course,
I thought we were in for a good thing. How could I imagine that the
creature of a critic would go home and make game of the whole show?
Doesn’t Mullekens pay him?”
“Ah, ja! Poot dat gritic’s vife is de sister of de Chairman agtress dat
blayed _Glytie_ in de orichinal Chairman broduction,” put in Gormleigh,
whose real surname was Gameltzch, as everybody does not know. “Did I not
varn you? It vas a gase of veels vidin veels.”
“Wheels or no wheels, _Clytie_ kissed us out of three thou. odd,” said
De Hanna, wearily scratching his ear with his “Geyser” pen, “and then we
cut our throats with——”
“With him,” put in Candelish, jerking a contemptuous thumb at the
hat-crowned effigy of the Bard of Avon.
“You were keen on my giving the great mass of playgoers a chance of
seeing my Juliet,” remarked Mrs. Gudrun casting a Parthian glance at the
worm that had turned.
“But they didn’t take the chance,” put in De Hanna, “and consequently—we
fizzle out.”
“Like a burst bladder ...” moaned Candelish, who saw before him a weary
waste of months unenlivened by paid occupation.
“Or a damp sguib,” put in Gormleigh.
“Let’s have a sputter before we expire,” said De Hanna, with a momentary
revival of energy. “Lots of manuscripts have been sent in.... Isn’t
there a little domestic drama of the purely popular sort, or a farce
imbecile enough to pay for production, to be found among ’em?”
“Dunno,” yawled Candelish, tilting his chair.
“Who is supposed to read the plays that are sent in?” asked De Hanna,
turning his large Oriental eyes toward. Mrs. Gudrun.
“I read some,” said the lady languidly, “and the dogs get the rest.”
She stretched, and an overpowering combination of fashionable perfumes,
shaken from her draperies, filled the apartment. The three men sneezed
simultaneously. Mrs. Gudrun rose with majesty, and going to the
mantel-glass, patted her transformation fringe into form, and smiled at
the perennially beautiful image that smiled and patted back. Suddenly
there was a whining and scratching outside the door.
“It’s Billy. Let him in, one of you,” ordered the manageress.
All three men obeyed, clashing their heads together smartly at the
portal. De Hanna, with watering eyes, opened the door, and a brindled
bull of surpassing ugliness trotted into the office, carrying a chewed
brown paper parcel decorated with futile red seals and trailing loops of
string. Lying down in the center of the carpet and carefully arranging
the parcel between his forepaws, Billy proceeded to worry it.
“Vot has de beast kott dere?” asked Gormleigh.
“Take it from him and see!” said Mrs. Gudrun carelessly. Gormleigh’s
violet nose became pale lavender as Billy, looking up from the work of
destruction, emitted a loud growl.
“He understonds everyding vot you say!” spluttered the stage-manager.
“Try him with German,” advised De Hanna.
“Or mit Yiddish,” retorted Gormleigh spitefully.
As De Hanna winced under the retort, Candelish, who had rummaged
unnoticed in a drawer for some moments, produced a biscuit. Billy,
watching out of the corner of his eye, pricked a ragged ear and whacked
the carpet with his muscular tail.
“Hee, boy, hee, Billy!” Candelish said seductively. Billy rose upon his
powerful bow-legs and hung out his tongue expectantly.
“Koot old Pillee!” uttered Gormleigh encouragingly. “Gleffer old poy!”
Billy vouchsafed the stage-manager not a glance; his bloodshot eyes were
glued upon the biscuit as he stood over the brown paper parcel. Then, as
Candelish, throwing an expression of eager voracity into his
countenance, made believe to eat the coveted delicacy himself, Billy
made a step forwards.... The end of the parcel projected from between
his hind-legs.... De Hanna softly stepped to the fireplace and seized
the tongs....
“Poo’ boy—poo’ ol’ Billy, then!” coaxed the acting-manager. He broke the
biscuit with one inviting snap, Billy forgot the parcel, and De Hanna
grabbed and got it. The next moment the bull, realizing his loss, pinned
the representative of the Syndicate by the leg.
“Dash—dash—dash! Take the dash brute off, somebody!” shrieked De Hanna.
There was a brief scene of confusion. Then, as Billy retired under a
corner table with a mouthful of ravished tweed, “He’s torn a piece out
of your trow-trows, old man,” Candelish remarked sympathetically.
“He might have torn all the veins out of my leg!” De Hanna gasped.
“Den,” said Gormleigh, chuckling, “you would haf been Kosher.”
But Mrs. Gudrun was deeply disappointed in Billy. “Letting you off for a
bit of cloth!” she said. “Why, the breed are famous for their bite. He
ought to have taken a piece of flesh clean out—I shall never believe in
that dog again!” She swept over to Gormleigh, who was busy disentangling
the lengths of chewed string and removing the tatters of brown paper
from Billy’s treasure-trove. It proved to be a green-covered, rather
bulky volume of typescript. A red-bordered label gummed on the cover
announced its title:
“MAGGS AT MARGATE
A SEASIDE FARCE,
IN THREE WHIFFS OF OZONE.”
“What funny fool has written this?” snorted the manageress.
“De name of de author.... Ach so! De name of de author is
Slump—Ferdinand Slump.”
“I know the chap, or of him. He’s a business man who owns a half share
in some chemical gasworks at Hackney, and does comic literature in off
hours. He writes the weekly theatrical page of _Tickles_,” said De
Hanna, “and——”
“_Dickles_ is a stupid halfpenny brint,” said Gormleigh, “dat sdeals all
its chokes from de Chairman babers.”
“Really? It struck me that there must be some existing reason,” said
Candelish, “for the wonderfully level flow of dullness the publication
manages to maintain——”
“Well, I suppose somebody is going to read this farce, since that is
what he calls it, by this Slump, since that is what he calls himself,”
said Mrs. Gudrun, removing her hat from Shakespeare and pinning it on.
“Certainly. De Hanna, as the Representative of the Syndicate——” began
Candelish eagerly.
“Pardon me. As acting-manager,” objected De Hanna, “you, Candelish, have
the prior claim.”
“Didn’t you say you were going out of town to-night, Gormleigh?”
interrupted Mrs. Gudrun, who had stuck in all her hatpins, and was now
putting on her gloves.
“Choost for a liddle plow,” admitted Gormleigh. “Dere is a cheab night
drain to Stinkton-on-Sea, sdarding from de Creat Northern at dwelve
dirty. I shall sleep in de gorridor gombardmend, oond breakfast at a
goffee and vinkle stall on de peach to-morrow morgen. By vich I haf poot
von night to pay for at de hotel.” His bearded lips parted in a
childlike smile of delight. “My vife goes not vid me,” he said, and
smiled again.
“Then take this!” said Mrs. Gudrun, turning Slump’s farce over. “Report
on it after the show on Monday.” And she rustled from the office on
billows of silk, attended by clouds of perfume, the despised Billy, and
the assiduous Candelish. The stage-manager swore. De Hanna, concealing
the solution in the continuity of his tweeds with a bicycle
trouser-clip, grinned.
“A little solid reading will steady you down, Gummy, and if my
experience of Slump goes for anything—you’ve got it there. But you’ll
report on Monday, as Her Nibs ordered. If you’ve not read it, look out
for squalls on Monday night!”
* * * * *
“Potstausend! Hof I read dot farce!” gasped Gormleigh on the night of
Monday. “Schwerlich! I hof read him tvice. Once from de beginning to de
end, oond akain from de end to de beginning.” His face assumed an
expression of anguish, and the veins on his bald forehead stood out as
the thick drops gathered there. “I cannot make heads or dails of him....
He is gram-jam with chokes, poot I cannot lof at dem; his situations are
sgreaming, poot I cannot sgream. De tears day komm instead.... Dat vork
is vonderful ... it should one day be broduced, poot in de kreat
National School Theatre for authors oond actors dot de gountry hos not
yet founded, to brove to bubils vot is not a farce——”
“Yet I shouldn’t be surprised if we did the piece here,” said Teddy
Candelish. “Slump, the author, has been talking over Her Nibs, and as he
would let _Maggs at Margate_ go for nothing down, find three hundred
pounds toward the production, and merely take a nominal sixty per cent.,
the chances are that you’ll be rehearsing before Tuesday. Hullo!” for
the stage-manager had reeled heavily against him.
“Ich bin unwohl.... It is dose undichested chokes of Slumps I haf hodd
on my gonstitution since I read dot farce. Oond now you komm mit
anodder,” Gormleigh groaned.
“Here’s Her Nibs with Slump,” said Candelish, with a grin; and Mrs.
Gudrun, in the Renaissance robes of Juliet, swept into the green room
with a little grinning, long-haired man in an imitation
astrachan-collared overcoat over crumpled evening dress—a little man who
gave a large hand, with mourning nails, familiarly to Candelish, and
nodded cavalierly when Gormleigh was introduced. Slump was to read his
play to the manageress and her staff after the performance that night.
Read his play Slump did, and Cimmerian gloom gathered upon the
countenances of his listeners as the first act dragged to a close. Slump
put the typescript down on the supper-table and looked round;
Gormleigh’s head had sunk upon his folded arms. Heavy snores testified
to the depth and genuineness of his slumbers. The countenances of De
Hanna and Candelish expressed the most profound dejection, while the
intellectual half of Mrs. Gudrun’s celebrated countenance had
temporarily vanished behind her upper lip.
“What do you say to that?” Slump asked, quite undismayed by these signs
of weariness on the part of his listeners. Mrs. Gudrun came back to
answer him.
“I say that it’s the longest funeral I’ve ever been at. Open another
bottle of the Boy, Teddy, and wake up, Gormleigh.”
“I hof not been asleep,” explained Gormleigh.
“I wish I had,” sighed De Hanna. “The fact is,” he continued, prompted
by a glance from Mrs. Gudrun, “that your play don’t do.”
Slump maintained, in the face of this discouragement, a smiling front.
“Won’t do, eh?”
“Won’t do for nuts,” said De Hanna firmly. “Nobody could possibly laugh
at it,” he continued.
“It is too tam tismal,” put in Gormleigh.
“But if I prove to you that people can laugh at it, what then?” queried
the undismayed Slump. He took from a fob pocket-book a newspaper cutting
and handed it across the supper-table to De Hanna. The cutting was
headed
“OZONE AT THE BALL,”
and ran thus:
“‘Will you take a little refreshment?’
“‘Thank you, I have just had a sniff of ozone.’
“Question and answer at the ball given last night in aid of the ——
Hospital, —— Square, at the Royal Rooms, Kensington. For, besides
champagne, ozone was laid on. After every dance Dr. Blank, head of the
Hospital, wheeled about the hall an appliance in which, by electrical
action, pure oxygen was converted into the invigorating element of
mountain or seaside air, greatly to the purifying and enlivening of the
atmosphere of the ballroom.”
“My firm supplies the gas used in the treatment of the patients at that
hospital,” said Slump. “It’s a turnover of ten thousand per annum. We’re
ready to lay it on at the theater, and give the playgoers genuine ozone
with their evening’s entertainment. As for the farce, I don’t count it
A1 quality, but I’ve made up my mind to be acted and laughed at, and I’m
going to bring chemistry in to help me. Think what an advertisement for
the hoardings: ‘Real Ozone Wafted Over the Footlights,’ ‘Sea Air in the
Stalls and Gallery!’”
“By thunder! it’s a whacking notion!” cried Candelish.
“Colossal!” exclaimed De Hanna, taking fire at last.
“Poot vill de beoble loff?” asked Gormleigh.
“Ah, yes! Will they stand your farce even with an ozone accompaniment?”
doubted Mrs. Gudrun.
“I’ve a machine downstairs in the stage-door office,” said Slump calmly.
“Will you try the first act over again—with gas?”
Gormleigh groaned, but the other three nodded acquiescence; and the men
in charge of the electrical oxygen-generator received instructions to
bring the machine upstairs.
* * * * *
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“Haw, haw, haw!”
“Ach, it is too funny for anydings!” This from Gormleigh, rocking in his
chair, and mopping his streaming eyes with a red silk handkerchief.
“Ach, ha, ha, ha!”
Mrs. Gudrun held up her jeweled hands for mercy. The laughing man who
worked the machine stopped pumping, the laughing author ceased to read,
Billy the bulldog, who had been grinning from ear to ear, wiped a wet
nose on his mistress’s gown and sat down panting.
“How the deuce,” gasped De Hanna, “can oxygen make a stupid farce a
funny one? I can’t understand it, for the life of me.”
“Because,” replied Slump, with brevity and clearness, “that’s my trade
secret, and I don’t mean to give it away. Well, does _Maggs_ go on, or
do I take it to another management?”
The general assent was flattering in its unanimity. _Maggs at Margate_
went into rehearsal at the “Sceptre” next day, and in a week was
presented to the public. We refer you to the critiques published in the
_Daily Tomahawk_, the _Yelper_, and other morning prints:
“It seems as though the good old days were come again.... Peals of
irresistible laughter rang through the crowded theater as the
side-splitting story of _Maggs_ was unfolded. The audience laughed, the
orchestra laughed, the actors themselves were infected by the general
merriment.”
“Mr. Slump is a public benefactor. When ‘down,’ a dose of him will be
found to act like magic. The management’s happy notion of supplying the
theater with real ozone adds not a little to the pleasure of the
entertainment.”
And so forth, and so forth. Booking was immense, the box-office and
libraries were besieged with applicants eager to breathe the genuine sea
air wafted over the footlights at the “Sceptre.” The treasury boxes had
to be carried to the office at night by two of the strongest
commissionaires.
“Slump has a soft snap,” said De Hanna, chewing his Geyser pen
rapturously as he went over the books. “Sixty per cent. of the gross
receipts in author’s fees, and we’re averaging two thousand a week since
we went in for daily _matinées_. Then the Transatlantic Trust is running
the play in New York to phenomenal business, and we’ve planted it out
for the Colonies, while France and Germany——”
“Id vas from Chairmany dat de leading itea of de blay was orichinally
sdolen,” said Gormleigh, who had blossomed out in new clothes, a red
necktie, and a cat’s-eye pin.
“Leading idea of the play is the Ozone,” said De Hanna; “and as Slump’s
firm holds the patent for the electro-oxygen generator, and manufactures
the oxygen used in the theater——”
“Dey call it bure oxygen, poot it is not dat,” said Gormleigh, laying
his finger to his nose. “It is a motch cheaber gombound, I give you my
vort.”
“What?” De Hanna came closer, and his Oriental eyes gleamed. “If that’s
true, and we could manufacture and generate it for ourselves, we—we
could buy up every rotten play we come across—there’s heaps of them to
be had, Heaven knows—and run ’em for nuts. What is the stuff?”
“It is nitrous oxide,” said Gormleigh, “gommonly known as loffing
kass—and I hof a friend, a Chairman chemist—dat vill——Hoosh!” He laid
his finger to his nose with an air of secrecy as Mrs. Gudrun swept into
the office, enveloped in her usual clouds of silk and perfume. Candelish
was not with her, but Slump and Billy followed at her heels.
“Of course, it must be admitted, _Maggs_ is a phenomenal success,” she
was saying, “and we’re making money hand over hand; but the part of
‘Angelina’—though Cluffer says no French comedy actress of any age or
period could act it as I do—does not give me proper opportunities. Mr.
Slump thinks with me.” She smiled dazzlingly upon the enamored little
man. “And he has written a tragedy in blank verse—_The Poisoned
Smile_—which we mean to produce as soon as the run is over.” She swept
out again with her following, and De Hanna and Gormleigh exchanged a
wink of partnership.
“A tragedy in blank verse by Slump.... Phew!” De Hanna whistled. “They
won’t want laughing-gas for that.... As for us, we go snacks in biz.
I’ll find the Syndicate and the theater.”
“Oond I de blays, de sdage-management, oond de kass. De Chairman chemist
friend I dold you of, I hof vith him already a gontract made.”
“Perhaps it is a bit shady,” said De Hanna punctiliously, “to exploit an
idea that really is Slump’s property....”
“De chokes in Slump’s comic baber he sdole from a Chairman orichinal,”
said Gormleigh pachydermatously. “It is nodding poot tid for tad!”
AIR
“Sweet are the uses of advertisement.”
_The Professional Shakespeare._
“I believe in the value of an ad.,” said Mrs. Gudrun one night at the
Paris Grand Opera, the Sceptre Theatre, London, being temporarily closed
pending a new production. “Sarah believes in it, too—and that’s another
of the remarkable points of resemblance between us. And for the sake of
a puff, I’m willing to do all that a woman can.”
“Can’t do more,” said De Petoburgh, shaking his head owlishly. “Can’t
possibly do more.”
“Shut up, De Peto. That woman’s ready to bite you for talking through
her big _aria_,” commanded Mrs. Gudrun, with a slight glance of imperial
indifference towards the infuriated _prima donna_. She dropped her
opera-glasses into the orchestra with a crash, narrowly shaving the
kettle-drums, and causing the cymbal-player to miss his cue, as she
continued: “But, though I’m generally keen to see the pay-end of a big
notion, this idea of Bobby Bolsover’s won’t do for macaroons. Not that
I’m lacking in what the Americans call horse-grit—wasn’t I on De Brin’s
automobile when he won the Paris-Rouen race with his Gohard Cup Defender
in nineteen-three? That was one hairbreadth escape, from the revolver
shot that started us—you remember Bobby put in ball cartridge by
mistake—to the three flying kilometers at the finish, which we did on
one wheel, as the brakes refused to act. And I’ve hung by one coupling
over a raging American river in my own drawing-room Pullman saloon. But
when it comes to dangling in a little basket that weighs next to nothing
from a bag of gas that weighs nothing at all—I’m not taking any, and I
don’t care who knows it. A captive balloon’s another thing. You’re
cabled and sand-bagged and what not, and, unless you jump out, nothing
can happen to you. But——Do see who’s knocking at the door!”
It was a uniformed and epauletted functionary conveying the polite
intimation of the management that Madame and her party must positively
maintain silence during the performance, or make themselves the trouble
to depart!
“Tell him we’d had enough and were just going!” commanded Mrs. Gudrun.
She rose, and, followed by the Duke, Bobby Bolsover, and Teddy
Candelish—most active and ubiquitous of business managers, sailed out of
the box, knocking over a fauteuil and carrying a footstool away upon the
surging billows of her train. “Calls herself an artist!” she said, in
reference to the _prima donna_, upon whose trills and roulades an
enraptured audience hung breathless and enthralled; “and lets herself be
put about by a little thing like that! Where’s her artistic absorption,
I should like to know. Why, I’ve studied Juliet in the drawing-room
where Bobby and De Petoburgh were having a rat-hunt under the tables and
things, and what difference did it make to my conception of the part?
Not a sou. And _she_ was a shrimp-seller at Nice! They all have that
_voce squillante_ and those thick flat ankles and those rolling black
eyes like treacle-balls. Let’s go and have some supper at the Café
Paris.”
Over American grilled lobster and quails _Georges Sand_, Bobby
Bolsover’s grand notion for an advertisement, cropped up again. One may
explain that it consisted in the suggestion that Mrs. Gudrun and party
should electrify Paris, and subsequently London, by traveling _per_
motor-airship from St. Cloud, rounding the Eiffel Tower in emulation of
the immortal Santos, and returning to the Highfliers’ Club airship
station at the Parc upon the conclusion of the feat. A friend of De
Petoburgh’s, a distinguished member of the Highfliers’ Club, would
undertake to lend the airship—a newly completed vessel, with basket
accommodation for three. This philanthropist did not propose to share
the notoriety by joining the trip, and it was to be distinctly
understood that De Petoburgh was to be responsible for any expenses
involved.
And Bobby Bolsover, brimming, as usual, with genuine British bravery and
brandy-and-soda, was ready to assume command.
“You know the principle of a motor?” Bobby demanded, as the supper
proceeded, and a collection of champagne corks, gradually amassed on the
corner of the table, assumed proportions favorable to purposes of
demonstration.
“Candelish knows the principle of a motor,” said De Petoburgh. “Never
could learn myshelf. Too much borror!”
“One may say that there is gasoline in a receptacle,” began Teddy. “Air
passing through becomes charged with gas, and comes out ready to
explode. Then——”
“To explode,” agreed De Petoburgh; “absorutely correc’ dennifishion, by
Ringo!”
“Don’t mind De Peto: he’s in for one of his old attacks,” said Mrs.
Gudrun. “His legs have been all over the place since breakfast. Well?”
“You give a twirl to a crank,” said Bobby Bolsover.
“Down goes the piston,” continued Teddy.
“Down go her pistol,” nodded De Petoburgh.
“And the dashed thing begins working automatically,” exclaimed Bobby
Bolsover. De Petoburgh balked at the six-syllabled hedge. “Now, an
airship is an example of——”
“The effectiveness of an aërial propeller driven by a petrol motor,” put
in Teddy.
“Jusso,” said De Petoburgh. “Jusso.”
“There is, practically speaking, no danger whatever,” pursued Bobby
Bolsover, warming to the subject, “that does not attend other popular
pursuits. You may be thrown from a horse, or tumble off a coach-box——”
“Did once,” said De Petoburgh, smiling in sad retrospection.
“Or you may blow up in a motor,” went on Bobby.
“But in either case,” said Mrs. Gudrun, with point, “one is on the
ground, not hanging between heaven and earth, like What’s-his-name’s
coffin.”
“Brarro!” exclaimed De Petoburgh. “Encore! _Bis!_”
“Permit me to put in, dear lady,” said Teddy Candelish, with his best
professional manner, “that if you fall out of an airship, you eventually
finish on the ground!”
“Under,” gloomily interpolated De Petoburgh. “Under.”
“And, further,” said Bobby Bolsover, “the guide-rope is in connection
with the ground all the time. Seventy feet of it, trailing like——”
“Snakes!” said the irrepressible De Petoburgh, with a glassy stare.
“And,” went on Bobby, “we will have four picked men from the Highfliers’
Club Grounds to run beside the guide-rope all the way and back.”
“Thus combining personal advertisement,” said Teddy Candelish, “with
physical integrity.”
Mrs. Gudrun permitted her classical features to soften. “Now you’re
talking!” the lady said. She smiled through the bottom of her
champagne-glass as Teddy, bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment, and
the trip was arranged forthwith. Thanks to the discretion of Teddy
Candelish, the preparations were kept so profoundly secret that all
Paris was on the alert when the eventful morning dawned. The Highfliers’
Club Grounds were literally besieged, and the intending sky-navigators
fought their way to the aërodrome containing their vessel through a
surging throng of scientists, editors, journalists, dandies, actresses,
photographers, pickpockets, and politicians.
“Regular scrimmage—what?” panted Bobby Bolsover, as, bare-headed and
disheveled, he reached the private side-door of the balloon-house.
“We ought to have slept here,” said Mrs. Gudrun, straightening her
hat-brim as the breathless men collected her hairpins.
“Nothing but perches to sleep on,” objected Bobby Bolsover, indicating
the skeleton arrangements of the vast interior.
Mrs. Gudrun, whose eye soared with Bobby’s, would have changed color had
the feat been possible.
“Do we really climb up that awful ladder to get on board?” she inquired.
“I have more nerve than any woman I know; but I wasn’t educated as an
acrobat. _J’en suis tout baba_, Bobby, that you should have let us all
in for a thing like this. We’re planted, however, and must go through.
What crowds of smart women! What on earth has brought _them_ out so
early in the morning? It must have got about that I’m going to be
killed!” She gulped and clutched Teddy. “I c-can’t go on in this scene!
Make an apology—make an apology and say I’m ill. I _am_ ill—horribly!”
“I feel far from frisky,” said Bobby Bolsover candidly. “Gout all last
night in the head and eyes, and—every limb, in fact, that one relies
upon in steering a motor. But, of course, I am ready to undertake the
helm—unless anybody else would like to volunteer?”
He looked at Teddy, whose eye was clear, whose cheek was blooming, whose
golden curls encroached upon a forehead unlined with the furrows of
personal apprehension.
“W-what do you say, Teddy?” gasped Mrs. Gudrun.
“I deeply regret.... It is imperatively necessary, dear lady,” said
Teddy glibly, “that in your absolute interests I should be at the
‘Fritz’ at twelve. The Paris representatives of the _Daily Yelper_, the
_Morning Whooper_, and the _Greenroom Rag_, have appointed that hour to
receive particulars of your start; three Berlin correspondents, one from
Nice, and the editors of the _Journal Rigolo_ and the _Vie Patachon_ are
to hole in ten minutes later; and there will be thousands of telegrams
to open and answer. You know that the Syndicate of the Escurial Palace
of Varieties have actually tendered to secure the turn. Therefore,
though my heart will make the voyage in your company, I—cannot.”
Blue-eyed Teddy melted into thin air. Mrs. Gudrun, looking older than a
professional beauty has any right to look, surveyed her companions with
a hollow gaze of despair, while outside the aërodrome Paris roared and
waited. Bobby, as green as jade, in a complete suit of motor armor,
goggles included, leaned limply against the ladder that led upwards to
the platform of the aërodrome. De Petoburgh, in foul-weather yachting
kit, his glass fixed in his bloodshot left eye by the little mechanical
contrivance that keeps it from tumbling, looked back. That debilitated
nobleman, though shaky, was game to the backbone.
“I can’t drive a motor, Bolsover,” he said quite distinctly, “but I can
drive _you_. Will you—oblige me—by climbing up that ladder? We follow.
After you, dear lady!”
And the three negotiated the giddy ascent. Upon the platform they found
the owner of the airship and the four workmen who, under promise of
reward and threat of punishment, were to attend the guide-rope. The
airship itself, a vast sausage-shaped silk bag of hydrogen, from which
depended by rubber-sheathed piano wires a framework of proven bamboo
supporting three baskets—one forward, one amidships, and one aft—hovered
over the heads of the three depressed adventurers like a shapeless
embodiment of adverse Fate. And Paris was growing impatient.
“Tell ’em to stick to the guide-rope, De Croqueville, for their lives,”
urged Bobby feverishly, squeezing the hands of the owner of the machine.
“Give it ’em in their own lingo; my French isn’t fluent to-day. They’re
not to trust to my steering, but just tow us to the Tower and back.”
De Croqueville squeezed back, and embraced Bobby on both cheeks. “My
brave, my very dear, rely upon me. Madame”—he kissed the jeweled
knuckles of Mrs. Gudrun—“all Paris is assembled to behold the most
beautiful woman prove herself also to be of the most brave. M. le Duc,”
he saluted De Petoburgh distantly, and then cordially shook hands, “I am
as kin a sportsman as how you. I have plank my egg—my oof—a thousand
francs you circulate the Tour Eiffel, in spite of the wind, which blows
from the wrong quarter. Adieu!”
“Blows from the wrong quarter!” gasped Bobby Bolsover. The eyeglass of
De Petoburgh turned in his direction, and he immediately climbed the
forward ladder and got into the steersman’s creaking basket, and grasped
the wheel with an awful sinking immediately below the heart.... The Duke
helped Mrs. Gudrun to assume the central position, and got in astern.
Just before the starting word was given and the great doors of the
aërodrome rolled apart in their steel grooves, he leaned over to De
Croqueville, addressing that gentleman in his own language:
“One supposes she”—he alluded to the vessel—“is—sea—I mean
air-worthy—eh, my friend?”
De Croqueville shot up his eyebrows and spread his hands.
“One supposes.... Truly, dear friend, I know not!... The vessel is newly
complete—this is what in English you call the try-trip. That is why I
hedge my bet. One thousand francs you round the Tour Eiffel and return
uninjure—two thousand you do not return uninjure—whether you round the
Tour or no. _Adieu-dieu!_”
The electric signal rang. The colossal doors groaned apart. The four
workmen scuttled down the ladders like frightened mice, seized the
guide-rope, and towed the airship out of dock. Paris waved
handkerchiefs, cheered. Bobby Bolsover, ghastly behind his goggles,
pressed the pedal and manipulated the wheel. The engine throbbed, the
tail-shaft screw revolved. The adventurers had started.
“Qui-quite nice,” gulped Mrs. Gudrun tremulously, as the keen wind toyed
with her silk veil and fluttered her fur boa.
“She pitches,” said De Petoburgh briefly. “Keep her head to it,
Bolsover.”
There was a sickening moment as the airship mounted obliquely upward....
Then a tug at the guide-rope brought her nose down, pointing to the sea
of fluttering handkerchiefs beneath. Mrs. Gudrun groaned and clung to
the sides of her padded basket. De Petoburgh swore.
“I can’t—manage her. My—my nerve has gone. Let’s put about and take her
back to dock again,” gasped Bobby.
“For—for Heaven’s sake, do!” groaned Mrs. Gudrun. But again that new
voice spake from the blue lips of De Petoburgh, and——
“I’ve lived like a dashed blackguard, but I’m not going to die like a
cowardly cad. Curtain’s up—go through with the show. Bolsover, you
bragging, white-livered idiot, you can steer an electric launch and
drive a motor-car. If I’d ever learned to do either, I’d take your
place. But as I can’t—go ahead, and keep on as I direct, or I’ll shoot
you through your empty skull with this revolver”—the click of the weapon
came stimulatingly to the ears of the scared helmsman—“and swear I went
mad and wasn’t responsible. They—they’d believe me! Mabel, if you sit
tight and go through with this, I’ll stand you that thousand-guinea
tiara you liked at Alphonse’s, if we—when we get safe to ground. Now,
Bolsover, drive on, or take the consequences!”
Perhaps the familiar terms employed restored Bobby to the use of his
suspended faculties. Certain it is that the airship began to forge
steadily ahead at the rate of some twenty miles an hour—but _not_
absolutely in the direction of the vast spidery erection of metal which
was its destined goal. It skimmed in the direction of the Bois de
Boulogne, keeping at so lofty an altitude that of the end of the
guide-rope merely a length of some six feet trailed upon the ground.
“Those—those men l-look so funny running after it,” said Mrs. Gudrun,
upon whom the promise of the tiara had acted as a stimulant.
“I hope they may keep up with it,” muttered De Petoburgh as the airship
sailed over the humming streets of the gay city, and tiny men and women
turned white specks of faces upwards to stare. “Ease her, Bolsover,” he
commanded.
“Oh, we’re going right up again!” gasped Mrs. Gudrun. Then, as the
airship regained the horizontal: “This isn’t half bad,” she said in a
more cheerful tone, “but the housetops with their spiky chimney-pots
look dreadfully dangerous. The guide-rope has knocked a row of potted
geraniums off a third-floor balcony, and the old man who was reading the
paper in the cane chair must be swearing awfully. But where are the men?
I don’t see them; do you?”
The four workmen were at that moment heatedly cursing the Municipal
Council of Paris at the bottom of a very long, very deep trench which
had been excavated across a certain street for the accommodation of a
new drain. The guide-rope pursued its course without them, now sweeping
a peaceful citizen off his legs, now covering the occupants of a smart
victoria with mud, now trailing over a roof or coiling serpent-wise
around the base of a block of chimneys. In the distance loomed the
Eiffel Tower, but in answer to De Petoburgh’s repeated requests that he
should steer thither, Bobby Bolsover only groaned. And the airship,
after navigating gracefully over the green ocean of the Bois de
Boulogne, continued her trip over the Longchamps racecourse, veered to
the south at the pleasure of a shifting current of air, and, having
leaked much, began plainly to buckle and bend.
De Petoburgh, uncomfortably conscious of a misspent existence and wasted
opportunities, looked at the back of Mrs. Gudrun’s head, and wondered
whether she knew any prayers.
“The trees are coming awfully close, aren’t they?” said the unconscious
beauty.
“Awfully!” said the Duke, as the capricious motor stopped.
Then Mrs. Gudrun screamed, and Bobby Bolsover, casting his goggles to
the winds, huddled in the bottom of his basket, and the debilitated but
plucky nobleman shut his eyes and thought of his long-dead mother as the
airship hurtled downwards ... crash into the top of the tallest of the
giant oaks in the magnificent park of H.S.H. Prince Gogonof Babouine.
The Prince has the reputation of being excessively hospitable. When the
three passengers recovered from the shaking, the top of a long ladder
pierced the thick foliage beneath the wrecked vessel, and the Prince’s
major-domo, a stout personage in black with a gold chain, came climbing
up with a courteous message from the Prince. Would Madame and M. le Duc
and the other gentleman descend and partake of the second _déjeuner_,
which was on the point of being served, or would they prefer to remain
on board their vessel?
“Stop up here? Does the man take us for angels?” snorted Mrs. Gudrun
indignantly.
The descent was not without danger, but with the aid of De Petoburgh and
the major-domo, she braved and completed it without injury either to her
long celebrated limbs or her famous features. Bobby followed.
The Prince entertained the shipwrecked castaways in princely fashion,
and drove the party back to Paris on his drag, the wonderful yellow
coach with the team of curly Orloffs. And he consented to dine; and that
night Mrs. Gudrun held a reception behind the illuminated balconies of
the Hotel Fritz, while the London newsboys were yelling her familiar
name, and the evening papers containing the most ornamental particulars
of her adventure went off like hot cakes.
According to the most reliable account garnered by our special
correspondent from the lovely lips of the exquisite aëronaut, she had
never quailed in the moment of peril, and, indeed, upon the
distinguished authority of the Hon. R. Bolsover: “One is never
frightened while one can rely upon one’s own pluck!” Nobody interviewed
De Petoburgh, leaning vacuously smiling against the wall. Indeed, he had
developed another of his attacks, and could not have responded with any
coherence.
“Wonderful fellow, Bolsover,” Teddy Candelish gushed, Teddy, all smile
and sparkle, “so brainy and resourceful!”
“Rath’ ...” assented De Petoburgh fragmentarily.
“And Her Nibs—a heroine—positively a heroine!”
“Ra’!” assented De Petoburgh, as the heroine swept by, making
magnificent eyes at the palpably enamored Prince, while Paris murmured
indiscreet admiration.
“And you, Duke, eh? Found it trying to your nerves, they tell me?” Teddy
continued, twirling his golden mustache. “Such trips too costly, eh, to
indulge in often?”
“Ra’!” agreed De Petoburgh, with a glance at the thousand-guinea diamond
fender surmounting the most frequently photographed features in the
world.
SIDE!
Upon the conclusion of the phenomenally brief run of _The Poisoned Kiss_
at the Sceptre Theatre, Mrs. Gudrun, who had sustained the heroic rôle
of Aldapora “with abounding verve and true histrionic inwardness” (to
cull a quotation from the enthusiastic notice which appeared in the
_Theatrical Piffer_), and whose sculpturesque temples throbbed no less
with the weight of the dramatic laurels heaped upon them than with the
heady quality of the champagne with which those laurels had been
liberally drowned—Mrs. Gudrun left the author and the Syndicate, _per_
their Business Representative, exchanging poignant personalities over a
non-existent percentage, and hied her to the Gallic capital for
recreation and repose; bearing in her train the leading man, Mr. Leo De
Boo, a young actor who had chipped the egg of obscurity in the recent
production. De Boo was “a splendid specimen of virile beauty,” according
to the _Greenroom Rag_—all shoulders, legs, nose, and curls, without any
perceptible forehead; and Teddy Candelish, most ubiquitous of
acting-managers, came within an appreciable distance of being
epigrammatic when he termed him “a chronic cad in beautiful boots.” For
more exquisite foot-gloves than those De Boo sported were never seen,
whoever made and gave credit for them; and De Boo was said to have a
different pair for every day in the month and every imaginable change in
the weather.
“Nearly threw up his part in _The Poisoned Kiss_,” said Teddy
afterwards, at the club, “when he discovered that it was to be a
sixteenth-century production; took me aside, and told me in confidence
afterwards, that if he’d been allowed to play Hermango in gray suède
tops with black pearl buttons and patent leather uppers, the piece would
have been a colossal monetary, as well as artistic, success.”
“Schwerlich! Who konn bretend to follow de workings of a mind like dot
jung man’s,” said Oscar Gormleigh, “vidout de assisdance of de
migroscope? Und hof I not known a brima donna degline to go on for
Siebel begause she hodd been kifen brown insdead of violet tights? It
vas a tam gonsbiracy, she svore py all her kodds! In prown legs she
vould groak like von frog mit kvinsy—mit violet she always varble like
de nachtigall. De choke of it vas”—the talented stage-director laid a
hairy finger archly against his Teutonic nose—“dat voman always
groak—not never varble—tights or no tights!”
“De Boo is a rank bounder,” said Candelish decidedly.
“He has pounded from de ranks,” pronounced Gormleigh, “und he vill go on
pounding—each pound so motch higher dan de last von, oontil he drop
splosh into de kutter akain. He who now oggupies a svell mansion-flat in
Biccadilly, _ach ja!_—he vill end vere he bekan—in de liddle krubby
sit-bedding-room over de shabby shop vere dey let out segond hond boogs
on hire mit segond hond furnidure.”
Mrs. Gudrun would have been deeply incensed had she heard this
unlicensed expression of opinion from one whom she had always kept in
his place as a paid underling. For six nights and a matinée she had, in
the character of Aldapora, elected to poison herself in the most painful
manner rather than incur the loss of De Boo’s affections, and, with the
“true histrionic inwardness” so belauded by the _Theatrical Piffer_, she
had identified herself with the part. So she took a blazing comet flight
to Paris with the actor in her train, and paragraphs announcing their
arrival at the Hotel Spitz appeared in the London papers.
“Listen to this, Jane Ann,” said the paternal De Boo, whose name was
Boodie—and when I add that for twenty years the worthy father had been
employed as one of the principal cutters at Toecaps and Heels, that
celebrated firm of West-End bootmakers, it will be understood whence the
son obtained his boots. “To think,” Mr. Boodie continued, “that
Alfred—our Alfred, who sp’iled every particle of leather he set his
knife to, and couldn’t stitch a welt or strap a seam to save his
life—should ever have lived to be called a rising genius!”
“The ways of Providence are wonderful, father!” returned the said
Alfred’s mother dutifully. Mrs. Boodie was an experienced finisher
herself, and had always lamented Alfred’s lack of “turn” in the family
direction. “An’, if I was you, I wouldn’t mention that bit in the paper
to Aphasia Cutts. She’s dreadful jealous over our Alfred, even now,
though he hasn’t bin to see ‘er or wrote for two years. As good as a
break off, I should a-regarded it, ’ad I bin in her place. But she’s
different to what I was.”
“So are all the gals,” said Mr. Boodie with conviction, bestowing upon
his wife a salute flavored with Russia leather and calf.
“Well, I’m sure. Go along, father, do!” said Mrs. Boodie, with a
delighted shove.
But of course Aphasia—so christened by an ambitious mother in defiance
of the expostulations of a timid curate—had already seen and cried over
the paragraph. She had loved Alfred and stood up for him when he was a
plain, stupid boy with an unconquerable aversion to work. She had been
his champion when he grew up, no longer plain, but as pronounced a
loafer as ever. She had given up, in exchange for his loutish
affections, the love of an honest and hard-working man.
“I can’t ’elp it!” she had said; “you can get on without me, and Alfred
can’t, pore chap. His Par calls ’im a waster—I believe ’e’d give ’im the
strap if ’e wasn’t six foot ’igh. But I’ve got ’im an opening in the
theatrical line, through a friend of mine as does fancy braiding at
Buskin’s, the stage shoemaker’s in Covent Garden. It’s only to walk on
as one of the Giant’s boy-babies in the Drury Lane panto.—eighteen pence
a night _and matinées_—but his Mar will be thankful. If only ’is legs
are long enough for the part——”
They were, and from that hour Alfred had embarked on a career. When
entrusted with a line to speak, it was Aphasia who held the grimy slip
of paper on which it was written and aided the would-be actor with
counsel and advice.
“And ’old up your ’ead, do, as if you was proud of yourself, and don’t
bend at the knees; and whether you remember your words or not, throw ’em
out from your chest as if you was proud of ’em. An’ move your arms from
the shoulder like as if you was swimmin’—don’t crook your elbers like a
wooden doll. And throw a bit o’ meanin’ into your eye. You took me to
see that Frenchman, Cocklin ’e calls ’imself; as played the chap with
the boko ’e wouldn’t let the other chaps make game of.... French or
Japanese, they’re both Dutch to me, but I watched Cocklin’s eye, and I
watched ’is ’ands, an’ I could foller the story as if it was print, an’
plainer. I’ve went to see an actor since what folks said was a great
artis’, and if ’e did talk English, ’is eye was as dumb as a boiled
fresh ’addock’s an’ ’s ’ands was like slices of skate. Now say your bit
over again.”
And Alfred said it, this time to the satisfaction of his instructress.
When he got a real part Aphasia coached him, and rode down from
Hammersmith with him on the bus, and was waiting for him at the
stage-door when he came out, the tears of joy undried on her pale
cheeks. And that was the night upon which she first noticed a coldness
in the manner of her betrothed.
“An’ now I’m not good enough for him to wipe his boots on,” she sobbed,
sitting on her bed in the single room lodging off the roaring, clanging
Broadway—“the boots ’is Par cut an’ welted, an’ ’is Mar stitched, an’ I
finished. But I won’t stand in ’is light. I’ve my pride, if I am a
boot-finisher. I’ll see that Mrs. What’s-her-name face to face, an’ ’ave
it out as woman to woman, an’ tell ’er she’s welcome to marry ’im for
me.”
And Aphasia dried her poor red eyes and took off Alfred’s betrothal
ring—a fifteen-carat gold circlet with three real garnets, bought in the
Broadway one blushful, blissful Saturday night—and evicted his
photographs from their gorgeous cheap frames, and made a brown-paper
parcel of these things, with a yellow leather purse with a blue enamel
“A” on it, and tied it up with string.
Perhaps something of her fateful mood was telepathically conveyed to Mr.
Leo De Boo at that moment, for he shivered as he sat at the feet of Mrs.
Gudrun upon the balcony of a private suite at the Hotel Spitz, and
turned up eyes that were large and lustrous at that imperishable image
of Beauty, exhaling clouds of fashionable perfume and upborne on billows
of chiffon and lace. Mrs. Gudrun, who naturally mistook the spasms of a
genuine plebeian British conscience for the pangs of love, lent him her
hand—dazzlingly white, astonishingly manicured, jeweled to the knuckles,
and polished by the devout kisses of generations of worshipers—and De
Boo mumbled it, and tried to be grateful and talk beautifully about his
acting. But this bored Mrs. Gudrun, who preferred to talk about her own.
“I have often felt that myself,” she said—“the conviction that a crowded
audience hung upon my lips and saw only with my eyes, and that I swayed
them as with a magic thingumbob, by the power of a magnetic
personality.”
“It is a mystery,” said De Boo, passing his long fingers through his
clustering curls, “that once in a century or so a man should be born——”
“Or a woman. Marvelous!” agreed Mrs. Gudrun. “Marvelous! the man who
runs the _Daily Tomahawk_ said that when I made my first appearance on
the stage.”
“Genius is a crown of fire,” said De Boo, who had read this somewhere.
“It illuminates the world, yet scorches the wearer to the bone. He——”
“She suffers,” said Mrs. Gudrun, neatly stopping the ball and playing it
on her side. “You may bet she suffers. Hasn’t she got the artistic
temperament? The amount of worry mine has given me you would never
believe. Cluffer, of the _Morning Whooper_, calls me a ‘consolidated
bundle of screaming nerves.’ When I’ve sat down to dinner on the eve of
a first night, De Petoburgh—you’ve met the Duke?—has had to hold me in
my chair while Bobby Bolsover gave me champagne and Angostura out of the
soup-ladle. And I believe I bit a piece out of that. And afterwards—ask
’em both if I wasn’t fairly _esquinte_.”
“But the possessor of an artistic temperament—such as mine—even though
the fairy gift entails the keenest susceptibility to anguish,” quickly
continued De Boo, “enjoys unspeakable compensation in the revelation to
him alone of a kingdom which others may not enter. Looking upon the high
mountains in the blush of dawn, I have shouted aloud with glee——”
“The first time I ever went into a southern Italian orange-grove in full
bloom,” acquiesced Mrs. Gudrun, “the Prince of Kursaal Carle Monto, who
was with me, simply sat down flat. He said Titian ought to have been
alive to paint my face and form against that background.... By the way,
the first act of that new play, the title of which I’ve forgotten, and
which I’ve leased from a scribbling idiot whose name don’t signify,
takes place in a blooming orange-grove. I’ve cast you for the leading
man’s part, Leo, and I hope you will be properly grateful for the
chance, and conquer that nasty habit you have of standing leering at the
audience in all my great moments.”
“Dearest lady,” De Boo argued glibly, “does it not increase the dramatic
poignancy of such moments if the spectators are enabled to read in the
varying expressions pictured on _my_ face the feelings your art
inspires?”
But Mrs. Gudrun was inexorable. “They can read ’em in the back of your
head if they’re anxious,” said she, “or they can take the direct tip
from me. I hope that’s good enough. I don’t see the cherry-bun of
running a theater to be scored off by other people, and so you know! And
now that’s settled, let us go and have stuffed oysters and roast ices at
Noel Peter’s, and see Sarah afterwards in her new tragedy _rôle_. I’m
the only woman she’s really afraid of, you know, and I feel I’m bound to
romp in in front of her before long. She says herself that acting like
mine cannot be taught in a conservatoire, and that I constitute a
complete school in myself. Have you ever seen me play Lady Teazle?”
“Unhappily I have not. It is a loss,” said De Boo, “a distinct loss. By
the way, when I scored so tremendously as Charles Surface at
Mudderpool——”
“Hell is full of men who have scored as Charles Surface at Mudderpool,”
said Mrs. Gudrun crushingly. “That sounds like a quotation, doesn’t it?
Only it must be mine, because I never read. You’re a charming fellow,
and a clever boy, Leo, but, as a friend, let me tell you that you talk
too much about yourself. It’s bad form; and the truly great are
invariably the truly modest. I must save up that epigram for my next
interview, I think. There’s the auto-brougham.”
And De Boo enfolded the renowned form of his manageress in a point lace
and sable wrap, and they went off to Noel Peter’s, and saw La Gr-r-ande
perform.
Rehearsals of the new play, _Pride of Race_, at the Sceptre had scarcely
commenced when in upon Teddy Candelish, laboriously smoking in his
sanctum and opening the morning’s mail, swept Mrs. Gudrun.
“I haven’t a moment to breathe,” she said imperially, accepting the
chair Teddy acrobatically vacated. “Come in, De Petoburgh—come in,
Bobby; you are in the way, but I’m used to it. No, De Petoburgh, that
cellaret’s tabooed; remember what Sir Henry said to you about liqueurs
before lunch. Are there any letters of importance, Teddy, to my cheek?”
“Several bundles of press-cuttings from different firms, thirty or forty
bills, a few tenders from photographers, and—and some love-letters,”
replied Candelish, pointing to some neat piles of correspondence
arranged on the American roll-top desk. “Usual thing—declarations,
proposals, and so forth.”
“Always plenty of those—hey?” chuckled De Petoburgh, sucking a
perfunctory peptoid lozenge in lieu of the stimulant denied.
“Plenty, b’Jove!” echoed Bobby Bolsover.
“Not so many as there used to be,” responded Candelish with tactless
truthfulness, rewarded by the lady with a magnificent glare. “By the
way, there’s one odd letter, from a girl or a woman who _isn’t_ quite a
lady, asking for an interview on private business. Signs herself by the
rummiest name—Aphasia Cutts.” He presented the letter.
“Aphasia?” said Mrs. Gudrun, extending heavily jeweled fingers for the
missive. “Isn’t that what De Petoburgh has when he can only order drinks
in one syllable and his legs take him where he doesn’t want to go? Eh,
Bobby?”
“Yes; but remindin’ the Duke of that always brings on an attack,” said
Bobby solicitously. “Look at him twitchin’ now.... Steady, Peto! Woa-a,
old mannums!”
“Take him for a tatta while I finish the rehearsal,” commanded Mrs.
Gudrun, rising from Teddy’s chair in an upsurge of expensive draperies.
“Write to this Aphasia girl, Teddy, and say I’ll see her to-morrow,
between three and four p. m. After all, the whole-souled adoration of
one’s own sex is worth having,” the lady said, as, heralded by the
rustling of silken robes, the barbaric clash of jeweled ornaments, and
wafts of fashionable perfume, she sailed back to the boards.
When Aphasia got her reply, p.p. Teddy, some hours later, there was very
little of whole-souled adoration in her reception of the missive.
“I s’pose she looks on me as the dirt under her feet, like Alfred. But I
won’t let that put me off makin’ the sacrifice that’s for his good—the
ungrateful thing! I ’ope she’ll make ’im a nice wife, that’s all,” she
sobbed, as she took from her collar-and-cuff drawer the flat brown-paper
parcel containing the garnet ring, the photographs, and the letters. And
she dressed herself in her best, with a large lace collar over a cloth
jacket, and the once fashionable low-necked pneumonia-blouse, to which
the girls of her class so fondly cling, and went to meet the lady whom,
in terms borrowed from the latest penny romance, she called her “haughty
rival.”
Mrs. Gudrun received her with excessive graciousness. A costume
rehearsal was in progress, and the lady was in the hands of her maids
and dressers. “I suppose this is the first time you have ever been
behind the scenes?” she inquired. “Look about you as much as you like,
and then you will be able to say to your friends: ‘I have been in Mrs.
Gudrun’s dressing-room.’ You see, I am in the gown I wear in the first
act. It is by Babin; and if you write for a ladies’ paper, you will
remember to say so, please.”
“I don’t write for any ladies’ paper,” said Aphasia. “I couldn’t spell
well enough—not if they ast me ever so. But it’s a lovely gownd, and I
suppose all that stuff on your face is what makes you look so young an’
’andsome—from a long way off.”
Mrs. Gudrun’s famous features assumed a look of cold displeasure. She
assumed the majestic air that suited her so eminently well, and asked
the young person’s business.
“It’s quite private, and I’ll thank you to send away your maids, if
you’ve no objection,” said the dauntless Aphasia. “The fact is,” she
continued, when the indignant menials had been waved from the apartment,
“as I’ve come to make you a present—a present of a young man——”
“Look here, my good young woman,” began the incensed manageress.
Aphasia suddenly handed her the brown-paper parcel, and the wrath of
Mrs. Gudrun was turned to trembling. She was sure this was an escaped
lunatic. Aphasia profited by the lull in the storm to explain. She had
come to hand over her Alfred—stock, goodwill, and fixtures. He had
forgotten to be off with the old love before he went on with the new,
but the old love bore no malice. All was now over.
“And you may marry ’im whenever you like,” sobbed Aphasia.
“I never heard anything so indecent in the whole course of my life,”
said Mrs. Gudrun, rising in offended majesty. “Marry Mr. De Boo, indeed!
If I had married every leading man I’ve played love-scenes with since I
adopted this profession, I should be a female Brigham Young! ‘In love
with me!’ Perhaps he is; it’s rather a common complaint among the men I
know. As for Mr. De Boo, if he has low connections and vulgar
entanglements, they are nothing to me. Good-day! Stop! You had better
take this parcel of rubbish with you. Dawkins—the stage-door!”
And Aphasia found herself being ushered along the passage. Bewildered
and dazzled by the glaring lights, the excitement and the strangeness,
she ran almost into the arms of De Boo himself as he emerged from his
dressing-room next the manageress’s. Had he overheard? There had been a
curtained-over door on that side. Under his paint his handsome features
were black with rage; he caught the girl’s shoulders in a furious grip,
and spluttered in her ear:
“Damn you! Damn you, you sneaking creature! You have made a pretty mess
of things for me—haven’t you?—with your blab about my father and the
boot-business, and my letters and the ring I gave you. To my dying day
I’ll never speak to you again!”
He threw her from him savagely and strode away.
Aphasia stood outside the theater and shook with sobs. It chanced—or did
not chance, so queer are the vagaries of Destiny—that Ulick Snowle, the
president of the New Stage-Door Club, happened to be passing; he had
just called in at the box-office to privately book the first three rows
of the upper circle on behalf of the club, the Old Stage-Doorers having
secured the gallery. Both clubs were originally one, the Old
Stage-Doorers having thrown off the younger club as the cuttlefish gets
rid of the supernumerary limb which in time becomes another cuttlefish.
And the unwritten compact between both clubs is that if one applauds a
new production, the other shall execrate the same—an arrangement which
contributes hugely to the liveliness of first-nights.
No uninitiated person beholding Ulick, with his shaggy beard, aged
felt-basin hat of Continental make, short nautical coat, and
tight-fitting sporting trousers, would suppose him to be the great
personage he really is. He came up to Aphasia, and bluntly asked her
what was the matter, and if he couldn’t do something? In her
overwhelming woe and desolation, she was like the soda-water bottle of
the glass-ball-stoppered description—once push in the stopper, there is
no arresting the escape of the aërated fluid. She told the sympathizing
Ulick all before he put her into the Hammersmith bus, and when he would
have handed in the fateful brown-paper parcel—“Keep it,” she said, with
a gesture of aversion. “Burn it—chuck the thing in the dustbin. They’re
no manner o’ use to me!” And away she rattled, leaving Ulick Snowle upon
the pavement, in his hands an engine of destruction meet to be used in
the extermination of the unfittest.
For the New Stage-Door Club did not love Mr. Leo De Boo, whose manner to
old friends—whom he had often led around street corners and relieved of
half-crowns—did not improve with his worldly prospects. And Ulick stood
and meditated while the double torrent of the London traffic went
roaring east and west; and as a charitable old lady was about to press a
penny into his hand, Tom Glauber, the dandy president of the Old
Stage-Doorers, came along, and the men greeted cordially. Von Glauber
seemed interested in something that Ulick had to tell, and the two went
off very confidentially, arm-in-arm.
“It would be a sensation if, for once, the O.S.D.’s and the N.S.D.’s
acted in unison,” agreed Tom Glauber.
And on the night when _Pride of Race_ was produced at the Sceptre, both
clubs attended in full strength, every man with a crook-handled
walking-stick, and a parcel buttoned under his coat. The piece had just
concluded a run of three hundred nights, and every reader is acquainted
with the plot, which is of modern Italy and Rome of to-day, to quote the
programme. We all know how the young Marchese di Monte Polverino, in
whose veins ran the bluest blood of the Latin race, secretly wedded
Aquella Guazetta, the tripe-seller, who had won his lofty affections in
the guise of a Bulgarian Princess, and how the dread secret of Aquella’s
origin was revealed at the very moment when the loftiest and most
exclusive of the Roman nobility were about to welcome the newly made
Marchesa into their ranks.... Aquella, her brain turned by the acuteness
of her mental suffering, greets the revelation with a peal of frenzied
laughter. Now this laughter was a continual obstacle, during rehearsals,
in the path of Mrs. Gudrun. Said she:
“The peculiarity and originality of my genius, as Cluffer says, consists
in the fact that I can’t do the things that might be expected of me—not
for filberts; while I _can_ do the things that mightn’t. If I can’t
really hit off that laugh, I’ll have a woman in the wings to do it for
me. But my impression is that I shall be all right at night. Don’t
forget, Gormleigh, that you’re not to tub the chandelier altogether; I
hate to play to a dark house.”
“Py vich innovation,” said Gormleigh afterwards, “de gonsbirators vas
enapled to garry out their blan. Himmel!” he cried, dabbing his
overflowing eyes with an antediluvian silk pocket-handkerchief, “shall I
effer forget—no, not vile I lif—de face of dot jung man!”
For at the moment when Monte Polverino’s scorn of the lovely plebeian he
has wedded is expressed in words—when Aquella, pierced to the heart by
being called “a low-born vulgarian” and a “peasant huckster,” is about
to utter her famous yell of frenzied laughter, the Old Stage-Doorers and
the New Stage-Doorers hung out their boots. A _chevaux de frise_ of
walking-sticks, from each of which depended a pair of these
indispensable articles of attire, graced the gallery, distinguished the
upper circle, and appeared upon the level of the pit. Stricken to the
soul, faltering and ghastly under his paint, and shaking in the most
sumptuous pair of patent leathers, white kid topped, in which he had yet
appeared, De Boo blankly contemplated the horrid spectacle; while Mrs.
Gudrun, to whose somewhat latent sense of humor the spectacle appealed,
burst into peal upon peal of the wildest laughter ever heard beyond the
walls of an establishment for the care of the mentally afflicted. “The
grandeur, poignancy, and reality of the acting,” wrote Cluffer, of the
_Morning Whooper_, “was acknowledged by a crowded house with a deafening
and unanimous outburst of applause.”
“Both Mrs. Gudrun and Mr. De Boo attained the highest level of dramatic
expression,” pronounced Mullekens, of the _Daily Tomahawk_. “It was the
touch of Nature which attunes the universe to one throb of universal
relationship.”
The play was a success. Even the “Boo’s!” of both the clubs, united for
the nonce in disapprobation, could not rob Leo of his laurels. He wears
them to-day, for _Pride of Race_ has enjoyed a tremendous run.
“We’ve made the beggar’s reputation instead of sending him back to the
boot-shop and that poor girl,” said Ulick Snowle to Tom Glauber next
day.
“Possibly,” said Tom Glauber, sniffing at his inseparable carnation.
“But it’s all the better for the girl, I imagine, in the long run.”
A SPIRIT ELOPEMENT
When I exchanged my maiden name for better or worse, and dearest
Vavasour and I, at the conclusion of the speeches—I was married in a
traveling-dress of Bluefern’s—descended the steps of mamma’s house in
Ebury Street—the Belgravian, _not_ the Pimlican end—and, amid a
hurricane of farewells and a hailstorm of pink and yellow and white
_confetti_, stepped into the brougham that was to convey us to a
Waterloo Station, _en route_ for Southampton—our honeymoon was to be
spent in Guernsey—we were perfectly well satisfied with ourselves and
each other. This state of mind is not uncommon at the outset of wedded
life. You may have heard the horrid story of the newly-wedded cannibal
chief, who remarked that he had never yet known a young bride to
disagree with her husband in the early stages of the honeymoon. I
believe if dearest Vavasour had seriously proposed to chop me into
_cotêlettes_ and eat me, with or without sauce, I should have taken it
for granted that the powers that be had destined me to the high end of
supplying one of the noblest of created beings with an _entrée_ dish.
We were idiotically blissful for two or three days. It was flowery
April, and Guernsey was looking her loveliest. No horrid hotel or
boarding-house sheltered our lawful endearments. Some old friends of
papa’s had lent us an ancient mansion standing in a wild garden, now one
pink riot of almond-blossom, screened behind lofty walls of lichened red
brick and weather-worn, wrought-iron gates, painted yellow-white like
all the other iron and wood work about the house.
“Mon Désir” the place was called, and the fragrance of potpourri yet
hung about the old paneled salons. Vavasour wrote a sonnet—I have
omitted to speak before of my husband’s poetic gifts—all about the
breath of new Passion stirring the fragrant dust of dead old Love, and
the kisses of lips long moldered that mingled with ours. It was a lovely
sonnet, but crawly, as the poetical compositions of the Modern School
are apt to be. And Vavasour was an enthusiastic convert to, and follower
of, the Modern School. He had often told me that, had not his father
heartlessly thrown him into his brewery business at the outset of his
career—Sim’s Mild and Bitter Ales being the foundation upon which the
family fortunes were originally reared—he, Vavasour, would have been,
ere the time of speaking, known to Fame, not only as a Minor Poet, but a
Minor Decadent Poet—which trisyllabic addition, I believe, makes as
advantageous a difference as the word “native” when attached to an
oyster, or the guarantee “new laid” when employed with reference to an
egg.
Dear Vavasour’s temperament and tastes having a decided bias towards the
gloomy and mystic, he had, before his great discovery of his latent
poetical gifts, and in the intervals of freedom from the brain-carking
and soul-stultifying cares of business, made several excursions into the
regions of the Unknown. He had had some sort of intercourse with the
Swedenborgians, and had mingled with the Muggletonians; he had coquetted
with the Christian Scientists, and had been, until Theosophic Buddhism
opened a wider field to his researches, an enthusiastic Spiritualist.
But our engagement somewhat cooled his passion for psychic research, and
when questioned by me with regard to table-rappings, manifestations, and
materializations, I could not but be conscious of a reticence in his
manner of responding to my innocent desire for information. The
reflection that he probably, like Canning’s knife-grinder, had no story
to tell, soon induced me to abandon the subject. I myself am somewhat
reserved at this day in my method of dealing with the subject of spooks.
But my silence does not proceed from ignorance.
Knowledge came to me after this fashion. Though the April sun shone
bright and warm upon Guernsey, the island nights were chill. Waking by
dear Vavasour’s side—the novelty of this experience has since been
blunted by the usage of years—somewhere between one and two o’clock
towards break of the fourth day following our marriage, it occurred to
me that a faint cold draft, with a suggestion of dampness about it, was
blowing against my right cheek. One of the windows upon that side—our
room possessed a rather unbecoming cross-light—had probably been left
open. Dear Vavasour, who occupied the right side of our couch, would
wake with toothache in the morning, or, perhaps, with mumps! Shuddering,
as much at the latter idea as with cold, I opened my eyes, and sat up in
bed with a definite intention of getting out of it and shutting the
offending casement. Then I saw Katie for the first time.
She was sitting on the right side of the bed, close to dear Vavasour’s
pillow; in fact, almost hanging over it. From the first moment I knew
that which I looked upon to be no creature of flesh and blood, but the
mere apparition of a woman. It was not only that her face, which struck
me as both pert and plain; her hands; her hair, which she wore dressed
in an old-fashioned ringletty mode—in fact, her whole personality was
faintly luminous, and surrounded by a halo of bluish phosphorescent
light. It was not only that she was transparent, so that I saw the
pattern of the old-fashioned, striped, dimity bed-curtain, in the
shelter of which she sat, quite plainly through her. The consciousness
was further conveyed to me by a voice—or the toneless, flat, faded
impression of a voice—speaking faintly and clearly, not at my outer, but
at my inner ear.
“Lie down again, and don’t fuss. It’s only Katie!” she said.
“Only Katie!” I liked that!
“I dare say you don’t,” she said tartly, replying as she had spoken, and
I wondered that a ghost should exhibit such want of breeding. “But you
have got to put up with me!”
“How dare you intrude here—and at such an hour!” I exclaimed mentally,
for there was no need to wake dear Vavasour by talking aloud when my
thoughts were read at sight by the ghostly creature who sat so
familiarly beside him.
“I knew your husband before you did,” responded Katie, with a faint
phosphorescent sneer. “We became acquainted at a _séance_ in North-West
London soon after his conversion to Spiritualism, and have seen a great
deal of each other from time to time.” She tossed her shadowy curls with
a possessive air that annoyed me horribly. “He was constantly
materializing me in order to ask questions about Shakespeare. It is a
standing joke in our Spirit world that, from the best educated spook in
our society down to the most illiterate astral that ever knocked out
‘rapport’ with one ‘p,’ we are all expected to know whether Shakespeare
wrote his own plays, or whether they were done by another person of the
same name.”
“And which way was it?” I asked, yielding to a momentary twinge of
curiosity.
Katie laughed mockingly. “There you go!” she said, with silent contempt.
“I wish _you_ would!” I snapped back mentally. “It seems to me that you
manifest a great lack of refinement in coming here!”
“I cannot go until Vavasour has finished,” said Katie pertly. “Don’t you
see that he has materialized me by dreaming about me? And as there
exists _at present_”—she placed an annoying stress upon the last two
words—“a strong sympathy between you, so it comes about that I, as your
husband’s spiritual affinity, am visible to your waking perceptions. All
the rest of the time I am hovering about you, though unseen.”
“I call it detestable!” I retorted indignantly. Then I gripped my
sleeping husband by the shoulder. “Wake up! wake up!” I cried aloud,
wrath lending power to my grasp and a penetrative quality to my voice.
“Wake up and leave off dreaming! I cannot and will not endure the
presence of this creature another moment!”
“_Whaa_——” muttered my husband, with the almost inebriate incoherency of
slumber, “_whasamaramydarling?_”
“Stop dreaming about that creature,” I cried, “or I shall go home to
Mamma!”
“Creature?” my husband echoed, and as he sat up I had the satisfaction
of seeing Katie’s misty, luminous form fade slowly into nothingness.
“You know who I mean!” I sobbed. “Katie—your spiritual affinity, as she
calls herself!”
“You don’t mean,” shouted Vavasour, now thoroughly roused, “that you
have seen _her_?”
“I do mean it,” I mourned. “Oh, if I had only known of your having an
entanglement with any creature of the kind, I would never have married
you—never!”
“Hang her!” burst out Vavasour. Then he controlled himself, and said
soothingly: “After all, dearest, there is nothing to be jealous of——”
“I jealous! And of that——” I was beginning, but Vavasour went on:
“After all, she is only a disembodied astral entity with whom I became
acquainted—through my fifth principle, which is usually well
developed—in the days when I moved in Spiritualistic society. She was,
when living—for she died long before I was born—a young lady of very
good family. I believe her father was a clergyman ... and I will not
deny that I encouraged her visits.”
“Discourage them from this day!” I said firmly. “Neither think of her
nor dream of her again, or I will have a separation.”
“I will keep her, as much as possible, out of my waking thoughts,” said
poor Vavasour, trying to soothe me; “but a man cannot control his
dreams, and she pervades mine in a manner which, even before our
engagement, my pet, I began to find annoying. However, if she really is,
as she has told me, a lady by birth and breeding, she will
understand”—he raised his voice as though she were there and he intended
her to hear—“that I am now a married man, and from this moment desire to
have no further communication with her. Any suitable provision it is in
my power to make——”
He ceased, probably feeling the difficulty he would have in explaining
the matter to his lawyers; and it seemed to me that a faint mocking
sniggle, or rather the auricular impression of it, echoed his words.
Then, after some more desultory conversation, we fell soundly asleep. An
hour may have passed when the same chilly sensation as of a damp draft
blowing across the bed roused me. I rubbed my cheek and opened my eyes.
They met the pale, impertinent smile of the hateful Katie, who was
installed in her old post beside Vavasour’s end of the bolster.
“You see,” she said, in the same soundless way, and with a knowing
little nod of triumph, “it is no use. He is dreaming of me again!”
“Wake up!” I screamed, snatching the pillow from under my husband’s head
and madly hurling it at the shameless intruder. This time Vavasour was
almost snappish at being disturbed. Daylight surprised us in the middle
of our first connubial quarrel. The following night brought a repetition
of the whole thing, and so on, _da capo_, until it became plain to us,
to our mutual disgust, that the more Vavasour strove to banish Katie
from his dreams, the more persistently she cropped up in them. She was
the most ill-bred and obstinate of astrals—Vavasour and I the most
miserable of newly-married people. A dozen times in a night I would be
roused by that cold draft upon my cheek, would open my eyes and see that
pale, phosphorescent, outline perched by Vavasour’s pillow—nine times
out of the dozen would be driven to frenzy by the possessive air and
cynical smile of the spook. And although Vavasour’s former regard for
her was now converted into hatred, he found the thought of her
continually invading his waking mind at the most unwelcome seasons. She
had begun to appear to both of us _by day as well as by night_ when our
poisoned honeymoon came to an end, and we returned to town to occupy the
house which Vavasour had taken and furnished in Sloane Street. I need
only mention that Katie accompanied us.
Insufficient sleep and mental worry had by this time thoroughly soured
my temper no less than Vavasour’s. When I charged him with secretly
encouraging the presence I had learned to hate, he rudely told me to
think as I liked! He implored my pardon for this brutality afterwards
upon his knees, and with the passage of time I learned to endure the
presence of his attendant shade with patience. When she nocturnally
hovered by the side of my sleeping spouse, or in constituence no less
filmy than a whiff of cigarette-smoke, appeared at his elbow in the face
of day, I saw her plainly, and at these moments she would favor me with
a significant contraction of the eyelid, which was, to say the least of
it, unbecoming in a spirit who had been a clergyman’s daughter. After
one of these experiences it was that the idea which I afterwards carried
into execution occurred to me.
I began by taking in a few numbers of a psychological publication
entitled _The Spirit-Lamp_. Then I formed the acquaintance of Madame
Blavant, the renowned Professoress of Spiritualism and Theosophy.
Everybody has heard of Madame, many people have read her works, some
have heard her lecture. I had heard her lecture. She was a lady with a
strong determined voice and strong determined features. She wore her
plentiful gray hair piled in sibylline coils on the top of her head,
and—when she lectured—appeared in a white Oriental silk robe that fell
around her tall gaunt figure in imposing folds. This robe was replaced
by one of black satin when she held her _séances_. At other times, in
the seclusion of her study, she was draped in an ample gown of Indian
chintz innocent of cut, but yet imposing. She smiled upon my new-born
desire for psychic instruction, and when I had subscribed for a course
of ten private _séances_ at so many guineas a piece she smiled more.
Madame lived in a furtive, retiring house, situated behind high walls in
Endor’s Grove, N.W. A long glass tunnel led from the garden gate to the
street door, for the convenience of Mahatmas and other persons who
preferred privacy. I was one of those persons, for not for spirit worlds
would I have had Vavasour know of my repeated visits to Endor’s Grove.
Before these were over I had grown quite indifferent to supernatural
manifestations, banjos and accordions that were thrummed by invisible
performers, blood-red writing on mediums’ wrists, mysterious characters
in slate-pencil, Planchette, and the Table Alphabet. And I had made and
improved upon acquaintance with Simon.
Simon was a spirit who found me attractive. He tried in his way to make
himself agreeable, and, with my secret motive in view—let me admit
without a blush—I encouraged him. When I knew I had him thoroughly in
hand, I attended no more _séances_ at Endor’s Grove. My purpose was
accomplished upon a certain night, when, feeling my shoulder violently
shaken, I opened the eyes which had been closed in simulated slumber to
meet the indignant glare of my husband. I glanced over his shoulder.
Katie did not occupy her usual place. I turned my glance towards the
armchair which stood at my side of the bed. It was not vacant. As I
guessed, it was occupied by Simon. There he sat, the luminously
transparent appearance of a weak-chinned, mild-looking young clergyman,
dressed in the obsolete costume of eighty years previously. He gave me a
bow in which respect mingled with some degree of complacency, and
glanced at Vavasour.
“I have been explaining matters to your husband,” he said, in that
soundless spirit-voice with which Katie had first made me acquainted.
“He understands that I am a clergyman and a reputable spirit, drawn into
your life-orbit by the irresistible attraction which your mediumistic
organization exercises over my——”
“There, you hear what he says!” I interrupted, nodding confirmatively at
Vavasour. “Do let me go to sleep!”
“What, with that intrusive beast sitting beside you?” shouted Vavasour
indignantly. “Never!”
“Think how many months I have put up with the presence of Katie!” said
I. “After all, it’s only tit for tat!” And the ghost of a twinkle in
Simon’s pale eye seemed to convey that he enjoyed the retort.
Vavasour grunted sulkily, and resumed his recumbent position. But
several times that night he awakened me with renewed objurgations of
Simon, who with unflinching resolution maintained his post. Later on I
started from sleep to find Katie’s usual seat occupied. She looked less
pert and confident than usual, I thought, and rather humbled and fagged,
as though she had had some trouble in squeezing her way into Vavasour’s
sleeping thoughts. By day, after that night, she seldom appeared. My
husband’s brain was too much occupied with Simon, who assiduously
haunted me. And it was now my turn to twit Vavasour with unreasonable
jealousy. Yet though I gloried in the success of my stratagem, the
continual presence of that couple of spooks was an unremitting strain
upon my nerves.
But at length an extraordinary conviction dawned on my mind, and became
stronger with each successive night. Between Simon and Katie an
acquaintance had sprung up. I would awaken, or Vavasour would arouse, to
find them gazing across the barrier of the bolster which divided them
with their pale negatives of eyes, and chatting in still, spirit voices.
Once I started from sleep to find myself enveloped in a kind of
mosquito-tent of chilly, filmy vapor, and the conviction rushed upon me
that He and She had leaned across our couch and exchanged an intangible
embrace. Katie was the leading spirit in this, I feel convinced—there
was no effrontery about Simon. Upon the next night I, waking, overheard
a fragment of conversation between them which plainly revealed how
matters stood.
“We should never have met upon the same plane,” remarked Simon silently,
“but for the mediumistic intervention of these people. Of the man”—he
glanced slightingly towards Vavasour—“I cannot truthfully say I think
much. The lady”—he bowed in my direction—“is everything that a lady
should be!”
“You are infatuated with her, it is plain!” snapped Katie, “and the
sooner you are removed from her sphere of influence the better.”
“Her power with me is weakening,” said Simon, “as Vavasour’s is with
you. Our outlines are no longer so clear as they used to be, which
proves that our astral individualities are less strongly impressed upon
the brains of our earthly sponsors than they were. We are still
materialized; but how long this will continue——” He sighed and shrugged
his shoulders.
“Don’t let us wait for a formal dismissal, then,” said Katie boldly.
“Let us throw up our respective situations.”
“I remember enough of the Marriage Service to make our union, if not
regular, at least respectable,” said Simon.
“And I know quite a fashionable place on the Outside Edge of Things,
where we could settle down,” said Katie, “and live practically on
nothing.”
I blinked at that moment. When I saw the room again clearly, the chairs
beside our respective pillows were empty.
Years have passed, and neither Vavasour nor myself has ever had a
glimpse of the spirits whom we were the means of introducing to one
another. We are quite content to know ourselves deprived for ever of
their company. Yet sometimes, when I look at our three babies, I wonder
whether that establishment of Simon’s and Katie’s on the Outside Edge of
Things includes a nursery.
THE WIDOW’S MITE
People bestowed that nickname upon little Lord Garlingham years ago,
when he was the daintiest of human playthings ever adored by a young
mother. Shutting my eyes, I can recall him, all golden curls and frills,
sitting on the front seat of the victoria with Toto, the Maltese.
Japanese pugs had not then come into fashion, nor the ubiquitous
automobile. Gar is the Widow’s Mite still, but for other reasons. He was
a charming, irresolute, impulsive child, who invariably meant
“macaroons” when he said “sponge cake.” It recurs to me that he was
passionately fond of dolls, not nigger Sambo dolls, or sailor dolls, or
Punchinelli with curved caps and bells, or policemen with large feet so
cunningly weighted that it is next door to impossible to knock them
over, but frilled and furbelowed dollies of the gentler sex. There was a
blue princess in tulle with a glass chandelier-drop tiara, and a dancing
girl in pink, and a stout, shapeless, rag lady, whose features were
painted on the calico ball that represented her head, and whose hair
resembled the fringe of a black woollen shawl. Holding her by one leg,
Gar would sink to sleep upon his lace-trimmed pillows in a halo of
shining curls, and Lady Garlingham’s last new friend or latest new
adorer would be brought up to the night nursery for an after-dinner peep
at “my precious in his cot.”
“My precious” was equally charming in his Eton days, when his sleepy
green eyes looked up at you from under a lock of fair silky hair that
was never to be kept within regulation School bounds, but continually
strayed upon the fair, if freckled, expanse of a brow which might have
been the home of a pure and innocent mind, and probably was not. He had
a pleasant treble boy’s voice and a beautiful smile, particularly when
his mother told him he might smoke just one cigarette, of her own
special brand, as a great treat.
“Mother’s are hay,” he said afterwards in confidence, and added that he
preferred cut Cavendish, and that the best way to induce a meerschaum to
color was to smoke it foul, and never to remove the dottle. But Lady
Garlingham was never the wiser. She had the utmost faith in her boy.
“Gar will be a dab at Classics,” she said with pride. “Fancy his knowing
that Dido was a heathen goddess, and Procrustes was a Grecian King who
murdered his mother and afterwards put out his own eyes! I must really
give his tutor a hint not to bring him on _too_ fast. He will have to
make his own way in the world, poor dear, that is certain; but I don’t
want him to turn out a literary genius with eccentric clothes, or
anything in the scientific line that isn’t careful about its nails and
doesn’t comb its hair.”
Garlingham’s clothes are always of the latest fashion and in the most
admirable taste. His hair is as well groomed, his hands are as
immaculate as any mother’s heart could desire, and he has not turned out
a genius. During his career at Oxford he did not allow his love of study
to interfere with the more serious pursuit of athletic distinction. He
left the University unburdened with honors, carrying in his wake a
string of bills as long as a kite’s tail. Relieved of this by the
sacrifice of some of Lady Garlingham’s diamonds, the kite shot up into
the empyrean in the wake of a dazzling star of the comic-opera stage.
“But, thank Heaven, the boy has principles,” breathed Lady Garlingham.
“He never dreamed of marrying her!”
Garlingham descended from the skies ere long, tangled in a telegraphic
wire, and went into the Diplomatic Service. He became fourth
under-secretary at an Imperial foreign Embassy, in virtue of the
marriage of his maternal aunt with Prince John Schulenstorff-Wangelbrode
(who was Military Attaché in the days of the pannier and the polonaise,
the bustle and the fringed whip-parasol). I have not the least idea in
what Garlingham’s duties consisted, and the dear fellow was
diplomatically reticent when sounded on the subject; but of one thing I
am sure, that few young men have worn an official button and lapels with
greater ease and distinction. He quite adored his mother, and made her
his _confidante_ in all his love affairs. Indeed I believe Lady
Garlingham kept a little register of these at one time on the sticks of
an ivory fan—those that were going off, those that were in full bloom,
and those that were just coming on; and posted up dates and set down
names with the utmost regularity.
For, like the typical butterfly, Garlingham sipped every flower and
changed every hour. A very mature Polly has now his passion requited,
and if human happiness depended on avoirdupois, and it were an
established mathematical fact that the felicity of the object attracted
may be calculated by the dimensions of the object attracting, then is
the handsome boy I used to tip a happy man indeed.
For Gar, “that pocket edition of Apollo,” as a Royal personage with a
happy knack at nicknames termed him—Gar has married a middle-aged, not
too good-looking, extremely fat widow, unknown to fame as Mrs. Rollo
Polkingham. The couple were Hanover Squared in June. Leila and Sheila
Polkingham made the loveliest pair of Dresden china bridesmaids
imaginable, and a Bishop tied the knot, assisted by the brother of the
bride, the Reverend Michael O’Halloran, of Mount Slattery, County Quare,
a surpliced brogue with a Trinity College B.A. hood. The hymns that were
sung by the choir during the ceremony were, “The Voice that Breathed,”
and “Fight the Good Fight,” and the bride looked quite as bridal as
might have been expected of a thirty-eight inch girth arrayed in the
latest heliotrope shade. She became peony, Garlingham pale blue, when
the moment arrived for him to pronounce his vows, and a voice—a high,
nasal voice of the penetrating, saw-edged American kind—said, several
pews behind, quite audibly: “Well, I call it child-stealing!”
The owner of that voice was at the reception in Chesterfield Crescent.
So was I, and when Garlingham thanked me for a silver cigar-box I had
sent him in memory of our old friendship, his hand was damp and clammy,
though he smiled. The Dowager Lady Garlingham, looking much younger than
her daughter-in-law, floated across to ask me why I never came to see
her now, and Gar drifted away. Later, I had a fleeting glimpse of the
bridegroom standing in the large, cool shadow of his newly-made bride,
looking helplessly from one to the other of his recently-acquired
stepdaughters. Then my circular gaze met and merged in the still
attractive eyes of Lady Garlingham.
“You heard,” she breathed in her old confidential way, “what that very
outspoken person—I think a Miss Van Something, from Philadelphia—said in
church?”
“I did hear,” I returned, “and, while I deplored her candor, I could not
but admit——”
“That she had hit off the situation with dreadful accuracy—I felt that,
too,” sighed Gar’s mother.
“We are old friends, or were,” said I, for people always became
sentimental in the vicinity of Lady Garlingham. “Tell me how it
happened!”
“Oh, how——” Lady Garlingham adroitly turned a slight groan into a little
cough. “Indeed, I hardly know. All that seems burned into me is that I
have become a dowager without adequate cause.”
Her pretty brown eyebrows crumpled; she dabbed her still charming eyes
with an absurd little lace handkerchief. She wore a wonderful dress of
something filmy in Watteau blue, and a Lamballe hat with a _paradis_.
Through innumerable veils of tulle her complexion was really wonderful,
considering, and her superb hair still tawny gold.
“Don’t look at me and ask yourself why I’ve never married again,” she
commanded, in the old petulant way. “For Gar’s sake, is the stereotyped
answer to that. And when I look at _her_——” She dabbed away a tear with
the absurd little handkerchief. “She hasn’t had the indecency to call me
‘Mother’ _yet_.... But she will, I know she will! If she doesn’t, she is
more than human. I have said such things to _her_.”
“I can quite believe it,” I agreed.
Champagne cups were going about; infinitesimal sandwiches, tabloids of
condensed indigestion, were being washed down. The best man, an Attaché
friend of Garlingham’s, brandishing a silver-handled carving-knife, was
encouraging the bridling bride to attack the cake. Sheila and Leila
hovered near with silver baskets, and Garlingham, with the merest shadow
of his old easy _insouciance_, was replying to the statute and legendary
chaff of the other men.
“You know he was engaged to the second girl, Sheila, first?” went on
Lady Garlingham plaintively.
I had not known it, and it gave me a thrill.
“Indeed!” I said in a tone of polite inquiry.
“When he was a very little boy, and I took him into a shop to buy a
toy,” said poor Lady Garlingham, “he always was in raptures with it,
whatever it was, until we were half-way home, and _then_ nothing would
satisfy him but the carriage being turned round and driven back, so that
he might exchange the thing for something he had particularly disliked
at first.”
I recalled the trait in my own experience of my young friend.
“Ah, yes. He always took _pralines_ when he really wanted chocolate
fondants,” sighed his mother. “And then—but perhaps you have
forgotten—the dolls?”
I had forgotten the dolls. I suppose I gaped rather stupidly.
“He had three,” gulped Lady Garlingham. “He chose the blue one first,
and then, when we had just reached Hyde Park Gate, he cried, and said it
was the pink one he had wanted all along. So we went back and got her,
and drove home to lunch, which, of course, was Gar’s dinner. And then,
if you had seen him, poor darling,”—her maternal bosom heaved with a
repressed sob—“with his underlip turned down in a quite South Sea Island
way, and the tears tumbling into his rice pudding because the blue
creature was absolutely his ideal from the first, you would have been
foolish enough to order the carriage and drive him back to the Regent
Street toyshop.”
“As you did?”
“As I did,” admitted Lady Garlingham.
“With the result that might have been expected?”
“With the result that seems to me _now_ to be a hateful foreshadowing of
what was to be my poor darling’s fate in life,” said the poor darling’s
mother.... “No, thank you, Sheila dear, I positively could not touch
it,” she added, as the cake-basket came our way. “Not even to dream on—I
have quite done with dreaming now.”
“But how,” I asked hypercritically, “could Garlingham’s subsequent
choice of the blue doll, originally discarded in favor of the pink,
foreshadow his ultimate fate in life?”
“Oh, don’t you understand?” quavered poor Lady Garlingham. “He went into
the toyshop by himself, and came marching out with what the Americans
call a rag-baby, the most odious, distorted, shapeless horror you can
imagine. It fascinated him by its sheer ugliness. He was obsessed,
magnetized, compelled.... As in this case!” A burst of confidence broke
down the floodgates of the poor woman’s reserve. She grasped me by the
arm as she gurgled out hysterically—rocking her slight form to and fro:
“My dear, _she_ is the rag-doll, this awful widow creature Garlingham
has married. And to his fatal curse of indecision he owes the Incubus
that is crushing him to-day.”
The bride had tripped upstairs to put on her going-away gown, attended
by Leila and Sheila and some freshly-married women, who meant to
struggle for the slippers for second choice.
Loud, explosive bursts of jeering merriment came from the dining-room,
where most of the men of the party had congregated. An exhausted maid
and a very obvious private detective hovered in the neighborhood of the
display of wedding presents, and through the open door of the
drawing-room one caught a glimpse of suspiciously new luggage piled up
in the hall, and a little group of youths and maidens of the callower
kind, who were industriously packing the sunshades and umbrellas in the
holdalls with rice and confetti.
“My poor, poor boy has been in and out of love _hundreds_ of times,”
moaned the despairing Dowager, “without once having been actually
engaged. So that when I saw Gar with these three women sitting on four
green chairs in the Park in May, I was not seriously alarmed. Georgiana
Bayham told me that the stout woman with too many bangles was a Mrs.
Rollo Polkingham, a widow, of whom nobody who might with truth be styled
anybody had ever heard, and that she had a wild, jungly house in
Chesterfield Crescent—(don’t those climbing peacocks in the wall-paper
set your teeth on edge?)—and always asked young men to call—and wanted
to know their intentions at the third visit.... ‘I would give this
turquoise charm off my _porte-bonheur_,’ said Georgiana, in her loud,
bubbling voice, ‘to know which of the two daughters Gar is smitten with.
The girl with the eyes like black ballot-balls, or the other with the
Gaiety smile.’ ... My dear, it was the dark one, Leila, as it happened.
Not that Gar flirted desperately. But they went to Hurlingham and
lunched at Prince’s, and then the mother thought my boy hooked, and
struck——”
“Asked his intentions?” I hinted.
“I knew something had happened,” said Gar’s mother, “when he came in to
tea with me that very afternoon. ‘Mother, am I a villain?’ were his very
words. ‘No, dear,’ I said, ‘do you feel like one?’ Then it came out that
the Polkingham woman had asked his intentions with regard to Leila; and
never having had such a thing done to him before, poor, dear boy! Gar
was quite prostrated. He did not deny that he found the eldest
Polkingham girl attractive, but secretly he had been more closely drawn
to the second, Sheila.”
“The pink doll,” I murmured.
“He behaved with the nicest honor in the matter,” declared Lady
Garlingham. “When he told me he was really in love with Sheila, and
could never be happy until he had married her—and how a young woman with
such a muddy complexion could inspire such a passion I don’t pretend to
know—I said: ‘Very well, you have my permission to tell her so. I shall
never stand in the way of your happiness, my son—although these people
are not in Our Set.’ If you had seen his shining eyes. If you had heard
the thrill in his voice as he said, ‘What a rattling good sort you are,
mother!’ you would have felt with me that the sacrifice was worth it.
And then he rushed off in a hansom to declare himself.” Lady Garlingham
clutched my arm painfully.
“To declare himself to Sheila?”
“And came back within the space of half an hour engaged to Leila,”
panted Lady Garlingham. “No, don’t laugh!”
“The b-blue d-doll!” I gasped.
“He was as pale as death!” said his mother. “He had found Leila in the
drawing-room in a becoming half-light, and been taken off his guard.”
“And metaphorically he told the shopwoman he would prefer that one,” I
said shakily. “I understand! Was he very unhappy over his bargain?”
“Frightfully out of sorts and off color,” said the wooer’s mother,
“until at a crisis, a month later, I nerved him to go and see the mother
and explain the mistake.”
“And did he?”
“I will say Mrs. Polkingham took the revelation in good part,” said Lady
Garlingham. “Leila cried a good deal, I believe, when she turned Gar
over to Sheila, and Sheila was not disagreeably inclined to crow. I must
give the girls credit for their behavior. As for Gar, he was the very
picture of young, ardent happiness. ‘Mother,’ I can hear him saying,
‘thanks to you, I have won the dearest and loveliest girl in the world.’
(Poor boy!) ‘And I’m as happy as a gardener.’”
“Did that phase last long?” I queried, with twitching facial muscles.
“He began to flag, as it were, in about six weeks,” said Garlingham’s
mother mournfully. “My poor, affectionate, _wobbly_ boy. The sky of his
simple happiness was overcast. There came a day when the floodgates of
his resolve to go through with everything at any cost—sacrifice himself
for the sake of his duty and for the credit of his family name——”
“_Noblesse oblige_,” I stammered chokily. “_Noblesse oblige._”
“The floodgates were broken down,” said his mother, with a tremble in
her voice. “His heart reverted with a bound to the—the other—to Leila.”
“To the blue doll!” I spluttered.
“When he entreated me,” went on Lady Garlingham, “begged me even with
tears to be his ambassadress to Leila, I grieve to say that for the
first time in his life I failed to rise to the occasion of his need. I
said: ‘I shall do nothing of the kind. Get out of the muddle as you
can—I wash my hands of it.’ And he thought me very hard and very
unfeeling, I know; but even when the _bouleversement_ was managed for
the third time, I could not bring myself to regard the position from my
usually philosophical point of view. It was too cruel. The retransfer of
the engagement-ring, for instance——”
“Ah, true,” I murmured, “and the presents!”
“Too painful!” sighed Lady Garlingham. “It was ultimately arranged by
Gar’s buying a new ring, and Sheila’s dropping the old one into the
almsbag at St. Baverstock’s. Poor girl! I will say her demeanor in the
trying circumstances was admirable.”
“As for the other?” I hinted.
“Leila is not a refined type of girl,” said Lady Garlingham decidedly.
“Her whole expression was that of a Bank Holiday tripper young person
who has just dismounted from one of those giddy-go-rounds. Boat-swings
might impart the dazed look. The mother seemed harassed. As for Gar——”
I guessed what was coming, but I would not have missed hearing Lady
Garlingham tell it for worlds.
“There came a day—a dreadful, dreadful day,” she said, with pale lips,
“when Gar told me that his life was ruined _unless he changed back_! We
had a _dreadful scene_, and for the first time in my life I had
hysterics. Then the unhappy boy tore from the house—_ventre à
terre_—leaving me a perfect wreck, held up by my maid Pinner—you know
Pinner?”
I nodded speechlessly.
“My wretched boy tore from the house, jumped into his ‘Gohard,’ which
was standing at the door—hurtled to Chesterfield Crescent—told the
painful truth——”
“Swopped dolls yet once again, and came back with the rag-baby,” I
gasped.
“_And_ now,” groaned Lady Garlingham, “he has to carry it through life!”
There was a gabbling on the upper landing. The bride was coming down in
a white cut-cloth, tailor-made gown and a picture hat, Leila and Sheila
and a bonneted maid following. The bridegroom, in immaculate tweeds,
appeared at a lower door, the smug face of his valet behind him. There
was a rush of women, an insane kissing and shaking of hands, a glare of
red carpet, a flapping of striped awning. Rice and confetti impregnated
the air, the doorsteps were swamped with smartly-dressed people. The
chauffeur of Gar’s “Gohard” with a giant favor in the buttonhole of his
livery coat grinned when Garlingham leaped tigerishly upon him and tore
it from his chest. The automobile moved on, pursued by farewells. Some
one had thoughtfully attached two slippers to its rearward steps, a
stout, elderly, white satin slipper and a slim masculine, evening shoe
of the pump kind, almost new.
“Say!” said the saw-edged American voice I had heard in the church—“say,
won’t the car-conductor allow she’s traveling with her little boy? What
will folks call him, anyhow?”
My mouth was on a level with the speaker’s back hair.
“The Widow’s Mite,” I said aloud—and fled.
SUSANNA AND HER ELDERS
I
The Earl of Beaumaris, a worthy and imposing personage, flushed from the
nape of his neck to the high summit of his cranium—premature baldness
figured amongst the family heredities—paced, in creaking patent-leather
boots, up and down the castle library—a noble apartment of Tudor design,
lined with rare and antique volumes into which none ever looked. There
were other persons present beside the Dowager Countess, and, to judge by
the strainedly polite expression of their faces, the squeaking leather
must have been playing havoc with their nerves.
“Gustavus,” said the Dowager at length, “you’re an English Peer in your
own castle, and not a pointsman on a Broadway block, unless I’m
considerably mistaken. Sit down!”
“Mother, I will not be defied!” said Lord Beaumaris. “I will not be
bearded by my own child—a mere chit of a girl! Had Susanna been a boy I
should have known how to deal with this spirit of insubordination. Being
a girl—and moreover, motherless—I abandon her to you. She has many
things to learn, but let the first lesson you inculcate be this—that I
positively refuse to be defied!”
“The child has, I gather, gone out to take the air when she ought to
have stayed in and taken a scolding,” said Lady Beaumaris. “Does anybody
know of her whereabouts?”
Alaric Osmond-Omer, a languid, drab-complexioned, light-haired man of
aristocratic appearance, never seen without the smoked eyeglass that
concealed a diabolic squint, spoke:
“I saw her in a crimson golfing-jacket and a white Tam-o’-shanter
crossing the upper terrace. She carried an alpenstock, and was followed
by quite a pack of dogs—incorporated in the body of one extraordinary
mongrel which I have occasionally observed about the stable-yards. I
gathered that she was going for a climb upon the cliffs. That was about
half an hour ago!”
“Alaric, you have attended every Family Council that I recollect since I
became a member of this family, and have never before opened your lips,”
said Lady Beaumaris, fixing the unfortunate Alaric with her eye, which
was still black and snappingly bright. “Make this occasion memorable by
offering a suggestion. You really owe us one!”
Everybody present looked at Alaric, who smiled helplessly and dropped
his eyeglass, revealing the physical peculiarity it concealed. The
effect of the diabolic squint, in combination with his mild features and
somewhat foolish expression, conveyed a general impression of reserve
force. He spoke, fumbling for the missing article, which had plunged
rapturously into his bosom, with long, trim fingers, encrusted with
mourning rings.
“The question at issue is—unless I have failed in my mental digest of
the situation—how to bring Susanna Viscountess Lymston—pardon me if I
indulge a little my weakness for prolixity——”
The door creaked, and Alaric broke off.
“My dear man,” said the Dowager, “I never before heard you utter a
sentence of more than two words’ length!”
“—To bring Susanna, who is just seventeen and fiercely virginal in her
expressed aversion to, and avoidance of, ordinary, everyday Man—into
compliance with your paternal wishes”—Alaric bowed to Lord
Beaumaris—“where the encouragement of a suitor is concerned!”
“I have appealed to her filial feelings—which do not appear to exist,”
said Lord Beaumaris; “I have appealed to her reason—I doubt gravely
whether the girl possesses any: ‘There is too much landed property,
there are too many houses and too many heirlooms, and there is not
enough ready money to keep things going,’ I said. Her reply was: ‘Sell
some of the land and some of the houses and all of the pictures, and
then there will be enough to keep up the rest.’ ‘My dear child, is it
possible,’ I said, ‘that at your age, and occupying the position you
occupy, you have no idea of what is meant by an Entail?’ Then I made her
sit down here, in this library, opposite me, and laid plainly before her
why it is necessary for her, as my daughter, to marry, and to marry
Wealth, Position, and Title. Before I had ended she rose with a flaming
face and burst into an hysterical tirade, which lasted ten minutes. I
gather that she was willing to marry Sir Prosper Le Gai or the Knight of
the Swan if either of these gentlemen proposed for her hand. Neither
being available, she intends, I gather, to write great poems, or paint
great pictures, or go upon the stage.... Go upon the stage! My blood
curdled at the bare idea. It is still in that unpleasant condition.”
Lord Beaumaris shuddered violently, and pressed his handkerchief to his
nose. “If you have any advice to give, Alaric,” he said bluntly, “oblige
us by giving it. We are at a positive crux!”
The drab-complexioned, light-haired Alaric responded:
“In my poor opinion—which may be crassly wrong—too much stress has been
laid upon the necessity of Susanna’s marrying.” At this point the
contrast between the amiable vacuity of Alaric’s face and the
Mephistophelian intelligence of his monocled eye was so extraordinary as
to hold his listeners spellbound in their chairs. “I think we may take
it that the principal feature of the child’s character is—call it
determination amounting to obstinacy——”
“Crass obstinacy!” burst from the Earl.
“Pig-headedness!” interjected the Dowager.
“I think I remember hearing that in her nursery days the sure way to
make her take a dose of harmless necessary medicine,” pursued Alaric,
his left eye fixed upon the door, “was to prepare the potion, pill, or
what-not, sweeten, and then carefully conceal it from her. Were she my
daughter—which Heaven for—which Heaven has not granted!—I should make
her take a husband in the same way.”
“An utterance possibly inspired, but as obscure as the generality. I
fear, my dear Alaric——” Lord Beaumaris began. The Dowager cut him short.
“Say, Gus, can’t you let him finish? That’s what I call real mean—to
switch a man off just when he’s beginning to grip the track.”
“Mother, I bow to you,” Lord Beaumaris said, purpling with indignation.
“Pray continue, Alaric!”
“Hum along, Alaric,” encouraged the Dowager.
Alaric, his countenance as the countenance of a little child, his right
eye beaming with mildness, and his left eye as the eye of an intelligent
fiend, went on:
“Susanna has never yet seen the Duke of Halcyon—her cousin, and the
husband for whom you destine her. When she does see him—I think I may be
pardoned for saying——”
“She’ll raise Cain,” agreed Lady Beaumaris. “Girls think such heaps of
good looks; I was like that myself, before I married your father, Gus.”
“My dear mother, granted that Halcyon’s gifts, both physical and mental,
are not”—the Earl coughed—“not of the kind best calculated to impress
and win upon a romantic, willful girl!... He is, to speak plainly——”
“A hideous little Troglodyte,” nodded the Dowager, over her interminable
Shetland-wool knitting.
“Odd, considering that his mother, when Lady Flora MacCodrum, was, with
the sole exception of myself, the handsomest young woman presented in
the Spring of 1845.”
“Mother,” said Lord Beaumaris, “delightful as your reminiscences
invariably are, Alaric is waiting to resume.”
“I had merely intended to suggest,” said Alaric, twirling his eyeglass
by its black ribbon and turning his demure drab-colored countenance and
balefully glittering left eye upon the Earl and the Dowager in turn,
“that the Duke of Halcyon, like the rhubarb of Susanna’s infancy, should
be rendered tolerable, agreeable, and even desirable to our dear girl’s
palate, by being forbidden and withheld. Ask him here in September for
the partridge shooting—as I understand you think of doing—but let him
appear, not in his own character as a young English Peer of immense
wealth and irreproachable reputation, but as one of those literary and
artistic Ineligibles, who are encouraged by Society to take every
liberty with it—short of marrying its cousins, sisters, or daughters.
Let him encourage his hair to grow—wear a velvet coat, a flamboyant
necktie, and silk stockings in combination with tweed knickerbockers.
Let him pay attention to Susanna—as marked as he chooses. And do you,
for your part”—he fixed Lord Beaumaris with his gleaming left
eye—“discourage those attentions, and lose no opportunity of impressing
upon your daughter that she is to discourage them too. Given this
tempting opportunity of manifesting her independent spirit, you will
find—or I know nothing of Susanna—that it will be pull baker, pull
devil. And I know which will pull the hardest!”
Lord Beaumaris rose to his feet in superb indignation. He struck the
attitude in which he had posed for his portrait, by Millais, which hung
at the upper end of the library, representing him in the act of
delivering his maiden speech in Parliament—an address advocating the
introduction of footwarmers into the Upper House, and opened upon
Alaric:
“Your proposal—I do not hesitate to say it—is audacious. You
deliberately expect that I—I, Gustavus Templebar Bloundle-Abbott
Bloundle, ninth Earl of Beaumaris, and head of this ancient
family—should stoop to carry out a deception—and upon my only child.
That I should take advantage of her willful youth, her undisciplined
temper, to——”
“To bring about a match that will set every mother’s mouth watering, and
secure your daughter’s son a dukedom, and a hundred and thirty thousand
a year.... That’s so, and I guess,” said Lady Beaumaris, “you’ll do it,
Gus! You’re a representative English peer, it’s true, but on my side
you’ve Yankee blood in you, and the grandson of Elijah K. Van Powler
isn’t going to back out of a little bluff that’s going to pay. No, sir!”
The Dowager ran her knitting-needles through her wool ball, and rolled
up her work briskly. “He’ll do it, Alaric,” she said with conviction.
“Mother,” exclaimed the Earl in desperation. “You were my father’s
choice, and Heaven forbid that I should fail in respect towards a lady
whom he honored with his hand. But when you suggest that to bring about
this most desirable union, I should wallow, metaphorically, in dirt——”
“It’s pay dirt, Gus,” said the Dowager. “A hundred and thirty thousand a
year, my boy!”
“Mother!” cried Lord Beaumaris. “If I brought myself to grovel to such
infamy, do you suppose for one moment Halcyon——”
“That Halcyon would tumble to the plot? There are no flies on Halcyon,”
said the Dowager, “and you bet he’ll worry through—velvet coat, orange
necktie, forehead, curls, and all!”
“Then do I understand,” said Lord Beaumaris helplessly, “that I am to
ask him to accept my hospitality in a character that is not his own, and
appear at my table in a disguise! The idea is inexpressibly loathsome,
and I cannot imagine in what character he could possibly appear.”
“As a painter—of the fashionable fresco brand—engaged if you like to
decorate your new ballroom!” put in Alaric in his level expressionless
tones.
“But he can’t paint!” said the Dowager. “That’s where we’re going to
buckle up and collapse. He can’t paint worth a cent! That takes brain,
and Halcyon isn’t overstocked with ’em, I must allow.”
“Get a man who has the brain and the ability to do the work,” said the
imperturbable Alaric.
“Deception on deception!” groaned Lord Beaumaris.
“I have the very fellow in my eye,” pursued Alaric: “Remarkable clever
A.R.A., and a kinsman of your own. Perhaps you have forgotten him,” he
continued, as Lord Beaumaris stiffened with polite inquiry, and the
Dowager elevated her handsome and still jetty eyebrows into
interrogative arches; “perhaps—it’s equally likely—you never heard of
him, but at least you remember his mother, Janetta Bloundle?”
“She married a person professionally interested in the restoration of
Perpendicular churches,” said Lord Beaumaris, “and though I cannot now
recall his name, I remember hearing of his death, and forwarding a
brief, condolatory postcard to his widow.”
“Who joined him, wherever he is, six months ago.”
“Dear me!” said Lord Beaumaris, “that is quite too regrettable. However,
it is too late in the day to send another postcard addressed to the
surviving members of the family.”
“There is only a son,” said Alaric, “and he is the rising artist to whom
I suggest that you should offer a commission. He is strong in fresco,
and has just executed a series of wall cartoons for the new Naval and
Military Idiot Asylum, which will carry his name down to the remotest
posterity.”
“Might—I—ah!—ask his name?” said Lord Beaumaris.
“Wopse,” responded Alaric.
Lord Beaumaris shuddered.
“And the Christian prefix?” He closed his eyes in readiness for the
coming shock.
“Halcyon.”
Lord Beaumaris opened his eyes, and the Dowager uttered a slight snort
of astonishment.
“A relationship existing upon the mother’s side between young Wopse and
the ducal house of Halcyon,” said Alaric, twirling his eyeglass faster:
“it is not surprising that the poor lady should have improved upon the
homespun Anglo-Saxonism of Wopse by the best means in her power. At any
rate the young fellow is well-looking and well-bred enough to carry both
names in a creditable fashion.”
“You’ve taken considerable of a time about making it,” said Lady
Beaumaris, “but I’m bound to say your suggestion ain’t worth shucks.
Given the real artistic and Bohemian article to nibble at, is a girl
like Susanna likely to swallow the imitation article? I guess not!”
“I concur entirely with my mother, Alaric,” said Lord Beaumaris. “You
propose, in the person of this young man, to introduce an element of
danger into our limited September house-party.”
“You could let this Mr. Wopse live in the garden _châlet_, and
commission the keeper’s wife to attend to him,” said the Dowager, “but
even then, how are you to make sure that——”
“That Susanna does not associate with him? There is a simple method of
divesting the young man of all attraction for a young creature of our
dear girl’s temperament,” said Alaric, “but for several reasons I shrink
from recommending its selection.”
“Pray mention it,” said Lord Beaumaris, with an uneasy laugh.
“Let’s hear it!” said Lady Beaumaris.
“You have only,” said Alaric, with great distinctness, “to call this
young fellow by his Christian name; to let him take Lady Beaumaris in to
dinner; to put him up in your best room—the Indian chintz suite—and
generally to foster the idea——”
“That he is the Duke of Halcyon!” cried the Dowager. “My stars! what a
Palais Royal farce to be played under this respectable old roof.”
“You suggest a double—a doubly-infamous and objectionable deception! Not
a word more.... I will not hear it!” Lord Beaumaris rapped decidedly on
the table, rose in agitation, and strode on creaking patent leathers to
the door. “The question is closed forever,” said he, turning upon the
threshold. “Let no one refer to it again in my——”
The door, which had occasionally creaked throughout this discussion,
smartly opened from without, and acting upon the Earl’s offended person
as a battering-ram, caused him to run forwards smartly, tripping over
the edge of the worn, but still splendid Turkey carpet. Lord Beaumaris
saved himself by clinging to the high back of an ancestral chair, upon
the seat of which he subsided, as the tall young figure of his daughter
appeared on the threshold, her Tam-o’-shanter cap, her long yellow
locks, and her red golfing jacket shining with moisture, her fresh
cheeks red with the cold kisses of the March winds.
“It began to snow like Happy Jack,” said Susanna, pulling off her rough
beaver gauntlet gloves, “so I came home. Well, have you all done
plotting? You look like conspirators—all—with the exception of Alaric.”
This was true, for while the Earl, his mother, and three other members
of the family council, whom we have not found it necessary to describe,
wore an air of somewhat guilty perturbation, the drab-colored, mild
countenance of Alaric, its diabolical left eye now blandly shuttered
with its tinted eyeglass, alone appeared guiltless and unmoved.
“We’ve been discussing the September house-party,” explained this
Catesby, as Susanna sat upon the elbow of his chair and affectionately
rumpled his sparse, light-colored locks.
“And husbands for me!” said Susanna, half throttling Alaric with her
strong young arm.
“Susanna!” cried her father. “I am surprised! I say no more than that I
am surprised!”
“And I say,” retorted Susanna, in clear, defiant, ringing accents, as
she swayed herself to and fro upon her narrow perch, “that it is
_beastly_ to be expected to marry just because money has got to be
brought into the family. Of course I _shall_ marry one day—I don’t want
to study law, or be a hospital nurse like that idiotic Laura Penglebury.
But I don’t want to be a married woman until I’m tired of being a girl.
I want to have lots of fun and do lots of things, and see lots of
people, and make my mind up for my own self. And——”
Lord Beaumaris, who had long been fermenting, frothed over. “When you
form an alliance, my child, you will form it with my sanction and my
approval, and the husband you honor with your hand will be a person
selected and approved of by me. By me! I will choose for you——”
“And suppose I choose for myself afterwards!” cried Susanna, blue fire
flashing from her defiant eyes.
“_Every woman is at heart_—ahem!” muttered Alaric, as Lord Beaumaris
strove with incipient apoplexy. Susanna continued, with a whimper in her
voice:
“The young men you and grandmother point out to me as nice and eligible,
and all that, are simply awful. They have no chins, or too much, and no
teeth, or too many, and they don’t talk at all, or they gabble all the
time, about nothing. They never read, they don’t care for Art or
Poetry—they aren’t interested in anything but Bridge and racing; and if
you told them that Beethoven composed the ‘Honeysuckle and the Bee,’ or
that Chopin wrote ‘When I Marry Amelia,’ they’d believe you. They like
married women better than girls, and people who dance at theaters better
than the married women——”
“Pet, you’d better go to Mademoiselle.... Ask her, with my love, to fix
you up some French history to translate,” Lady Beaumaris suggested.
“I should prefer a Gallic verb,” Lord Beaumaris amended. “I marry in
accordance with my parents’ wishes. Thou marriest in accordance with thy
parents’ wishes. He marries—and so on! And make a solid schoolroom tea
while you are about it, my child,” he continued, as Susanna bestowed a
parting strangle upon Alaric, kicked over a footstool, and rose to leave
the room. “For I fear we are to be deprived of your society at dinner
this evening.”
Susanna’s lovely red underlip pouted; her blue eyes clouded with tears.
She flashed a resentful look at her sire, and went out.
“She is not manageable by any ordinary methods,” said Lord Beaumaris,
running his forefinger round the inside of his collar, and shaking his
head. “In such a case Contumacy must be combated with Craft, and
Defiance met with Diplomacy. Alaric, regrettable as is the course you
have counseled us to pursue, I feel inclined to adopt it.... I shall
write to-night to make an appointment on Wednesday with the Duke of
Halcyon at the Peers’ Club, and—I shall be obliged if you will, at your
early convenience—favor me with the address of the young man Wopse.”
II
The garden _châlet_ was damp; it had been raining, and the glittering
appearance of the walls betrayed the fact. “As though a bally lot of
snails had been dancin’ a cotillon on ’em!” said the Duke of Halcyon. He
yawned dismally as he opened the casement and leaned out, looking, in
his gaudily-hued silken night-suit, like a tulip drooping from the
window-sill. Then the keeper’s wife came splashing up the muddy path
carrying a tray covered with a mackintosh, and the knowledge that his
breakfast would presently be set before him, and set before him in a
lukewarm, flabby, and tepid condition, caused Halcyon to groan. But
presently, when bathed, shaved, and attired in a neat knickerbocker suit
of tawny-orange velveteen, with green silk stockings and tan shoes,
salmon-colored silk shirt, rainbow necktie, and Panama, he issued,
cigarette in mouth, from the _châlet_, and strolled in the direction of
the newly-restored west wing, his Grace’s equanimity seemed restored. He
even hummed a tune, which might have been “The Honeysuckle and the Bee”
or “God Save the King,” as he mounted the short, wide, double flight of
marble steps that led from the terrace, and, pushing open the glazed
swing-doors, entered the ballroom, the entire space of which was filled
by a bewildering maze of ropes and scaffolding, as though a giant spider
had spun a cobweb in hemp and pine. A smell of turpentine and size was
in the air, and a paint-table occupied a platform immediately under the
skylight dome, the sides of which were already filled in with outlines,
transferred from cartoons designed by the artist engaged to ornament the
apartment. That gentleman, arrayed in a blue canvas blouse and wearing a
deerstalker cap on the back of a well-shaped head, was actively engaged
in washing in the values of a colossal nude figure-group with a bucket
of sepia and a six-foot brush. He whistled rather queerly as his bright
eye fell upon the intruder.
“You’re there, are you?” said the Duke unnecessarily. “Shall I come up?”
“If you can!” said Halcyon Wopse, with a decided smile, that revealed a
very complete set of very white teeth. “But, to save time, perhaps I had
better come down to you.” And the painter swung himself lightly down
from stage to stage until he reached the ground-level of his august
relative.
“Put what you’ve got to tell me as clearly as you can,” said the Duke.
“I never was a sap at Eton, and the classical names of these Johnnies
you’re thingambobbing on the what’s-a-name rather queer me.”
“The design outlined on the plaster in the central space on the
left-hand side of the skylight dome,” said Wopse, A.R.A., “is the
‘Judgment of Paris.’ The three figures of the rival goddesses are
completely outlined, but, as you see, Paris is only roughly blocked in.”
“I don’t see a city,” said the Duke with some annoyance. “I only see a
bit of a man. And, as for being block-tin——”
“Paris was a man—or, rather, a youth,” said Halcyon Wopse, quoting—
“‘Fair and disdainfully lidded, the Shepherd of Ida,
Holding the golden apple, desired of——’”
“Hold on! When people get spouting it knocks me galley-west,” said the
Duke. “Just tell me plainly what the beggar was to judge? Goddesses? I
savvy! And which of ’em took the biscuit—I mean the apple? Venus? Right
you are! That’s as much as I can hold at one time, thanky!”
“Sorry if I’ve over-estimated the extent of the accommodation,” said
Halcyon Wopse, smiling and lighting a cigar.
“One of the Partagas. Now, hang it,” said the Duke, “that is infernally
stupid of my man.”
“Of my man, you mean,” corrected the painter.
“I begin to think,” said the Duke, “that I have, in falling in with the
absurd plot, cooked up by that old footler, Beaumaris, and swopping
characters with a beg—with an artist fellow like you, in order to take
the fancy of a long-haired, long-legged colt of a girl——”
“I presume you allude to Lady Lymston?” put in the painter coldly.
“Of course. I say, in tumblin’ to the idea and embarkin’ in the game,
I’ve made an ass of myself,” said the Duke. “As for you, you’re in
clover.”
“Say nettles,” sighed the painter.
“Passin’ under my name——”
“Pardon,” said the painter. “The name is my own. And let us say, simply,
that in changing identities with your Grace in order to enable your
Grace to cast a glamour of artistic romance over a very ordinary——”
“Eh?” interjected the Duke.
“Situation,” continued the painter. “In doing this I have laid up for
myself a considerable store of regret.”
“Regret! Why, hang you! You’re chalkin’ up scores the whole bally time!”
shrieked the Duke, stamping his tan shoes on the canvas-protected
parquet. “Beaumaris’s guests—only a few purposely selected fogies and
duffers, who don’t count, it’s true—believe you to be me. They flatter
you and defer to you. You take the Dowager in to dinner, and I’m left to
toddle after with Susanna’s French governess. I’m out of everything—and
obliged to talk Art, bally Art—from mornin’ till night! While you—you’ve
ridden to cub-hunts on my mounts—driven my motor-cars and bust my
tires——”
“And very bad ones they are,” said the painter.
“You ride infernally well, and show off before the field at Henworthy
Three Gates, where the hardest riders in the county hang back. You ain’t
afraid of a trappy take-off—you weren’t built for a broken neck,”
screeched the incensed Peer. “You play golf too, and win the Coronation
Challenge Cup for the Lymston Club, takin’ seven holes out of the
eighteen, and holin’ the round in the score of sixty-eight.”
“It was my duty to maintain the honor of your Grace’s rank once I had
consented to assume it,” said the painter with a bow.
“And you’re a dead shot, confound you, knockin’ the birds over right and
left, and getting a par. in every sportin’ newspaper for a record bag of
four hundred. You’re a polo player too—hit a ball up and down the field
and through the goals at each end, and look as if you didn’t care
whether the ladies applauded you or not, da—hang you! And you must own
to bein’ a bit of a cricketer, and consent to play in the County Match
on Thursday, and I wouldn’t like to bet against your chances of makin’ a
big score—an all-round admirable what’s-a-name of a fellow like you!”
“Perhaps you’d better not,” the painter remarked calmly, knocking off
the ash of his cigar. “But I should be glad to know the reason for this
display of temper on your Grace’s part, all the same,” he added. “If I
rode like a tailor and shot like a duffer, hit your ponies’ legs instead
of the ball, and played cricket like a German governess at a girls’
boarding-school, I could understand——”
“Don’t you understand when I get back into my own skin again, I’ll have
to live up to the reputation you’ve made me?” yelled Halcyon. “I could
pass muster before because nobody looked for anything. But now....”
“And what of my reputation? I think I heard you telling Susanna——”
“Susanna!” echoed the Duke.
“She is Susanna to your Grace. Did I not hear you telling her that
Chiaroscuro was an Italian painter of the Cinquecento—who, you said, was
a Pope who patronized Art! You went on to say that Chiaroscuro lived on
hard eggs, and designed carnival cars, and that Benvenuto Cellini won
the Gold Cup at Ascot Race Meeting in ’91.”
“Look here, we won’t indulge in mutual recriminations. It’s beastly bad
form!” said the Duke. “And though you can ride and all that, I never
said I thought you could paint for nuts! In fact, between ourselves, I
don’t half like havin’ these spooks on the ceilin’ set down to me.” He
twisted his sandy little moustache, and fixed his eyeglass in his eye,
and started. “Here’s Lady Lymston comin’ over the lawn with a whole pack
of dogs, to ask me how I’ve got on since yesterday.”
“Take my blouse!” The painter denuded himself of the turpentiny garment,
appearing in a well-cut tweed shooting-suit.
“Get into that rag! Not me, thanks! Hand over your brush, and give me a
leg up on that scaffoldin’, like a good chap. I’d better be discovered
at work, I suppose,” said his Grace of Halcyon, as he slowly mounted to
the platform under the dome.
He had just reached it when Susanna’s fresh young voice was heard
outside calling to her dogs, and a moment later she appeared. Her fair
cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes were bright with exercise. She wore a
rough gray skirt, which, if less abbreviated than of yore, still showed
a slim, arched foot and suggested a charming ankle. Her white silk
blouse was confined by a Norwegian belt, and a loose _beret_ cap of
black velvet crowned her yellow head, its silken riches being now
disposed in a great coil, through which a silver arrow was carelessly
thrust. She started and reddened from her temples to the edge of lace at
her round throat when the tweed-clad figure of the painter caught her
eye, and gave him her hand with an indifference which was too
ostentatious.
“I didn’t know you were interested in Art,” she said.
“Oh yes!” responded the painter. “At least, if this can be called Art,”
he added modestly.
“’Ssh!” warned Susanna. “He is up there, and will hear you.”
“He?” echoed the painter, reveling in the blush.
“Did I hear my name?” called the Duke sweetly, from above. “Hulloa, Lady
Lymston, that you? Come to record progress? As you see, we’re going
strong.” His six-foot brush menaced a Juno’s draperies, a gallipot of
size upset, trickled its contents through the planking; his velveteen
coat-tails placed Paris in peril, as he turned his back to the cartoon
and resting his hands upon his knees, assumed a stooping attitude, and
peered waggishly down over the edge of the scaffolding at Susanna.
“Take care—you!” shouted the painter, forgetting his aristocratic
_rôle_.
“My foot is on my native thingumbob, ain’t it, Lady Lymston?” said the
owner of the small, cockneyfied, grinning countenance above. “How do you
like the wax-works? This is the”—he flourished the six-foot brush
perilously—“this is the Judgment of Berlin.”
“Paris!” prompted the false Duke hoarsely.
“He is trying to joke,” said Susanna, in an undertone. “Don’t discourage
him.”
“I should think that would be difficult,” remarked Wopse grimly.
“Papa tries to be crushing, and Cousin Alaric’s rudeness is simply
appalling,” said Susanna, in a confidential undertone. “And grandmother
walks over him as though he were a beetle—no! she would run away from a
thing like that—I should say an earwig or a snail, so one feels bound to
be a _little_ nice.”
“If only out of opposition!” said the painter, with a keen look of
intelligence, at which Susanna blushed again.
“He is idiotic when he tries to be funny about Art—and mixes up names
and dates—and tells you that Titian sang in opera and Rubens is a
popular composer. But he can paint, and Alaric Orme thinks he will be
President of the Academy one day. These cartoons are splendidly bold and
effective.”
“You think so! Wait till I’ve colored these girls up a bit,” said the
Duke, catching the end of the sentence. “Then you’ll——” He dipped his
brush and advanced it, dripping with cobalt, towards the group of
goddesses.
“Don’t touch them!” shouted Wopse, in agony.
“Why not?” asked Susanna.
“I don’t know. Excuse me, Lady Lymston, I believe the smell of this size
isn’t wholesome,” Wopse stammered. “I’ll get out into the air.” He
bolted.
“Good Heavens!” he moaned, as he strode unseeing down a broad path of
the dazzling west front pasture, “I can’t stand this! I’ll tell that
idiot Osmond-Orme that the deception must come to an end....”
“Why do you walk so fast?” said the voice of Susanna, behind him. “I
have had to _race_ to catch you.”
“I am sorry,” said Wopse, stopping and turning his troubled eyes upon
the fair face of his young relation.
“Let us walk on”—Susanna cast an apprehensive glance behind her—“or
somebody——”
“Somebody will see us walking together!” said Wopse acutely.
“It is so much nicer,” Susanna said demurely, “when one can keep
pleasant things to oneself. And we have had a good many walks and talks
since you came down here, haven’t we? And cliff scrambles—and bicycle
rides—and rows on the river. And the fun of it is that, although we are
such pals, really, father and grandmother and Uncle Alaric believe that
I positively detest you.” Her young laugh rang out gayly; she thrust a
sprig of lavender, perfumed and spicy, under the painter’s nose. He
captured the tantalizing hand.
“Do you not?”
“Detest you! You know I don’t.”
“May I have it?” It was the sprig of lavender. But the painter looked
at, and squeezed, the hand.
“If you promise to make a big score on Thursday!”
Susanna, it must be admitted, was learning coquetry.
“I will—if you are looking at me!”
“Done!”
“Done! Come into the beech avenue,” the painter pleaded, “just for a few
moments, before that little beast follows us. You know he will!”
“He can’t!” Susanna’s golden eyelashes drooped upon crimson cheeks. “He
can’t get down! I—I took away the ladder before I came away!” she owned.
Both hands were imprisoned, her blue eyes lifted, lost themselves in the
brown ones that looked down at her.
“Was that because you wanted—to be alone with me? Was it?” demanded
Wopse.
“Oh, Hal, don’t!”
“I’ll let you go when you have owned up, not before,” Wopse said
sternly.
Susanna’s reply came in a whisper: “You—know—it—was!”
The whisper was so faint that Wopse had to bend quite low to catch it.
Of course he need not have kissed Susanna. But he did, as Alaric
Osmond-Orme and Lord Beaumaris appeared, walking confidentially together
arm-in-arm.
“I think my little stratagem succeeds!” Lord Beaumaris had just said, in
reference to the preference exhibited by his daughter for the society of
the pretended painter. And Alaric had responded:
“Yes, as you say, my plan has proved quite a brilliant success!” when
Lord Beaumaris clutched his cousin’s arm.
“Merciful powers! Susanna and that—that young impostor!”
Alaric’s eyeglass fell with a click, and the diabolical left eye twirled
and twisted fiendishly in its socket as its retina embraced the picture
indicated.
“Feign not to have observed.... Well, Susanna! How are you, Halcyon. We
are strolling towards the ballroom for a glimpse of Wopse’s work.”
“We are stro——” Lord Beaumaris choked and purpled. Alaric dragged him
on.
“Do you think?...” Susanna’s cheeks were white roses now. “Do you
think—they——”
“Saw me kiss you? Not a doubt of it!”
“Oh!” Susanna confronted him with blazing eyes. “You!—you did it on
_purpose_! It was a plot——”
She clenched her strong young hands, battling with the desire to buffet
the handsome bronzed face before her. “I’ll never—never speak to you
again!” she cried.
“You will not be allowed to,” groaned the poor painter. “Our walks and
rides and all the rest are over.... Yes, there has been a plot, but not
of the kind you suspect. I am a traitor—but not the kind of traitor you
think me. Lady Lymston, I am not the Duke of Halcyon. I am a poor
devil—I beg your pardon!—I am a painter; my name is Wopse, and I have
disgraced my profession by the part I have played!” He sat down
miserably on a rustic bench.
“Oh! It has been a put-up thing between you all!” Susanna gasped. “Oh!”
She towered over Wopse like an incensed young goddess.
“If I could only paint you like that! Yes—I deserve that you should hate
me. Never mind who planned the thing, I should have known better than to
soil my hands with a deception,” said Wopse. “As for the Duke——”
“The Duke! Do I understand that that earwig in velveteen is my cousin
Halcyon!” Susanna’s voice was very cold.
“Yes. I am a kind of cousin, too,” said Wopse.
“But not that kind. Those—those designs—the work on the ceiling. They
are really yours?” Susanna asked.
“Mine, of course. Do you think that fellow could have done them?” cried
Wopse, firing up. “I’ve risen at four every morning to work at them,
and——”
“And you ride splendidly, and you’re a crack shot and polo player, and
you’re going to win for the county Eleven on Thursday,” came
breathlessly from Susanna.
“Ah, you won’t care to look at me now!” said the depressed Wopse.
“Won’t I?” Susanna’s eyes were dancing, her cheeks were glowing, she
pirouetted on the moss-grown ground of the avenue and dropped a little
curtsey to the painter. “When doing it will drive father and grandmother
and Alaric and the Earwig wild with rage.... When—when I like doing it,
too! When——” she stooped, and her lips were very near Wopse’s
cheek—“when I love doing it!”
“Oh, Susanna!” cried the painter.
“My dear Halcyon!” said Lord Beaumaris, peering short-sightedly upwards
through a maze of scaffolding. “I think you may as well come down.”
“In other words—the game is up!” said Alaric Osmond-Orme mildly. “Come
down, my dear fellow, and resume your own _rôle_ of hereditary
legislator. Allow me to replace the ladder.” He did so.
“So that fellow’s done me! I guessed as much when that little—when
Susanna took away the ladder,” said the Duke, preparing to descend. “And
then when I saw him kiss her—there’s a remarkably good view of the
gardens through the end window. I——” He pointed to some remarkable
effects of color splashed upon the ground so carefully prepared by the
painter. “I took it out of the beggar in the only way I could, don’t you
know.”
“Take it out of him still more,” suggested Alaric, his tinted eyeglass
concealing a fiendish twinkle, “by playing in the County Cricket Match.
He’s entered in your name, you know!”
“You’re very obligin’,” said the Duke, “but I don’t think I’m taking
any.” He gracefully slithered to the floor as Susanna and Halcyon Wopse
entered the ballroom, radiant and hand in hand.
“Papa,” said Susanna, taking the bull by the horns, “Mr. Wopse and I are
engaged. We mean to be married as soon as possible after the County
Cricket Match.” She kissed the perturbed countenance of Lord Beaumaris,
nodded to the Duke, and walked over to Alaric. “Your plan has succeeded
beautifully,” she said. “Ain’t you pleased—and won’t you congratulate
us?”
“I am delighted,” said the imperturbable Alaric. He dropped his eyeglass
and before the preternatural intelligence of his left eye even Susanna
quailed. “And I congratulate you both most heartily.” He smiled, and
pressed the hands of Susanna and her lover, and, moving away, stepped
into the garden. There, unseen, he rubbed his hands, twinkling with
mourning rings.
“I loved that boy’s mother very dearly, boy as I was then ...” said
Alaric. “As for Susanna, if she knew that I knew she was listening at
the library door....” He replaced his eyeglass, and his expression
became, as usual, a blank.
LADY CLANBEVAN’S BABY
There was a gray, woolly October fog over Hyde Park. The railings wept
grimy tears, and the damp yellow leaves dropped soddenly from the soaked
trees. Pedestrians looked chilled and sulky; camphor chests and
cedar-presses had yielded up their treasures of sables and sealskin,
chinchilla and silver fox. A double stream of fashionable traffic rolled
west and east, and the rich clarets and vivid crimsons of the
automobiles burned through the fog like genial, warming fires.
A Baby-Bunting six horse-power petrol-car, in color a chrysanthemum
yellow, came jiggeting by. The driver stopped. He was a technical
chemist and biologist of note and standing, and I had last heard him
speak from the platform of the Royal Institution.
“I haven’t seen you,” said the Professor, “for years.”
“That must be because you haven’t looked,” said I, “for I have both seen
and heard you quite recently. Only you were upon the platform and I was
on the ground-floor.”
“You are too much upon the ground-floor now,” said the Professor, with a
shudder of a Southern European at the dampness around and under foot,
“and I advise you to accept a seat in my car.”
And the Baby-Bunting, trembling with excitement at being in the company
of so many highly-varnished electric victorias and forty horse-power
auto-cars, joined the steadily-flowing stream going west.
“I wonder that you stoop to petrol, Professor,” I said, as the thin,
skillful hand in the baggy chamois glove manipulated the driving-wheel,
and the little car snaked in and out like a torpedo-boat picking her way
between the giant warships of a Channel Squadron.
The Professor’s black brows unbent under the cap-peak, and his thin,
tightly-gripped lips relaxed into a mirthless smile.
“Ah, yes; you think that I should drive my car by radio-activity, is it
not? And so I could—and would, if the pure radium chloride were not
three thousand times the price of gold. From eight tons of uranium ore
residues about one gramme—that is fifteen grains—can be extracted by
fusing the residue with carbonates of soda, dissolving in hydrochloric
acid, precipitating the lead and other metals in solution by the aid of
hydrogen-sulphide, and separating from the chlorides that
remain—polonium, actinium, barium, and so forth—the chloride of radium.
With a single pound of this I could not only drive an auto-car, my
friend”—his olive cheek warmed, and his melancholy dark eyes grew oddly
lustrous—“I could stop the world!”
“And supposing it was necessary to make it go on again?” I suggested.
“When I speak of the world,” exclaimed the Professor, “I do not refer to
the planet upon which we revolve; I speak of the human race which
inhabits it.”
“Would the human race be obliged to you, Professor?” I queried.
The Professor turned upon me with so sudden a verbal _riposte_ that the
Baby-Bunting swerved violently.
“You are not as young as you were when I met you first. To be plain, you
are getting middle-aged. Do you like it?”
“I hate it!” I answered, with beautiful sincerity.
“Would you thank the man who should arrest, not the beneficent passage
of Time, which means progress, but the wear and tear of nerve and
muscle, tissue, and bone, the slow deterioration of the blood by the
microbes of old age, for Metchnikoff has shown that there is no
difference between the atrophy of senility and the atrophy caused by
microbe poison? Would you thank him—the man who should do that for you?
Tell me, my friend.”
I replied, briefly and succinctly: “Wouldn’t I?”
“Ha!” exclaimed the Professor, “I thought so!”
“But I should have liked him to have begun earlier,” I said.
“Twenty-nine is a nice age, now.... It is the age we all try to stop at,
and can’t, however much we try. Look there!”
A landau limousine, dark blue, beautifully varnished, nickel-plated, and
upholstered in cream-white leather, came gliding gracefully through the
press of vehicles. From the crest upon the panel to the sober
workmanlike livery of the chauffeur, the turn-out was perfection. The
pearl it contained was worthy of the setting.
“Look there?” I repeated, as the rose-cheeked, sapphire-eyed, smiling
vision passed, wrapped in a voluminous coat of chinchilla and silver
fox, with a toque of Parma violets under the shimmer of the silken veil
that could only temper the burning glory of her wonderful Renaissance
hair.
“There’s the exception to the rule.... There’s a woman who doesn’t need
the aid of science or of Art to keep her at nine and twenty. There’s a
woman in whom ‘the wear and tear of nerve and muscle, tissue and bone’
goes on—if it does go on—imperceptibly. Her blood doesn’t seem to be
much deteriorated by the microbe of old age, Professor, does it? And
she’s forty-three! The alchemistical forty-three, that turns the gold of
life back into lead! The gold remains gold in her case, for that hair,
that complexion, that figure, are,” I solemnly declared, “her own.”
At that moment Lady Clanbevan gave a smiling gracious nod to the
Professor, and he responded with a cold, grave bow. The glow of her
gorgeous hair, the liquid sapphire of her eyes, were wasted on this
stony man of science. She passed, going home to Stanhope Gate, I
suppose, in which neighborhood she has a house; I had barely a moment to
notice the white-bonneted, blue-cloaked nurse on the front of the
landau, holding a bundle of laces and cashmeres, and to reflect that I
have never yet seen Lady Clanbevan taking the air out of the society of
a baby, when the Professor spoke:
“So Lady Clanbevan is the one woman who has no need of the aid of Art or
science to preserve her beauty and maintain her appearance of youth?
Supposing I could prove to you otherwise, my friend, what then?”
“I should say,” I returned, “that you had proved what everybody else
denies. Even the enemies of that modern Ninon de l’Enclos, who has just
passed——”
“With the nurse and the baby?” interpolated the Professor.
“With the nurse and the baby,” said I. “Even her enemies—and they are
legion—admit the genuineness of the charms they detest. Mentioning the
baby, do you know that for twenty years I have never seen Lady Clanbevan
out without a baby? She must have quite a regiment of children—children
of all ages, sizes, and sexes.”
“Upon the contrary,” said the Professor, “she has only one!”
“The others have all died young, then?” I asked sympathetically, and was
rendered breathless by the rejoinder:
“Lady Clanbevan is a widow.”
“One never asks questions about the husband of a professional beauty,” I
said. “His individuality is merged in hers from the day upon which her
latest photograph assumes a marketable value. Are you sure there isn’t a
Lord Clanbevan alive somewhere?”
“There is a Lord Clanbevan alive,” said the Professor coldly. “You have
just seen him, in his nurse’s arms. He is the only child of his mother,
and she has been a widow for nearly twenty years! You do not credit what
I assert, my friend?”
“How can I, Professor?” I asked, turning to meet his full face, and
noticed that his dark, somewhat opaque brown irises had lights and
gleams of carbuncle-crimson in them. “I have had Lady Clanbevan and her
progeny under my occasional observation for years. The world grows
older, if she doesn’t, and she has invariably a baby—_toujours_ a new
baby—to add to the charming illusion of young motherhood which she
sustains so well. And now you tell me that she is a twenty-years’ widow
with one child, who must be nearly of age—or it isn’t proper. You puzzle
me painfully!”
“Would you care,” asked the Professor after a moment’s pause, “to drive
back to Harley Street with me? I am, as you know, a vegetarian, so I
will not tax your politeness by inviting you to lunch. But I have
something in my laboratory I should wish to show you.”
“Of all things, I should like to come,” I said. “How many times haven’t
I fished fruitlessly for an invitation to visit the famous laboratory
where nearly twenty years ago——”
“I traced,” said the Professor, “the source of phenomena which heralded
the evolution of the Röntgen Ray and the ultimate discovery of the
radio-active salt they have christened radium. I called it protium
twenty years ago, because of its various and protean qualities. Why did
I not push on—perfect the discovery and anticipate Sir William C—— and
the X——’s? There was a reason. You will understand it before you leave
my laboratory.”
The Baby-Bunting stopped at the unfashionable end of Harley Street, in
front of the dingy yellow house with the black front door, flanked by
dusty boxes of mildewed dwarf evergreens, and the Professor, relieved of
his fur-lined coat and cap, led the way upstairs as lightly as a boy.
Two garret-rooms had been knocked together for a laboratory. There was a
tiled furnace at the darker end of the long skylighted room thus made,
and solid wooden tables much stained with spilt chemicals, were covered
with scales, glasses, jars, and retorts—all the tools of chemistry. From
one of the many shelves running round the walls, the Professor took down
a circular glass flask and placed it in my hands. The flask contained a
handful of decayed and moldy-looking wheat, and a number of peculiarly
offensive-looking little beetles with tapir-like proboscides.
“The perfectly developed beetle of the _Calandria granaria_,” said the
Professor, as I cheerfully resigned the flask, “a common British weevil,
whose larvæ feed upon stored grain. Now look at this.” He reached down
and handed me a precisely similar flask, containing another handful of
grain, cleaner and sounder in appearance, and a number of grubs,
sharp-ended chrysalis-like things buried in the grain, inert and
inactive.
“The larvæ of _Calandria granaria_,” said the Professor, in his drawling
monotone. “How long does it take to hatch the beetle from the grub? you
ask. Less than a month. The perfect weevils that I have just shown you I
placed in their flask a little more than three weeks back. The grubs you
see in the flask you are holding, and which, as you will observe by
their anxiety to bury themselves in the grain so as to avoid contact
with the light, are still immature, I placed in the glass receptacle
twenty years ago. Don’t drop the flask—I value it.”
“Professor!” I gasped.
“Twenty years ago,” repeated the Professor, delicately handling the
venerable grubs, “I enclosed these grubs in this flask, with sufficient
grain to fully nourish them and bring them to the perfect state. In
another flask I placed a similar number of grubs in exactly the same
quantity of wheat. Then for twenty-four hours I exposed flask number one
to the rays emanating from what is now called radium. And as the
electrons discharged from radium are obstructed by collision with
air-atoms, I exhausted the air contained in the flask.” He paused.
“Then, when the grubs in flask number two hatched out,” I anticipated,
“and the larvæ in flask number one remained stationary, you realized——”
“I realized that the rays from the salt arrested growth, and at the same
time prolonged to an almost incalculable extent,” said the
Professor—“for you will understand that the grubs in flask number one
had lived as grubs half a dozen times as long as grubs usually do....
And I said to myself that the discovery presented an immense, a
tremendous field for future development. Suppose a young woman of, say,
twenty-nine were enclosed in a glass receptacle of sufficient bulk to
contain her, and exposed for a few hours to my protium rays, she would
retain for many years to come—until she was a great-grandmother of
ninety!—the same charming, youthful appearance——”
“As Lady Clanbevan!” I cried, as the truth rushed upon me and I grasped
the meaning this astonishing man had intended to convey.
“As Lady Clanbevan presents to-day,” said the Professor, “thanks to the
discovery of a——”
“Of a great man,” said I, looking admiringly at the lean worn figure in
the closely-buttoned black frock-coat.
“I loved her.... It was a delight to her to drag a disciple of Science
at her chariot-wheels. People talked of me as a coming man. Perhaps I
was.... But I did not thirst for distinction, honors, fame.... I
thirsted for that woman’s love.... I told her of my discovery—as I told
her everything. Bah!” His lean nostrils worked. “You know the game that
is played when one is in earnest and the other at play. She promised
nothing, she walked delicately among the passions she sowed and fostered
in the souls of men, as a beautiful tigress walks among the
poison-plants of the jungle. She saw that rightly used, or wrongly used,
my great discovery might save her beauty, her angelic, dazzling beauty
that had as yet but felt the first touch of Time. She planned the whole
thing, and when she said, ‘You do not love me if you will not do this,’
I did it. I was mad when I acceded to her wish, perhaps; but she is a
woman to drive men frenzied. You have seen how coldly, how slightingly
she looked at me when we encountered her in the Row? I tell you—you have
guessed already—I went there to see her. I always go where she is to be
encountered, when she is in town. And she bows, always; but her eyes are
those of a stranger. Yet I have had her on her knees to me. She cried
and begged and kissed my hands.”
He knotted his thin hands, their fingers brown-tipped with the stains of
acids, and wrung and twisted them ferociously.
“And so I granted what she asked, carried out the experiment, and paid
what you English call the piper. The giant glass bulb with the
rubber-valve door was blown and finished in France. It involved an
expense of three hundred pounds. The salt I used—of protium (christened
radium now)—cost me all my savings—over two thousand pounds—for I had
been a struggling man——”
“But the experiment?” I broke in. “Good Heavens, Professor! How could a
living being remain for any time in an exhausted receiver? Agony
unspeakable, convulsions, syncope, death! One knows what the result
would be. The merest common sense——”
“The merest common sense is not what one employs to make discoveries or
carry out great experiments,” said the Professor. “I will not disclose
my method; I will only admit to you that the subject—the subjects were
insensible; that I induced _anæsthesia_ by the ordinary ether-pump
apparatus, and that the strength of the ray obtained was concentrated to
such a degree that the exposure was complete in three hours.” He looked
about him haggardly. “The experiment took place here nineteen years
ago—nineteen years ago, and it seems to me as though it were yesterday.”
“And it must seem like yesterday to Lady Clanbevan—whenever she looks in
the glass,” I said. “But you have pricked my curiosity, Professor, by
the use of the plural. Who was the other subject?”
“Is it possible you don’t guess?” The sad, hollow eyes questioned my
face in surprise. Then they turned haggardly away. “My friend, the other
subject associated with Lady Clanbevan in my great experiment was—Her
Baby!”
I could not speak. The dowdy little grubs in the flask became for me
creatures imbued with dreadful potentialities.... The tragedy and the
sublime absurdity of the thing I realized caught at my throat, and my
brain grew dizzy with its horror.
“Oh! Professor!” I gurgled, “how—how grimly, awfully, tragically
ridiculous! To carry about with one wherever one goes a baby that never
grows older—a baby——”
“A baby nearly twenty years old? Yes, it is as you say, ridiculous and
horrible,” the Professor agreed.
“What could have induced the woman!” burst from me.
The Professor smiled bitterly.
“She is greedy of money. It is the only thing she loves—except her
beauty and her power over men; and during the boy’s infancy—that word is
used in the Will—she has full enjoyment of the estate. After he ‘attains
to manhood’—I quote the Will again—hers is but a life-interest. Now you
understand?”
I did understand, and the daring of the woman dazzled me. She had made
the Professor doubly her tool.
“And so,” I gurgled between tears and laughter, “Lord Clanbevan, who
ought to be leaving Eton this year to commence his first Oxford term, is
being carried about in the arms of a nurse, arrayed in the flowing
garments of a six-months’ baby! What an astonishing conspiracy!”
“His mother,” continued the Professor calmly, “allows no one to approach
him but the nurse. The family are only too glad to ignore what they
consider a deplorable case of atavistic growth-arrest, and the boy
himself——” He broke off. “I have detained you,” he said, after a pause.
“I will not do so longer. Nor will I offer you my hand. I am as
conscious as you are—that it has committed a crime.” And he bowed me out
with his hands sternly held behind him. There were few more words
between us, only I remember turning on the threshold of the laboratory,
where I left him, to ask whether protium—radium, as it is now
christened—checks the growth of every organic substance? The answer I
received was curious:
“Certainly, with the exception of the nails and the hair!”
A week later the Professor was found dead in his laboratory.... There
were reports of suicide—hushed up. People said he had been more
eccentric than ever of late, and theorized about brain-mischief; only I
located the trouble in the heart. A year went by, and I had almost
forgotten Lady Clanbevan—for she went abroad after the Professor’s
death—when at a little watering-place on the Dorset coast, I saw that
lovely thing, as lovely as ever—she who was fifty if a day! With her
were the blue-cloaked elderly nurse and Lord Clanbevan, borne, as usual,
in the arms of his attendant, or wheeled in a luxurious perambulator.
Day after day I encountered them—the lovely mother, the middle-aged
nurse, and the mysterious child—until the sight began to get on my
nerves. Had the Professor selected me as the recipient of a secret
unrivaled in the records of biological discovery, or had he been the
victim of some maniacal delusion that cold October day when we met in
Rotten Row? One peep under the thick white lace veil with which the
baby’s face was invariably covered would clear everything up! Oh! for a
chance to allay the pangs of curiosity!
The chance came. It was a hot, waspy August forenoon. Everybody was
indoors with all the doors and windows open, lunching upon the
innutritive viands alone procurable at health resorts—everybody but
myself, Lord Clanbevan, and his nurse. She had fallen asleep upon a
green-painted esplanade seat, gratuitously shielded by a striped awning.
Lord Clanbevan’s C-springed, white-hooded, cane-built perambulator stood
close beside her. He was, as usual, a mass of embroidered cambric and
cashmere, and, as always, thickly veiled, his regular breathing heaved
his infant breast; the thick white lace drapery attached to his
beribboned bonnet obscured the features upon which I so ardently longed
to gaze! It was the chance, as I have said; and as the head of the
blue-cloaked nurse dropped reassuringly upon her breast, as she emitted
the snore that gave assurance of the soundness of her slumbers, I
stepped silently on the gravel towards the baby’s perambulator. Three
seconds, and I stood over its apparently sleeping inmate; another, and I
had lifted the veil from the face of the mystery—and dropped it with a
stifled cry of horror!
The child had a moustache!
THE DUCHESS’S DILEMMA
“A person called to see me!” repeated the Duchess of Rantorlie. “He
pleaded urgent business, you say?”
She glanced at the card presented by her groom-of-the-chambers without
taking the trouble to lift it from the salver. “‘Mr. Moss Rubelius.’ I
do not know the name—I have no knowledge of any urgent business. You
must tell him to go away at once, and not call again.”
“Begging your Grace’s pardon,” remarked the official, “the person seemed
to anticipate a message of the kind——”
“Did he? Then,” thought her Grace, “he is not disappointed.”
“And, still begging your Grace’s pardon,” pursued the discreet domestic,
“he asked me to hand this second card to your Grace.”
It was rather a shabby card, and dog’s-eared as though it had been
carried long in somebody’s pocket; but it was large and feminine, and
adorned with a ducal coronet and the Duchess’s own cipher, and scribbled
upon it in pencil, in the Duchess’s own handwriting, were two or three
words, simple enough, apparently, and yet sufficiently fraught with
meaning to make their fair reader turn very pale. She did not replace
this card upon the salver, but kept it as she said:
“Bring the person to me at once.”
And when the softly stepping servant had left the room—one of her
Grace’s private suite, charmingly furnished as a study—she made haste to
tear the card up, dropping the fragments into the hottest part of the
wood-fire, and thrusting at them with the poker until the last tremulous
fragment of gray ash had disappeared. Rising from this exercise with a
radiant glow upon her usually colorless cheeks the Duchess became aware
that she was not alone. A person of vulgar appearance, outrageously
attired in a travesty of the ordinary afternoon costume of an English
gentleman, stood three or four feet off, regarding her with an observant
and rather wily smile. Not at all discomposed, he was the first to
speak.
“Before burnin’ _that_,” he remarked, in the thick, snuffling accents of
the low-bred, “your Grace ought to have asked yourself whether it was
any use. Because—I put it to your Grace, as a poker-player, being told
the game’s fashionable in your Grace’s set—a man who holds four aces can
afford to throw away the fifth card, even if it’s a king. And people of
my profession don’t go in for bluff. It ain’t their fancy.”
“What is your profession?” asked the Duchess, regarding with contempt
the dark, full-fed, red-lipped, hook-beaked countenance before her.
“Money!” returned Mr. Moss Rubelius. He rattled coin in his
trousers-pockets as he spoke, and the superfluity of gold manifested in
large, coarse rings upon his thick fingers, the massy chain festooned
across his broad chest, the enormous links fastening his cuffs, and the
huge diamond pin in his cravat, seemed to echo “Money.”
The Duchess lost no time in coming to the point. She was not guided by
previous experience, having hitherto, by grace as well as luck, steered
clear of scandal. But, girl of twenty as she was, she asked, as coolly
as an _intrigante_ of forty, though her young heart was fluttering
wildly against the walls of its beautiful prison, “How did you get that
card?”
“I will be quite plain with your Grace,” returned the money-lender.
“When the second lot of cavalry drafts sailed for South Africa early in
the year of 1900, our firm, ’aving a writ of _’abeas_ out against
Captain Sir Hugh Delaving of the Royal Red Dragoon Guards—I have reason
to believe your Grace knew something of the Captain?”
“Yes,” said the Duchess, turning her cold blue eyes upon the twinkling
orbs of Mr. Moss Rubelius, “I knew something of the Captain. You do not
need to ask the question. Please go on!”
“The Captain was,” resumed Mr. Rubelius, “for a born aristocrat, the
downiest I ever see—saw, I mean. He gave our clerks and the men with the
warrant the slip by being ’eaded up in a wooden packin’ case, labeled
‘Officers’ Stores,’ and got away to the Cape, where he was killed in his
first engagement.”
“This,” said the Duchess, “is no news to me.”
“No,” said the money-lender; “but it may be news to your Grace that,
though we couldn’t lay our ‘ands on the Captain himself, we got hold of
all his luggage. Not much there that was of any marketable value, except
a silver-gilt toilet-set. But there was a packet of letters in a Russia
writin’-case with a patent lock, all of ’em written in the large-sized,
square ’and peculiar to the leadin’ female aristocracy, and signed
‘Ethelwyne,’ or merely ‘E.’”
“And this discovery procures me the pleasure of this interview?”
remarked the Duchess. “The letters are mine—you come on the errand of a
blackmailer. I have only one thing to wonder at, and that is—why you
have not come before?”
“Myself and partner thought, as honorable men of business, it would be
better to approach the Captain first,” explained the usurer. “His mother
died the week he sailed for Africa, and left him ten thousand pounds. We
’astened to communicate with him, but——”
“But he had been killed meanwhile,” said the Duchess. “You would have
had the money he owed—or did not owe—you, and your price for the
letters, had you reached him in time; but you did not, and your goods
are left upon your hands. Why, as honorable men of business”—her lovely
lip curled—“did you not take them at once to the Duke?”
Mr. Moss Rubelius seemed for the first time a little nonplussed. He
looked down at his large, shiny boots, and the sight did not appear to
relieve him.
“I will be quite plain with your Grace.”
“Pray endeavor!” said the Duchess.
“The letters are—to put it delicately—not compromising enough. They’re
more,” said Mr. Rubelius, “the letters a school-girl at Brighton would
write to her music-master, supposing him to be young and possessed of a
pair of cavalry legs and a moustache. There’s fuel in ’em for a
First-Class Connubial Row,” continued Mr. Rubelius, “but not material
for a Domestic Upheaval—followed by an Action for Divorce. As a man, no
longer, but once in business—for within this last month our firm has
dissolved, and myself and my partner have retired upon our means—this is
my opinion with regard to these letters in your Grace’s handwriting,
addressed to the late Captain Sir H. Delaving: The Duke, I believe,
would only laugh at ’em.”
The Duchess started violently, and seemed about to speak.
“But, still, the letters are worth paying for,” ended Mr. Moss Rubelius.
“And your Grace can have em—at my price.”
“What is your price?” asked the Duchess, trying in vain to read in the
stolid physiognomy before her the secret purpose of the soul within.
“Perhaps your Grace wouldn’t mind my taking a chair?” insinuated Mr.
Rubelius.
“Do as you please, sir,” said the Duchess, “only be brief.”
“I’ll try,” said the money-lender, comfortably crossing his legs. “To
begin—we’re in the London Season and the month of March, and your Grace
has a party at Rantorlie for the April salmon-fishing. Angling’s my one
vice—my only weakness, ever since I caught minnows in the Regent’s Canal
with a pickle-bottle tied to a string. Coarse fishing in the Thames was
my recreation in grub times, whenever I ’ad a day away from our office
in the Minories. Trout I’ve caught now and then, with a worm on a Stuart
tackle—since I became a butterfly. But I’ve never had a slap at a
salmon, and the finest salmon-anglin’ in the kingdom is to be ’ad in the
Haste, below Rantorlie. Ask me there for April, see that I ’ave the pick
of the sport, even if you ’ave a Royal duke to cater for, as you ’ad
last year, and, the day I land my first twenty-pounder, the letters are
yours.”
The Duchess burst out laughing wildly.
“Ha, ha! Oh!” she cried; “it is impossible to help it.... I can’t!... It
is so.... Ha, ha, ha!”
“I shan’t disgrace you,” said Mr. Rubelius. “My kit and turn-out will be
by the best makers, and I’ll tip the ’ead gillie fifty pound. I’m a
soft-hearted hass to let the letters go so cheap, but——Golly! the chance
of catchin’ a twenty-pound specimen of _Salmo salar_ that a Royal
’Ighness ’as angled for in vain!... Look ’ere, your Grace”—his tones
were oily with entreaty—“write me the invitation now, on the spot, and
you shall ’ave back the first three of those nine letters down on the
nail.”
“You have them——?”
“With me!” said Mr. Rubelius, producing a letter-case attached to his
stout person by a chain. “The others are—say, in retirement for the
present.” He extracted from the case three large, square, gray
envelopes, their addresses penned in a large, angular, girlish hand.
“Write me the invite now,” he said, “and these are yours to burn or show
to his Grace—whichever you please. The others shall be yours the day I
land my twenty-pounder.”
The Duchess moved to her writing-table and sat down. She chose paper and
a pen, and dashed off these few lines:
“900, BERKELEY SQUARE, W.
“DEAR MR. MOSS RUBELIUS,
“The Duke and myself have asked a few friends to join us at Rantorlie on
April 1, for the salmon-fishing, and we should be so pleased if you
would come.
“Sincerely yours,
“ETHELWYNE RANTORLIE.”
“The first letter I ever had, dated from Berkeley Square,” commented Mr.
Rubelius, as, holding the letter very firmly down upon the blotter with
her slim and white, but very strong hands, the Duchess signed to him
with her chin to read, “that was anything in the nature of a genial
invitation.”
He allowed the Duchess to take the three letters previously referred to
from his right hand, as he dexterously twitched the invitation from the
blotter with his left finger and thumb. “This, your Grace, will be as
good as half a dozen more to me,” he observed, “when I show it about and
get a par. into the papers.”
“Horrible!” cried the Duchess, shuddering. “You would not do that!”
Mr. Rubelius favored her with a knowing smile as he produced his shiny
hat, his gloves, and a malacca cane, gold-handled, from some remote
corner in which he had concealed them.
“Let us, being now on the footing of ’ostess and guest, part friendly,”
he said. “Your Grace, may I take your ’and?”
“I think the formality absolutely unnecessary,” said the Duchess,
ringing the bell.
Then the money-lender went away, and she caught up a little portrait of
the Duke that stood upon her writing-table and began to cry over it and
kiss it, and say incoherent, affectionate things, like quite an
ordinary, commonplace young wife. For, after eighteen months of
marriage, she had fallen seriously in love with her quiet, well-bred,
intellectual husband, and the remembrance of the silly, romantic
flirtation with dead Hugh Delaving was gall and wormwood to the palate
that had learned a finer taste. How had she fallen so low as to write
those idiotic, gushing letters?
Their perfume sickened her. She shuddered at the touch of them, as she
would have shuddered at the touch of the man to whom they had been
written had he still lived. But he was dead, and she had never let him
kiss her. She was thankful to remember that, as she put the letters in
the fire and watched them blacken and burst into flame.
* * * * *
“My dear Ethelwyne,” asked the Duke, “where did you pick up Mr.
Rubelius? Or, I should ask, perhaps, how did that gentleman attain to
your acquaintance?”
“It is rather a long, dull story,” said his wife, “but he is really an
excellent person, if a little vulgar, and—— You won’t bother me any more
about him, Rantorlie, will you?”
She clasped her gloved hands about her husband’s arm as they stood
together on the river beach below Rantorlie. The turbid flood of the
Haste, tinged brown by spate, raced past between its rocky banks; the
pine-forests climbed to meet the mountains, and the mountains lifted to
the sky their crowns of snow. There was a smell of spring in the air,
and word of new-run fish in the string of deep pools below the famous
Falls.
“I will not, if you particularly wish it,” said her husband. “But to
banish your guest from my mind—that is impossible. For one thing, he is
hung with air-belts, bottles, and canteens, as though he were starting
for a tour in the wildest part of Norway. I believe his equipment
includes a hatchet, and I think that wad he wears upon his shoulders is
a rubber tent, but I am not sure. He has never heard of prawn-baiting,
his rods are of the most alarming weight and size, and his salmon-flies
are as large and gaudy as paroquets, and calculated, McDona says, to
frighten any self-respecting fish out of his senses. We can’t allow such
a gorgeous tyro to spoil the best water. He must be sent to some of the
smaller pools, with a man to look after him.”
“But he—he won’t be likely to catch anything there, will he?” asked the
Duchess anxiously.
“A seven-pounder, if he has luck!”
“Oh, Rantorlie, that won’t do _at all_!” cried Rantorlie’s wife in
dismay. “I want him to have the chance of something _really big_. It’s
our duty to see that our guests are properly treated, and, though you
don’t like Mr. Rubelius——”
“Dear child, I don’t dislike Mr. Rubelius. I simply don’t think about
him any more than I think about the sea-lice on the new-run fish. They
are there, and they look nasty. Rubelius is here, and so does he.”
“_Doesn’t_ he—especially in evening-dress with a red camelia and a
turn-down collar?” gasped the Duchess.
The Duke could not restrain a smile at the vision evoked, as Mr.
Rubelius, panoplied in india-rubber, cork, and unshrinkables, strode
into view. One of the gillies bore his rod, the other his basket. A
third followed with that wobbliest of aquatic vehicles, a coracle,
strapped upon his back. With a grin, the man waded into the water,
unhitched his light burden, placed it on the rapid stream, and stood,
knee-deep, holding the short painter, as the frisky coracle tugged at
it.
“You’re going to try one of those things?” said the Duke, as Rubelius
gracefully lifted his waterproof helmet to the Duchess. “You know
they’re awfully crank, don’t you, and not at all safe for a bung—I mean,
a beginner?”
“The men, your Grace,” explained Mr. Rubelius, “are going to peg me down
in the bed of the stream, a little way out from the shore.”
“But if your peg draws,” said his host, “do you know how to use your
paddle?”
“That will be all right, your Grace,” said the affable Rubelius. “I know
how to punt. Often on the Thames at Twicken’am——”
“My dear sir, the Haste in Moss-shire and the Thames at Twickenham are
two very different rivers,” said the Duke, beckoning his gillies to
follow, and turning away. “I hope the man may not come to any harm,” he
said. “Ethelwyne, will you walk down to the Falls with me? I”—he
reddened a little—“I sent the others on in carts by road. We see so
little of each other these days.”
And the young couple started, leaving Mr. Rubelius to be put into his
coracle, with much splashing, and swearing on his part, by two of the
gillies and a volunteer. It was a mild day for April in the North. A
single cuckoo called by the riverside, and the Duke and Duchess did not
hurry, though Ethelwyne turned back before she reached the Falls, below
which the deepest salmon-pools were situated, and where the men, the
boats, and the rest of the party waited. She had her rod and gillie, and
meant to spin a little desultorily from the bank, the Haste being almost
in every part too deep for waders, except in the upper reaches.
“I wonder how that horror is getting on?” she thought, as the gillie
baited her prawn-tackle. Then, stepping out upon a natural pier of rough
stones leading well out into the turbulent whitey-brown stream, the
Duchess skilfully swung out her line, and, after a little manipulation,
found herself fast in a good-sized fish.
“What weight should you judge it?” she asked the attendant, when the
silvery prey had been gaffed and landed.
“All saxteen,” said the gillie briefly. “Hech! What cry was that?”
As the man held up his hand the noise was repeated.
“It sounds like somebody shouting ‘Help!’” said the Duchess.
And, rod in hand, she ran out upon the pier of bowlders, and, shading
her eyes with her hand, gazed upstream, as round a rocky point above
came something like a tarred washing-basket with a human figure huddled
knees-to-chin inside. The coracle had betrayed the confidence of Mr.
Rubelius, and drifted with its hapless tenant down the mile and a half
of racing water which lay between Rantorlie and the Falls. The Falls! At
that remembrance the laughter died upon the Duchess’s lips, and the
ridiculous figure drifting towards her in the bobbing coracle became
upon an instant a tragic spectacle. For Death waited for Mr. Rubelius a
little below the next bend in the rocky bed of the Haste. And—if the
money-lender were drowned—those letters ... yes, those letters, the
proofs of the Duchess’s folly, might be regained and destroyed,
secretly, and nobody would ever——
It seemed an age of reflection, but really only a second or two went by
before the Duchess cried out to Rubelius in her sweet, shrill voice, and
ran out to the very end of the pier of rocks, and with a clever
underhand jerk sent the heavy prawn-tackle spinning out up and down the
river. Once she tried—and failed. The second time, two of the three
hooks stuck firmly into the wickerwork of the coracle. It spun round,
suddenly arrested in its course, but the strong salmon-gut held, and,
after an anxious minute or two, the livid Rubelius safely reached shore.
“I’ve ’ad my lesson,” said he, as the gillie administered whisky. “Never
any more salmon-fishing for me! It’s too tryin’,” he gulped—“too ’ard
upon the nerves of a man not born to it!” Then he got up, and came
bare-headed to the Duchess. His face was very pale and flabby, and his
thick lips had lost their color, as he held out a black leather notecase
to her Grace. “You—you saved my life,” he said, “and I’m not going to be
ungrateful. Here they are—the six letters. Look ’em over, if you like,
and see for yourself. And, my obliged thanks to his Grace for his
hospitality—but I leave for town to-morrow. Good-by, your Grace. You
won’t hear of me again!” And Mr. Rubelius kept his word.
THE CHILD
He arrived late—long after the ship of his father’s fortune had been
safely tugged into dock—announcing his entrance upon this terrestrial
stage at a moment when people had ceased to expect him. I may say that
Tom and Leila, having spent twelve years of married life in the
propagation of theories alone, had the most definite notions upon the
subject of infant rearing, training, culture, and so forth. Leila
intended, she informed me in confidence, to be “an advanced mother,” and
Tom, as father to the child of an advanced mother, could hardly help
turning out an advanced father, even had he not cherished ambitions in
that line.
The boy—for, as Tom reassured all sympathetic callers during the
high-pressure first week of its existence, it undoubtedly was a
boy—seemed on first sight rather smaller and spottier than the child of
so many brilliant prospects had any right to be. They gave him the name
of Harold, a clanking procession of other names coupled on to it, ending
in Alexander Eric. And they engaged and imported a professional Child
Culturist, Miss Sallie Cooter, of Washington—pronounced
Wawshington—certified teacher, trained nurse, member of the
Ethnophysiological Society of America, and one doesn’t know how many
others, to rear Harold on the very latest scientific plan. Miss Cooter,
as the intimate friend and chosen disciple of the Inventress of the
System at which Tom and Leila had taken fire (a lady of literary talents
and original views, who had brought up, on purely hygienic principles, a
family of one, and expanded it into a multiplicity of chapters)—Miss
Cooter might be trusted to achieve the desired result, and turn out
Harold, physically and mentally, a prodigy of infantile perfection. Her
work was purely philanthropic, and if she consented to accept the
inadequate salary of two hundred a year in return for her services,
Leila and Tom explained, she must in no sense be treated as a hireling.
The united efforts of the brougham and the spring-cart fetched Miss
Cooter and a mountain of Saratogas from the station one spring day, and
she came down to afternoon tea in the very newest of Parisian tea-gowns,
which, properly speaking, is not a tea-gown at all. She was decidedly
pretty, being dark, slim, bright-eyed, keen-featured, and almost
painfully intelligent-looking, even without her gold-framed pince-nez.
We devoted the evening to sociality, as Harold’s regimen of mental and
physical culture was to commence upon the following day.
“But you shall have a little peep at Baby,” Leila said, “when we go up
to dress for dinner.”
Miss Cooter agreed. “But I guess I’ve got to ask you, since the boy’s
name is Har’ld, to call him by it, and no other,” she said. “Our society
is dead against abbreviations and pet names. We hold that they act as a
clog upon the expanding faculties of the child, and arrest mental
progress. Besides, when maturity is reached, how pyfectly absurd it is
to hear middle-aged men and women addressed as ‘Toto’ and ‘Tiny’!”
Tom, who has a way of calling Leila “Mouse” when in good humor, turned
rich imperial purple at this home-thrust, and Leila, whose pet name for
Tom is “Tumps,” called attention to the green-fly on the pot-roses, both
silently registering a vow never again, save _in camera_, to use the
offending appellations.
Miss Cooter was formally invested with Harold on the following morning.
His ex-nurse, a plump, rosy-cheeked country-woman, painfully devoid of
culture, and absolutely unskilled in the repression of emotion, was
relegated, in floods of tears, to command of the laundry. Leila,
compassionating the grief of the exile, would have pleaded for Mary’s
reduction to the post of under-nurse; but Miss Cooter pronounced that
Mary was an obstacle in the way of Progress, and an enemy to Culture,
and must go.
Mary went, and Harold, at first too stunned by her desertion to yield to
sorrow, presently proclaimed his bereavement in a succession of
ear-piercing shrieks.
“What is to be done?” queried Leila, by signs.
Applying both hands to his mouth, after the fashion of a
speaking-trumpet, Tom vocalized the suggestion, “Send—for Mary—back!”
But Miss Cooter sternly shook her head, and, bending over the cradle
which contained Harold, looked sternly in his flushed and disfigured
countenance. He immediately held his breath, growing from crimson to
purple and from purple to black as she delivered her inaugural address.
“My dear Har’ld,” said she, with crisp distinctness, “you are a vurry
little boy——”
“Hear, hear!” I interpolated, and got a frown from Leila.
“And at three months old your reasoning fahculties are not developed
enough for you to comprehend that what you don’t like may be the best
thing for you. Mary has gone, and Mary will not come back. Henceforth
you are in my cayah, and you will find me fyum, but gentle. However
badly you may act, I shall not punish you.”
Harold hiccoughed and stared up at the bright, intellectual face above
him with round, astonished eyes and open, dribbling mouth.
“Your own sense of what is right and what is wrawng, dormant though it
be at this vurry moment, I intend to awaken and——”
Harold, never before in his brief life harangued after this fashion,
appeared to grasp already the idea that something was wrong. The
expression of astonishment faded, his down-drooped mouth assumed the
bell or trumpet-shape, and, rapidly doubling and undoubling himself with
mechanical regularity, he emitted the most astonishing series of sounds
we had yet heard from him. No caresses were administered for the
assuagement of his woe, no broken English babbled in his infant ears.
The Rules of the System of Child Culture absolutely prohibited petting,
and baby-language was denounced by Miss Cooter as “pynicious.”
As she predicted, Harold left off howling after a certain interval.
“Now I guess you have lyned one lesson already!” said Miss Cooter. “When
you are older, Har’ld, you will cawmprehend that the truest kindness on
your payrents’ part praumpted the separation that has given you pain.
You will have your bottle now; you will say ‘Thank you’ for it, and
ahfter consuming the contents, you will go quietly to sleep.”
But it took a long time to convince the dubious Harold that the
trumpet-shaped, nickel-silver-stoppered vessel tendered by his new
guardian was the equivalent of his beloved and familiar “Maw.” When
finally convinced, he grabbed it without the slightest attempt at saying
“Thank you,” and, with the gloomiest scowl that I have ever beheld upon
a countenance of such pulpy immaturity, applied himself to deglutition.
Miss Cooter shook her head discouragingly.
“This child has a strawngly developed animal nature,” pronounced she—“a
throwback to the primeval savage, I should opine.”
“Delightful! Do buy him a little stone ax and a baby bearskin, Leila,” I
pleaded. “Think what light he will throw upon the Tertiary Period—if
Miss Cooter happens to be right!”
But Miss Cooter shook her head. “He must be environed by softening and
civilizing influences,” said she, “from this vurry moment. Vegetarian
diet is what I should strawngly recommend.” Her eye doubtfully
questioned the rapidly sinking level of the sterilized milk in Harold’s
glass trumpet.
“There is such a thing as a cow-tree, isn’t there?” said Leila
anxiously. “Perhaps Cope might acclimatize one in the tropical house?”
“But while the cow-tree is being acclimatized,” I asked disturbingly,
“upon what is Harold to live?”
“Kindly take this,” said Miss Cooter. “May I trouble you? Please!” she
repeated sternly. But Harold only screwed up his eyes and dug his pinky
fists into them as his monitress took the empty trumpet away, telling us
stories of an atypical and highly-cultured boy baby of her acquaintance
who not only exhibited Chesterfieldian politeness at four months of age,
saying “Please” and “Thank you,” and “Kindly pass the salt,” but
regularly performed its own ablutions, went through breathing exercises
and simple gymnastics, was familiar with the use of the abacus, and
could work out sums in simple addition upon a patent hygienic slate. All
these facts Miss Cooter put before us with convincing eloquence. Her
language was well chosen, her scientific knowledge and technical skill
quite appalling. There was nothing about a baby that she did not
understand, except, perhaps—the baby.
From that day Harold lived under the microscope. Charts of his temper,
as of his temperature, were regularly kept up to date; and his progress,
physical and psychological, was recorded by Miss Cooter in a kind of
ship’s log-book, in which data of meteorological disturbances appeared
with distressing frequency. He was not precocious enough to be
classified as abnormal, or sufficiently original to come under the
heading “Atypical,” or old enough to tell lies, and so be dubbed
imaginative. But that tertiary ancestor from whom, according to Miss
Cooter, he derived his temperament, must have possessed some strength of
character, for from the beginning to the end, Harold’s strongest
prejudice was manifested towards Miss Cooter, his most violent
attachment in the direction of the banished Mary, for whom he howled at
regular intervals until he forgot her, when he became reserved,
distrustful, and apathetic. His intellectual qualities were not of the
kind that responded to scientific forcing. He never learned that an
orange was a sphere, or a rusk an irregular cube. The india-rubber
letters and object-blocks possessed for him no meaning; the colored
balls of the abacus only awakened in him a tepid interest. He was in
texture flabby, and habitually wore an expression of languid
indifference—intensified when Miss Cooter was delivering one of her oral
lectures, to utter boredom. Despite his sanitary surroundings, his
day-nursery, intermediate nursery, and night-nursery, papered, carpeted,
furnished, lighted, ventilated, and warmed upon the most approved
scientific methods, he did not thrive, contracting complaints incidental
to infancy with passionate enthusiasm, and keeping them long after
another child would have done with them. And then he complicated an
unusually violent attack of croup with convulsions, and Miss Cooter
guessed she had better resign the case, which she did “right away,” in
favor of some atypical, imaginative, non-atavistic young American
citizen. When last I looked into the hygienic day-nursery, most of the
educational objects it had contained had vanished—presumably into
cupboards—and Harold was lying in the cotton lap of his recovered Mary,
nursing a stuffed kitten, and sucking an attenuated thumb. The
expression of gloomy boredom had vanished from his countenance as Mary
chanted a rhyme, deplorably lacking in sense and construction, about a
certain Baby Bunting whose father went a-hunting to get a little
rabbit-skin to wrap the Baby Bunting in. It afforded Harold such
undisguised delight that I felt sure the rabbit must have burrowed in
tertiary strata, and that the predatory parents of Baby Bunting must
have been the primal type from which Harold hailed. But Miss Cooter, who
could alone have sympathized with my scientific delight in this
discovery, was tossing in mid-Atlantic on her way to the land of the
Stars and Stripes.
We were, however, to meet yet once again under the spangled folds of Old
Glory. It was a year or so later, on board a Hudson River steamboat. She
was prettier than ever, quite beautifully dressed, and her _entourage_
comprised two nurses (a colored “mammy” and a pretty Swiss), a
perambulator with a baby, and a husband. She introduced me to the
husband and the baby, a round, rosy baby, neither atypical nor
atavistic, but just of the common, old-fashioned kind.
“Isn’t he cute!” she exclaimed, with rapture. “Smile at Momma, Baby, and
show um’s pretty toofs!” Then she addressed the child as a “doodleum
ducksey,” while I stood speechless and staring.
My circular gaze awakened memories of the past. She asked after Harold.
“He is very well—now!” I said with point. “May I be pardoned for
remarking that you do not appear to be rearing your own baby upon the
System of Child Culture you formerly followed with such extraordinary
success?”
“No,” said the late Miss Cooter thoughtfully. “No-o!”
“Why not?” I asked, hot with the remembrance of Harold’s sufferings.
Miss Cooter considered, a beautifully manicured forefinger in a dimple
that I had never observed before.
“Why not? You earnestly advocated the system—for other people’s babies.”
“Well,” said the late Miss Cooter, with a burst of candor, “I reckon
because those _were_ other people’s babies. This is mine!”
A HINDERED HONEYMOON
The coffee and liquor stage of a long and elaborate luncheon having been
reached, the rubicund and puffy personage occupying the chair at the
head of the table—number three against the glass partition, east end,
Savoy Grill-room—waved a stout hand, and instantly eight of the nimblest
waiters—two to a double-leaved folding-screen—closed in upon the table
with these aids to privacy. The rubicund personage, attired, like each
of his male guests present, in the elaborate frock-coat, with white
buttonhole bouquet, tender-hued necktie, pale-complexioned waistcoat,
gray trousers, and shiny patent leathers inseparable from a wedding—the
rubicund personage (who was no less a personage than Mr. Otto Funkstein,
managing head of the West End Theatre Syndicate) got upon his legs,
champagne-glass in hand, and proposed the united healths of Lord and
Lady Rustleton.
“For de highly-brivileged nopleman who hos dis day gonferred ubon de
brightest oond lofliest ornamend of de London sdage a disdinguished name
oond an ancient didle I hof noding put gongradulations,” said Mr.
Funkstein, balancing himself upon the tips of his patent-leather toes,
and thrusting his left hand (hairy and adorned with rings of price) in
between the jeweled buttons of his large, double-breasted buff
waistcoat. “For de sdage oond de pooblic dot will lose de most prilliant
star dot has efer dwinkled on de sdage of de West Enf Deatre I hof
nodings poot gommiseration. As de manacher of dot blayhouse I feel vit
de pooblic. As de friend—am I bermitted to say de lofing oond baternal
friend of de late Miss Betsie le Boyntz?”—(tumultuous applause checked
the current of the speaker’s eloquence)—“changed poot dis day in de
dwingling of an eye—in de hooding of a modor-horn—by de machick of a
simble ceremony at de Registrar’s—gonverted from a yoong kirl in de
first dender ploom”—(deafening bravos hailed this flight of poetic
imagination)—“de first dender ploom of peauty oond de early brime of
chenius”—(the lady-guests produced their handkerchiefs)—“into a yoong
vife, desdined ere long to wear upon her lofely prow de goronet of an
English Gountess”—(Otto began to weep freely)—“a Gountess of
Pomphrey.... Potztauzend! de dears dey choke me. Mine dear vriends, I
gannot go on.”
Everybody patted Funkstein upon the back at once. Everybody uttered
something consoling at an identical moment. Mopping his streaming
features with the largest white cambric handkerchief ever seen, the
manager was about to resume, when Lord Rustleton—whose tragic demeanor
at the Registrar’s Office had created a subdued sensation among the
officials there, whose deep depression during the wedding banquet had
been intensified rather than alleviated by frequent bumpers of
champagne, and who had gradually collapsed in his chair during
Funkstein’s address until little save his hair and features remained
above the level of the tablecloth, galvanically rose and, with a soft
attempt to thump the table, cried: “Order!”
“Choke him off,” murmured a smart comedian to his neighbor, “for pity’s
sake. He’s going to tell us how he threw over the swell girl he was
engaged to a month before their wedding—for Petsie’s sake; and how he
has brought his parents’ gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, and for
ever forfeited the right to call himself an English gentleman. I know,
bless you! I had it all from him last night at the Mummers’ Club, and
this morning at his rooms in Wigmore Street.”
“Rustleton!”
“Order!” yelled Rustleton again.
“Order!” echoed Funkstein, turning a circular pair of rather bibulous
and bloodshot blue eyes upon the protestant bridegroom. “Oond vy order?”
“Permimme to reminyou,” said Rustleton, with laborious distinctness,
“that the present Head of my fammary, the Rironaurable the Earl of
Pomphrey—in poinnofac’, my Fara—is at the present momen’ of speaking in
the enjoymen’ of exhallent health, an’ nowistanning present painfully
strained rela’ions essisting bi’ween us, I have no desire—nor, I feel
convinned, has my wife, Lady Rustleton, any desire—to, in poinnofac’,
usurp his shoes, or play leapfrog over his—in poinnofac’, his coffin.
Therefore, the referen’ of the distinnwished gelleman who, in
poinnofac’, holds the floor, to the coronet of a Countess in premature
conneshion with the brow of my newly-marriwife I am compelled to regard
as absorrutely ram bad form!”
“Tam bad _vat_?” shrieked Funkstein.
Rustleton leaned over the table. His eyes were set in a leaden-hued
countenance. His hair hung lankly over his damp forehead. He nerved
himself for a supreme effort. “Ununerrarrably ram baform!” he said, and
with this polysyllabic utterance fell into a crystal dish of melted ice,
and a comatose condition.
“Bad, bad boy!” said the recently-made Lady Rustleton, biting her
notorious cherry underlip, and darting a brilliant glance at Funkstein
out of her celebrated eyes as Rustleton was snatched from his perilous
position by a strong-armed chorus beauty; and the low comedian, who had
become famous since the production of _The Charity Girl_, dried the
Viscount’s head with a table-napkin and propped him firmly in his chair.
“It is not de Boy, but de man dat drinks it,” giggled Funkstein, with
recovered good temper. “Ach ja, oond also de voman. How many bints hof I
not seen you....”
“That’ll do, thanks,” said the newly-made Viscountess, with her
well-known expression of prim propriety. “Not so much reminiscing, you
know; it’s what poor Tonnie called ‘ahem’d bad form’ just now, didn’t
you, ducky?”
“Don’t call me rucky,” said the gentleman addressed, who was now rapidly
lapsing into the lachrymose stage of his complaint. “Call me a
mirerrable worm or a ‘fernal villain. I reserve both names. Doesn’ a man
who has alienarid the affeshuns of his father, blirid his mother’s
fonnest hopes, and broken his pli’rid word to a fonnanloving woman—girl,
by Jingo——”
“Oh, do dry up about that now, darling!” said Lady Rustleton tartly. “I
dare say she deserved what she got. What you have to remember now is
that you’re married to me, and we shall be spinning away in the
Liverpool Express in another hour, _en route_ for the ocean wave. I
always _said_, when I _did_ have a honeymoon—a real one—I’d have it on
the opening week of the production on a big Atlantic liner. And this is
the trial voyage of the _Regent Street_, and she’s the biggest thing in
ships afloat to-day. Do let’s drink her health!”
The toast was drunk with enthusiasm. Two waiters advanced bearing a
wedding-cake upon a charger. The bride coyly cut a segment from the
mass. It was divided and passed round. The ladies took pieces to dream
on, the men shied at the indigestible morsels. Somebody had the bright
idea of sending a lump to the chauffeur of the bridal motor-car, which
had been waiting in the bright October sunshine, outside in the
palm-adorned courtyard, since one o’clock. A _chassé_ of cognac went
round. Rustleton was shaken into consciousness of his marital
responsibilities and a fur-lined overcoat; everybody kissed Petsie; all
the women cried, Petsie included—but not unbecomingly. Her bridal gown,
a walking-costume of white cloth trimmed with silver braid, contained a
thoroughly contented young woman; her hat, a fascinating creation,
trimmed with a rose-colored bird, a _marquisette_, and a real lace veil,
crowned a completely happy wife. Tonnie possessed nothing extraordinary
in the way of good looks or good brains, it was true; but Tonnie’s wife
was wealthy in these physical attributes. He possessed a high-nosed,
aristocratic old fossil of a father, whose prejudices against a
daughter-in-law taken from the lyric boards must be got over. He owned a
perfectly awful mother, whose ancestral pride and whose three chins
must—nay, should—be leveled with the dust. His sisters, the Ladies
Pope-Baggotte, Petsie said to herself with a smile, were foewomen
unworthy of such steel as is forged in the _coulisses_ of the musical
comedy theaters. Yet should they, too, bite the dust. In a golden
halo—partly hope, partly champagne—she saw Lady Rustleton sweeping,
attired in electrifying gowns, onwards to the conquest of Society. The
greengrocer’s shop in Camberwell, among whose cabbages and potatoes her
infancy had been passed; the Board-School, on whose benches the
first-fruits of knowledge had been garnered, were quite forgotten. Some
other little circumstances connected with the Past were blotted from the
slate of memory by the perfumed sponge of gratified ambition. She bore
the deluge of rice and confetti with dazzling equanimity. She hummed
“Buzzy, Buzzy, Busy Bee” as the motor-car, its chauffeur sorely
embarrassed by a giant wedding favor, a pair of elderly slippers tied on
the rear-axle, sped to Euston.
“I’ve got there at last,” said Petsie, as the Express ran into the
Liverpool docks and toiling human ants began to climb up the ship’s
gangways thrust downwards from the beetling gray sides of the biggest of
all modern liners. “I’ve got there at last, I have, and in spite of
Billy Boman. A precious little silly I must have been to take a
hairdresser for a swell; but at seventeen what girl brought up in a
Camberwell backstreet knows a paste solitaire from a real diamond, or a
ready-made suit, bought for thirty bob at a Universal Supply Stores,
from a Bond Street one? And if nice curly hair and a straight nose, a
clear skin, and a good figure were all that’s wanted to make a
gentleman, Billy could have sported himself along with the best. But now
he’s dead, and I’ve married again into the Peerage, and I shall sit on
the Captain’s right at the center saloon table, not only as the
prettiest woman on board his big new ship, but as a bride and a
Viscountess into the bargain. Wake up, Tonnie dear. You’ve slept all the
way from Euston, and there’s a plank to climb.”
“Eh?” Tonnie stared with glassy eyes at the scurrying crowds of human
figures, the piled-up trucks of giant trunks and dress-baskets soaring
aloft at the end of donkey-engine cables, to vanish into the bowels of
the marine leviathan. “Eh! What! Hang it! How confoundedly my head
aches! Funkstein must have given us a brutally unwholesome luncheon. Why
did I allow him to entertain us? I felt from the first it was a hideous
mistake.”
“Why did you let the fellows persuade you to drink more of the Boy than
is good for you, you soft-headed old darling?” Petsie gurgled. She
smoothed the lank hair of her new-made spouse, and, reaching down his
hat from the netting, crowned him with it, and bounded out of the
reserved first-class compartment like a lively little rubber ball.
“Here’s Timms, your man, with my new maid. No, thank you, Simpkins. You
can take the traveling-bags. I may be a woman of title, but I mean to
carry my jewel-case myself. Come along into the Ark, Tonnie, with the
other couples. What number did you say belonged to our cabin, darling?”
“The Gobelin Tapestry Bridal Suite Number Four,” said Rustleton, with a
pallid smile, as a white-capped, gold-banded official hurried forward to
relieve the Viscountess of her coroneted jewel-case.
“How tweedlums!” sighed Petsie, retaining firm hold of the leather
repository of her brand-new diamond tiara and necklace, not to mention
all the rings and brooches and bangles reaped from the admiring
occupants of the orchestra-stalls at the West End Theatre during the
tumultuously successful run of _The Charity Girl_.
“It costs for the trip—five days, four hours, and sixteen
minutes—between Queenstown and the Daunts Rock Lightship,” said
Rustleton, with a heavy groan, “exactly two hundred and seventy-five
guineas. Ha, ha!” He laughed hollowly.
“But why did you choose such a screamingly swell suite, you wicked,
wasteful duckums?” cried the bride coquettishly, as their guide switched
on the electric light and revealed a chaste and sumptuous nest of
apartments in carved and inlaid mahogany, finished in white enamel with
artistic touches of gold, and hung with tapestry of a greeny-blue and
livid flesh-color.
“Because I can’t afford it,” said the dismal bridegroom, “and because
the meals and all that will be served here separately and privately.” He
sank limply upon a sumptuous lounge, and hurled an extinct cigarette-end
into an open fireplace surrounded by beaten brass and crowned by a
mantel in rose-colored marble. “The execrable ordeal of the first cabin
dining-room, with its crowds of gross, commonplace, high-spirited,
hungry feeders will thus be spared us. You need never set foot in the
Ladies’ Drawing-room; the Lounge and the Smoking-room shall equally be
shunned by me. Exercise on the Promenade Deck is a necessity. We shall
take it daily, and take it together, my _incognito_ preserved by a
motor-cap and goggles, your privacy ensured by a silk—two silk—veils.”
He smiled wanly. “I have roughly laid down these lines, formulated this
plan, for the maintenance of our privacy without making any allowance
for the exigencies of the weather and the condition of the sea. But if I
should be prostrated—and I am an exceedingly bad sailor at the best of
times—remember, dearest, that a tumbler of hot water administered every
ten minutes, alternately with a slice of iced lemon, should feverish
symptoms intervene, is not a panacea, but an alleviation, as my cousin,
Hambridge Ost, would say. I rather wonder what Hambridge is saying now.
He possesses an extraordinary faculty of being scathingly sarcastic at
the expense of persons who deserve censure. An unpleasant sensation in
my spine gives me the impression—do you ever have those
impressions?—that he is exercising that faculty now—and at my expense.
Timms, I will ask you to unpack my dressing-gown and papooshes, and
then, if you, my darling, do not object, I will lie down comfortably in
my own room and have a cup of tea. If I might make a suggestion,
dearest, it is that you would tell your maid to get out _your_
dressing-gown and _your_ slippers, and lie down comfortably in _your_
own room and have a cup of tea.”
The twenty-six thousand ton Atlantic flyer moved gracefully down the
Mersey, the last flutter of handkerchiefs died away on the stage, the
last head was pulled back over the vessel’s rail, the seething tumult of
settling down reduced itself to a hive-like buzzing. The _Regent
Street’s_ passenger-list comprised quite a number of notabilities
connected with Art and the Drama, a promising crop of American
millionaires, an ex-Viceroy of India, and a singularly gifted
orang-utan, the biggest sensation of the London season, who had dined
with the Lord Mayor and Corporation at the Mansion House, and was now
crossing the ocean to fulfill a roof-garden engagement in New York, and
be entertained at a freak supper by six of the supreme leaders of
American Society. Petsie pondered the passenger-list with a pouting lip.
She heard from her enraptured maid of the glories of the floating palace
in which the first week of her honeymoon was to be spent as she sipped
the cup of tea recommended by Rustleton.
“Lifts to take you up and down stairs, silver-gilt and enamel souvenirs
given to everybody free, Turkish baths, needle baths, electric baths,
hairdressing and manicuring saloons, millinery establishments, a theater
with a stock company who don’t know what sea-sickness means, jewelers’
shops, florists, and Fuller’s, a palmist, and a thought-reader.
Goodness! the gay old ship must be a floating London, with fish and
things squattering about underneath one’s shoe-heels instead of
‘phone-wires and electric-light cables. And I’m shut up like a blooming
pearl in an oyster, instead of running about and looking at everything.
Oh, Simpkie’—Simpkins, the new maid, had been a dresser at the West End
Theatre—“I’m dying for the chance of a little flutter on my own, and how
am I to get it?”
The _Regent Street_ gave a long, stately, sliding dive forwards as a
mammoth roller of St. George’s Channel swept under her sky-scraping
stern. A long, plaintive moan—forerunner of how many to come!—sounded
from the other side of the partition dividing the apartments of the
bride from that of her newly-wedded lord.
“I think you’re goin’ to get it, my lady,” said the demure Simpkins, as
Rustleton’s man knocked at his mistress’s door to convey the intimation
that his lordship preferred not to dine.
A head-wind and a heavy sea combined, during the next three days of the
voyage, to render Rustleton a prey to agonies which are better imagined
than described. While he imbibed hot water and nibbled captain’s
biscuits, or lay prone and semi-conscious in the clutches of the hideous
malady of the wave, Lady Rustleton, bright-eyed, _petite_, and
beautifully dressed, paraded the promenade deck with a tail of male and
female cronies, played at quoits and croquet, to the delight of select
audiences, and sat in sheltered corners after dinner, well out of the
radius of the electric light, sometimes with two or three, generally
with one, of the best-looking victims of her bow and spear. She sat on
the Captain’s right hand at the center table, outrageously bedecked with
diamonds. She played in a musical sketch and sang at a charity concert.
“Buzzy, Buzzy, Busy Bee” was thenceforth to be heard in every corner of
the vast maritime hotel that was hurrying its guests Westward at the
utmost speed of steel and steam. Fresh bouquets of Malmaison carnations,
roses and violets from the Piccadilly florists, were continually heaped
upon her shrine, dainty jeweled miniature representations of the _Regent
Street’s_ house-flag, boxes of choice bonbons showered upon her like
rain. The celebrated orang-utan occupied the chair next hers at a
special banquet, the newest modes in millinery found their way
mysteriously to her apartment, if she had but tried them on, smiled,
and, with the inimitable Petsie wink at the reflection of her own
provokingly pretty features in the shop mirror, approved.
“I keep forgetting I’m a married woman,” she would say, with the Petsie
smile, when elderly ladies of the cat-like type, and middle-aged men who
were malicious, inquired after the health of the invisible Lord
Rustleton. “But he’s there, poor dear; or as much as is left of him.
Quite contented if he gets his milk and beef-juice, and the hot water
comes regularly, and there’s a slice of lemon to suck. No; I’m afraid I
can’t give him your kind message of sympathy, you know, because sympathy
is too disturbing, he says.... He doesn’t even like _me_ to ask him if
he’s feeling bad, because, as he tells me, I have only to look at him to
know that he is, poor darling.”
Thus prattled the bride, even ready to _faire l’ingénue_ for the benefit
of even an audience of one. The voyage agreed with Petsie. Her
complexion, dulled by make-up, assumed a healthier tint; her eyes and
smile grew brighter, even as the ruddy gold faded from her abundant
hair. The end of this story would have been completely different had not
the tricksy sea-air brought about this deplorable change.
“I’m getting dreadfully rusty, as you say, Simpkie; and if the man in
the hairdresser’s shop on the Promenade Deck Arcade can give me a
shampoodle and touch me up a bit—quite an artist is he, and quite the
gentleman? Oh, very well, I’ll look in on my gentleman-artist between
breakfast and _bouillon_.”
Petsie did look in. The artist’s studio, elegantly hung with heavy pink
plush curtains, only contained, besides a shampooing-basin, a large
mirror, a nickel-silver instrument of a type between a chimney-cowl and
a ship’s ventilator, and a client’s chair, a young person of
ingratiating manners, who offered Lady Rustleton the chair, and
enveloping her dainty person in a starchy pink wrapper, touched a bell,
and saying, “The operator will attend immediately, moddam,” glided
noiselessly away. Petsie, approvingly surveying her image in the mirror,
did not hear a male footstep behind her. But as the head and shoulders
of the operator rose above the level of her topmost waves, and his
reflected gaze encountered her own, she became ghastly pale beneath her
rose-bloom, and with a little choking cry of recognition gasped out:
“Bill ... Boman! ... it can’t be you?”
“The old identical same,” Mr. William Boman said, with a cheerful smile.
“And if the shock has made you giddy, I can turn on the basin-hose in
half a tick, and give you a splash of cold as a reviver. Will you have
it? No? Then don’t faint, that’s all.”
“You wrote to say you were dying at Dieppe five years ago,” sobbed
Petsie, into the folds of the pink calico wrapper. “You wicked, cruel
man, you know you did!”
“And now you’re crying because I didn’t die,” said Mr. Boman, arranging
his sable forehead-curls in the glass, and complacently twirling a
highly-waxed mustache. “No pleasing you women. You never know what you
want, strikes me.”
“But somebody sent me a French undertaker’s bill for a first-class
funeral, nearly thirty pounds it came to when we’d got the francs down
to sovereigns,” moaned Petsie, “and I paid it.”
“That was my little dodge,” said Mr. Boman calmly, “to get a few
yellow-birds to go on with. Trouble I’d got into—don’t say any more
about it, because I am a reformed character now. And now we’re talking
about characters, what price yours, my Lady Rustleton?”
“Oh, Billy!”
“Bigamy ain’t a pretty word, but that’s what it comes to, as I’ve said
to myself many an evening as I smoked my cigar on the second-class deck
promenade, and heard you singing away in there to the swells in the
music-room like a—like a cage full of canaries. I shan’t make no scene
nor nothing like that, says I. Her hair’s getting a bit off color—see it
by daylight, she’ll have to come my way before long, and then I shall
tip her the ghost with a vengeance.”
“Oh, Bill dear, how could you be so cruel!” pleaded Petsie.
“Not so much of the ‘Bill dear,’ I’ll trouble you,” said Mr. Boman
sternly. “Why don’t you produce that aristocratic corpse you’ve married,
and let me have it out with him? Seasick, is he? I’ll make him land-sick
before I’ve done with him, and so I tell you. He’ll have to sell some of
his blooming acres to satisfy me, or some of them diamonds of yours, my
lady.”
But at this juncture the delayed attack of hysteria swooped upon its
victim. Summoning his young lady-assistant, Mr. Boman, with a few
injunctions, placed the patient in her care. Then brushing a few
bronze-hued hairs from his frock-coat, removing his dapper apron, and
tidying his hair with a rapid application of the brush, he winked as one
well pleased, and betook himself to Gobelin Tapestry Bridal Suite Number
Four, in the character of a Messenger of Fate.
Three hours later the news had leaked out all over the _Regent Street_.
The great vessel buzzed like a wasps’-nest, and the utmost resources of
wireless telegraphy were taxed to communicate to sister ships upon the
ocean and fellow-men upon the nearest land the astounding fact of the
sudden collapse of the Rustleton marriage, owing to the arrival on the
scene of a previous husband of the lady.
“_Ach Himmel!_ it is klorious!” gasped Funkstein, waving a pale blue
paper, “I haf here Petsie’s reply to de offer of de Syindigate—she comes
to de Vest End Theatre; at an advanced salary returns—and de house will
be cram-jammed to de doors for anoder tree hoondred berformances. It is
an ill vind dot to nopody plows goot, mark my vords!”
Lord Pomphrey had just given utterance to a similar sentiment;
Rustleton, on the other side of the Atlantic, had previously arrived at
a like conclusion. Mr. Boman had entertained the same view from the
outset of affairs. Petsie—again Le Poyntz—realizing the gigantic
advertisement that the resurrection of her first proprietor involved,
was gradually becoming reconciled to the situation. When all the
characters of a tale are made content, is it not time the narrative came
to a close?
“CLOTHES—AND THE MAN—!”
The smoking-room of the Younger Sons’ Club, the bow-windows of which
command a view of Piccadilly, contained at the hour of two-thirty its
full complement of habitual nicotians, who, seated in the comfortable
armchairs, recumbent on the leather divans, or grouped upon the
hearthrug, lent their energies with one accord to the thickening of the
atmosphere.
Hambridge Ost, a small, drab-hued man with a triangular face,
streakily-brushed hair, champagne-bottle shoulders, and feet as narrow
as boot-trees without the detachable side-pieces, invariably encased in
the shiniest of patent leathers,—Hambridge, from behind a large green
cigar, was giving a select audience of very young and callow listeners
the benefit of his opinions upon dress.
“If I proposed to jot down the small events of my insignificant private
life, dear fellers, or had the gift—supposing I did commit ’em to
paper—of makin’ ’em interesting ...” said Hambridge, raising his
eyebrows to the edge of his carefully parted hair and letting them down
again, “I don’t mind telling you, dear fellers, that the resultant
volume or two would mark an epoch in autobiographical literature. But,
like the violet—so to put it—I have, up to the present, preferred to
blush unseen. Not that the violet _can_ blush anything but purple—or
blue in frosty weather, but the simile has up to now always held good in
literature. Lord Pomphrey—a man appreciative to a degree of the talents
of his relatives—has said to me a thousand times if one, ‘Confound you,
Hambridge, why is not that, or this, or the other, so to put it, in
print?’ But Pomphrey may be partial——”
“No, no!” exclaimed, in a very deep bass, a very young man in a knitted
silk waistcoat and a singularly brilliant set of pimples. “No, no!”
“Much obliged, dear fellow,” said Hambridge, hoisting his eyebrows and
letting them drop in his characteristic manner. “Some of my views may
possess originality—even freshness when expressed, as I invariably
express ’em, in a perfectly commonplace manner.”
“No, no!” again exclaimed the pimply-faced owner of the deep bass voice.
“As to the Ethics of the Crinoline, now,” went on Hambridge, “I observe
that an energetic effort is being made—in a certain quarter and amongst
a certain _coterie_—to revive the discarded hoops of 1855–66. They did
their best to impart a second vitality to the Early Victorian
poke-bonnet some years ago. Why did the effort fail, dear fellers?
Because, with their accompanying garniture of modesty, blushes were
considered necessary to the feminine equipment at the date I have
mentioned. And because blushes—I speak on the most reliable
authority—are more difficult to simulate than tears. Also because,
looking down the pink silk-lined tunnel of the poke-bonnet of 1855–66,
it was impossible for you, as an ordinary male creature, to decide
whether the rosy glow invading the features of the woman you adored—we
adored women, dear fellows, at that period—was genuine or the reverse.
There you have in a nutshell the reason why the poke-bonnet was not
welcomed at the dawn of the twentieth century. Modesty and blushes, dear
fellers, are out of date.”
Hambridge leaned back in his chair with an air of mild triumph, running
his movable eye—the left was rigidly fixed behind his monocle—over the
faces of the listeners.
“Will the woman of the Twentieth Century willingly enclose her legs—they
were limbs in 1855–66—once more in the steel-barred calico cage, fifteen
feet in circumference, if not more, that contained the woman of the
Early Victorian Era? Dear fellers, the question furnishes material for
an interestin’ debate. In my young days there was no sittin’ in ladies’
pockets, no cosy-cornering, so to put it. You invariably kept at a
respectful distance from the young creature whom you, more or less
ardently—we could be ardent in those days—desired to woo and win, simply
because you couldn’t get nearer. You didn’t approach her mother for
permission to pay your addresses-her mother was encased in a similar
panoply. You went to her father, because you could get at him—there you
have the plain, simple reason of the custom of ‘askin’ Papa.’ And if you
were reprehensibly desirous of eloping with another fellow’s wife, you
didn’t express your wish in words. You wrote a letter invitin’ her to
fly with you—we called it flying in those days—and dropped it in the
post. If the lady disapproved, she dropped you. If not, she bolted with
you in a chaise with four or a pair—and even then her crinoline kept you
at a distance. You were no more at liberty to put your arm round her
waist than if the eye of Early Victorian Society had been glued upon
you.
“To put forward another reason _contra_ the reacceptance of the
crinoline by the Woman of To-day, dear fellers, the Woman of To-day can
swim. Therefore, the advantage of being dressed practically in a
lifebuoy, does not appeal to her as it did early in the previous reign.
I could quote you an instance of an accident which occurred to the Dover
and Calais paddle-wheel steam-packet, on board which I happened to be a
passenger, which, owing to the negligence of the captain, ran ashore
upon a sandbank half a mile from the pier. The first boat which was
lowered was filled with lady passengers, all in crinolines. It was
swamped by a wave which washed over the stern. The steersman and the
sailors who were rowing were unluckily snatched to a watery grave, poor
fellows. Not so the women passengers of the swamped boat, dear
creatures, who simply floated, keeping hold of one another’s scarves and
bonnet-strings, and so forth, until they could be picked up and conveyed
ashore. Not one of ’em could swim a stroke—and all were saved, thanks to
the crinoline in which each was attired. But, useful as under certain
circumstances the birdcage may be, the Twentieth Century Woman will
never be tempted back into it. She has learned what it is to have
muscles and to use ’em, dear fellers! and the era of languid inertia is
over for her.
“I will add, dear fellers, that in these drab and uncommonly dismal days
of early December, the dash of color now perceptible in the clothes of
the best dressed men present at social functions of the superior sort,
adds largely to the cheeriness of the scene. _Cela me fait cet effet_,
dear fellers, but of course I may be wrong. And the first man to adopt
and appear in the newest style in evenin’ dress—a bright blue coat of
fine faced cloth, with black velvet collar, velvet cuffs, and silk
facin’s, worn with trousers of the same material, braided with black
down the side seams, and a V-cut vest of white Irish silk poplin-has
realized a fortune through it.
“A well-known man, dear fellers, connected with two old Tory families of
the highest distinction, educated at Eton, popular at the
University-where he did not allow his love of study to interfere with
the more serious pursuit of sport—d’ye take me? Suppose we call him Eric
de Peauchamp-Walmerdale. His marriage took place yesterday at St.
Neot’s, Knightsbridge, the sacred edifice bein’ decorated with large
lilies and white chrysanthemums, and the gatherin’ of guests
surprisingly large—the biggest crush of the Season as yet. There were
six little girl-bridesmaids in pale blue, with diamond lockets, and the
bride’s train was carried by four pages, also in pale blue, with
gold-headed canes. As for the bride, considerin’ her age—a cool
seventy—surprisin’, dear fellers! Only daughter and heiress of an
ex-butler, who invented a paste for cleanin’ plate, patented it, and
became a millionaire, Isaac Shyne, Esq., M.P., of The Beeches, Wopsley,
and 710, Park Lane, deceased ten years ago at the ripe age of ninety.
“De Peauchamp-Walmerdale’s married sister lived next door to the rich
Miss Shyne, who practically went nowhere, and only received her
Nonconformist minister, and a few whist-playin’ friends of the same
denomination on certain specified evenin’s. House absolutely Early
Victorian—walnut-wood drawing-room suite, upholstered in green silk rep,
mahogany and brown leather for the dinin’-room. Berlin woolwork
curtains, worked by the mistress of the house, at all the front windows.
Three parrots, two poodles, and a pair of King Charles spaniels of the
obsolete miniature breed. Maid-servants—all elderly, butler like a
bishop, uncommon good cellar of gouty old Madeiras and sherries, laid
down by the defunct Shyne, awful collection of pictures by Smith, Jones,
Brown, and Robinson, splendid plate, too heavy to lift. And a fortune of
one hundred and fifty thousand in the most reliable Home Rails and
breweries, besides an estate of sixty thousand acres in Crannshire, and
the title deeds of the Park Lane house.
“It came—the idea of bringing Miss Shyne and De Peauchamp-Walmerdale
together—like a flash of inspiration—as the dear feller’s sister, Lady
Tewsminster, told me yesterday when people had struggled up after the
Psalm, and yawned through the address, _not_ delivered by a
Nonconformist, but by the Bishop of Baxterham; and while the choir were
singin’, ‘O Perfect Love!’ She was frightfully cast down when she
discovered through her maid, who had scraped, under orders, an
acquaintance with Miss Shyne’s elderly confidential attendant, that her
lady objected to young gentlemen—couldn’t endure the sight, so to put
it, of anything masculine under fifty, or without a bulge under the
waistcoat, and a bald top to its head. Further inquiries elicited that
Miss Shyne had had a disappointment in early life, and wore at the back
of an old-fashioned cameo brooch, representin’ the ‘Choice of Paris,’
the portrait on ivory of a handsome young man with fair hair, the livin’
image of Eric de Peauchamp-Walmerdale, in a light blue tail-coat, with a
black velvet collar and gold buttons, holding a King Charles spaniel of
the miniature breed under his arm.
“Dear fellers, Lady Tewsminster, the evening upon which she received
this item of information, knew no more than a newly-born infant what she
was going to do with it. As happens to most of us, she mentally filed it
for further reference, and getting into her gown, her diamonds, and her
evening _coiffure_—those Etruscan rolled curls are extremely becoming to
a woman of pronounced outlines, and there’s only one place in London,
she tells me, where they can be bought or redressed—went down to the
drawing-room.
“A small but select party had been invited for the evenin’, including,
on the feminine side, an American heiress on the lookout for a husband
with a title—or, at least, the next heir to one-a handsome widow with a
fairly decent jointure, and a couple of marriageable girls with almost
quite respectable _dots_. From these, carefully collected on approval by
a devoted sister, De Peauchamp-Walmerdale might, who knows? have
selected a life partner, and sunk into the obscurity of moderate means
for ever, had it not occurred to him upon that particular evening—do you
take me, dear fellers?—to array himself in the latest cry of modern
masculine evening dress.
“He was standing on the hearthrug when Lady Tewsminster entered, a tall,
slim, youthful figure, fair-haired and complexioned, and quite
uncommonly handsome, in his light blue coat with the black velvet
collar, braided accompaniments, and pearl-buttoned, watch-chainless,
white silk vest.
“‘How do you like me, Ju, old girl?’ he said, coming to kiss her. ‘I’ve
come to dine in character as our great-grandfather. Awful fool I feel,
but my tailor insisted on my wearin’ ’em, and as I owe the brute a
frightful bill I thought I’d best appease him by givin’ in.’
“The gilded Early Victorian frame of the high mantel-mirror behind De
Peauchamp-Walmerdale had the effect of being a frame, if you foller me,
out of which, the figure of the dear feller had stepped. A cameo brooch
shot into the mind of Lady Tewsminster, above it the long narrow face
and dowdy black lace bonnet of the heiress, Miss Jane Ann Shyne. A plan
of campaign was instantly formulated in the mind of that surprising
woman. She stepped to one of the windows commandin’ Park Lane, drew
aside the blind, and saw, paddlin’ up and down on the rainy pavement
outside, the waterproofed figure of Miss Shyne’s confidential maid,
taking the King Charles spaniels and the poodles for their customary
evenin’ ta-ta. Instantly she touched the bell, sent for her maid and
said to her in a rapid undertone, ‘Johnson, ten pounds are yours if you
can steal one of Miss Shyne’s pet King Charles spaniels while their
attendant is not looking. There is no risk—I shall send the creature
back in ten minutes. Will you undertake this? Yes? Very well, go and get
the beast.’
“The maid, Johnson, departed swiftly, the area-gate clicked, and Lady
Tewsminster, feverish with the great project boiling under her
transformation, paced the drawing-room until she heard the second click
of the gate. She swept down the stairs to meet Johnson, in whose black
silk apron struggled the smallest of the King Charles spaniels. ‘Did the
woman see?’ whispered the mistress. ‘Not a bit of her, my lady,’
returned the maid. ‘She was gossiping with the District Police-Inspector
about a burglary they’ve had three doors away. So I got Tottles—that’s
his name, my lady-quite easy, not being on a lead.’
“Telling the maid the promised ten pounds should be hers that night,
Lady Tewsminster snatched the struggling ‘Tottles’ from the enveloping
apron and swept back to her drawing-room to carry out her plan. ‘Peachie
dear,’ she said as she entered, ‘it would be frightfully sweet of you if
you would run in next door and carry this little beast to its owner,
Miss Shyne. Insist on seeing her; do not give the animal into any other
hands; do not wear your hat or an overcoat. I am firm upon this; and
remember,’ she fixed her large, expressive eyes full upon her brother’s
face, ‘remember, she has _nearly two hundred thousand pounds, and your
fate is in your own hands!... Go!_’
“Rather bewildered by Lady Tewsminster’s almost tragic address, De
Peauchamp-Walmerdale took the wriggling Tottles, left the house, and
carried out his instructions to the letter. The loss of Tottles had been
discovered. Miss Shyne’s establishment was topsy-turvy when he arrived,
servants tearing up and down stairs, the confidential attendant in tears
on a hall chair, Miss Shyne in hysterics in her Early Victorian boudoir,
the remaining dogs harking their heads off, and the very devil to pay.
But the arrival of De Peauchamp-Walmerdale, dear fellers, caused a lull
in the storm. Faithful to his instructions, he refused to give up the
dog, except to its mistress, and after a feint or two of departure, Miss
Shyne gave in and ordered her fate, as it turned out to be—d’ye foller
me?—to be shown upstairs.
“The Early Victorian drawing-room, with the green rep furniture and the
Berlin woolwork curtains—a pattern of macaws and dahlias, I
understood—was in partial darkness. Only the wax candles in the crystal
candelabra on the marble mantelshelf were alight, no electric
illuminations bein’ permitted on the premises.
“De Peauchamp-Walmerdale—dog under his arm—took up a commandin’ position
on the hearthrug, also worked in Berlin wool, in front of a small,
mysterious and palely-twinkling fire. As he did so the foldin’ doors
opposite, communicating with the boudoir, slowly opened, and Miss Jane
Ann Shyne, spinster, aged seventy, saw before her the long-dead romance
of her youth, resuscitated from the ashes of—wherever long-dead romances
are deposited, dear fellers. There was a faint, feminine scream—quite
Early Victorian in character—a rustle of old-fashioned satins—an
outburst of joyous barks from Tottles, a strong, bewildering perfume of
lavender water (triple extract), and the old lady sank, literally sank,
upon the white Irish poplin vest that added style and _cachet_ to De
Peauchamp-Walmerdale’s uncommonly fetchin’ costume.
“What more, dear fellers? The couple were united yesterday at
St. Neot’s, Knightsbridge. Every penny is settled on De
Peauchamp-Walmerdale, and Lady Tewsminster says she can now die happy,
her dear boy being provided for, for life. She naturally claims the
honors of the affair! Quite so, but without the clothes where would the
man have been? D’ye foller me, dear fellers? In my poor opinion, the
principal factor in the making of De Peauchamp-Walmerdale’s fortune was
the Man Behind the Shears. Do you foller me? So glad! Thought you
would.”
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
“‘Let us be consistent,’” said Lady Pomphrey, her three saddle-bag chins
quivering with emotion, “‘or let us die’—that is what I have always
said. Here is my only niece, Wendoleth Caer-Brydglingbury, goes—actually
goes—and marries a Liberal Member of Parliament in a red necktie—who
makes speeches in townhalls and tents, and things, to masses of people,
all about pulling down the House of Lords and abolishing the Peerage,
and absolutely declines to allow his wife to drop her title. To you—so
intimate a friend, don’t you know?—I may say in confidence I am
sickened. I cannot imagine what the world is coming to. I could wish to
die and leave it, were it not that Jane and Charlotte are still
unmarried, and I have promised to present three of the _sweetest_
girls—well-bred Americans of the best type, without a trace of accent—at
the first Drawing-room of the Winter Season. And the family diamonds are
being reset in view of Rustleton’s approaching marriage—a union
satisfactory from every point of view, especially a mother’s.”
Lady Pomphrey paused for breath, and the intimate friend-they had met at
Bad Smellstein a fortnight previously while taking little early morning
walks, and drinking little glasses of excessively nauseous waters
warranted to correct the most aristocratic acidity—the intimate friend
murmured something sympathetic.
“Of course, I might have _known_ one _could_ look to _you_ for
comprehension and all that sort of thing,” said Lady Pomphrey,
graciously bending her head, which was enveloped in a large mushroom hat
of blue straw tied down all round with a drab silk veil, and patting the
intimate friend upon the knee with the stick of her celebrated green
silk sunshade. “One of those delightful literary creatures-was it
Algernon Meredith or George Swinburne?—has termed friendship ‘the
marriage of true minds.’ Ever since the Hambridge-Osts introduced us—in
a thunderstorm—at the firework display in the Park in honor of the Grand
Duke’s birthday—and being Sunday, I will _own_ that the nerve-shattering
meteorological demonstrations that drove us to shelter in that extremely
leaky Chinese pavilion seemed to me but a judgment upon German
Sabbath-breakers—ours has been such a union. Cemented by your
helpfulness in the matter of sandbags for a rattling window—Lord
Pomphrey is completely impervious to all such nerve-shattering tortures,
and will sleep happily in his cabin on the yacht in Cowes Roads through
a Royal Naval Review—and your timely ministrations with soda-mint
lozenges when acute indigestion virtually prostrated me after a
homicidal _plat_ of eels with cranberry-sauce, of which I foolishly
partook at the _table d’hôte_. The mysteriousness of it allured me. I
wished for once to feel like a German. Now I feel assured their
extraordinary diet accounts for much that is abstruse and metaphysical
in the national character. For you cannot possibly be normal if you are
fed upon abnormal things. And I am grateful that Rustleton has never
shown himself in the least susceptible to the attractions of their
women. I know—almost quite intimately—a Grand Duchess who has brought up
every one of her nine young daughters upon red-cabbage soup, with
sausage-meat balls and dumplings; and somehow it is suggested in the
girls’ complexions and figures—_especially_ the dumplings.”
The friend tittered. Lady Pomphrey placed upon the seat beside her a
straw handbag containing a Tauchnitz edition of the last new Mudie
novel, a black fan, a large bottle of frightfully strong salts, several
spare pocket-handkerchiefs, several indelible-ink pencils, and a
quantity of obsolete railway tickets, and became more confidential than
ever.
“Had I been consulted by destiny when the arrangement of Rustleton’s
matrimonial future came _sur le tapis_ I could not—with my expiring
breath I would repeat this—_could not_ be more completely satisfied. It
began by his hating her.... She hit him on the nose with a diabolo in
June at Ranelagh, and, ‘Mother,’ he said afterwards to me—his upper lip
perfectly rigid with wounded dignity—‘I should have greatly preferred to
have been born in the days of “Coningsby,” or “Lothair.” Muscular young
women create in me a feeling of _positive aversion_!’ He found her
agitating even at that early stage of affairs? How subtle of you to
_see_ that!”
The flattered friend murmured an interrogation.
“Who is she?” repeated Lady Pomphrey. “But surely the newspapers?... You
suffer too acutely from dancing spots in the field of vision ever to
read when undergoing a cure?... Poor dear, I can feel for you. She is
the Hon. Céline Twissing—will be Baroness Twissing of Hopsacks in her
own right when old Lord Twissing dies. He insisted upon _that_
arrangement in the interests of his only child; when the intimation was
conveyed from a Certain Quarter that the Jubilee Baronetcy he already
enjoyed would be changed into a Peerage did he encourage the idea. Quite
a bluff old English type, and I must say in hospitality Imperial.
‘Twissing’s Bonded Breweries.’... A colossal fortune, and that _sweet_
girl is to inherit nearly the whole. Shall I say that my heart went out
to her from the first instant I saw her? As a mother yourself, you will
understand! Here comes the young woman with the tray for our glasses.
_Ja, bitte, Ich danke Sie...._ You _don’t_ mean to tell me the creature
is a Cockney?... How distressing! I may be fanciful, possibly I am,”
said Lady Pomphrey, “but I do prefer my surroundings to be congruous and
in tone. I’m sure you feel what I convey? You do? How nice that is!...”
The friend smiled and inaudibly murmured something.
“Of course,” cried Lady Pomphrey, “you’re on thorns to hear all about
Rustleton’s love-match. As I told you, Céline Twissing—the _Christian_
name has been Gallicized from Selina—and why on earth not? _Céline_ is
an expert at diabolo. It’s a knack, sending these little black and red
demons as high as a house, or into your neighbor’s eye; and she is a
talented as well as a charming girl. With three languages, several
sciences, a system of physical-culture exercises, golf, tennis, and the
laws of hockey at her finger-ends, she would have gone far in these days
of violent recreations and brusque manners, even without a _dot_.
Masculine? Oh _dear no_! Perhaps deficient in reverence for what _we_
were taught to believe in as the superior sex. Perhaps lacking in
feminine _finesse_. I _have_ heard it said that the girl of the
twentieth century cannot cajole, and is ignorant how to be alluring.
Perhaps it is a pity. The woman who has a gift of managing difficult
people, smoothing absurd people down, and being perfectly amiable to the
absolutely objectionable is practically priceless as a greaser of the
social cog-wheels. Now Céline calls that sort of woman, plumply and
plainly, a hypocrite.... But is it not a woman’s _duty_ to be a
hypocrite, if telling the truth to everybody makes the world a place of
gnashing?” demanded Lady Pomphrey, making her eyebrows climb up out of
sight under the shadow of her mushroom hat.
The compliant friend assented.
“You understand, then, how dissonant was the chord Céline Twissing
struck in Rustleton. With his Plantagenet dash in the blood, his
hereditary intolerance of anything smacking of vulgarity, his medieval
attitude of chivalry towards Woman, his Early Victorian dislike of the
_outré_ and the _bizarre_, he frankly found her intolerable. ‘In a
drawing-room,’ he said to me in confidence, ‘that girl reminds me of a
Polar bear in a hothouse.’ Where the boy could have seen one I cannot
imagine—probably it was only a young man’s daring figure of speech.
Shall we walk about a little? I think I felt a twinge.”
The friend agreed, and, gently ambling up and down the Kreuzbrunnen
Promenade, Lady Pomphrey continued her narrative.
“Rustleton said she was a New Girl of the worst type. Then came the
diabolo affair, which, considering Céline’s remarkable knack, I cannot
think accidental. The bridge of Rustleton’s nose was seriously contused,
and his monocle was shattered—fortunately without danger to the eye. He
took no revenge beyond an epigram, quite worthy of La Rochefou—what’s
his name?... She is keen on dancing, unlike other muscular girls; and
said so in my boy’s near vicinity. ‘Why not? She has hops in her blood,’
he uttered. Of course, a little bird carried it to her ear.... How d’ye
do, Lady Frederica? How d’ye do, Count Pyffer? I quite agree with
you.... Piercing winds, varied by muggy airlessness and a distressingly
relaxing warmth, _have_ made the last eight days intolerable.... My
dear, where was I when I left off?” The suffering friend indicated the
point. Lady Pomphrey continued:
“And _after all_ they have come together. Quite a romance. If a mother’s
prayers have any influence, ... and I am old-fashioned enough to believe
they have.... But I knew Rustleton too well to breathe a hint of my
hopes. I did not stoop to intrigue, as some mothers would, to bring the
young people together. But dearest Jane, who is always my right hand,
conceived a devoted friendship for Céline just at the psychological
moment, and owing to that she and Rustleton were _constantly_ thrown in
each other’s way. Céline quite exerted herself to be overwhelmingly
unpleasant. Jane says that during a bicycling excursion in the
neighborhood of our place at Cluckham-Pomphrey, she offered to help him
to lift his machine over a stile, and would have done it unaided and
alone if Rustleton had not peremptorily seized the frame-bar, gripping
both her hands in his. On Jane’s authority, she crimsoned to the hat,
throwing him off like a feather, and, mounting her machine, was out of
sight in an instant. He was icily sarcastic on the subject of muscular
young women all the way home, and limited his dinner to clear soup and a
single cutlet with dry toast, while Céline went through all the courses
in her usual thoroughgoing way. They are not in the least ashamed to
eat, do you notice?—these golfing, hockey-playing, open-air young
people.... Now you and I can recall placing a solid barrier of five
o’clock cake and muffins between undue appetite and the eight o’clock
dinner, at which we merely toyed with our knives and forks, trusting to
our maids to have a tray of cold eatables ready in the bedroom for
consumption while our hair was being brushed. Of _course_! ‘but _these_
girls devour at tea, _wolf_ at dinner’—I quote Rustleton—‘and probably
stodge sandwiches and cold chicken and chocolate-wafers before they
plunge into their beds. When there, how they must snore!’
“His eye gleamed with such feverish malignancy as he said this, that I
involuntarily dropped a quantity of stitches in the silk necktie I was
knitting for him—a soothing neutral shade not calculated to call
attention to the tinge of bile in his complexion—and exclaimed, ‘Good
Heavens!’ He immediately begged my pardon and bade me ‘good-night,’
whispering that he had arranged to shoot over the lower sixty acres with
Stubbins, the head keeper—purely as a filial duty, Pomphrey not feeling
robust enough to undertake it this year....
“Whether it was my having breathed a hint of this to Jane—who is, as a
rule, a _grave_ for chance confidence—or whether Miss Twissing had
overheard, how can I say? But she and Stubbins were waiting for my boy
on the following morning, Stubbins—who loathes sporting women—in a state
of complacency that only a five-pound note could have brought about. Her
beautiful Bond-street self-ejecting breechloader, her cap, tweeds, and
gaiters were the _dernier cri_, and with the coolest self-possession she
wiped my poor boy’s eye over and over again. Out of thirty brace of
birds before luncheon only three and a half fell to his gun, and _those_
were of the red-legged French description, ‘bred for duffers to blaze
at,’ according to Lord Pomphrey. Rustleton went up to town that night,
charging Jane with all sorts of civil messages for Miss Twissing, and
slept at his Club, which was being painted and disagreed with him
excessively.”
The friend sighed sympathy.
“Even with every door and window open and a flat dish full of milk upon
the washstand,” said Lady Pomphrey, taking the friend’s arm and
emphasizing her utterances with the green sunshade, “white paint
permeates my whole being in a way that is perfectly indescribable. My
son inherits my receptiveness—perhaps my weakness-indeed, he came into
the world at Cluckham-Pomphrey during an early visit of ours, subsequent
to spring-cleaning, where, owing to an unhappy facility possessed by
Lord Pomphrey of being easily persuaded by self-interested persons, the
hall screen, grand staircase, and all the Jacobean paneling had been
covered by the local decorator with a creamy-hued, turpentiny and
glutinous mixture known as ‘Eggster’s Exquisite Enamel.’ It cost a
fortune to get off again, and some of it still lingers in the crevices
of the carving. My basket.... It is a little cumbrous, but I really
couldn’t think of letting you.... Well then, dear friend, if you
insist.... Now for the really remarkable ending of my boy’s story.
“He flew to his cousin for consolation. Now, Wendoleth
Caer-Brydglingbury is extremely sympathetic. Only for the color of her
hair-a violent Boadicean red, almost purple in some lights—Rustleton and
she—but I am devoutly thankful things have turned out as they _have_.
“‘A sea cruise,’ said Wendoleth promptly, ‘will get the white paint out
of your system quicker than anything I know; and your morbid feeling of
vexation with this girl, impatience of her persistency in continuing to
exist, and so forth, will vanish with other things. Mr. Mudge,’—the
person she has since married,—‘has kindly asked Papa and myself to join
his party on board the steam-yacht _Fifi_ for a trip to Lisbon, Madeira,
and the Canaries; join us. I assure you a complete welcome and at least
half a cabin.’ Rustleton recognized the cousinly kindness in Wendoleth’s
proposal, accepted, and went with her and Todmoxen—the Earl is still
robust, but not what he was in the ’seventies, nor is it to be
expected—down to Southampton to join the _Fifi_. Mudge is Liberal member
for the North Clogger Division of Mudderpool. But for a crimson
necktie—the Party badge—and a habit of hanging on to his own coat-lapels
when conversing, he is almost quite presentable, and, like all those
people who begin by not having twopence, he is astonishingly rich. His
welcome to Rustleton was cordial in the extreme. But when Rustleton
found Lord Twissing and his daughter already on board, discovered that
he was to share Twissing’s cabin, and that Céline slept in the one next
door, he was dismayed. He would have excused himself and left the _Fifi_
only that she was already on her way. Fate, like one of those curious
jelly-like creatures which wave their tentacles to attract their prey
and then clutch it and gradually absorb it, had wrapped its feelers
around my poor boy. He is now resigned, calm, content, even happy; but
when I think how he must have suffered.... My salts. In the basket. So
kind of you, and _so_ reviving.”
Lady Pomphrey inhaled with drooping eyelids and sniffed at the
salts-flagon from time to time as she embarked once more upon her
narrative way.
“The _Fifi_ anchored for the night, which promised to be squally, in
Southampton Water, about a quarter of a mile from Hythe Pier. Depressed
and discouraged, my boy retired to his cabin, leaving the entire party
screaming over ‘Bridge’ at a number of little tables in the saloon. He
had just put on his nightalines,—pink with a green stripe, the jacket
ornamented with green braid in loops, to match—and was attending to his
teeth with a palm-stick, when, with a terrific crash, all the electric
lights went out and the _Fifi_ was plunged in darkness. I shudder when I
realize the awfulness of all that. Don’t you?”
The friend supplied a shudder expressly manufactured for the purpose.
“A Welsh collier steamer, the _Rattletrap_, from Penwryg, had run
down Mr. Mudge’s yacht, becoming firmly embedded in the hull of the
craft—the details are graven on my memory,” said Lady Pomphrey
impressively—“immediately forward of the engine-room. The crew
turned out—not into the sea, but out of their hammocks—the ‘Bridge’
players rushed in confusion upon deck. In their evening dresses,
without being even able to save a bag from below, Mr. Mudge’s party
were dragged over the grimy bows of the collier. The crew scrambled
after. The captain of the _Rattletrap_, having ascertained that the
_Fifi_ was rapidly filling, and that all her passengers, as he
thought, were safe on board his vessel, was about to give the signal
from the bridge to reverse engines when, with an appalling scream a
lithe young girl in a crêpe de Chine evening wrap embroidered with
roses and turtle-doves—quite symbolic when you think of it—leaped
back upon the deck of the _Fifi_ and disappeared below. Guess who
she was, and whither she had gone? You can? You do? What romance in
real life, isn’t it? Céline Twissing had missed Rustleton, and,
knowing that he occupied the cabin next to her own, had rushed below
to save him.
“He had rung for his man and was waiting calmly to be dressed, when she
burst in the door with her shoulder—have you ever noticed her
shoulders?—and shrieked to him to come on deck and be saved. Wrapped in
a Scotch plaid which he had hastily thrown over his pyjamas at the
moment of her entrance, he defied her, rebuked her immodesty in entering
a gentleman’s dressing-room unannounced, ordered her to quit the cabin
and go back to her father. When properly attired to appear before
ladies, my boy, ever chivalrous and delicate-minded, said he would board
the _Rattletrap_. ‘Don’t you feel that this yacht is water-logged?’
screamed Céline Twissing. ‘Don’t you know she’ll sink under our feet in
another minute? Come on deck at _once_, you duffing little precisian,
unless you want me to carry you!’ He retorted with contempt. She
instantly seized him in her muscular arms—have you ever noticed her
arms?—threw him, Scotch plaid and all, over her shoulder, carried him up
the yacht’s companion-ladder, and amidst the cheers of the united crews
of the _Fifi_ and the _Rattletrap_, handed him over the bulwarks to the
men of the collier. Then she followed, the captain gave the order to go
astern, the collier reversed her engines, the water rushed into the
yacht, and she sank instantly. All that can be seen of her to-day is her
masts. And Céline Twissing and my boy are to be made one at St.
George’s, Hanover Square, in the first week of the Winter Season. Céline
will be married in white satin and _mousseline_ trimmed with silver
embroidery, and she goes away in a gown of putty-colored _velvelise_—the
new stuff. I believe she secretly adored Rustleton from the very
beginning, and he, I feel, is reconciled to the inscrutable appointments
of Providence. _How_ we have been chattering, haven’t we? Time for
luncheon now. Oh, I pray, no carp in beer, or eels with currant jelly.
But one never knows. _Au revoir_, dear! _Au revoir!_” And Lady Pomphrey
put up her green sunshade and sailed away.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Off Sandy Hook and other stories" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.