← catalogue

Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

by Arlo Bates · English · Gutenberg #42831 · 389,921 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

Author: Arlo Bates


        
Release date: May 28, 2013 [eBook #42831]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42831

Credits: E-text prepared by sp1nd, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (http://archive.org)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE IN A CLOUD: A COMEDY IN FILIGREE ***

More: Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive. See
      https://archive.org/details/loveincloudcomed00bate





LOVE IN A CLOUD

A Comedy in Filigree

by

ARLO BATES







Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1900

Copyright, 1900, by Arlo Bates
All Rights Reserved




          TO
    MRS. E. L. HOMANS




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                  PAGE

         I. THE MISCHIEF OF A MAID              1

        II. THE MADNESS OF A MAN               11

       III. THE BABBLE OF A TEA                19

        IV. THE TICKLING OF AN AUTHOR          29

         V. THE BLAZING OF RANK                43

        VI. THE MISCHIEF OF A WIDOW            50

       VII. THE COUNSEL OF A MOTHER            60

      VIII. THE TEST OF LOVE                   69

        IX. THE MISCHIEF OF A GENTLEMAN        79

         X. THE BUSINESS OF A CLUBMAN          89

        XI. THE GAME OF CROSS-PURPOSES         98

       XII. THE WASTING OF REQUESTS           108

      XIII. THE WILE OF A WOMAN               119

       XIV. THE CONCEALING OF SECRETS         130

        XV. THE MISCHIEF OF A LETTER          138

       XVI. THE DUTY OF A SON                 150

      XVII. THE BUSINESS OF A LOVER           166

     XVIII. THE MISCHIEF OF MEN               180

       XIX. THE CRUELTY OF LOVE               191

        XX. THE FAITHFULNESS OF A FRIEND      198

       XXI. THE MISCHIEF OF A FIANCÉ          206

      XXII. THE COOING OF TURTLE-DOVES        220

     XXIII. THE BUSINESS OF A MUSE            227

      XXIV. THE MISCHIEF OF A CAD             241

       XXV. THE WAKING OF A SPINSTER          254

      XXVI. THE WOOING OF A WIDOW             266

     XXVII. THE CLIMAX OF COMEDY              277

    XXVIII. THE UNCLOUDING OF LOVE            288




LOVE IN A CLOUD




I

THE MISCHIEF OF A MAID


"No, my dear May, I positively will not hear another word about 'Love in
a Cloud.' I am tired to death of the very sound of its stupid name."

"Oh, Mrs. Harbinger," May Calthorpe responded, eagerly defensive, "it
isn't a stupid name."

Mrs. Harbinger settled herself back into the pile of gay cushions in the
corner of the sofa, and went on without heeding the interruption:--

"I have heard nothing but 'Love in a Cloud,' 'Love in a Cloud,' until it
gives me a feeling of nausea. Nobody talks of anything else."

May nodded her head triumphantly, a bright sparkle in her brown eyes.

"That only shows what a perfectly lovely book it is," she declared.

Mrs. Harbinger laughed, and bent forward to arrange a ribbon at May's
throat.

"I don't care if it is the loveliest book ever written," she responded;
"I won't have it stuffed down my throat morning, noon, and night. Why,
if you'll believe it, my husband, who never reads novels, not only read
it, but actually kept awake over it, and after that feat he'll talk of
it for months."

Pretty May Calthorpe leaned forward with more animation than the mere
discussion of an anonymous novel seemed to call for, and caught one of
her hostess's hands in both her own.

"Oh, did Mr. Harbinger like it?" she asked. "I am so interested to know
what he thinks of it."

"You never will know from me, my dear," was the cool response. "I've
forbidden him to speak of it. I tell you that I am bored to death with
the old thing."

May started up suddenly from the sofa where she had been sitting beside
Mrs. Harbinger. With rather an offended air she crossed to the
fireplace, and began to arrange her hat before the mirror over the
mantel. Mrs. Harbinger, smiling to herself, gave her attention to
setting in order the cups on the tea-table before her. The sun of the
April afternoon came in through the window, and from the polished floor
of the drawing-room was reflected in bright patches on the ceiling; the
brightness seemed to gather about the young, girlish face which looked
out from the glass, with red lips and willful brown hair in tendrils
over the white forehead. Yet as she faced her reflection, May pouted and
put on the look of one aggrieved.

"I am sorry I mentioned the book if you are so dreadfully against it,"
she observed stiffly. "I was only going to tell you a secret about the
author."

Mrs. Harbinger laughed lightly, flashing a comical grimace at her
visitor's back.

"There you go again, like everybody else! Do you suppose, May, that
there is anybody I know who hasn't told me a secret about the author?
Why, I'm in the confidence of at least six persons who cannot deny that
they wrote it."

May whirled around swiftly, leaving her reflection so suddenly that it,
offended, as quickly turned its back on her.

"Who are they?" she demanded.

"Well," the other answered quizzically, "Mrs. Croydon, for one."

"Mrs. Croydon! Why, nobody could dream that she wrote it!"

"But they do. It must have been written by some one that is inside the
social ring; and there is a good deal in the style that is like her
other books. I do wish," she went on, with a note of vexation in her
voice, "that Graham would ever forget to mix up my two tea-services. He
is a perfect genius for forgetting anything he ought to remember."

She walked, as she spoke, to the bell, and as she passed May the girl
sprang impulsively toward her, catching both her hands.

"Oh, Mrs. Harbinger!" she cried breathlessly. "I must tell you something
before anybody comes."

"Good gracious, May, what is it now? You are as impulsive as a pair of
bellows that could blow themselves."

The butler came ponderously in, in reply to her ring as she spoke, and
the two women for the moment suspended all sign of emotion.

"Graham," Mrs. Harbinger said, with the air of one long suffering and
well-nigh at the end of her patience, "you have mixed the teacups again.
Take out the tray, and bring in the cups with the broad gold band."

Graham took up the tray and departed, his back radiating protest until
the portière dropped behind him. When he was gone Mrs. Harbinger drew
May down to a seat on the sofa, and looked at her steadily.

"You evidently have really something to tell," she said; "and I have an
idea that it's mischief. Out with it."

May drew back with heightened color.

"Oh, I don't dare to tell you!" she exclaimed.

"Is it so bad as that?"

"Oh, it isn't bad, only--Oh, I don't know what in the world you will
think!"

"No matter what I think. I shan't tell you, my dear. No woman ever does
that."

May regarded her with a mixture of curiosity and wistfulness in her
look.

"You are talking that way just to give me courage," she said.

"Well, then," the other returned, laughing, "take courage, and tell me.
What have you been doing?"

"Only writing letters."

"Only! Good gracious, May! writing letters may be worse than firing
dynamite bombs. Women's letters are apt to be double-back-action
infernal-machines; and girls' letters are a hundred times worse. Whom
did you write to?"

"To the author of 'Love in a Cloud.'"

"To the author of 'Love in a Cloud'? How did you know him?"

Miss Calthorpe cast down her eyes, swallowed as if she were choking, and
then murmured faintly: "I don't know him."

"What? Don't know him?" her friend demanded explosively.

"Only the name he puts on his book: Christopher Calumus."

"Which of course isn't his name at all. How in the world came you to
write to him?"

The air of Mrs. Harbinger became each moment more judicially moral,
while that of May was correspondingly humble and deprecatory. In the
interval during which the forgetful Graham returned with the teacups
they sat silent. The culprit was twisting nervously a fold of her frock,
creasing it in a manner which would have broken the heart of the tailor
who made it. The judge regarded her with a look which was half
impatient, but full, too, of disapproving sternness.

"How could you write to a man you don't know," insisted Mrs.
Harbinger,--"a man of whom you don't even know the name? How could you
do such a thing?"

"Why, you see," stammered May, "I thought--that is--Well, I read the
book, and--Oh, you know, Mrs. Harbinger, the book is so perfectly
lovely, and I was just wild over it, and I--I--"

"You thought that being wild over it wasn't enough," interpolated the
hostess in a pause; "but you must make a fool of yourself over it."

"Why, the book was so evidently written by a gentleman, and a man that
had fine feelings," the other responded, apparently plucking up courage,
"that I--You see, I wanted to know some things that the book didn't
tell, and I--"

"You wrote to ask!" her friend concluded, jumping up, and standing
before her companion. "Oh, for sheer infernal mischief commend me to one
of you demure girls that look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouths!
If your father had known enough to have you educated at home instead of
abroad, you'd have more sense."

"Oh, a girl abroad never would dare to do such a thing," May put in
naïvely.

"But you thought that in America a girl might do what she pleases. Why,
do you mean to tell me that you didn't understand perfectly well that
you had no business to write to a man that you don't know? I don't
believe any such nonsense."

May blushed very much, and hung her head.

"But I wanted so much to know him," she murmured almost inaudibly.

Mrs. Harbinger regarded her a moment with the expression of a mother who
has reached that stage of exasperation which is next halting-place
before castigation. Then she turned and walked vehemently up the
drawing-room and back, a quick sprint which seemed to have very little
effect in cooling her indignation.

"How long has this nonsense been going on?" she demanded, with a new
sternness in her voice.

"For--for six weeks," answered May tearfully. Then she lifted her
swimming eyes in pitiful appeal, and proffered a plea for mercy. "Of
course I didn't use my own name."

"Five or six weeks!" cried Mrs. Harbinger, throwing up her hands.

"But at first we didn't write more than once or twice a week."

The other stared as if May were exploding a succession of torpedoes
under her very nose.

"But--but," she stammered, apparently fairly out of breath with
amazement, "how often do you write now?"

May sprang up in her turn. She faced her mentor with the truly virtuous
indignation of a girl who has been proved to be in the wrong.

"I shan't tell you another word!" she declared.

Mrs. Harbinger seized her by the shoulders, and fairly pounced upon her
in the swoop of her words.

"How often do you write now?" she repeated. "Tell me before I shake
you!"

The brief defiance of May vanished like the flare of a match in a
wind-storm.

"Every day," she answered in a voice hardly audible.

"Every day!" echoed the other in a tone of horror.

Her look expressed that utter consternation which is beyond any
recognition of sin, but is aroused only by the most flagrant breach of
social propriety. Again the culprit put in what was evidently a prayer
for pity, couched in a form suggested by instinctive feminine cunning.

"Oh, Mrs. Harbinger, if you only knew what beautiful letters he writes!"

"What do I care for his beautiful letters? What did you want to drag me
into this mess for? Now I shall have to do something."

"Oh, no, no, Mrs. Harbinger!" cried May, clasping her hands. "Don't do
anything. You won't have to do anything. I had to tell you when he is
coming here."

Mrs. Harbinger stared at the girl with the mien of one who is convinced
that somebody's wits are hopelessly gone, and is uncertain whether they
are those of herself or of her friend.

"Coming here?" she repeated helplessly. "When?"

"This afternoon. I am really going to meet him!" May ran on, flashing
instantly from depression into smiles and animation. "Oh, I am so
excited!"

Mrs. Harbinger seized the girl again by the shoulder, and this time with
an indignation evidently personal as well as moral.

"Have you dared to ask a strange man to meet you at my house, May
Calthorpe?"

The other cringed, and writhed her shoulder out of the clutch of her
hostess.

"Of course not," she responded, taking in her turn with instant
readiness the tone of just resentment. "He wrote me that he would be
here."

The other regarded May in silence a moment, apparently studying her in
the light of these new revelations of character. Then she turned and
walked thoughtfully to a chair, leaving May to sit down again on the
sofa by which they had been standing. Mrs. Harbinger was evidently going
over in her mind the list of possible authors who might be at her
afternoon tea that day.

"Then 'Love in a Cloud' was written by some one we know," she observed
reflectively. "When did you write to him last?"

"When I was here yesterday, waiting for you to go to the matinée."

"Do you expect to recognize this unknown paragon?" asked Mrs. Harbinger
with an air perhaps a thought too dispassionate.

A charming blush came over May's face, but she answered with perfect
readiness:--

"He asked me to give him a sign."

"What kind of a sign?"

"He said he would wear any flower I named if I would--"

"Would wear one, too, you minx! That's why you have a red carnation at
your throat, is it? Oh, you ought to be shut up on bread and water for a
month!"

May showed signs of relapsing again into tears.

"I declare, I think you are just as horrid as you can be," she
protested. "I wish I hadn't told you a word. I'm sure there was no need
that I should. I--"

The lordly form of Graham the butler appeared at the drawing-room door.

"Mrs. Croydon," he announced.




II

THE MADNESS OF A MAN


While Mrs. Harbinger was receiving from May Calthorpe the disjointed
confession of that young woman's rashness, her husband, Tom Harbinger,
was having a rather confused interview with a client in his down-town
office. The client was a middle-aged man, with bushy, sandy hair, and an
expression of invincible simplicity not unmixed with obstinacy. Tom was
evidently puzzled how to take his client or what to do with him. He had,
as they talked, the air of being uncertain whether Mr. Barnstable was in
earnest, and of not knowing how far to treat him seriously.

"But why do you come to me?" he asked at length, looking at his client
as one regards a prize rebus. "Of course 'Love in a Cloud,' like any
other book, has a publisher. Why don't you go there to find out who
wrote it?"

The other shook his head wearily. He was a chunky man, seeming to be
made largely of oleaginous material, and appearing to be always
over-worn with the effort of doing anything with muscles and
determination hopelessly flabby despite his continual persistence.

"I've been to them," he returned; "but they won't tell."

"Then why not let the matter pass? It seems to me--"

The other set his square jaw the more firmly amid its abundant folds of
flabby flesh.

"Let it pass?" he interrupted with heavy excitement. "If something isn't
done to stop the infernal impudence of these literary scribblers there
will be no peace in life. There is nothing sacred! They ought to be
punished, and I'll follow this rascal if it costs me every dollar I'm
worth. I came to you because I thought you'd sympathize with me."

Mr. Harbinger moved uneasily in his chair like a worm on a hook.

"Why, really, Barnstable," he said, "I feel as you do about the
impudence of writers nowadays, and I'd like to help you if I could;
but--"

The other broke in with a solemn doggedness which might well discourage
any hope of his being turned from his purpose by argument.

"I mean to bring suit for libel, and that's the whole of it."

"Perhaps then," the lawyer responded with ill concealed irritation, "you
will be good enough to tell me whom the suit is to be against."

"Who should it be against? The author of 'Love in a Cloud,' of course."

"But we don't know who the author of that cursed book is."

"I know we don't know; but, damme, we must find out. Get detectives;
use decoy advertisements; do anything you like. I'll pay for it."

Mr. Harbinger shrugged his shoulders, and regarded his client with an
expression of entire hopelessness.

"But I'm not in the detective business."

The other gave no evidence of being in the least affected by the
statement.

"Of course a lawyer expects to find out whatever is necessary in
conducting his clients' business," he remarked, with the air of having
disposed of that point. "There must be a hundred ways of finding out who
wrote the book. An author ought not to be harder to catch than a
horse-thief, and they get those every day. When you've caught him, you
just have him punished to the extent of the law."

Harbinger rose from his chair and began to walk up and down with his
hands in his pockets. The other watched him in silence, and for some
moments nothing was said. At length the lawyer stopped before his
client, and evidently collected himself for a final effort.

"But consider," he said, "what your case is."

"My case is a good case if there is any justice in the country. The man
that wrote that book has insulted my wife. He has told her story in his
confounded novel, and everybody is laughing over her divorce. It is
infamous, Harbinger, infamous!"

He so glowed and smouldered with inner wrath that the folds of his fat
neck seemed to soften and to be in danger of melting together. His
little eyes glowed, and his bushy hair bristled with indignation. He
doubled his fist, and shook it at Harbinger as if he saw before him the
novelist who had intruded upon his private affairs, and he meant to
settle scores with him on the spot.

"But nobody knew that you had a wife," Harbinger said. "You came here
from Chicago without one, and we all thought that you were a bachelor."

"I haven't a wife; that's just the trouble. She left me four years ago;
but I don't see that that makes any difference. I'm fond of her just the
same; and I won't have her put into an anonymous book."

Harbinger sat down again, and drew his chair closer to that in which the
other seethed, molten with impotent wrath.

"Just because there's a divorced woman in 'Love in a Cloud,'" he said,
"you propose to bring a suit for libel against the author. If you will
pardon me, it strikes me as uncommon nonsense."

Barnstable boiled up as a caldron of mush breaks into thick, spluttering
bubbles.

"Oh, it strikes you as uncommon nonsense, does it? Damme, if it was your
wife you'd look at it differently. Isn't it your business to do what
your clients want done?"

"Oh, yes; but it's also my business to tell them when what they want is
folly."

"Then it's folly for a man to resent an insult to his wife, is it? The
divorce court didn't make a Pawnee Indian of me. My temper may be
incompatible, but, damme, Harbinger, I'm human."

Harbinger began a laugh, but choked the bright little bantling as soon
as it saw the light. He leaned forward, and laid his hand on the other's
knee.

"I understand your feelings, Barnstable," he said, "and I honor you for
them; but do consider a little. In the first place, there is no
probability that you could make a jury believe that the novelist meant
you and your wife at all. Think how many divorce suits there are, and
how well that story would fit half of them. What you would do would
be to drag to light all the old story, and give your wife the
unpleasantness of having everything talked over again. You would injure
yourself, and you could hardly fail to give very serious pain to her."

Barnstable stared at him with eyes which were full of confusion and of
helplessness.

"I don't want to hurt her," he stammered.

"What do you want to do?"

The client cast down his eyes, and into his sallow cheeks came a dull
flush.

"I wanted to protect her," he answered slowly; "and I wanted--I wanted
to prove to her that--that I'd do what I could for her, if we were
divorced."

The face of the other man softened; he took the limp hand of his
companion and shook it warmly.

"There are better ways of doing it than dragging her name before the
court," he said. "I tell you fairly that the suit you propose would be
ridiculous. It would make you both a laughing-stock, and in the end come
to nothing."

The square jaw was still firmly set, but the small eyes were more
wistful than ever.

"But I must do something," Barnstable said. "I can't stand it not to do
anything."

Harbinger rose with the air of a man who considers the interview ended.

"There is nothing that you can do now," he replied. "Just be quiet, and
wait. Things will come round all right if you have patience; but don't
be foolish. A lawyer learns pretty early in his professional life that
there are a good many things that must be left to right themselves."

Barnstable rose in turn. He seemed to be trying hard to adjust his mind
to a new view of the situation, but it was evident enough that his brain
was not of the sort to yield readily to fresh ideas of any kind. He
examined his hat carefully, passing his thumb and forefinger round the
rim as if to assure himself that it was all there; then he cleared his
throat, and regarded the lawyer wistfully.

"But I must do something," he repeated, with an air half apologetic. "I
can't just let the thing go, can I?"

"You can't do anything but let it go," was the answer. "Some time you
will be glad that you did let it be. Take my word for it."

Barnstable shook his head mournfully.

"Then you take away my chance," he began, "of doing something--"

He paused in evident confusion.

"Of doing something?" repeated Harbinger.

"Why, something, you know, to please--"

"Oh, to please your wife? Well, just wait. Something will turn up sooner
or later. Speaking of wives, I promised Mrs. Harbinger to come home to a
tea or some sort of a powwow. What time is it?"

"Yes, a small tea," Barnstable repeated with a queer look. "Pardon me,
but is it too intrusive in me to ask if I may go home with you?"

Harbinger regarded him in undisguised amazement; and quivers of
embarrassment spread over Barnstable's wavelike folds of throat and
chin.

"Of course it seems to you very strange," the client went on huskily;
"and I suppose it is etiquettsionally all wrong. Do you think your wife
would mind much?"

"Mrs. Harbinger," the lawyer responded, his voice much cooler than
before, "will not object to anybody I bring home."

The acquaintance of the two men was no more than that which comes from
casual meetings at the same club. The club was, however, a good one, and
membership was at least a guarantee of a man's respectability.

"I happen to know," Barnstable proceeded, getting so embarrassed that
there was reason to fear that in another moment his tongue would cleave
to the roof of his mouth and his husky voice become extinct altogether,
"that a person that I want very much to see will be there; and I will
take it as very kind--if you think it don't matter,--that is, if your
wife--"

"Oh, Mrs. Harbinger won't mind. Come along. Wait till I get my hat and
my bag. A lawyer's green bag is in Boston as much a part of his dress as
his coat is."

The lawyer stuffed some papers into his green bag, rolled down the top
of his desk, and took up his hat. The visitor had in the meantime been
picking from his coat imaginary specks of lint and smoothing his
unsmoothable hair.

"I hope I look all right," Barnstable said nervously. "I--I dressed
before I came here. I thought perhaps you would be willing--"

"Oh, ho," interrupted Harbinger. "Then this whole thing is a ruse, is
it? You never really meant to bring a suit for libel?"

The face of the other hardened again.

"Yes, I did," was his answer; "and I'm by no means sure that I've given
it up yet."




III

THE BABBLE OF A TEA


The entrance of Mrs. Croydon into Mrs. Harbinger's drawing-room was
accompanied by a rustling of stuffs, a fluttering of ribbons, and a
nodding of plumes most wonderful to ear and eye. The lady was of a
complexion so striking that the redness of her cheeks first impressed
the beholder, even amid all the surrounding luxuriance of her toilet.
Her eyes were large and round, and of a very light blue, offering to
friend or foe the opportunity of comparing them to turquoise or blue
china, and so prominent as to exercise on the sensitive stranger the
fascination of a deformity from which it seems impossible to keep the
glance. Mrs. Croydon was rather short, rather broad, extremely
consequential, and evidently making always a supreme effort not to be
overpowered by her overwhelming clothes. She came in now like a yacht
decorated for a naval parade, and moving before a slow breeze.

Mrs. Harbinger advanced a step to meet her guest, greeting the new-comer
in words somewhat warmer than the tone in which they were spoken.

"How do you do, Mrs. Croydon. Delighted to see you."

"How d' y' do?" responded the flutterer, an arch air of youthfulness
struggling vainly with the unwilling confession of her face that she was
no longer on the sunny side of forty. "How d' y' do, Miss Calthorpe?
Delighted to find you here. You can tell me all about your cousin
Alice's engagement."

Miss Calthorpe regarded the new-comer with a look certainly devoid of
enthusiasm, and replied in a tone not without a suggestion of
frostiness:--

"On the contrary I did not know that she was engaged."

"Oh, she is; to Count Shimbowski."

"Count Shimbowski and Alice Endicott?" put in Mrs. Harbinger. "Is that
the latest? Sit down, Mrs. Croydon. Really, it doesn't seem to me that
it is likely that such a thing could be true, and the relatives not be
notified."

She reseated herself as she spoke, and busied herself with the
tea-equipage. May rather threw herself down than resumed her seat.

"Certainly it can't be true," the latter protested. "The idea of Alice's
being engaged and we not know it!"

"But it's true; I have it direct," insisted Mrs. Croydon; "Miss
Wentstile told Mr. Bradish, and he told me."

May sniffed rather inelegantly.

"Oh, Miss Wentstile! She thinks because Alice is her niece she can do
what she likes with her. It's all nonsense. Alice has always been fond
of Jack Neligage. Everybody knows that."

Mrs. Croydon managed somehow to communicate to her innumerable streamers
and pennants a flutter which seemed to be meant to indicate violent
inward laughter.

"Oh, what a child you are, Miss Calthorpe! I declare, I really must put
you into my next novel. I really must!"

"May is still so young as to be romantic, of course," Mrs. Harbinger
remarked, flashing at her young friend a quick sidewise glance. "Besides
which she has been educated in a convent; and in a convent a girl must
be either imaginative or a fool, or she'll die of ennui."

"I suppose you never were romantic yourself," put in May defensively.

"Oh, yes, my dear; I had my time of being a fool. Why, once I even fell
violently in love with a man I had never seen."

The swift rush of color into the face of Miss Calthorpe might have
arrested the attention of Mrs. Croydon, but at that moment the voice of
Graham interrupted, announcing:--

"Mr. Bradish; Mr. Neligage."

The two men who entered were widely different in appearance.

That Mr. Bradish was considerably the elder was evident from his
appearance, yet he came forward with an eager air which secured for him
the first attention. He was lantern-jawed, and sanguine in color.
Near-sight glasses unhappily gave to his eyes an appearance of having
been boiled, and distorted his glance into an absurd likeness to a
leer. A shadow of melancholy, vague yet palpable, softened his face, and
was increased by the droop of his Don Quixote like yellow mustaches. The
bald spot on his head and the stoop in his shoulders betrayed cruelly
the fact that Harry Bradish was no longer young; and no less plainly
upon everything about him was stamped the mark of a gentleman.

Jack Neligage, on the other hand, came in with a face of irresistible
good nature. There was a twinkle in his brown eyes, a spark of humor and
kindliness which could evidently not be quenched even should there
descend upon him serious misfortune. His face was still young enough
hardly to show the marks of dissipation which yet were not entirely
invisible to the searching eye; his hair was crisp and abundant; his
features regular and well formed. He was a young fellow so evidently
intended by nature for pleasure that to expect him to take life
seriously would have seemed a sort of impropriety. An air of youth, and
of jocund life, of zest and of mirthfulness came in with Jack,
inevitably calling up smiles to meet him. Even disapproval smiled on
Jack; and it was therefore not surprising if he evaded most of the
reproofs which are apt to be the portion of an idle pleasure-seeker. He
moved with a certain languid alertness that was never hurried and yet
never too late. This served him well on the polo-field, where he was
deliberately swift and swiftly deliberate in most effective fashion. He
came into the drawing-room now with the easy mien of a favorite, yet
with an indifference which seemed so natural as to save him from all
appearance of conceit. He had the demeanor of the conscious but not
quite spoiled darling of fortune.

"You are just in time for the first brewing of tea," Mrs. Harbinger
said, when greetings had been exchanged. "This tea was sent me by a
Russian countess who charged me to let nobody drink it who takes cream.
It is really very good if you get it fresh."

"To have the tea and the hostess both fresh," Mr. Bradish responded,
"will, I fear, be too intoxicating."

"Never mind the tea," broke in Mrs. Croydon. "I am much more interested
in what we were talking about. Mr. Bradish, you can tell us about Count
Shimbowski and Alice Endicott."

Jack Neligage turned about with a quickness unusual in him.

"The Count and Miss Endicott?" he demanded. "What about them? Who's had
the impertinence to couple their names?"

Mrs. Croydon put up her hands in pretended terror, a hundred tags of
ribbon fluttering as she did so.

"Oh, don't blame me," she said. "I didn't do it. They're engaged."

Neligage regarded her with a glance of vexed and startled disfavor. Then
he gave a short, scornful laugh.

"What nonsense!" he said. "Nobody could believe that."

"But it's true," put in Bradish. "Miss Wentstile herself told me that
she had arranged the match, and that I might mention it."

Neligage looked at the speaker an instant with a disbelieving smile on
his lip; and tossing his head went to lean his elbow on the mantel.

"Arranged!" he echoed. "Good heavens! Is this a transaction in real
estate?"

"Marriage so often is, Mr. Neligage," observed Mrs. Harbinger, with a
smile.

Bradish began to explain with the solemn air which he had. He was often
as obtuse and matter-of-fact as an Englishman, and now took up the
establishment of the truth of his news with as much gravity as if he
were setting forth a point of moral doctrine. He seemed eager to prove
that he had at least been entirely innocent of any deception, and that
whatever he had said must be blamelessly credible.

"Of course it's extraordinary, and I said so to Miss Wentstile. She said
that as the Count is a foreigner, it was very natural for him to follow
foreign fashions in arranging the marriage with her instead of with
Alice."

"And she added, I've no doubt," interpolated Mrs. Harbinger, "that she
entirely approved of the foreign fashion."

"She did say something of that sort," admitted Bradish, with entire
gravity.

Mrs. Harbinger burst into a laugh, and trimmed the wick of her tea-lamp.
Neligage grinned, but his pleasant face darkened instantly.

"Miss Wentstile is an old idiot!" said he emphatically.

"Oh, come, Mr. Neligage," remonstrated his hostess, "that is too strong
language. We must observe the proprieties of abuse."

"And say simply that she is Miss Wentstile," suggested Mrs. Croydon
sweetly.

The company smiled, with the exception of May, whose face had been
growing longer and longer.

"I don't care what she says," the girl burst out indignantly; "I don't
believe Alice will listen to such a thing for one minute."

"Perhaps she won't," Bradish rejoined doubtfully, "but Miss Wentstile is
famous for having her own way. I'm sure I shouldn't feel safe if she
undertook to marry me off."

"She might take you for herself if she knew her power, Mr. Bradish,"
responded Mrs. Croydon. "No more tea, my dear, thank you."

"For Heaven's sake don't mention it then," he answered. "It's enough to
have Jack here upset. The news is evidently too much for him."

"What news has upset my son, Mr. Bradish?" demanded a crisp voice from
the doorway. "I shall disown him if he can't hide his feelings."

Past Graham, who was prepared to announce her, came a little woman,
bright, vivacious, sparkling; with clear complexion and mischievous
dimples. A woman trimly dressed, and in appearance hardly older than the
son she lightly talked of disowning. The youthfulness of Mrs. Neligage
was a constant source of irritation to her enemies, and with her
tripping tongue and defiant independence she made enemies in plenty. Her
gypsyish beauty and clear skin were offenses serious enough; but for a
woman with a son of five and twenty to look no more than that age
herself was a vexation which was not to be forgiven. Some had been
spiteful enough to declare that she preserved her youth by being
entirely free from feeling; but since in the same breath they were ready
to charge the charming widow with having been by her emotions carried
into all sorts of improprieties, the accusation was certainly to be
received with some reservations. Certainly she was the fortunate
possessor of unfailing spirits, of constant cleverness, and delightful
originality. She had the courage, moreover, of daring to do what she
wished with the smallest possible regard for conventions; and it has
never been clearly shown how much independence of conventionality and
freedom of life may effect toward the preservation of a woman's youth.

She evidently understood the art of entering a room well. She came
forward swiftly, yet without ungraceful hurry. She nodded brightly to
the ladies, gave Bradish the momentary pleasure of brushing her
finger-tips with his own as she passed him, then went forward to shake
hands with Mrs. Harbinger. Without having done anything in particular
she was evidently entire mistress of the situation, and the rest of the
company became instantly her subordinates. Mrs. Croydon, almost twice
her size and so elaborately overdressed, appeared suddenly to have
become dowdy and ill at ease; yet nothing could have been more
unconscious or friendly than the air with which the new-comer turned
from the hostess to greet the other lady. There are women to whom
superiority so evidently belongs by nature that they are not even at the
trouble of asserting it.

"Oh, Mrs. Neligage," Mrs. Croydon said, as she grasped at the little
glove which glanced over hers as a bird dips above the water, "you have
lived so much abroad that you should be an authority on foreign
marriages."

"Just as you, having lived in Chicago, should be an authority on
un-marriages, I suppose. Well, I've had the fun of disturbing a lot of
foreign marriages in my day. What marriage is this?"

"We were speaking of Miss Wentstile's proposing to marry Alice to Count
Shimbowski," explained Mrs. Harbinger.

"Then," returned Mrs. Neligage lightly, "you had better speak of
something else as quickly as possible, for Alice and her aunt are just
behind me. Let us talk of Mrs. Croydon's anonymous novel that's made
such a stir while I've been in Washington. What is it? 'Cloudy Love'!
That sounds tremendously improper. My dear, if you don't wish to see me
fall in a dead faint at your feet, do give me some tea. I'm positively
worn out."

She seated herself near Mrs. Croydon, over whose face during her remarks
had flitted several expressions, none of them over-amiable, and watched
the hostess fill her cup.

"Come, Mrs. Neligage," protested Bradish with an air of mild
solicitation. "You are really too bad, you know. It isn't 'Cloudy Love,'
but 'Love in a Cloud.' I didn't know that you confessed to writing it,
Mrs. Croydon."

"Oh, I don't. I only refuse to deny it."

"Oh, well, now; not to deny is equivalent to a confession," he returned.

"Not in the least," Mrs. Neligage struck in. "When you are dealing with
a woman, Mr. Bradish, it isn't safe even to take things by contraries."




IV

THE TICKLING OF AN AUTHOR


The entrance of Miss Wentstile and her niece Alice Endicott made the
company so numerous that it naturally broke up into groups, and the
general conversation was suspended.

Miss Wentstile was a lady of commanding presence, whose youth was with
the snows of yester year. She had the eye of a hawk and the jaw of a
bulldog; nor was the effect of these rather formidable features softened
by the strong aquiline nose. Her hair was touched with gray, but her
color was still fresh and too clear not to be natural. She was richly
dressed in dark green and fur, her complexion making the color possible
in spite of her years. She was a woman to arouse attention, and one,
too, who was evidently accustomed to dominate. She cast a keen glance
about her as she crossed the room to her hostess, sweeping her niece
along with her not without a suggestion that she dragged the girl as a
captive at her chariot-wheel.

Jack Neligage stepped forward as she passed him, evidently with the
intention of intercepting the pair, or perhaps of gaining a word with
Alice Endicott.

"How do you do, Miss Wentstile," he said. "I am happy to see you looking
so well."

"There is no reason why I should not look well, Mr. Neligage," she
responded severely. "I never sit up all night to smoke and drink and
play cards."

Neligage smiled his brightest, and made her a bow of mock deference.

"Indeed, Miss Wentstile," he responded, "I am delighted to know that
your habits have become so correct."

She retorted with a contemptuous sniff, and by so effectually
interposing between him and her niece that Miss Endicott could only nod
to him over her aunt's shoulder. Jack made a grimace more impertinent
than courtly, and for the time turned away, while the two ladies went on
to Mrs. Harbinger.

"Well, Alice," Mrs. Harbinger said, "I am glad you have come at last. I
began to think that I must appoint a substitute to pour in your place."

"I am sorry to be so late," Miss Endicott responded, as she and her
hostess exchanged places. "I was detained unexpectedly."

"I kept her," Miss Wentstile announced with grim suddenness. "I have
been talking to her about--"

"Aunt Sarah," interposed Alice hurriedly, "may I give you some tea?"

"Don't interrupt me, Alice. I was talking to her about--"

Mrs. Harbinger looked at the crimsoning cheeks of Alice, and meeting
the girl's imploring glance, gave her a slight but reassuring nod.

"My dear Miss Wentstile," she said, "I know you will excuse me; but here
are more people coming."

Miss Wentstile could hardly finish her remarks to the air, and as Mrs.
Harbinger left her to greet a new arrival the spinster turned sharply to
May Calthorpe, who had snuggled up to Alice in true school-girl fashion.

"Ah, May," Miss Wentstile observed, "what do you settle down there for?
Don't you know that now you have been brought out in society you are
expected to make your market?"

"No, Miss Wentstile," May responded; "if my market can't make itself,
then it may go unmade."

The elder turned away with another characteristic sniff, and Alice and
May were left to themselves. People were never tired of condemning Miss
Wentstile for her brusque and naked remarks; but after all society is
always secretly grateful for any mortal who has the courage to be
individual. The lady was often frank to the verge of rudeness; she was
so accustomed to having her own way that one felt sure she would insist
upon it at the very Judgment Seat; she said what she pleased, and
exacted a deference to her opinions and to her wishes such as could
hardly under existing human conditions be accorded to any mortal. Miss
Wentstile must have been too shrewd not to estimate reasonably well the
effect of her peculiarities, and no human being can be persistently
eccentric without being theatrical. It was evident enough that she
played in some degree to the gallery; and undoubtedly from this it is to
be argued that she was not without some petty enjoyment in the notoriety
which her manners produced. Should mankind be destroyed, the last thing
to disappear would probably be human vanity, which, like the grin of the
Cheshire cat in "Alice," would linger after the race was gone. Vanity in
the individual is nourished by the notice of others; and if Miss
Wentstile became more and more confirmed in her impertinences, it is
hardly to be doubted that increase of vanity was the cause most active.
She outwardly resented the implication that she was eccentric; but as
she contrived continually and even complacently to become steadily more
so, society might be excused for not thinking her resentment
particularly deep. Dislike for notoriety perhaps never cured any woman
of a fault; and certainly in the case of Miss Wentstile it was not in
the least corrective.

The relations between Miss Wentstile and Alice Endicott were well known.
Alice was the doubly orphaned daughter of a gallant young officer killed
in a plucky skirmish against superior force in the Indian troubles, and
of the wife whose heart broke at his loss. At six Alice was left, except
for a small pension, practically penniless, and with no nearer relative
than Miss Wentstile. That lady had undertaken the support of the child,
but had kept her much at school until the girl was sixteen. Then the
niece became an inmate of her aunt's house, and outwardly, at least,
the mere slave of the older lady's caprices. Miss Wentstile was kind in
her fashion. In all that money bought she was generous. Alice was richly
dressed, she might have what masters she wished, be surrounded by
whatever luxuries she chose. As if the return for these benefits was to
be implicit obedience, Miss Wentstile was impatient of any show toward
herself of independence. If Alice could be imagined as bearing herself
coldly and haughtily toward the world in general,--a possibility hardly
to be conceived of,--Miss Wentstile might be pictured glorying in such a
display of proper spirit; but toward her aunt the girl was expected to
be all humility and concession. As neither was without the pride which
belonged to the Wentstile blood, it is easy to see that perfect harmony
was not to be looked for between the pair. Alice had all the folly of
girlhood, which is so quick to refuse to be bullied into affection;
which is so blind as not to perceive that an elder who insists upon its
having no will of its own is providing excellent lessons in the high
graces of humility and meekness. Clever observers--and society remains
vital chiefly in virtue of its clever observers--detected that Miss
Wentstile chafed with an inward consciousness that the deference of her
niece was accorded as a courtesy and not as a right. The spinster had
not the tact to avoid betraying her perception that the submission of
Alice was rather outward than inward, and the public sense of justice
was somewhat appeased in its resentment at her domineering treatment by
its enjoyment of her powerlessness either to break the girl's spirit or
force her into rebellion.

The fondness of Alice for Jack Neligage was the one tangible thing with
which Miss Wentstile could find fault; and this was so intangible after
all that it was difficult to seize upon it. Nobody doubted that the two
were warmly attached. Jack had never made any effort to hide his
admiration; and while Alice had been more circumspect, the instinct of
society is seldom much at fault in a matter of this sort. For Miss
Wentstile to be sure that her niece favored the man of all others most
completely obnoxious, and to bring the offense home to the culprit were,
however, matters quite different. Now that Miss Wentstile had outdone
herself in eccentricity by boldly adopting the foreign fashion of a
_mariage de convenance_, there was every reason to believe that the real
power of the spinster would be brought to the test. Nobody doubted that
behind this absurd attempt to make a match between Alice and Count
Shimbowski lay the determination to separate the girl from Jack
Neligage; and it was inevitable that the struggle should be watched for
with eager interest.

The first instant that there was opportunity for a confidential word,
May Calthorpe rushed precipitately upon the subject of the reported
engagement.

"Oh, Alice," she said, in a hurried half-whisper, "do you know that Miss
Wentstile says she has arranged an engagement between you and that
horrid Hungarian Count."

Alice turned her long gray eyes quickly to meet those of her companion.

"Has she really told of it?" she demanded almost fiercely.

"They were all talking of it before you came in," May responded.

Her voice was deepened, apparently by a tragic sense of the gravity of
the subject under discussion; yet she was a bud in her first season, so
that it was impossible that there should not also be in her tone some
faint consciousness of the delightfully romantic nature of the
situation.

An angry flush came into the cheek of Miss Endicott. She was not a girl
of striking face, although she had beautiful eyes; but there was a
dignity in her carriage, an air of birth and breeding, which gave her
distinction anywhere. She possessed, moreover, a sweet sincerity of
character which made itself subtly felt in her every tone and movement.
Now she knit her forehead in evident perplexity and resentment.

"But did they believe it?" she asked.

"Oh, they would believe anything of Miss Wentstile, of course," May
replied. "We all know Aunt Sarah too well not to know that she is
capable of the craziest thing that could be thought of."

She picked out a fat bonbon as she spoke, and nibbled it comfortably, as
if thoroughly enjoying herself.

"But what can I do?" demanded Alice pathetically. "I can't stand up here
and say: 'Ladies and gentlemen, I really have no idea of marrying that
foreign thing Aunt Sarah wants to buy for me.'"

Whatever reply May might have made was interrupted by the arrival of a
gentleman with an empty teacup. The new-comer was Richard Fairfield, a
young man of not much money but of many friends, and of literary
aspirations. As he crossed the drawing-room Mrs. Neligage carelessly
held out to him her cup and saucer.

"As you are going that way, Richard," she said without preface of
salutation, "do you mind taking my cup to the table?"

"Delighted, of course," he answered, extending his hand for it.

"If Mrs. Neligage will permit me," broke in Mr. Bradish, darting
forward. "I beg ten thousand pardons for not perceiving--"

"But Mrs. Neligage will not permit you, Mr. Bradish," she responded
brightly. "I have already commissioned Richard."

Fairfield received the cup, and bore it away, while Bradish cast upon
the widow a glance of reproach and remonstrance.

"You women all pet a rising author," he said. "I suppose it's because
you all hope to be put in his books."

"Oh, no. On the contrary it is because we hope to be left out."

"I don't see," he went on with little apparent relevancy, "why you need
begrudge me the pleasure of doing you a small favor."

"I don't wish you to get too much into the habit of doing small favors,"
she responded over her shoulder, as she turned back to the group with
which she had been chatting. "I am afraid that if you do, you'll fail
when I ask a great one."

Fairfield made his way to the table where Alice was dispensing tea. He
was by her welcomed cordially, by May with a reserve which was evidently
absent-minded regret that he should break in upon her confidences with
her cousin. He exchanged with Alice the ordinary greetings, and then
made way for a fresh arrival who wished for tea. May responded rather
indifferently to his remarks as he took a chair at the end of the sofa
upon which she was seated, seeming so absorbed that in a moment he
laughed at some irrelevant reply which she gave.

"You did not understand what I said," he remarked. "I didn't mean--"

"I beg your pardon," she interrupted, turning toward him. "I was
thinking of something I was talking about with Alice, and I didn't mind
what you did say."

"I am sorry that I interrupted."

"Oh, everybody interrupts at an afternoon tea," she responded, smiling.
"That is what we are here for, I suppose. I was simply in a cloud--"

Fairfield returned her smile with interest.

"Is that an allusion?"

May flushed a little, and put her hand consciously to the carnation at
her throat.

"Oh, no," she answered, with a little too much eagerness. "I can talk of
something beside that book. Though of course," she added, "I do think
it is a perfectly wonderful story. There is so much heart in it. Why, I
have read it so much that I know parts of it almost word for word."

"Then you don't think it is cynical?"

"Oh, not the least in the world! How can anybody say that? I am ashamed
of you, Mr. Fairfield."

"I didn't mean that I thought it cynical; but lots of folk do, you
know."

May tossed her hands in a girlish gesture of disdain.

"I hate people that call everything cynical. It is a thing that they
just say to sound wise. 'Love in a Cloud' is to me one of the truest
books I ever read. Why, you take that scene where she tells him she
cares for him just the same in spite of his disgrace. It brings the
tears into my eyes every time I read it."

A new light came into the young man's face as she spoke in her
impulsive, girlish fashion. He was a handsome fellow, with well-bred
face. He stroked his silky mustache with an air not unsuggestive of
complacency.

"It is delightful," said he, "to find somebody who really appreciates
the book for what is best in it. Of course there are a great many people
who say nice things about it, but they don't seem to go to the real
heart of it as you do."

"Oh, the story has so much heart," she returned. Then she regarded him
quizzically. "You speak almost as if you had written it yourself."

"Oh, I--That is--Why, you see," he answered, in evident confusion, "I
suppose that my being an embryo literary man myself makes it natural for
me to take the point of view of the author. Most readers of a novel, you
know, care for nothing but the plot, and see nothing else."

"Oh, it is not the plot," May cried enthusiastically. "I like that, of
course, but what I really care for is the feeling in the book."

Jack Neligage, with his eyes on Alice Endicott, had made his way over to
the tea-table, and came up in time to hear this.

"The book, Miss Calthorpe?" he repeated. "Oh, you must be talking of
that everlasting novel. I wish I had had the good luck to write it."

"Oh, I should adore you if you had, Mr. Neligage."

"By Jove, then I'll swear I did write it."

Fairfield regarded the girl with heightened color.

"You had better be careful, Miss Calthorpe," he commented. "The real
author might hear you."

She started in pretty dismay, and covered with her hand the flower
nestling under her chin.

"Oh, he is not here!" she cried.

"How do you know that?" demanded Jack laughingly.

She sank back into the corner of the sofa with a blush far deeper than
could be called for by the situation.

"Oh, I just thought so," she said. "Who is there here that could have
written it?"

"Why, Dick here is always scribbling," Neligage returned, with a
chuckle. "Perhaps you have been telling him what you thought of his
book."

The face of Fairfield grew suddenly sober.

"Come, Jack," he said, rising, "that's too stupid a joke to be worthy of
you."

He was seized at that moment by Mrs. Harbinger, who presented him to
Miss Wentstile. Fairfield had been presented to Miss Wentstile a dozen
times in the course of the two winters since he had graduated at Harvard
and settled in Boston; but since she never seemed to recognize him, he
gave no sign of remembering her.

"Miss Wentstile," the hostess said, "don't you know Mr. Fairfield? He is
one of our literary lights now, you know."

"A very tiny rushlight, I am afraid," the young man commented.

Miss Wentstile examined him with critical impertinence through her
lorgnette.

"Are you one of the Baltimore Fairfields?" she asked.

"No; my family came from Connecticut."

"Indeed!" she remarked coolly. "I do not remember that I ever met a
person from Connecticut before."

The lips of the young man set themselves a little more firmly at this
impertinence, and there came into his eyes a keen look.

"I am pleased to be the humble means of increasing your experience," he
said, with a bow.

Miss Wentstile had the appearance of being anxious to quarrel with
somebody, a fact which was perhaps due to the conversation which she had
had with her niece as they came to the house. Alice had been ordered to
be especially gracious to Count Shimbowski, and had respectfully but
succinctly declared her intention to be as cold as possible. Miss
Wentstile had all her life indulged in saying whatever she felt like
saying, little influenced by the ordinary restraints of conventionality
and not at all by consideration for the feelings of others. She had gone
about the room that afternoon being as disagreeable as possible, and her
rudeness to Fairfield was milder than certain things which were at that
very moment being resented and quoted in the groups which she had
passed. She glared at the young man now as if amazed that he had dared
to reply, and unfortunately she ventured once more.

"Thank you," she said. "Even the animals in the Zoo increase one's
experience. It is always interesting to meet those that one has heard
chattered about."

He made her a deeper bow.

"I know," he responded with a manner coolly polite. "I felt it myself
the first half dozen times I had the honor to be presented to you; but
even the choicest pleasures grow stale on too frequent repetition."

Miss Wentstile glared at him for half a minute, while he seemed to grow
pale at his own temerity. Then a humorous smile lightened her face, and
she tapped him approvingly on the shoulder with her gold lorgnette.

"Come, come," she said briskly but without any sharpness, "you must not
be impertinent to an old woman. You will hold your own, I perceive. Come
and see me. I am always at home on Wednesdays."

Miss Wentstile moved on looking less grim, but her previous sins were
still to be atoned for, and Mrs. Neligage, who knew nothing of the
encounter between the spinster and Fairfield, was watching her
opportunity. Miss Wentstile came upon the widow just as a burst of
laughter greeted the conclusion of a story.

"And his wife is entirely in the dark to this day," Mrs. Neligage ended.

"That is--ha, ha!--the funniest thing I've heard this winter," declared
Mr. Bradish, who was always in the train of Mrs. Neligage.

"I think it's horrid!" protested Mrs. Croydon, with an entirely
unsuccessful attempt to look shocked. "I declare, Miss Wentstile, they
are gossiping in a way that positively makes me blush."

"So you see that the age of miracles is not past after all," put in Mrs.
Neligage.

"Mrs. Neligage has lived abroad so much," Miss Wentstile said severely,
"that I fear she has actually forgotten the language of civility."

"Not to you, my dear Miss Wentstile," was the incorrigible retort. "My
mother taught me to be civil to you in my earliest youth."

And all that the unfortunate lady, thus cruelly attacked, could say
was,--

"I wish you remembered all your mother taught you half as well!"




V

THE BLAZING OF RANK


The usual mass of people came and went that afternoon at Mrs.
Harbinger's. It was not an especially large tea, but in a country where
the five o'clock tea is the approved method of paying social grudges
there will always be a goodly number of people to be asked and many who
will respond. The hum of talk rose like the clatter of a factory, the
usual number of conversations were begun only to end as soon as they
were well started; the hostess fulfilled her duty of interrupting any
two of her guests who seemed to be in danger of getting into real talk;
presentations were made with the inevitable result of a perfunctory
exchange of inanities; and in general the occasion was very like the
dozen other similar festivities which were proceeding at the same time
in all the more fashionable parts of the city.

As time wore on the crowd lessened. Many had gone to do their wearisome
duty of saying nothing at some other five o'clock; and the rooms were
becoming comfortable again. The persons who had come early were
lingering, and one expert in social craft might have detected signs that
their remaining so long was not without some especial reason.

"If he is coming," Mrs. Neligage observed to Mr. Bradish, "I wish he
would come. It is certainly not very polite of him not to arrive earlier
if he is really trying to pass as the slave of Alice."

"Oh, he is always late," Bradish answered. "If you had not been in
Washington you would have heard how he kept Miss Wentstile's dinner
waiting an hour the other day because he couldn't make up his mind to
leave the billiard table."

Mrs. Neligage laughed rather mockingly.

"How did dear Miss Wentstile like that?" asked she. "It is death for any
mortal to dare to be late at her house, and she does not approve of
billiards."

"She was so taken up with berating the rest of us for his tardiness that
when he appeared she had apparently forgotten all about his being to
blame in anything."

"She loves a title as she loves her life," Mrs. Neligage commented. "She
would marry him herself and give him every penny she owns just to be
called a countess for the rest of her life."

A stir near the door, and the voice of Graham announcing "Count
Shimbowski" made them both turn. A brief look of intelligence flashed
across the face of the widow.

"It is he," she murmured as if to herself.

"Do you know him?" demanded Bradish.

"Oh, I used to see him abroad years ago," was her answer. "Very likely
he will have forgotten me."

"That," Bradish declared, with a profound bow, "is impossible."

The Count made his way across the drawing-room with a jaunty air not
entirely in keeping with the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes. He
was tall and wiry, with sandy hair and big mustaches. He showed no
consciousness that he was being stared at, but with admirable
self-possession saluted his hostess.

"How do you do, Count?" Mrs. Harbinger greeted him. "We began to think
you were not coming."

"Ah, how do, Mees Harbeenger. Not to come eet would be to me too
desolate. _Bon jour_, my deear Mees Wentsteele. I am so above-joyed to
encountair you'self here. My deear Mees Endeecott, I kees your
feengair."

"Beast!" muttered Jack Neligage to Fairfield. "I should like to cram a
fistful of his twisted-up sentences down his snaky throat!"

"He must open his throat with a corkscrew in the morning," was the
reply.

Miss Wentstile was smiling her most gracious.

"How do you feel to-day, Count?" she asked. "Does our spring weather
affect you unpleasantly?"

The Count made a splendid gesture with both his hands, waving in the
right the monocle which he more often carried than wore.

"Oh, what ees eet de weder een one land w'ere de peoples so heavenly
keent ees?" he demanded oratorically. "Only eet ees Mees Endeecott do
keel me wid her so great cheelleeness."

Miss Endicott looked up from her seat at the tea-table beside which the
group stood. Her air was certainly sufficiently cold to excuse the Count
for feeling her chilliness; and she answered without a glimmer of a
smile.

"I'm not cruel," she said. "I wouldn't hurt a worm."

"But," the Count responded, shaking his head archly, "eet ees dat I be
not a worm."

"I thought that all men were worms of the dust," Mrs. Harbinger
observed.

The Count bowed his tall figure with finished grace.

"And all de weemens," he declared, "aire angles!"

"It is our sharpness, then, that is to be admired," Alice commented.

"Of course, Alice," Miss Wentstile corrected vixenishly, "the Count
means angels."

"So many men," Alice went on without showing other sign of feeling than
a slight flush, "have turned a woman from an angel into an angle."

"I do comprehend not," the Count said.

"It is no matter, Count," put in the hostess. "She is only teasing you,
and being rude into the bargain. You will take tea? Alice, pour the
Count some tea."

Alice took up a cup.

"How many lumps?" she asked.

"Loomps? Loomps? Oh, eet weel be sugaire een de tea. Tree, eef you weel
be so goot weedeen eet."

Just as the Count, with profuse expressions of overwhelming gratitude
to have been permitted so great an honor, had received his tea from the
hand of Miss Endicott, and Miss Wentstile was clearing her throat with
the evident intention of directing toward him some profound observation,
Mrs. Neligage came briskly forward with outstretched hand.

"It would be generous of you, Count," she said, "to recognize an old
friend."

He stared at her with evident astonishment.

"_Ciel!_" he exclaimed. "Ah, but eet weel be de _belle_ Madame
Neleegaze!"

She laughed as she shook hands, her dark eyes sparkling with fun.

"As gallant as ever, Count. It is good of you to remember me after so
many years."

The Count regarded her with a look so earnest that he might easily be
supposed to remember from the past, whatever and whenever it had been,
many things of interest. Miss Wentstile surveyed the pair with an
expression of keen suspicion.

"Louisa," she demanded, "where did you know the Count?"

The Count tried to speak, but Mrs. Neligage was too quick for him.

"It was at--Where was it, Count? My memory for places is so bad," she
returned mischievously.

"Yees," he said eagerly. "Eet weel have been Paris _certainement_, ees
eet not?"

She laughed more teasingly yet, and glanced swiftly from him to Miss
Wentstile. She was evidently amusing herself, though the simple
question of the place of a former meeting might not seem to give much
opportunity.

"That doesn't seem to me to have been the place," she remarked. "Paris?
Let me see. I should have said that it was--"

The remark was not concluded, for down went the Count's teacup with a
splash and a crash, with startings and cries from the ladies, and a
hasty drawing away of gowns. Miss Endicott, who had listened carefully
to the talk, took the catastrophe coolly enough, but with a darkening of
the face which seemed to show that she regarded the accident as
intentional. The Count whipped out his handkerchief, and went down on
his knee instantly to wipe the hem of Miss Wentstile's spattered frock;
while Mrs. Neligage seemed more amused than ever.

"Oh, I am deesconsolate forever!" the Count exclaimed, in tones which
were pathetic enough to have made the reputation of an actor. "I am
broken een de heart, Mees Wentsteele."

"It is no matter," Miss Wentstile said stiffly.

A ring of the bell brought Graham to repair the damage as far as might
be, and in the confusion the Count moved aside with the widow.

"That was not done with your usual skill, Count," she said mockingly.
"It was much too violent for the occasion."

"But for what you speak of Monaco here?" he demanded fiercely. "De old
Mees Wentsteele say dat to play de card for money ees villain. She say
eet is murderous. She say she weel not to endure de man dat have
gamboled."

"And you have gamboled in a lively manner in your time, Count. It's an
old pun, but it would be new to you if you could understand it."

"I don't understand," he said savagely in French.

"No matter. It wasn't worth understanding," she answered, in the same
tongue. "But you needn't have been afraid. I'm no spoil-sport. I
shouldn't have told."

"She is an old prude," he went on, smiling, and showing his white teeth.
"If she knew I had been in a duel, she would know me no more."

"She will not know from me."

"As lovely and as kind as ever," he responded. "Ah, when I remember
those days, when I was young, and you were just as you are now--"

"Old, that is."

"Oh, no; young, always young as when I knew you first. When I was at
your feet with love, and your countryman was my rival--"

Mrs. Neligage began to look as if she found the tables being turned, and
that she had no more wish to have the past brought up than had the
Count. She turned away from her companion. Then she looked back over her
shoulder to observe, still in French, as she left him:--

"I make it a point never to remember those days, my friend."




VI

THE MISCHIEF OF A WIDOW


There were now but ten guests left, the persons who have been named, and
who seemed for the most part to be lingering to observe the Count or
Alice Endicott. May Calthorpe had all the afternoon kept near Alice, and
only left her place when the sopping up of the Count's tea made it
necessary for her to move. Mrs. Harbinger took her by the arm, and
looked into her face scrutinizingly.

"Well," she asked, "did your unknown author come?"

"Nobody has come with a carnation. Oh, I am so disappointed!"

"I am glad of it, my dear."

"But he said he would come if I'd give him a sign, and I wrote to him
while I was waiting for you yesterday."

"So you told me."

"Well," May echoed dolefully; "I think you might be more sympathetic."

"What did you do with the letter?" asked Mrs. Harbinger.

"I gave it to Graham to post."

"Then very likely no harm is done. Graham never in his life posted a
letter under two days."

"Oh, do you think so?" May asked, brightening visibly at the suggestion.
"You don't think he despised me, and wouldn't come?"

Mrs. Harbinger gave her a little shake.

"You hussy!" she exclaimed, with too evident an enjoyment of the
situation to be properly severe. "How was it addressed?"

"Just to Christopher Calumus, in care of the publishers."

"Well, my dear," the hostess declared, "your precious epistle is
probably in the butler's pantry now; or one of the maids has picked it
up from the kitchen floor. I warn you that if I can find it I shall read
it."

"Oh, you wouldn't!" exclaimed May in evident distress.

"Um! Wouldn't I, though? The way you take the suggestion shows that it's
time somebody looked into your correspondence with this stranger."

May opened her lips to protest again, but the voice of Graham was heard
announcing Mr. Barnstable, and Mrs. Harbinger turned to greet the
late-coming stranger. The gentleman's hair had apparently been scrubbed
into sleekness, but had here and there broken through the smooth outer
surface as the stuffing of an old cushion breaks through slits in the
covering. His face was red, and his air full of self-consciousness. When
he entered the drawing-room Mr. Harbinger was close behind him, but the
latter stopped to speak with Bradish and Mrs. Neligage, and Barnstable
advanced alone to where Mrs. Harbinger stood with May just behind her.

"Heavens, May," the hostess said over her shoulder. "Here is your
carnation. I hope you are pleased with the bearer."

Barnstable stood hesitating, looking around as if to discover the
hostess. On the face of Mrs. Croydon only was there sign of recognition.
She bowed at him rather than to him, with an air so distant that no man
could have spoken to her after such a frigid salutation. The stranger
turned redder and redder, made a half step toward Mrs. Croydon, and then
stopped. Fortunately Mr. Harbinger hastened up, and presented him to the
hostess. That lady greeted him politely, but she had hardly exchanged
the necessary commonplaces, before she put out her hand to where May
stood watching in dazed surprise.

"Let me present you to Miss Calthorpe," she said. "Mr. Barnstable, May."

She glided away with a twinkle in her eye which must have implied that
she had no fear in leaving the romantic girl with a lover that looked
like that. May and Barnstable stood confronting each other a moment in
awkward silence, and then the girl tossed her head with the air of a
young colt that catches the bit between his teeth.

"I had quite given you up," she said in a voice low, but distinct.

"Eh?" he responded, with a startled look. "Given me up?"

"I have been watching for the carnation all the afternoon."

"Carnation?" he echoed, trying over his abundant chins to get a glimpse
of the flower in his buttonhole. "Oh, yes; I generally wear a carnation.
They keep, don't you know; and it was always the favorite flower of my
wife."

"Your wife?" demanded Miss Calthorpe.

Her cheeks grew crimson, and she drew herself up haughtily.

"Yes," Barnstable replied, looking confused. "That is, of course, she
that was my wife."

"I should never have believed," May observed distantly, "that 'Love in a
Cloud' could have been written by a widower."

Barnstable began to regard her as if he were in doubt whether she or he
himself had lost all trace of reason.

"'Love in a Cloud,'" he repeated, "'Love in a Cloud'? Do you know who
wrote that beastly book?"

Her color shot up, and the angry young goddess declared itself in every
line of her face. Her pose became instantly a protest.

"How dare you speak of that lovely book in that way?" she demanded. "It
is perfectly exquisite!"

"But who wrote it?" he demanded in his turn, growing so red as to
suggest awful possibilities of apoplexy.

"Didn't you?" she stammered. "Are you running it down just for
modesty?"

"I! I! I write 'Love in a Cloud'?" cried Barnstable, speaking so loud
that he could be heard all over the room. "You insult me, Miss--Miss
Calthump! You--"

His feelings were evidently too much for him. He turned with rude
abruptness, and looking about him, seemed to become aware that the eyes
of almost everybody in the room were fixed on him. He cast a despairing
glance to where Mrs. Harbinger and Mrs. Croydon were for the moment
standing together, and then started in miserable flight toward the door.
At the threshold he encountered Graham the butler, who presented him
with a handful of letters.

"Will you please give the letters to Mrs. Harbinger?" Graham said, and
vanished.

Barnstable looked after the butler, looked at the letters, looked around
as if his head were swimming, and then turned back into the
drawing-room. He walked up to the hostess, and held out the letters in
silence, his fluffy face a pathetic spectacle of embarrassed woe.

"What are these?" Mrs. Harbinger asked.

He shook his head, as if he had given up all hope of understanding
anything.

"The butler put them in my hands," he murmured.

"Upon my word, Mrs. Harbinger," spoke up Mrs. Croydon, seeming more
offended than there was any apparent reason for her to be, "you have the
most extraordinary butler that ever existed."

Mrs. Harbinger threw out her hands in a gesture by which she evidently
disclaimed all responsibility for Graham and his doings.

"Extraordinary! Why, he makes my life a burden. There is no mistake he
cannot make, and he invents fresh ones every day. Really, I know of no
reason why the creature is tolerated in the house except that he makes a
cocktail to suit Tom."

"Dat ees ver' greet veertue," Count Shimbowski commented genially.

"I do not agree with you, Count," Miss Wentstile responded stiffly.

The spinster had been hovering about the Count ever since his accident
with the teacup, apparently seeking an opportunity of snubbing him.

"Oh, but I die but eef Mees Wentsteele agree of me!" the Count declared
with his hand on his heart.

Mrs. Croydon in the meanwhile had taken the letters from the hand of
Barnstable, and was looking at them with a scrutiny perhaps closer than
was exactly compatible with strict good-breeding.

"Why, here is a letter that has never been posted," she said.

Mr. Harbinger took the whole bundle from her hand.

"I dare say," was his remark, "that any letter that's been given to
Graham to mail in the last week is there. Why, this letter is addressed
to Christopher Calumus."

May Calthorpe moved forward so quickly that Mrs. Harbinger, who had
extended her hand to take the letters from her husband, turned to
restrain the girl. Mrs. Croydon swayed forward a little.

"That is the author of 'Love in a Cloud,'" she said with a simper of
self-consciousness.

Mrs. Neligage, who was standing with Bradish and Alice at the moment,
made a grimace.

"She'll really have the impudence to take it," she said to them aside.
"Now see me give that woman a lesson."

She swept forward in a flash, and deftly took the letter out of Tom
Harbinger's hand before he knew her intention. Flourishing it over her
head, she looked them all over with eyes full of fun and mischief.

"Honor to whom honor is due," she cried. "Ladies and gentlemen, be it my
high privilege to deliver this to its real and only owner. Count," she
went on, sweeping him a profound courtesy, "let your light shine. Behold
in Count Shimbowski the too, too modest author of 'Love in a Cloud.'"

There was a general outburst of amazement. The Count looked at the
letter which had been thrust into his hand, and stammered something
unintelligible.

"_Vraiment_, Madame Neleegaze," he began, "eet ees too mooch of you--"

"Oh, don't say anything," she interrupted him. "I have no other pleasure
in life than doing mischief."

Mrs. Croydon looked from the Count to Mrs. Neligage with an expression
of mingled doubt and bewilderment. Her attitude of expecting to be
received as the anonymous author vanished in an instant, and vexation
began to predominate over the other emotions visible in her face.

"Well," she said spitefully, "it is certainly a day of wonders; but if
the letter belongs to the Count, it would be interesting to know who
writes to him as Christopher Calumus."

Mrs. Harbinger answered her in a tone so cold that Mrs. Croydon colored
under it.

"Really, Mrs. Croydon," she said, "the question is a little pointed."

"Why, it is only a question about a person who doesn't exist. There
isn't any such person as Christopher Calumus. I'm sure I'd like to know
who writes to literary men under their assumed names."

May was so pale that only the fact that everybody was looking at Mrs.
Harbinger could shield her from discovery. The hostess drew herself up
with a haughty lifting of the head.

"If it is of so great importance to you," she said, "it is I who wrote
the letter. Who else should write letters in this house?"

She extended her hand to the Count as she spoke, as if to recover the
harmless-looking little white missive which was causing so much
commotion, but the Count did not offer to return it. Tom Harbinger stood
a second as if amazement had struck him dumb. Then with the air of a
puppet pronouncing words by machinery he ejaculated:--

"You wrote to the Count?"

His wife turned to him with a start, and opened her lips, but before she
could speak a fresh interruption prevented. Barnstable in the few
moments during which he had been in the room had met with so many
strange experiences that he might well be bewildered. He had been
greeted by May as one for whom she was waiting, and then had been hailed
as the author of the book which he hated; the eccentric Graham had made
of him a sort of involuntary penny-post; he had been in the midst of a
group whisking a letter about like folk in the last act of a comedy; and
now here was the announcement that the Count was the anonymous libeler
for whom he had been seeking. He dashed forward, every fold of his chins
quivering, his hair bristling, his little eyes red with excitement. He
shook his fist in the face of the Count in a manner not often seen in a
polite drawing-room.

"You are a villain," he cried. "You have insulted my wife!"

Bradish and Mr. Harbinger at once seized him, and between them he was
drawn back gesticulating and struggling. The ladies looked frightened,
but with the exception of Mrs. Croydon they behaved with admirable
propriety. Mrs. Croydon gave a little yapping screech, and fell back in
her chair in hysterics. More complete confusion could hardly have been
imagined, and Mrs. Neligage, who looked on with eyes full of laughter,
had certainly reason to congratulate herself that if she loved making
mischief she had for once at least been most instantly and triumphantly
successful.




VII

THE COUNSEL OF A MOTHER


If an earthquake shook down the house in which was being held a Boston
function, the persons there assembled would crawl from the ruins in a
manner decorous and dignified, or if too badly injured for this would
compose with decency their mangled limbs and furnish the addresses of
their respective family physicians. The violent and ill-considered farce
which had been played in Mrs. Harbinger's drawing-room might elsewhere
have produced a long-continued disturbance; but here it left no trace
after five minutes. Mr. Barnstable, babbling and protesting like a
lunatic, was promptly hurried into confinement in the library, where Mr.
Harbinger and Bradish stood guard over him as if he were a dangerous
beast; while the other guests made haste to retire. They went, however,
with entire decorum. Mrs. Croydon was, it is true, a disturbing element
in the quickly restored serenity of the party, and was with difficulty
made to assume some semblance of self-control. Graham, being sent to
call a carriage, first caught a forlorn herdic, which was prowling about
like a deserted tomcat, and when the lady would none of this managed to
produce a hack which must have been the most shabby in the entire town.
The Count was taken away by Miss Wentstile, who in the hour of his peril
dropped the stiffness she had assumed at his recognition of Mrs.
Neligage. She dragged Alice along with them, but Alice in turn held on
to May, so that the Count was given no opportunity to press his suit.
They all retired in good order, and however they talked, they at least
behaved beautifully.

As Neligage took his hat in the hall Fairfield caught him by the arm.

"Jack," he said under his breath, "do you believe Mrs. Harbinger wrote
me those letters?"

"Of course not," Jack responded instantly. "Not if they are the sort of
letters you said. Letty Harbinger is as square as a brick."

"Then why did she say she did?"

Jack rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"The letter was evidently written here," he said. "She must know who did
write it."

"Ah, I see!" exclaimed the other. "She was shielding somebody."

Jack regarded him with sudden sternness.

"There was nobody that it could be except--"

He broke off abruptly, a black look in his face, and before another word
could be exchanged Mrs. Neligage called him. He went off with his
mother, hastily telling his friend he would see him before bedtime.

Mrs. Neligage was hardly up to her son's shoulder, but so well preserved
was she that she might easily have been mistaken for a sister not so
much his senior. She was admirably dressed, exquisitely gloved and
booted, to the last fold of her tailor-made frock entirely correct, and
in her manner provokingly and piquantly animated.

"Who in the world was that horror that made the exhibition of himself?"
she asked. "I never saw anything like that at the Harbingers' before."

"I know nothing about him except that his name is Barnstable, and that
he came from the West somewhere. He's joined the Calif Club lately. How
he got in I don't understand; but he seems to have loads of money."

"He is a beast," Mrs. Neligage pronounced by way of dismissing the
subject. "What did Mrs. Harbinger mean by thanking you for arranging
something with the Count? What have you to do with him?"

"Oh, that is a secret."

"Then if it is a secret tell it at once."

"I'll tell you just to disappoint you," Jack returned with a grin. "It
is only about some etchings that the Count brought over. Mrs. Harbinger
has bought a couple as a present for Tom."

"She had better be careful," Mrs. Neligage observed. "Tom thinks more of
the collection now than he does of anything else in the world. But what
are you mixed up in the Count's transactions for?"

"She asked me to fix it, and besides the poor devil needed to sell them
to raise the wind. I'm too used to being hard up myself not to feel for
him."

"But you wrote me that you detested the Count."

"So I do, but you can't help doing a fellow a good turn, can you, just
because you don't happen to like him?"

She laughed lightly.

"You are a model of good nature. I wish you'd show it to May Calthorpe."

Her son looked down at her with a questioning glance.

"She is always at liberty to admire my virtues, of course; but she can't
expect me to put myself out to make special exhibitions for her
benefit."

The faces of both mother and son hardened a little, as if the subject
touched upon was one concerning which they had disagreed before. The
change of expression brought out a subtle likeness which had not before
been visible. Jack Neligage was usually said to resemble his father, who
had died just as the boy was entering his teens, but when he was in a
passion--a thing which happened but seldom--his face oddly took on the
look of his mother. The change, moreover, was not entirely to his
disadvantage, for as a rule Jack showed too plainly the easy-going,
self-indulgent character which had been the misfortune of the late John
Neligage, and which made friends of the family declare with a sigh that
Jack would never amount to anything worth while.

Mother and son walked on in silence a moment, and then the lady
observed, in a voice as dispassionate as ever:--

"She is a silly little thing. I believe even you could wind her round
your finger."

"I haven't any intention of trying."

"So you have given me to understand before; but now that I am going away
you might at least let me go with the consolation of knowing you'd
provided for yourself. You must marry somebody with money, and she has
no end of it."

He braced back his shoulders as if he found it not altogether easy not
to reply impatiently.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Oh, to Europe. Anywhere out of the arctic zone of the New England
conscience. I've had as long a spell of respectability as I can stand,
my boy."

Something in her manner evidently irritated him more and more. She spoke
with a little indefinable defiant swagger, as if she intended to anger
him. He looked at her no longer, but fixed his gaze on the distance.

"When you talk of giving up respectability," he remarked in an aggrieved
tone, "I should think you might consider me."

Her eyes danced, as if she were delighted to see him becoming angry.

"Oh, I do, Jack, I assure you; but I really cannot afford to be
respectable any longer. Respectability is the most expensive luxury of
civilization; and how can I keep it up when I'm in debt to everybody
that'll trust me."

"Then you might economize."

"Economize! Ye gods! This from you, Jack! Where did you hear the word?
I'm sure you know nothing of the thing."

He laughed in evident self-despite.

"We are a nice pair of ruffianly adventurers," he responded; "a regular
pair of genteel paupers. But we've both got to pull up, I tell you."

"Oh, heavens!" was his mother's reply. "Don't talk to me of pulling up.
What fun do I have as it is but quarreling with Miss Wentstile and
snubbing Harry Bradish? I've got to keep up my authority in our set, or
I should lose even these amusements."

Jack flashed her a swift, questioning look, and with a new note in his
voice, a note of doubt at once and desperation, blurted out a fresh
question.

"How about flirting with Sibley Langdon?"

Mrs. Neligage flushed slightly and for a brief second contracted her
well-arched eyebrows, but in an instant she was herself again.

"Oh, well," she returned, with a pretty little shrug, "that of course is
a trifle better, but not much. Sibley really cares for himself so
entirely that there's very little to be got out of him."

"But you know how you make folks talk."

"Oh, folks always talk. There is always as much gossip about nothing as
about something."

"But he puts on such a damnable air of proprietorship," Jack burst out,
with much more feeling than he had thus far shown. "I know I shall kick
him some time."

"That is the sort of thing you had better leave to the Barnstable man,"
she responded dryly. "Sibley only has the air of owning everything.
That's just his nature. He's really less fun than good old Harry
Bradish. But such as he is, he is the best I can do. If that stuffy old
invalid wife of his would only die, I think I'd marry him out of hand
for his money."

Jack threw out his arm with an angry gesture.

"For Heaven's sake, mother," he said, "what are you after that you are
going on so? You know you drive me wild when you get into this sort of a
talk."

"Or I might elope with him as it is, you know," she continued in her
most teasing manner; but watching him intently.

"What in the deuce do you talk to me like that for!" he cried, shaking
himself savagely. "You're my mother!"

Mrs. Neligage grew suddenly grave. She drew closer to her son, and
slipped her hand through his arm.

"So much the worse for us both, isn't it, Jack? Come, we may as well
behave like rational beings. Of course I was teasing you; but that isn't
the trouble. It's yourself you are angry with."

"What have I to be angry with myself about?"

"You are trying to make up your mind that you're willing to be poor for
the sake of marrying Alice Endicott; but you know you wouldn't be equal
to it. If I thought you would, I'd say go ahead. Do you think you'd be
happy in a South End apartment house with the washing on a line between
the chimneys, and a dry-goods box outside the window for a
refrigerator?"

Jack mingled a groan and a laugh.

"You can't pay your debts as it is," she went on remorselessly. "We are
a pair of paupers who have to live as if we were rich. You see what your
father made of it, starting with a fortune. You can't suppose you'd do
much better when you've nothing but debts."

"I think I'll enlist, or run away to sea," Jack declared, tugging
viciously at his mustache.

"No, you'll accept your destiny. You'll like it better than you think,
when you're settled down to it. You'll stay here and marry May
Calthorpe."

"You must think I'm a whelp to marry a girl just for her money."

"Oh, you must fall in love with her. Any man is a wretch who'd marry a
girl just for her money, but a man's a fool that can't fall in love with
a pretty girl worth half a million."

Jack dropped his mother's hand from his arm with more emphasis than
politeness, and stopped to face her on the corner of the street.

"The very Old Boy is in you to-day, mother," he said. "I won't listen to
another word."

She regarded him with a saucy, laughing face, and put out her hand.

"Well, good-night then," she said. "Come in and see me as soon as you
can. I have a lot of things to tell you about Washington. By the way,
what do you think of my going there, and setting up as a lobbyist? They
say women make no end of money that way."

He swung hastily round, and left her without a word. She went on her
way, but her face turned suddenly careworn and haggard as she walked in
the gathering twilight toward the little apartment where she lived in
fashionable poverty.




VIII

THE TEST OF LOVE


One of the distinctive features of "good society" is that its talk is
chiefly of persons. Less distinguished circles may waste precious time
on the discussion of ideas, but in company really select such
conversation is looked upon as dull and pedantic. One of the first
requisites for entrance into the world of fashion is a thorough
knowledge of the concerns of those who are included in its alluring
round; and not to be informed in this branch of wisdom marks at once the
outsider. It follows that concealment of personal affairs is pretty
nearly impossible. Humanity being frail, it frequently happens that
fashionable folk delude themselves by the fond belief that they have
escaped the universal law of their surroundings; but the minute
familiarity which each might boast of all that relates to his neighbors
should undeceive them. That of which all the world talks is not to be
concealed.

Everybody in their set knew perfectly well that Jack Neligage had been
in love with Alice Endicott from the days when they had paddled in the
sand on the walks of the Public Garden. The smart nursery maids whose
occupation it was to convey their charges thither and keep them out of
the fountains, between whiles exchanging gossip about the parents of the
babies, had begun the talk. The opinions of fashionable society are
generally first formed by servants, and then served up with a garnish of
fancifully distorted facts for the edification of their mistresses; and
in due time the loves of the Public Garden, reported and decorated by
the nursery maids, serve as topics for afternoon calls. Master Jack was
known to be in love with Miss Alice before either of them could have
written the word, and in this case the passion had been so lasting that
it excited remark not only for itself as an ordinary attachment, but as
an extraordinary case of unusual constancy.

Society knew, of course, the impossibility of the situation. It was
common knowledge that neither of the lovers had anything to marry on.
Jack's handsome and spendthrift father had effectually dissipated the
property which he inherited, only his timely death preserving to Mrs.
Neligage and her son the small remnant which kept them from actual
destitution. Alice was dependent upon the bounty of her aunt, Miss
Wentstile. Miss Wentstile, it is true, was abundantly able to provide
for Alice, but the old lady seriously disapproved of Jack Neligage, and
of his mother she disapproved more strongly yet. Everybody said--and
despite all the sarcastic observations of that most objectionable class,
the satirists, what everybody says nobody likes to disregard--that if
Jack and Alice were so rash as to marry they would never touch a penny
of the aunt's money. Jack, moreover, was in debt. Nobody blamed him much
for this, because he was a general favorite, and all his acquaintance
recognized how impossible it was for a young man to live within an
income so small as from any rational point of view to be regarded as
much the same thing as no income at all; but of course it was recognized
also that it is not well in the present day to marry nothing upon a
capital of less than nothing. It has been successfully done, it is true;
but it calls for more energy and ingenuity than was possessed by
easy-going Jack Neligage. In view of all these facts, frequently
discussed, society was unanimously agreed that Jack and Alice could
never marry.

This impossibility excited a faint sort of romantic sympathy for the
young couple. They were invited to the same houses and thrown together,
apparently with the idea that they should play with fire as steadily and
as long as possible. The unphrased feeling probably was that since the
culmination of their hopes in matrimony was out of the question, it was
only common humanity to afford them opportunities for getting from the
ill-starred attachment all the pleasure that was to be had. Society
approves strongly of romance so long as it stops short of disastrous
marriages; and since Jack and Alice were not to be united, to see them
dallying with the temptation of making an imprudent match was a
spectacle at once piquant and diverting.

On the evening of the day when the news of Alice's pseudo-engagement
had been discussed at Mrs. Harbinger's tea, Jack called on her. She
received him with composure, coming into the room a little pale,
perhaps, but entirely free from self-consciousness. Alice was not
considered handsome by her friends, but no one could fail to recognize
that her face was an unusual one. The Count, in his distorted English,
had declared that Miss Endicott "have een her face one Madonna," and the
description was hardly to be bettered. The serene oval countenance, the
dark, clear skin, the smooth hair of a deep chestnut, the level brows
and long lashes, the high, pure forehead, all belonged to the Madonna
type; although the sparkle of humor which now and then gleamed in the
full, gray eyes imparted a bewitching flavor of humanity. To-night she
was very grave, but she smiled properly, the smile a well-instructed
girl learns as she learns to courtesy. She shook hands in a way perhaps
a little formal, since she was greeting so old an acquaintance.

"Sit down, please," she said. "It is kind of you to come in. I hardly
had a chance to say a word to you this afternoon."

Jack did not return her greeting, nor did he accept her invitation to be
seated. He stooped above the low chair into which she sank as she spoke.

"What is this amazing story that you are engaged to Count Shimbowski?"
he demanded abruptly.

She looked up to him with a smile which was more conventional than
ever.

"What right have you to ask me a question like that?" she returned.

He waved his hand as if to put aside formalities.

"But is it true?" he insisted.

"What is it to you, Jack, if it were?"

She grew visibly paler, and her fingers knit themselves together. He, on
the contrary, flushed and became more commanding in his manner.

"Do you suppose," he answered, "that I should be willing to see a friend
of mine throw herself away on that old roué? He is old enough to be your
father."

"But you know," said she, assuming an air of raillery which did not seem
to be entirely genuine, "that the proverb says it's better to be an old
man's darling than a young man's slave."

Jack flung himself into a chair with an impatient exclamation, and
immediately got up again to walk the floor.

"I wouldn't have believed it of you, Alice. How can you joke about a
thing like that!"

"Why, Jack; you've told me a hundred times that the only way to get
through life comfortably is to take everything in jest."

"Oh, confound what I've told you! That's good enough philosophy for me,
but it's beneath you to talk so."

"What is sauce for the goose--"

"Keep still," he interrupted. "If you can't be serious--"

"You are so fond of being serious," she murmured, interrupting in her
turn.

"But I am serious now. Haven't we always been good friends enough for me
to speak to you in earnest without your treating me as if I was either
impertinent or a fool?"

He stopped his restless walk to stand before her again. She was silent a
moment with her glance fixed on the rug. Then she raised her eyes to
his, and her manner became suddenly grave.

"Yes, Jack," she said, "we have always been friends; but has any man,
simply because he is a friend, a right to ask a girl a question like
that?"

"You mean--"

"I mean no more than I say. There are other men with whom I've been
friends all my life. Is there any one of them that you'd think had a
right to come here to-night and question me about my engagement?"

"I'd break his head if he did!" Jack retorted savagely.

"Then why shouldn't he--whoever he might be--break yours?"

He flung himself into his chair again, his sunny face clouded, and his
brows drawn down. He met her glance with a look which seemed to be
trying to fathom the purpose of her mood.

"Why, hang it," he said; "with me it's different. You know I've always
been more than a common friend."

"You have been a good friend," she answered with resolute
self-composure; "but only a friend after all."

"Then you mean that I cannot be more than a friend?"

She dropped her eyes, a faint flush stealing up into her pale cheeks.

"You do not wish to be; and therefore you have no right--"

He sprang up impulsively and seized both her hands in his.

"Good God, Alice," he exclaimed, "you drive me wild! You know that if I
were not so cursedly poor--"

She released herself gently, and with perfect calmness.

"I know," she responded, "that you have weighed me in the balance
against the trouble of earning a living, and you haven't found me worth
the price. In the face of a fact like that what is the use of words?"

He thrust his empty hands into his pockets, and glowered down on her.

"You know I love you, Alice. You know I've been in love with you ever
since I began to walk; and you--you--"

She rose and faced him proudly.

"Well, say it!" she cried. "Say that I was foolish enough to love you!
That I knew no better than to believe in you, and that I half broke my
heart when you forced me to see that you weren't what I thought. Say it,
if you like. You can't make me more ashamed of it than I am already!"

"Ashamed--Alice?"

"Yes, ashamed! It humiliates me that I should set my heart on a man that
cared so little for me that he set me below his polo-ponies, his
bachelor ease, his miserable little self-indulgences! Oh, Jack," she
went on, her manner suddenly changing to one of appeal, and the tears
starting into her eyes, "why can't you be a man?"

She put her hand on his arm, and he covered it affectionately with one
of his while she hurried on.

"Do break away from the life you are living, and do something worthy of
you. You are good to everybody else; there's nothing you won't do for
others; do this for yourself. Do it for me. You are throwing yourself
away, and I have to hear them talk of your debts, and your racing and
gambling, and how reckless you are! It almost kills me!"

The full sunniness of his smile came back as he looked down into her
earnest face, caressing her hand.

"Dear little woman," he said; "are you sure you have got entirely over
being fond of me?"

"I couldn't get over being fond of you. You know it. That's what makes
it hurt so."

He raised her hand tenderly, and kissed it. Then he dropped it abruptly,
and turned away.

"You must get over it," he said, so brusquely that she started almost as
if from a blow.

She sank back into her seat, and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes,
while he walked back to his chair and sat down with an air of bravado.

"It's no use, Alice," he said, "I'm not worth a thought, and it isn't in
me to--Well, the fact is that I know myself too well. I know that if I
promised you to-night that to-morrow I'd begin better fashions, I'm not
man enough to live up to it. I couldn't involve you in--Oh, don't,
don't!"

He broke off to turn to toy with some of the ornaments on the table. In
a moment Alice had suppressed her sobs, and he spoke again, but without
meeting her look. His voice was hard and flippant.

"You see I have such a good time that I wouldn't give it up for the
world. I think I'd better keep on as I'm going. The time makes us, and
we have to abide by the fashion of the time."

"If that is the way you feel," she said coldly, "it is I who have
presumed on old friendship."

He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed harshly.

"We have both been a little unnecessarily tragic, it seems to me," was
his rejoinder. "Love isn't for a poor man unless he'll take it on the
half-shell without dressing; and I fancy neither of us would much care
for it that way. My bank-account is a standing reason why I shouldn't
marry anybody."

"The sentiment does credit to Mr. Neligage's head if not to his heart,"
commented the sneering voice of Miss Wentstile, who at that moment came
through the portières from the library. "I hope I don't intrude?"

"Certainly not," Alice answered with spirit. "Mr. Neligage was giving
me a lesson in the social economics of matrimony; but I knew before all
he has to tell."

"Then, my dear," her aunt said, "I trust he will excuse you. It is time
we went to Mrs. Wilson's. I promised the Count that we would be there
early."




IX

THE MISCHIEF OF A GENTLEMAN


The Goddess of Misfortune sometimes capriciously takes a spite against
an entire family, so that all of its members are at the same time
involved in one misadventure or another. She shows a malicious impulse
to wreak her disfavor on all of a connection at once, apparently from a
knowledge that misery begets misery, and that nothing so completely
fills to overflowing the cup of vexation as the finding that those from
whom sympathy would naturally be expected are themselves in a condition
to demand rather than to give it. She apparently amuses herself in mere
wantonness of enjoyment of the sufferings of her victims when no one of
them is in a condition to cheer the others. She illustrated this
unamiable trait of her celestial character next day in her dealing with
the Neligages, mother and son.

It was a beautiful spring day, not too warm in the unseasonable fashion
which often makes a New England April so detestable, but with a fresh
air full of exhilaration. Even in the city the cool, invigorating
morning was refreshing. It provoked thoughts of springing grass and
swelling buds, it suggested the marsh-marigolds preparing their gold
down amid the roots of rushes, it teased the sense with vague yet
disquieting desires to be in the open. The sun called to mind the
amethystine foliage, half mist and half leaves, which was beginning to
appear in the woods, as if trailing clouds had become entangled among
the twig-set branches. The wind brought a spirit of daring, as if to-day
one could do and not count the cost; as if adventures were the normal
experience of man, and dreams might become tangible with the foliage
which was condensing out of the spring air. It was one of those rare
days which put the ideal to shame.

The windows of Mrs. Neligage's little parlor were open, and the morning
air with all its provoking suggestions was floating in softly, as she
rose to welcome a caller. He was not in the first springtime of life,
yet suggested a season which was to spring what Indian summer is to
autumn. A certain brisk jauntiness in face, dress, and manner might mean
that he had by sheer determination remained far younger than his years.
He had a hard, handsome face, with cleanly cut features, and side
whiskers which were perhaps too long and flowing. His hair was somewhat
touched with gray, but it was abundant, and curled attractively about
his high, white forehead. His dress was perfection, and gave the
impression that if he had moral scruples--about which his hard, bright
eyes might raise a doubt--it would be in the direction of being always
perfectly attired. His manner as he greeted Mrs. Neligage was carefully
genial, yet the spring which was in the air seemed in his presence to be
chilled by an untimely frost.

"How bright you are looking this morning, Louise," Mr. Sibley Langdon
said, kissing her hand with an elaborate air of gallantry. "You are
really the incarnation of the spring that is upon us."

She smiled languidly, drawing away her hand and moving to a seat.

"You know I am getting old enough to like to be told I am young,
Sibley," was her answer. "Sit down, and tell me what has happened in the
month that I've been in Washington."

"Nothing can happen while you are away," he responded, with a smile. "We
only vegetate, and wait for your return. You don't mind if I smoke?"

"Certainly not. How is Mrs. Langdon?"

He drew out a cigarette-case of tortoise-shell and gold, helped himself
to a cigarette, and lighted it before he answered.

"Mrs. Langdon is as usual," he replied. "She is as ill and as pious as
ever."

"For which is she to be pitied the more?"

"Oh, I don't know that she is to be pitied for either," Langdon
responded, in his crisp, well-bred voice. "Both her illness and her
piety are in the nature of occupations to her. One must do something,
you know."

Mrs. Neligage offered no reply to this, and for half a moment the caller
smoked in silence.

"Tell me about yourself," he said. "You cruelly refuse to write to me,
so that when you are away I am always in the dark as to what you are
doing. I've no doubt you had all Washington at your feet."

"Oh, there were a few unimportant exceptions," Mrs. Neligage returned,
her voice a little hard. "I don't think that if you went on now you'd
find the capital draped in mourning over my departure."

Langdon knocked the ashes from his cigarette with the deliberation which
marked all his movements. Then he looked at his hostess curiously.

"You don't seem to be in the best of spirits this morning, Louise," he
said. "Has anything gone wrong?"

She looked at him with contracting brows, and ignored his question as
she demanded abruptly:--

"What did you come to say to me?"

"To say to you, my dear? I came as usual to say how much I admire you,
of course."

She made an impatient gesture.

"What did you come to say?" she repeated. "Do you think I don't know you
well enough to see when you have some especial purpose in mind?"

Sibley Langdon laughed lightly,--a sort of inward, well-bred laugh,--and
again with care trimmed his cigarette.

"You are a person of remarkable penetration, and it is evidently of no
use to hope to get ahead of you. I really came for the pleasure of
seeing you, but now that I am here I may as well mention that I have
decided to go abroad almost at once."

"Ah," Mrs. Neligage commented. "Does Mrs. Langdon go with you?"

He laughed outright, as if the question struck him as unusually droll.

"You really cannot think me so selfish as to insist upon her risking her
fragile health by an ocean voyage just for my pleasure."

"I suspected that you meant to go alone," she said dryly.

"But, my dear child," he answered with no change of manner, "I don't
mean to go alone."

She changed color, but she did not pursue the subject. She took up from
the table a little Japanese ivory carving, and began to examine it with
close scrutiny.

"You do not ask whom I hope to take with me," Langdon said.

She looked at him firmly.

"I have no possible interest in knowing," she responded.

"You are far too modest, Louise. On the contrary you have the greatest.
I had hoped--"

He half hesitated over the sentence, and she interrupted him by rising
and moving to the open window.

"It is so nice to have the windows open again," she said. "I feel as if
I were less alone when there is nothing between me and the world. That
big fat policeman over there is a great friend of mine."

"We are all your slaves, you see," Langdon responded, rising languidly
and joining her. "By the way, I had a letter from Count Marchetti the
other day."

Mrs. Neligage flushed and paled, and into her eye came a dangerous
sparkle. She moved away from him, and went back to her seat, leaving him
to follow again. She did not look at him, but she spoke with a
determined manner which showed that she was not cowed.

"Before I go to bed to-night, Sibley," she said, "I shall write to the
Countess the whole story of her necklace. I was a fool not to do it
before."

He smiled indulgently.

"Oh, did I call up that old unpleasantness?" he observed. "I really beg
your pardon. But since you speak of it, what good would it do to write
to her now? It would make no difference in facts, of course; and it
wouldn't change things here at all."

She sprang up and turned upon him in a fury.

"Sibley Langdon," she cried, "you are a perfect fiend!"

He laughed and looked at her with admiration so evident that her eyes
fell.

"You have told me that before, and you are so devilish handsome when you
say it, Louise, that I can't resist the temptation sometimes of making
you repeat it. Come, don't be cross. We are too wise if not too old to
talk melodrama."

"I shall act melodrama if you keep on tormenting me! What did you come
here for this morning? Say it, and have done."

"If you take it that way," returned he, "I came only to say
good-morning."

His coolness was unshaken, and he smiled as charmingly as ever.

"Tell me," he remarked, flinging his cigarette end into the grate and
taking out his case again, "did you see the Kanes in Washington?"

He lighted a fresh cigarette, and for half an hour talked of casual
matters, the people of their set in Washington, the new buildings there,
the decorations, and the political scandals. His manner became almost
deferential, and Mrs. Neligage as they chatted lost gradually all trace
of the excitement which she had shown. At length the talk came round to
their neighbors at home.

"I met Count Shimbowski at the club the other day," Langdon remarked,
"and he alluded to the old days at Monte Carlo almost with sentiment. It
is certainly amusing to see him passed round among respectable Boston
houses."

"He is respectable enough according to his standards," she responded.
"It is funny, though, to see how much afraid he is that Miss Wentstile
should know about his past history."

"I suppose there's no doubt he's to marry Alice Endicott, is there?"

"There is Alice herself," Mrs. Neligage answered. "I should call her a
pretty big doubt."

"At any rate," her companion observed, "Jack can't marry her. Miss
Wentstile would never give them a penny."

"I have never heard Jack say that he wished to marry her," Mrs.
Neligage responded coolly. "You are quite right about Miss Wentstile,
though; she regards Jack as the blackest sheep imaginable."

Langdon did not speak for a moment or two, and when he did break silence
his manner was more decided than before.

"What line do you like best to cross by?" he asked.

"I have been on so many," she answered, "that I really can't tell."

"It is safe to say then that you like a fast boat."

She made no reply, and only played nervously with the clever carving in
her hand, where little ivory rats were stealing grain with eternal
motionless activity.

"Of course if you were going over this spring," Langdon said, "we should
be likely to meet somewhere on the other side; Paris, very possibly. It
is a pity that people gossip so, or we might go on the same steamer."

She looked him squarely in the face.

"I am not going abroad this summer," she said distinctly.

"Oh, my dear Louise," returned he half mockingly, half pleadingly, "you
really can't mean that. Europe would be intolerably dull without you."

She looked up, pale to the eyes.

"My son would be dull here without me," she said.

"Oh, Jack," returned the other, shrugging his shoulders, "he'll get on
very well. If you were going, you know, you might leave him something--"

She started to her feet with eyes blazing.

"You had better go," she said in a low voice. "I have endured a good
deal from you, Sibley; and I've always known that the day would come
when you'd insult me. It will be better for us both if you go."

He rose in his turn, as collected as ever.

"Insult you, my dear Louise? Why, I wouldn't hurt your feelings for
anything in the world. I give you leave to repeat every word that I have
said to any of your friends,--to Miss Wentstile, or Letty Harbinger, or
to Jack--"

"If I repeated them to Jack," she interrupted him, "he'd break every
bone in your body!"

"Would he? I doubt it. At any rate he would have to hear me first; and
then--"

Mrs. Neligage, all her brightness quenched, her face old and miserable,
threw out her hands in despairing supplication.

"Go!" she cried. "Go! Or I shall do something we'll both be sorry for!
Go, or I'll call that policeman over there."

He laughed lightly, but he moved toward the door.

"Gad!" he ejaculated. "That would make a pretty item in the evening
papers. Well, if you really wish it, I'll go; but I hope you'll think
over what I've said, or rather think over what I haven't said, since
you haven't seemed pleased with my words. I shall come at one to drive
you to the County Club."

He bade her an elaborate good-morning, and went away, as collected, as
handsome, as debonaire as ever; while Mrs. Neligage, the hard, bright
little widow who had the reputation of being afraid of nothing and of
having no feelings, broke down into a most unusual fit of crying.




X

THE BUSINESS OF A CLUBMAN


The first game of polo for the season at the County Club was to be
played that Saturday. The unusually early spring had put the turf in
condition, and the men had had more or less practice. It was too soon,
of course, for a match, but there was to be a friendly set-to between
the County Club team and a team from the Oracle Club. It was not much
more than an excuse for bringing the members out, and for having a mild
gala, with fresh spring toilettes and spring buoyancy to add to the zest
of the day.

Amusement is a business which calls for a good deal of brains if it is
to be carried on successfully. Of course only professionals can hope to
succeed in a line so difficult, and in America there are few real
professionals in the art of self-amusement. Most men spoil their chances
of complete success by dallying more or less with work of one sort or
another; and this is fatal. Only he who is sincere in putting amusement
first, and to it sacrifices all other considerations, can hope for true
preëminence in this calling. Jack Neligage was one of the few men in
Boston entirely free from any weakness in the way of occupation beyond
that of pleasure-seeking; and as a consequence he was one of the few
who did it well.

All forms of fashionable play came easily and naturally to Jack, and in
them all he bore a part with tolerable grace. He was sufficiently adept
at tennis in its day; and when that had passed, he was equally adroit in
golf and in curling; he could lead a german better than anybody else;
nobody so well managed assemblies and devised novel surprises in the way
of decorations; nobody else so well arranged coaching trips or so surely
made the life of a house party. All these things were part of his
profession as a pleasure-seeker, and they were all done with a quick and
merry spirit which gave to them a charm not to be resisted.

It was on the polo-field, however, that Jack was at his best. No man who
hopes to keep up with the fashions can afford to become too much
interested in any single sport, for presently the fad will alter, and he
must perforce abandon the old delights; but polo held its own very well,
and it was evidently the thing in which Jack reveled most. He was the
leading player not of his club only, but of all the clubs about. His
stud of polo-ponies was selected with more care than has often gone to
the making of a state constitution, for the matters that are really
important must be attended to with zeal, while public politics may be
expected more or less to take care of themselves. His friends wondered
how Neligage contrived to get hold of ponies so valuable, or how he was
able to keep so expensive an outfit after he had obtained it; but
everybody was agreed that he had a most wonderful lot.

The question of how he managed might have been better understood by any
one who had chanced to overhear a conversation between Jack and Dr.
Wilson, which took place just before luncheon that day. Dr. Wilson was
chairman of the board of managers of the club. He was a man who had come
into the club chiefly as the husband of Mrs. Chauncy Wilson, a lady
whose stud was one of the finest in the state, and he was somewhat
looked down upon by the men of genuine old family. He was good-humored,
however; shrewd if a little unrefined; and he had been rich long enough
to carry the burden of his wife's enormous fortune without undue
self-consequence. To-day it became his duty to talk to Jack on an
unpleasant matter of business.

"Jack," he said, "I've got to pitch into you again."

"The same old thing, I suppose."

"Same old thing. Sometimes I've half a mind to resign from the club, so
as to get rid of having to drub you fellows about your bills."

Jack gnawed his mustache, twisting his cigar in his fingers in a way
that threatened to demolish it altogether.

"I've told you already that I can't do anything until--"

"Oh, I know it," Wilson broke in. "I'm satisfied, but the committee is
getting scared. The finances of the club are in an awful mess; there's
no denying that. Some of the men on the committee, you see, are afraid
of being blamed for letting the credits run on so."

Jack did not take advantage of the pause which gave him an opportunity
to speak, and the other went on again.

"I'm awfully sorry, old man; but there's got to be an end somewhere, and
nobody's been given the rope that you have."

"I can resign, of course," Jack said shortly.

"Oh, dry up that sort of talk! Nobody'd listen to your resigning.
Everybody wants you here, and we couldn't spare you from the polo team."

"But if I can't pay up, what else can I do?"

"But you can't resign in debt, man."

Jack laughed with savage amusement.

"What the devil am I to do? I can't stay, and I can't leave. That seems
to be about the size of it."

Dr. Wilson looked at his companion keenly, and there was in his tone
some hesitation as he replied.

"You might sell--"

"Sell my ponies!" broke in Neligage excitedly. "When I do I'll give up
playing."

"Oh, nonsense! Don't be so infernally stubborn. Harbinger'll buy one,
and I'll buy a couple, and the others it doesn't matter about. You've
always had twice as many as you need."

"So you propose that I shouldn't have any."

"You could use them just the same."

Jack swore savagely.

"Thank you," he returned. "I may be a beggar, but I won't be a beat."

Wilson laughed with his oily, chuckling laugh.

"I don't see," he observed with characteristic brusqueness, "why it is
any worse to take a favor from a friend that offers it than to get it
out of a club that can't help itself."

Jack's cheeks flushed, and he began an angry reply. Then he restrained
himself.

"I won't quarrel with you for doing your official duty, Wilson," he said
stiffly. "I'll fix things somehow or get out."

"Oh, hang it, man," returned the doctor good-naturedly, "you mustn't
talk of getting out. I'll lend you what you need."

"Thank you, but you know I can't pay you."

"That's no matter. Something will turn up, and you may pay me when you
get ready."

"No; I'm deep enough in the mire as it is. I won't make it worse by
borrowing. That's the only virtue that I ever had,--that I didn't sponge
on my friends. I'm just as much obliged to you; but I can't do it."

They had been sitting in the smoking-room before the fireplace where a
smouldering log or two took from the air its spring chill. Jack as he
spoke flung the stub of his cigar into the ashes, and rose with an air
of considering the conversation definitely ended. Wilson looked up at
him, his golden-brown eyes more sober than usual.

"Of course it is just as you say, old man," he remarked; "but if you
change your mind, you've only to let me know."

Jack moved off with a downcast air unusual to him, but by the time he
had encountered two or three men who were about the club-house, and had
exchanged with them a jest or a remark about the coming game, his face
was as sunny as ever. People were now arriving rather rapidly, and soon
the stylish trap of Sibley Langdon came bowling up the driveway in fine
style, with Mrs. Neligage sitting beside the owner. Jack was on the
front piazza when they drove up, and his mother waved her hand to him
gayly.

"Gad, Jack," one of the men said, "your mother is a wonder. She looks
younger than you do this minute."

"I don't think she is," Jack returned with a grin; "but you're right.
She is a wonderfully young woman to be the mother of a great cub like
me."

Not only in her looks did Mrs. Neligage give the impression of youth,
but her movements and her unquenchable vivacity might put to a
disadvantage half of the young girls. She tripped up the steps as
lightly as a leaf blown by the wind, her trim figure swaying as lithely
as a willow-shoot. As she came to Jack she said to him in a tone loud
enough to be heard by all who were on the piazza:--

"Oh, Jack, come into the house a moment. I want to show you a letter."

She dropped a gay greeting here and there as she led the way, and in a
moment they were alone inside the house. Mrs. Neligage turned instantly,
with a face from which all gayety had vanished as the color of a
ballet-dancer's cheek vanishes under the pall of a green light.

"Jack," she said hastily, "I am desperate. I am in the worst scrape I
ever was in, in my life. Can you raise any money?"

He looked at her a moment in amazed silence; then he laughed roughly.

"Money?" he retorted. "I am all but turned out of the club to-day for
want of it. This is probably my last game."

"You are not in earnest?" she demanded, pressing closer to him, and
putting her hand on his arm. "You are not really going to leave the
club?"

"What else can I do? The committee think it isn't possible to let things
go any longer."

She looked into his face, her own hardening. She studied him with a keen
glance, which he met firmly, yet with evident effort.

"Jack," she said at length, her voice lower, "there is only one way out
of it. Last night you wouldn't listen to me; but you must now. You must
marry May Calthorpe. If you were engaged to her it would be easy enough
to raise money."

"You talk as if she were only waiting for me to say the word, and she'd
rush into my arms."

"She will, she must, if you'll have her. You wouldn't take her for your
own good, but you've got to do it for mine. You can't let me be ruined
just through your obstinacy."

"Ruined? What under the canopy do you mean, mother? You are trying to
scare me to make me go your way."

"I'm not, Jack; upon my word I'm not! I tell you I'm in an awful mess,
and you must stand by me."

Jack turned away from her and walked toward the window; then he faced
her again with a look which evidently questioned how far she was really
in earnest. There had been occasions when Mrs. Neligage had used her
histrionic powers to get the better of her son in some domestic
discussion, and the price of such success is inevitably distrust. Now
she faced him boldly, and met his look with a nod of perfect
comprehension.

"Yes, I am telling you the truth, Jacky. There is nothing for it but for
us both to go to smash if you won't take May."

"Take May," he echoed impatiently, "how you do keep saying that! How can
I take her? She doesn't care a straw about me anyway, and I've no doubt
she looks on me as one of the old fellows."

"She being eighteen and you twenty-five," his mother answered, smiling
satirically. "But somebody is coming. I can't talk to you now; only this
one thing I must say. Play into my hands as you can if you will, and
you'll be engaged to May before the week's over."

He broke into a roar of laughter which had a sound of being as much
nerves as amusement.

"Is this a comic opera?" he demanded.

"Yes, dear Jacky," his mother retorted, resuming her light manner,
"that's just what it is. Don't you miss your cue."

She left him, and went gayly forward to greet the new-comers, ladies who
had just driven up, and Jack followed her lead with a countenance from
which disturbance and bewilderment had not entirely vanished.




XI

THE GAME OF CROSS-PURPOSES


Mrs. Neligage escaped from her friends speedily, with that easy
swiftness which is in the power of the socially adroit, and returned to
the piazza by a French window which opened at the side of the house, and
so was not in sight from the front of the club. There she came upon
Count Shimbowski comfortably seated in a sunny corner, smoking and
meditating.

"Ah, Count," she said, as he rose to receive her, "this is unexpected
pleasure. Are you resting from the strain of continual adulation?"

"What you say?" he responded. Then he dropped into his seat with a
despairing gesture. "Dis Eengleesh," he said; "eet ees eemposseeble eet
to know. I have told Mees Wentsteele dat she ees very freesh, and--"

He ended with a groan, and a snug little Hungarian oath under his
breath.

"Fresh!" echoed Mrs. Neligage, with a laugh like a redbird whisking
gayly from branch to branch. "My dear Count, she is anything but fresh.
She is as stale as a last year's love-affair. But she ought to be
pleased to be told she is fresh."

"Oh, I say: 'You be so freesh, Mees Wentsteele,' and she, she say:
'Freesh, Count Shimbowski? You result me!' Den day teel me freesh mean
fooleesh, _sotte_. What language ees dat?"

"Oh, it isn't so bad as you think, Count. It is only _argot_ anyway, and
it doesn't mean _sotte_, but _naïve_. Besides, she wouldn't mind. She is
enough of a woman to be pleased that you even tried to tell her she was
young."

"But no more ees she young."

"No more, Count. We are all of us getting to be old enough to be our own
grandmothers. Miss Wentstile looks as if she was at the Flood and forgot
to go in when it rained."

The Count looked more puzzled than amused at this sally, but his
politeness came to his rescue. A compliment is always the resource of a
man of the world when a lady puzzles him.

"Eet ees only Madame Neleegaze to what belong eemortal youth," he said
with a bow.

She rose and swept him a courtesy, and then took from her dress one of
the flowers she was wearing, which chanced to be very portly red
carnations.

"You are as gallant as ever, Count," she said, "so that your English
doesn't matter. Besides that, you have a title; and American women love
a title as a moth loves a candle."

She stuck the carnation into his buttonhole as she spoke, and returned
to her seat, where she settled herself with the air of one ready for a
serious chat.

"It is very odd to see you on this side of the Atlantic, Count," she
remarked. "Tell me, what are you doing in this country,--besides taking
the town by storm, that is?"

"I weell range my own self;--say you een Eengleesh 'arrange my own
self'?"

"When it means you are going to marry, Count, it might be well to say
that you are going to arrange yourself and derange somebody else. Is the
lady Miss Endicott?"

"Eet ees Mees Endeecott. Ees she not good for me?"

"She is a thousand times too good for you, my dear fellow; but she is as
poor as a church mouse."

"Ah, but her aunt, Mees Wentsteele, she geeve her one _dot_: two
thousand hundred dollar. Eet weell be a meellion francs, ees eet not?"

"So you get a million francs for yourself, Count. It is more than I
should have thought you worth."

"But de teettle!"

"Oh, the title is worth something, but I could buy one a good deal
cheaper. If I remember correctly I might have had yours for nothing,
Count."

The Count did not look entirely pleased at this reminiscence, but he
smiled, and again took refuge in a compliment.

"To one so _ravissante_ as madame all teettles are under her feet."

"I wish you would set up a school for compliments here in Boston,
Count, and teach our men to say nice things. Really, a Boston man's
compliments are like molasses candy, they are so home-made. But why
don't you take the aunt instead of the niece? Miss Wentstile is worth
half a million."

"Dat weell be mouche," responded the Count with gravity; "but she have
bones."

The widow laughed lightly. The woman who after forty can laugh like a
girl is one who has preserved her power over men, and she is generally
one fully aware of the fact. Mrs. Neligage had no greater charm than her
light-hearted laugh, which no care could permanently subdue. She tossed
her head, and then shook it at the Count.

"Yes," she responded, "you are unfortunately right. She has bones. By
the way, do you happen to have with you that letter I gave you at Mrs.
Harbinger's yesterday?"

"Yes," he answered, drawing from his pocket the note addressed to
Christopher Calumus, "I have eet."

"I would like to see it," Mrs. Neligage said, extending her hand.

The Count smiled, and held it up.

"You can see eet," said he, "but eet ees not permeet you weedeen de hand
to have eet."

She leaned forward and examined it closely, studying the address with
keen eyes.

"It is no matter," was her remark. "I only wanted to make sure."

"Do you de handwrite know?" he demanded eagerly.

"And if I do?"

"You do know," he broke out in French. "I can see it in your face. Tell
me who wrote it."

She shook her head, smiling teasingly. Then she rose, and moved toward
the window by which she had come from the house.

"No, Count," was her answer. "It doesn't suit my plan to tell you. I
didn't think quickly enough yesterday, or I wouldn't have given it to
you. It was in your hands before I thought whose writing it was."

The Count, who had risen, bowed profoundly.

"After all," he said, "I need not trouble you. Mrs. Harbinger
acknowledged that she wrote it."

Mrs. Neligage flashed back at him a mocking grimace as she withdrew by
the window.

"I never expected to live to see you believe a thing because a woman
said it," she laughed. "You must have been in strange hands since I used
to know you!"

Left alone, the Count thoughtfully regarded the letter for a moment,
then with a shrug he restored it to his pocket, and turned to go around
the corner of the house to the front piazza. Sounds of wheels, of
voices, of talking, and of laughter told of the gathering of
pleasure-seekers; and scarcely had the Count passed the corner than he
met Mr. Bradish face to face. There were groups of men and women on the
piazza and on the lawn, with the horses and dogs in sight which are the
natural features in such a picture at an out-of-town club. The Count
heeded none of these things, but stepped forward eagerly.

"Ah, Count, you have come out to the games like everybody else, I see,"
Bradish said pleasantly.

"Eet ees extreme glad to see me, Mr. Bradeesh," the Count returned,
shaking him by the hand. "Do you weelleengly come wid us a leettle, for
dat I say to you ver' particle?"

Bradish, with his usual kindly courtesy, followed the Count around the
corner of the house, out of sight of the arriving company.

"Something particular to say to me, Count?" he observed. "You do me too
much honor."

"Eet weell be of honor dat I weell to you speak," the Count responded.
"Weell you for myself de condescension to have dat you weell be one
friend to one _affaire d'honneur_?"

Bradish stared at him in undisguised amazement.

"An _affaire d'honneur_?" he echoed. "Surely you don't mean that you are
going to fight? You can't mean a duel?"

"Oh, _oui, oui_; eet weell be a duel dat eet calls you."

Bradish stared harder than ever, and then sat down as if overcome.

"But, my dear Count, you can't fight duels in America."

"For what weell not een Amereeca fight? He have result me! Me, Count
Ernst Shimbowski! Weell I not to have hees blood?"

"I'm afraid you won't," Bradish responded, shaking his head. "That isn't
the way we do things here. But who is it has insulted you?"

The Count became more and more excited as he spoke of his wrongs, and
with wide gestures he appealed to the whole surrounding region to bear
him out in his rage and his resolution. He stood over Bradish like an
avenging and furious angel, swaying his body by way of accent to his
words.

"You deed see! De ladies day deed see! All de world weell have heard dat
he result--he eensult me! De Shimbowski name have been eensult'! Deed he
not say 'Veelaine! Veelaine!' Oh, _sacré nom de mon père_! 'Veelaine!
Veelaine!' Eet weell not but only blood to wash dat eensult!"

How an American gentleman should behave when he is seriously asked to
act as a second in a duel in this land and time is a question which has
probably never been authoritatively settled, and which might be reasoned
upon with very curious arguments from different points of view. It is
safe to say that any person who finds himself in such a position could
hardly manage to incur much risk of running into danger, or even of
doing violence to any moral scruples with which he may chance to be
encumbered. He must always feel that the chances of a duel's actually
taking place are so ridiculously small that the whole matter can be
regarded only as food for laughter; and that no matter how eager for
fight one or both of the possible combatants might be, the end will be
peace. So far from making the position of a second more easy, however,
this fact perhaps renders it more difficult. It is harder to face the
ridiculous than the perilous. If there were any especial chance that a
duel would proceed to extremes, that principals would perhaps come to
grief and seconds be with them involved in actual danger, even though
only the ignoble danger of legal complications, a man might feel that
honor called upon him not to fail his friend in extremity. When it is
merely a question of becoming more or less ridiculous according to the
notoriety of the affair, the matter is different. The demand of society
is that a gentleman shall be ready to brave peril, but there is nothing
in the social code which goes so far as to call upon him to run the
chance of making himself ridiculous. Society is founded upon the deepest
principles of human nature, and if it demanded of man the sacrifice of
his vanity the social fabric would go to pieces like a house of cards in
a whirlwind. Bradish might have been called upon to risk his life at the
request of the Count, although they were in reality little more than
acquaintances; but he certainly cannot be held to have been under any
obligations to give the world a right to laugh at him.

Bradish regarded the Count with a smile half amused and half
sympathetic, while the Hungarian poured out his excited protest, and
when there came a pause he said soothingly:--

"Oh, sit down and talk it over, my dear Count. I see you mean that
stupid dunce of a Barnstable. You can't fight him. Everybody would laugh
at the very idea. Besides, he isn't your equal socially. You can't fight
him."

"You do comprehend not!" cried the Count. "De Shimbowski name weell eet
to have blood for de eensult!"

"But--"

The Count drew himself up with an air of hauteur which checked the words
on Bradish's lips.

"Eet ees not for a Shimbowski to beg for favors," he said stiffly. "Eef
eet ees you dat do not serve me--"

"Oh, I assure you," interrupted Bradish hastily, "I am more than willing
to serve you; but I wanted to warn you that in America we look at things
so differently--"

"Een Amereeca even," the Count in his turn interrupted with a superb
gesture, "dare weell be gentlemans, ees eet not?"

In the face of that gesture there was nothing more to be said in the way
of objection. Time and the chapter of accidents must determine what
would come of it, but no man of sensibility and patriotism, appealed to
in that grand fashion in the name of the honor of America, could have
held out longer. Least of all was it to be expected that Harry Bradish,
kindest-hearted of living men, and famous for never being able to refuse
any service that was asked of him, could resist this last touch. He rose
as if to get out of the interview as speedily as possible.

"Very well then," he said, "if you persist in going on, I'll do what I
can for you, but I give you fair warning once more that it'll come to
nothing more than making us both ridiculous."

The Count shook hands warmly, but his response was one which might be
said to show less consideration than might have been desired for the man
who was making a sacrifice in his behalf.

"De Shimbowski name," he declared grandiloquently, yet with evident
sincerity, "ees never reedeeculous."

There followed some settling of details, in all of which Bradish evinced
a tendency to temporize and to postpone, but in which the ardor of the
Count so hurried everything forward that had Barnstable been on the spot
the duel might have been actually accomplished despite all obstacles. It
was evident, however, that one side cannot alone arrange a meeting of
honor, and in the end little could be done beyond the Count's receiving
a promise from Bradish that the latter would communicate with Barnstable
as soon as possible.

This momentous and blood-curdling decision having been arrived at, the
two gentlemen emerged from their retirement on the side piazza, and once
more joined the gay world as represented by the now numerous gathering
assembled to see the polo at the County Club.




XII

THE WASTING OF REQUESTS


The exhilaration of the spring day, the pleasure of taking up once more
the outdoor life of the warm season, the little excitement which belongs
to the assembling of merry-makers, the chatter, the laughter, all the
gay bustle combined to fill the County Club with a joyous atmosphere.
Before the front of the house was a sloping lawn which merged into an
open park, here and there dotted with groups of budding trees and
showing vividly the red of golf flags. The driveway wound in curves of
carefully devised carelessness from the country road beyond the park to
the end of the piazza, and all arrivals could be properly studied as
they approached. The piazza was wide and roomy, so that it was not
crowded, although a considerable number of men and women were there
assembled; and from group to group laughter answered laughter.

Mrs. Harbinger in the capacity of chaperone had with her Alice Endicott
and May Calthorpe. The three ladies stood chatting with Dick Fairfield,
tossing words back and forth like tennis-balls for the sheer pleasure of
the exercise.

"Oh, I insist," Fairfield said, "that spring is only a season when the
days are picked before they are ripe."

"You say that simply in your capacity of a literary man, Mr. Fairfield,"
Alice retorted; "but I doubt if it really means anything."

"I am afraid it doesn't mean much," he responded laughing, "but to
insist that an epigram must mean something would limit production
dreadfully."

"Then we are to understand," Mrs. Harbinger observed, "that what you
literary men say is never to be taken seriously."

"Oh, you should make a distinction, Mrs. Harbinger. What a literary man
says in his professional capacity you are at liberty to believe or not,
just as you choose; but of course in regard to what is said in his
personal capacity it is different."

"There, I suppose," she retorted, "he is simply to be classed with other
men, and not to be believed at all."

"Bless me, what cynicism! Where is Mr. Harbinger to defend his
reputation?"

"He is so absorbed in getting ready for the game that he has forgotten
all about any reputation but that of a polo-player," Mrs. Harbinger
returned. "And that reminds me that I haven't seen his new pony. Come,
Alice, you appreciate a horse. We must go and examine this new wonder
from Canada."

"We are not invited apparently," May said, seating herself in a piazza
chair. "It is evidently your duty, Mr. Fairfield, to stay here and
entertain me while they are gone."

"I remain to be entertained," he responded, following her example.

Mrs. Harbinger and Alice went off to the stables, and the pair left
behind exchanged casual comments upon the day, the carriages driving up,
the smart spring gowns of the ladies, and that sort of verbal
thistledown which makes up ordinary society chit-chat. A remark which
Fairfield made on the attire of a dashing young woman was the means of
bringing the talk around again to the subject which had been touched
upon between them on the previous afternoon.

"I suppose," Miss Calthorpe observed, "that a man who writes stories has
to know about clothes. You do write stories, I am sure, Mr. Fairfield."

He smiled, and traced a crack in the piazza floor with his stick.

"Which means, of course," he said, "that you have never read any of
them. That is so far lucky for me."

"Why is it lucky?"

"Because you might not have liked them."

"But on the other hand I might have liked them very much."

"Well, perhaps there is that chance. I don't know, however, that I
should be willing to run the risk. What kind of a story do you like?"

"I told you that yesterday, Mr. Fairfield. If you really cared for my
opinion you would remember."

"You said that you liked 'Love in a Cloud.' Is that what you mean?"

"Then you do remember," she remarked with an air of satisfaction.
"Perhaps it was only because you liked the book yourself."

"Why not believe that it was because I put so much value on your
opinion?"

"Oh, I am not so vain as that, Mr. Fairfield," she cried. "If you
remember, it was not on my account."

He laughed without replying, and continued the careful tracing of the
crack in the floor as if the occupation were the pleasantest imaginable.
May watched him for a moment, and then with the semblance of pique she
turned her shoulder toward him. The movement drew his eyes, and he
suddenly stopped his occupation to straighten up apologetically.

"I was thinking," he said, "what would be the result of your reading
such stories of mine as have been published--there have been a few, you
know, in the magazines--if you were to test them by the standard of
'Love in a Cloud.' I'm afraid they might not stand it."

She smiled reassuringly, but perhaps with a faint suggestion of
condescension.

"One doesn't expect all stories to be as good as the best," she
observed.

Fairfield turned his face away for a quick flash of a grin to the
universe in general; then with perfect gravity he looked again at his
companion.

"I am afraid," he said, "that even the author of 'Love in a Cloud'
wouldn't expect so much of you as that you should call his story the
best."

"I do call it the best," she returned, a little defiantly. "Don't you?"

"No," he said slowly, "I couldn't go so far as that."

"But you spoke yesterday as if you admired it."

"But that isn't the same thing as saying that there is nothing better."

Miss Calthorpe began to tap her small foot impatiently.

"That is always the way with men who write," she declared. "They always
have all sorts of fault to find with everything."

"Have you known a great many literary men?" he asked.

There are few things more offensive in conversation, especially in
conversation with a lady, than an insistence upon logic. To ask of a
woman that she shall make only exact statements is as bad as to require
her to be always consistent, and there is small reason for wonder if at
this inquiry Miss Calthorpe should show signs of offense.

"I do not see what that has to do with the matter," she returned
stiffly. "Of course everybody knows about literary men."

The sun of the April afternoon smiled over the landscape, and the young
man smiled under his mustache, which was too large to be entirely
becoming. He glanced up at his companion, who did not smile in return,
but only sat there looking extremely pretty, with her flushed cheeks,
her dark hair in pretty willful tendrils about her temples, and her
dark eyes alight.

"Perhaps you have some personal feeling about the book," he said. "You
know that it is claimed that a woman's opinion of literature is always
half personal feeling."

She flushed more deeply yet, and drew herself up as if he were intruding
upon unwarrantable matters.

"I don't even know who wrote the book," she replied.

"Then it is only the book itself that you admire, and not the author?"

"Of course it is the book. Haven't I said that I don't even know who the
author is? I can't see," she went on somewhat irrelevantly, "why it is
that as soon as there is anything that is worth praising you men begin
to run it down."

He looked as if he were a trifle surprised at her warmth.

"Run it down?" he repeated. "Why, I am not running it down. I said that
I admired the novel, didn't I?"

"But you said that you didn't think it was one of the best," she
insisted.

"But you might allow a little for individual taste, Miss Calthorpe."

"Oh, of course there is a difference in individual tastes, but that has
to do with the parts of the story that one likes best. It's nothing at
all to do with whether one isn't willing to confess its merits."

He broke into a laugh of so much amusement that she contracted her level
brows into a frown which made her prettier than ever.

"Now you are laughing at me," she said almost pouting. "It is so
disappointing to find that I was deceived. Of course I know that there
is a good deal of professional jealousy among authors, but I shouldn't
have thought--"

She perhaps did not like to complete her sentence, and so left it for
him to end with a fresh laugh.

"I wish I dared tell you how funny that is!" he chuckled.

She made no reply to this, but turned her attention to the landscape.
There was a silence of a few moments, in which Fairfield had every
appearance of being amused, while she equally showed that she was
offended. The situation was certainly one from which a young author
might derive a good deal of satisfaction. It is not often that it falls
to the lot of a writer to find his work so sincerely and ardently
admired that he is himself taken to task for being jealous of its
success. Such pleasure as comes from writing anonymous books must be
greatly tempered by the fact that in a world where it is so much more
easy to blame than to praise the author is sure to hear so much more
censure of his work than approbation. To be accused by a young and
pretty girl of a fault which one has not committed and from which one
may be clear at a word is in itself a pleasing pastime, and when the
imaginary fault is that of not sufficiently admiring one's own book,
the titillation of the vanity is as lively as it is complicated. The
spirit which Miss Calthorpe had shown, her pretty vehemence, and her
marked admiration for "Love in a Cloud" might have seemed charming to
any man who had a taste for beauty and youthful enthusiasm; upon the
author of the book she praised it was inevitable that they should work
mightily.

The pair were interrupted by the return of Mrs. Harbinger and Alice, who
reported that there were so many men about the stables, and the ponies
were being so examined and talked over by the players, that it was
plainly no place for ladies.

"It was evident that we weren't wanted," Mrs. Harbinger said. "I hope
that we are here. Ah, here comes the Count."

The gentleman named, fresh from his talk with Harry Bradish, came
forward to join them, his smile as sunny as that of the day.

"See," May whispered tragically to Mrs. Harbinger as the Hungarian
advanced, "he has a red carnation in his buttonhole."

"He must have read the letter then," Mrs. Harbinger returned hastily.
"Hush!"

To make the most exciting communication and to follow it by a command to
the hearer to preserve the appearance of indifference is a
characteristically feminine act. It gives the speaker not only the last
word but an effective dramatic climax, and the ever-womanly is nothing
if not dramatic. The complement of this habit is the power of obeying
the difficult order to be silent, and only a woman could unmoved hear
the most nerve-shattering remarks with a manner of perfect tranquillity.

"Ah, eet ees so sweet loovly ladies een de landscape to see," the Count
declared poetically, "where de birds dey twatter een de trees and things
smell you so mooch."

"Thank you. Count," Mrs. Harbinger responded. "That is very pretty, but
I am afraid that it means nothing."

"What I say to you, Madame," the Count responded, with his hand on his
heart, "always eet mean mooch; eet ees dat eet mean everyt'ing!"

"Then it is certainly time for me to go," she said lightly. "It wouldn't
be safe for me to stay to hear everything. Come, girls: let's walk over
to the field."

The sitters rose, and they moved toward the other end of the piazza.

"It is really too early to go to the field," May said, "why don't we
walk out to the new golf-holes first? I want to see how they've changed
the drive over the brook."

"Very well," Mrs. Harbinger assented. "The shortest way is to go through
the house."

They passed in through a long window, and as they went Alice Endicott
lingered a little with the Count. That part of the piazza was at the
moment deserted, and so when before entering the house she dropped her
parasol and waited for her companion to pick it up for her, they were
practically alone.

"Thank you, Count," she said, as he handed her the parasol. "I am sorry
to trouble you."

"Nodings what eet ees dat I do for Mees Endeecott ees trouble."

"Is that true?" she asked, pausing with her foot on the threshold, and
turning back to him. "If I could believe it there are two favors that I
should like to ask."

"Two favors?" he repeated. "Ah, I weell be heavenlee happee eef eet ees
dat I do two favors."

"One is for myself," she said, "and the other is for Miss Wentstile. I'm
sure you won't refuse me."

"Who could refuse one ladee so loovlaie!"

"The first is," Alice went on, paying no heed to the Count's florid
compliments, "that you give me the letter Mrs. Neligage gave you
yesterday."

"But de ladee what have wrote eet--"

"The lady that wrote it," Alice interrupted, "desires to have it again."

"Den weell I to her eet geeve," said the Count.

"But she has empowered me to receive it."

"But dat eet do not empower me eet to geeve."

"Then you decline to let me have it, Count?"

"Ah, I am desolation, Mees Endeecott, for dat I do not what you desaire;
but I weell rather to do de oder t'ing what you have weesh."

"I am afraid, Count, that your willingness to oblige goes no farther
than to let you do what you wish, instead of what I wish. I only wanted
to know where you have known Mrs. Neligage."

"Ah," he exclaimed, "dat is what Mees Wentsteele have ask. My dear
young lady, eet ees not dat you can be jealous dat once I have known
Madame Neleegaze?"

She faced him with a look of astonishment so complete that the most
simple could not misunderstand it. Then the look changed into profound
disdain.

"Jealous!" she repeated. "I jealous, and of you, Count!"

Her look ended in a smile, as if her sense of humor found the idea of
jealousy too droll to admit of indignation, and she turned to go in
through the window, leaving the Count hesitating behind.




XIII

THE WILE OF A WOMAN


Before the Count had recovered himself sufficiently to go after Miss
Endicott despite her look of contempt and her yet more significant
amusement, Jack Neligage came toward him down the piazza, and called him
by name.

"Oh, Count Shimbowski," Jack said. "I beg your pardon, but may I speak
with you a moment?"

The Count looked after Miss Endicott, but he turned toward Neligage.

"I am always at your service," he said in French.

"I wanted to speak to you about that letter that my mother gave you
yesterday. She made a mistake."

"A mistake?" the Count echoed, noncommittally.

"Yes. It is not for you."

"Well?"

"Will you give it to me, please?" Jack said.

"But why should I give it to you? Are you Christopher Calumus?"

"Perhaps," answered Jack, with a grin. "At least I can assure you that
it is on the authority of the author of 'Love in a Cloud' that I ask for
the letter."

"But I've already refused that letter to a lady."

"To a lady?"

"To Miss Endicott."

"Miss Endicott!" echoed Jack again, in evident astonishment. "Why should
she want it?"

"She said that she had the authority of the writer, as you say that you
have the authority of the man it was written to."

"Did you give it to her?"

"No; but if I did not give it to her, how can I give it to you?"

Neligage had grown more sober at the mention of Miss Endicott's name; he
stood looking down, and softly beating the toe of his boot with his polo
mallet.

"May I ask," he said at length, raising his glance to the Count's face,
"what you propose to do with the letter?"

The other waved his hands in a gesture which seemed to take in all
possible combinations of circumstances, while his shrug apparently
expressed his inner conviction that whichever of these combinations
presented itself Count Shimbowski would be equal to it.

"At least," he returned, "as Mrs. Harbinger has acknowledged that she
wrote it, I could not give it up without her command."

Neligage laughed, and swung his mallet through the air, striking an
imaginary ball with much deftness and precision.

"She said she wrote it, I know; but I think that was only for a lark,
like mother's part in the play. I don't believe Mrs. Harbinger wrote
it. However, here she comes, and you may ask her. I'll see you again. I
must have the letter."

He broke into a lively whistle, and went off down the walk, as Mrs.
Harbinger emerged through the window which a few moments before she had
entered.

"I decided that I wouldn't go down to the brook," she said. "It is too
warm to walk. Besides, I wanted to speak to you."

"Madame Harbeenger do to me too mooch of _honneur_," the Count
protested, with his usual exuberance of gesture. "Eet ees to be me at
her sarveece."

She led the way back to the chairs where her group had been sitting
shortly before, and took a seat which placed her back toward the only
other persons on the piazza, a couple of men smoking at the other end.

"Sit down, Count," she said, waving her hand at a chair. "Somebody will
come, so I must say what I have to say quickly. I want that letter."

The Count smiled broadly, and performed with much success the inevitable
shrug.

"You dat lettaire weesh; Madame Neleegaze dat lettaire weesh; Mr.
Neleegaze dat lettaire weesh; everybody dat lettaire weesh. Count
Shimbowski dat lettaire he keep, weell eet not?"

"Mrs. Neligage and Jack want it?" Mrs. Harbinger exclaimed. "What in the
world can have set them on? Did they ask you for it?"

"Eet ees dat they have ask," the Count answered solemnly.

"I cannot understand that," she pursued thoughtfully. "Certainly they
can't know who wrote it."

"Ees eet not dat you have said--"

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Harbinger interrupted him, with a smile, "I forgot that
they were there when I confessed to it."

The Count laid his hand on his heart and rolled up his eyes,--not too
much.

"I have so weesh' to tell you how dat I have dat beauteous lettaire
adore," he said. "I have wear de lettaire een de pocket of my heart."

This somewhat startling assertion was explained by his pushing aside his
coat so that the top of a letter appeared peeping out of the left pocket
of his waistcoat as nearly over his heart as the exigencies of tailoring
permitted.

"I shouldn't have let you know that I wrote it," she said.

"But eet have geeve to me so joyous extrodinaire eet to know!"

She regarded him shrewdly, then dropping her eyes, she asked:--

"Was it better than the other one?"

"De oder?" he repeated, evidently taken by surprise. "Ah, dat alone also
have I treasured too mooch."

Mrs. Harbinger broke out frankly into a laugh.

"Come," she said, "I have caught you. You know nothing about any other.
We might as well be plain with each other. I didn't write that letter
and you didn't write 'Love in a Cloud,' or you'd know about the whole
correspondence."

"Ah, from de Eden_garten_," cried the Count, "de weemens ees too mooch
for not to fool de man. Madame ees for me greatly too clevaire."

"Thank you," she said laughingly. "Then give me the letter."

He bowed, and shrugged, and smiled deprecatingly; but he shook his head.

"So have Mees Endeecott say. Eef to her I geeve eet not, I can geeve eet
not to you, desolation as eet make of my heart."

"Miss Endicott? Has she been after the letter too? Is there anybody
else?"

"Madame Neleegaze, Mr. Neleegaze, Mees Endeecott, Madame Harbeenger,"
the Count enumerated, telling them off on his fingers. "Dat ees all now;
but eef I dat lettaire have in my heart-pocket she weell come to me dat
have eet wrote. Ees eet not so? Eet ees to she what have eet wrote dat
eet weell be to geeve eet. I am eenterest to her behold."

"Then you will not give it to me?" Mrs. Harbinger said, rising.

He rose also, a mild whirlwind of apologetic shrugs and contortions,
contortions not ungraceful, but as extraordinary as his English.

"Eet make me desolation een de heart," he declared; "but for now eet
weell be for me to keep dat lettaire."

He made her a profound bow, and as if to secure himself against farther
solicitation betook himself off. Mrs. Harbinger resumed her chair, and
sat for a time thinking. She tapped the tip of her parasol on the
railing before her, and the tip of her shoe on the floor, but neither
process seemed to bring a solution of the difficulty which she was
pondering. The arrivals at the club were about done, and although it
still wanted some half hour to the time set for the polo game, most of
those who had been about the club had gone over to the polo-field. The
sound of a carriage approaching drew the attention of Mrs. Harbinger. A
vehicle easily to be recognized as belonging to the railway station was
advancing toward the club, and in it sat Mr. Barnstable. The gentleman
was landed at the piazza steps, and coming up, he stood looking about
him as if in doubt what to do next. His glance fell upon Mrs. Harbinger,
and the light of recognition flooded his fluffy face as moonlight floods
the dunes of a sandy shore. He came forward abruptly and awkwardly.

"Beg pardon, Mrs. Harbinger," he said. "I came out to find your husband.
Do you know where I can see him?"

"He is all ready to play polo now, Mr. Barnstable," she returned. "I
don't think you can see him until after the game."

She spoke rather dryly and without any cordiality. He stood with his hat
in his two hands, pulling nervously at the brim.

"You are very likely angry with me, Mrs. Harbinger," he blurted out
abruptly. "I ought to apologize for what I did at your house yesterday.
I made a fool of myself."

Mrs. Harbinger regarded him curiously, as if she could hardly make up
her mind how such a person was to be treated.

"It is not customary to have scenes of that kind in our parlors," she
answered, smiling.

"I know it," he said, with an accent of deep despair. "It was all my
unfortunate temper that ran away with me. But you don't appreciate, Mrs.
Harbinger, how a man feels when his wife has been made the subject of an
infamous libel."

"But if you'll let me say so, Mr. Barnstable, I think you are going out
of your way to find trouble. You are not the only man who has been
separated from his wife, and the chances are that the author of 'Love in
a Cloud' never heard of your domestic affairs at all."

"But he must have," protested Barnstable with growing excitement,
"why--"

"Pardon me," she interrupted, "I wasn't done. I say that the chance of
the author of that book knowing anything about your affairs is so small
as to be almost impossible."

"But there were circumstances so exact! Why, all that scene--"

"Really, Mr. Barnstable," Mrs. Harbinger again interrupted, "you must
not go about telling what scenes are true. That is more of a publishing
of your affairs than any putting them in a novel could be."

His eyes stared at her from the folds and undulations of his face like
two remarkably large jellyfish cast by the waves among sand heaps.

"But--but," he stammered, "what am I to do? How would you feel if it
were your wife?"

She regarded him with a glance which gave him up as incorrigible, and
half turned away her head.

"I'm sure I can't say," she responded. "I never had a wife."

Barnstable was too much excited to be restrained by the mild jest, and
dashed on, beginning to gesticulate in his earnestness.

"And by such a man!" he ran on. "Why, Mrs. Harbinger, just look at this.
Isn't this obliquitous!"

He pulled from one pocket a handful of letters, dashed through them at a
mad speed, thrust them back and drew another handful from a second
pocket, scrabbled through them, discarded them for the contents of a
third pocket, and in the end came back to the first batch of papers,
where he at last hit upon the letter he was in search of.

"Only this morning I got this letter from a friend in New York that knew
the Count in Europe. He's been a perfect rake. He's a gambler and a
duelist. There, you take it, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it. You'll see,
then, how I felt when that sort of a man scandaled my wife."

"But I thought that you received the letter only this morning,"
suggested Mrs. Harbinger, with a smile.

Her companion was too thoroughly excited to be interrupted, and dashed
on.

"You take the letter, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it for yourself. Then
you show it to your friends. Let people know what sort of a man they are
entertaining and making much of. Damme--I beg your pardon; my temper's
completely roused up!--it makes me sick to see people going on so over
anything that has a title on it. Why, damme--I beg your pardon, Mrs.
Harbinger; I really beg your pardon!--in America if a man has a title he
can rob henroosts for a living, and be the rage in society."

Mrs. Harbinger reached out her hand deliberately, and took the letter
which was thus thrust at her. She had it safe in her possession before
she spoke again.

"I shall be glad to see the letter," she said, "because I am curious to
know about Count Shimbowski. That he is what he pretends to be in the
way of family I am sure, for I have seen his people in Rome."

"Oh, he is a Count all right," Barnstable responded; "but that doesn't
make him any better."

"As for the book," she pursued calmly, "you are entirely off the track.
The Count cannot possibly have written it. Just think of his English."

"I've known men that could write English that couldn't speak it
decently."

"Besides, he hasn't been in the country long enough to have written it.
If he did write it, Mr. Barnstable, how in the world could he know
anything about your affairs? It seems to me, if I may say so, that you
might apply a little common sense to the question before you get into a
rage over things that cannot be so."

"I was hasty," admitted Barnstable, an expression of mingled penitence
and woe in his face. "I'm afraid I was all wrong about the Count. But
the book has so many things in it that fit, things that were particular,
why, of course when Mrs.--that lady yesterday--"

"Mrs. Neligage."

"When she said the Count wrote it, I didn't stop to think."

"That was only mischief on her part. You might much better say her son
wrote it than the Count."

"Her son?" repeated Barnstable, starting to his feet. "That's who it is!
Why, of course it was to turn suspicion away from him that his mother--"

"Good heavens!" Mrs. Harbinger broke in, "don't make another blunder.
Jack Neligage couldn't--"

"I see it all!" Barnstable cried, not heeding her. "Mr. Neligage was in
Chicago just after my divorce. I heard him say he was there that winter.
Oh, of course he's the man."

"But he isn't a writer," Mrs. Harbinger protested.

She rose to face Barnstable, whose inflammable temper had evidently
blazed up again with a suddenness entirely absurd.

"That's why he wrote anonymously," declared the other; "and that's why
he had to put in real things instead of making them up! Oh, of course
it was Mr. Neligage."

"Mr. Barnstable," she said with seriousness, "be reasonable, and stop
this nonsense. I tell you Mr. Neligage couldn't have written that book."

He glared at her with eyes which were wells of obstinacy undiluted.

"I'll see about that," he said.

Without other salutation than a nod he walked away, and left her.

She gazed after him with the look which studies a strange animal.

"Well," she said softly, aloud, "of all the fools--"




XIV

THE CONCEALING OF SECRETS


Where a number of persons are in the same place, all interested in the
same matter, yet convinced that affairs must be arranged not by open
discussion but by adroit management, the result is inevitable. Each will
be seeking to speak to some other alone; there will be a constant
shifting and rearranging of groups as characters are moved on and off
the stage in the theatre. Life for the time being, indeed, takes on an
artificial air not unlike that which results from the studied devices of
the playwright. The most simple and accurate account of what takes place
must read like the arbitrary conventions of the boards; and the reader
is likely to receive an impression of unreality from the very closeness
with which the truth has been followed.

At the County Club that April afternoon there were so many who were in
one way or another interested in the fate of the letter which in a
moment of wild fun Mrs. Neligage had handed over to the Count, that it
was natural that the movements of the company should have much the
appearance of a contrived comedy. No sooner, for instance, had
Barnstable hastened away with a new bee in his bonnet, than Mrs.
Harbinger was joined by Fairfield. He had come on in advance of the
girls, and now at once took advantage of the situation to speak about
the matter of which the air was full.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I left the young ladies chatting with
Mrs. Staggchase, and they'll be here in a minute. I wanted to speak to
you."

She bestowed the letter which she had received from Barnstable in some
mysterious recess of her gown, some hiding-place which had been devised
as an attempted evasion of the immutable law that in a woman's frock
shall be no real pocket.

"Go on," she said. "I am prepared for anything now. After Mr. Barnstable
anything will be tame, though; I warn you of that."

"Mr. Barnstable? I didn't know you knew him till his circus last night."

"I didn't. He came to me here, and I thought he was going to apologize;
but he ended with a performance crazier than the other."

"What did he do?" asked Fairfield, dropping into the chair which
Barnstable had recently occupied. "He must be ingenious to have thought
of anything madder than that. He might at least have apologized first."

"I wasn't fair to him," Mrs. Harbinger said. "He really did apologize;
but now he's rushing off after Jack Neligage to accuse him of having
written that diabolical book that's made all the trouble."

"Jack Neligage? Why in the world should he pitch upon him?"

"Apparently because I mentioned Jack as the least likely person I could
think of to have written it. That was all that was needed to convince
Mr. Barnstable."

"The man must be mad."

"We none of us seem to be very sane," Mrs. Harbinger returned, laughing.
"I wonder what this particular madman will do."

"I'm sure I can't tell," answered Fairfield absently. Then he added
quickly: "I wanted to ask you about that letter. Of course it isn't you
that's been writing to me, but you must know who it is."

She stared at him in evident amazement, and then burst into a peal of
laughter.

"Well," she said, "we have been mad, and no mistake. Why, we ought to
have known in the first place that you were Christopher Calumus. How in
the world could we miss it? It just shows how we are likely to overlook
the most obvious things."

Fairfield smiled, and beat his fist on the arm of his chair.

"There," he laughed, "I've let it out! I didn't mean to tell it."

"What nonsense!" she said, as if not heeding. "To think that it was you
that May wrote to after all!"

"May!" cried Fairfield. "Do you mean that Miss Calthorpe wrote those
letters?"

The face of Mrs. Harbinger changed color, and a look of dismay came over
it.

"Oh, you didn't know it, of course!" she said. "I forgot that, and now
I've told you. She will never forgive me."

He leaned back in his chair, laughing gayly.

"A Roland for an Oliver!" he cried. "Good! It is only secret for
secret."

"But what will she say to me?"

"Say? Why should she say anything? You needn't tell her till she's told
me. She would have told me sometime."

"She did tell you in that wretched letter; or rather she gave you a sign
to know her by. How did you dare to write to any young girl like that?"

The red flushed into his cheeks and his laughter died.

"You don't mean that she showed you my letters?"

"Oh, no; she didn't show them to me. But I know well enough what they
were like. You are a pair of young dunces."

Fairfield cast down his eyes and studied his finger-nails in silence a
moment. When he looked up again he spoke gravely and with a new
firmness.

"Mrs. Harbinger," he said, "I hope you don't think that I meant anything
wrong in answering her letters. I didn't know who wrote them."

"You must have known that they were written by a girl that was young and
foolish."

"I'm afraid I didn't think much about that. I had a letter, and it
interested me, and I answered it. It never occurred to me that--"

"It never occurs to a man that he is bound to protect a girl against
herself," Mrs. Harbinger responded quickly. "At least now that you do
know, I hope that there'll be no more of this nonsense."

Fairfield did not reply for a moment. Then he looked out over the
landscape instead of meeting her eyes.

"What do you expect me to say to that?" he asked.

"I don't know that I expect anything," she returned dryly. "Hush! They
are coming."

He leaned forward, and spoke in a hurried whisper.

"Does she know?" he demanded.

"Of course not. She thinks it's the Count, for all I can tell."

The arrival of Alice and May put an end to any further confidential
discourse. Fairfield rose hastily, looking dreadfully conscious, but as
the two girls had some interesting information or other to impart to
Mrs. Harbinger, he had an opportunity to recover himself, and in a few
moments the party was on its way to the polo-field.

With the game this story has nothing in particular to do. It was not
unlike polo games in general. The playing was neither especially good
nor especially bad. Jack Neligage easily carried off the honors, and the
men pronounced his playing to be in remarkable form for so early in the
season. Fairfield sat next to Miss Calthorpe, but he was inclined to be
quiet, and to glance at Mrs. Harbinger when he spoke, as if he expected
her to be listening to his conversation. Now and then he fixed his
attention on the field, but when the game was over, and the clever plays
were discussed, he showed no signs of knowing anything about them. To
him the game had evidently been only an accident, and in no way a vital
part of the real business of the day.

There was afternoon tea at the club-house,--groups chatted and laughed
on the piazza and the lawn; red coats became more abundant on the golf
links despite the lateness of the hour; carriages were brought round,
one by one took their freights of pleasure-seekers, and departed.
Fairfield still kept in the neighborhood of Miss Calthorpe, and although
he said little he looked a great deal. Mrs. Harbinger did not interfere,
although for the most part she was within ear-shot. Fairfield was of
good old family, well spoken of as a rising literary man, and May had
money enough for two, so that there were no good grounds upon which a
chaperone could have made herself disagreeable, and Mrs. Harbinger was
not in the least of the interfering sort.

Before leaving the County Club Mrs. Harbinger had a brief talk with Mrs.
Neligage.

"I wish you'd tell me something about the Count's past," she said. "You
knew him in Europe, didn't you?"

"Yes, I met him in Rome one winter; and after that I saw a good deal of
him for a couple of seasons."

"Was he received?"

"Oh, bless you, yes. He's real. His family tree goes back to the tree in
the Garden of Eden."

"Perhaps his ancestor then was the third person there."

Mrs. Neligage laughed, and shook her head.

"Come, Letty," she said, "that is taking an unfair advantage. But
really, the Count is all right. He's as poor as a church mouse, and I've
no doubt he came over here expressly to marry money. That is a foreign
nobleman's idea of being driven to honest toil,--to come to America and
hunt up an heiress."

Mrs. Harbinger produced the letter which she had received from
Barnstable earlier in the afternoon.

"That crazy Mr. Barnstable that made an exhibition of himself at my
house yesterday has given me a letter about the Count. I haven't read
much of it; but it's evidently an attack on the man's morals."

"Oh, his morals," Mrs. Neligage returned with a pretty shrug; "nobody
can find fault with the Count's morals, my dear, for he hasn't any."

"Is he so bad then?" inquired Mrs. Harbinger with a sort of
dispassionate interest.

"Bad, bless you, no. He's neither good nor bad. He's what all his kind
are; squeamishly particular on a point of honor, and with not a moral
scruple to his name."

Mrs. Harbinger held the letter by the corner, regarding it with little
favor.

"I'm sure I don't want his old letter," she observed. "I'm not a
purveyor of gossip."

"Why did he give it to you?"

"He wanted me to read it, and then to show it to my friends. He
telegraphed to New York last night, Tom said, to find out about the
Count, and the letter must have come on the midnight."

"Characters by telegraph," laughed Mrs. Neligage. "The times are getting
hard for adventurers and impostors. But really the Count isn't an
impostor. He'd say frankly that he brought over his title to sell."

"That doesn't decide what I am to do with this letter," Mrs. Harbinger
remarked. "You'd better take it."

"I'm sure I don't see what I should do with it," Mrs. Neligage returned;
but at the same time she took the epistle. "Perhaps I may be able to
make as much mischief with this as I did with that letter yesterday."

The other looked at her with serious disfavor expressed in her face.

"For heaven's sake," she said, "don't try that. You made mischief enough
there to last for some time."




XV

THE MISCHIEF OF A LETTER


The meditations of Mrs. Neligage in the watches of the night which
followed the polo game must have been interesting, and could they be
known might afford matter for amusement and study. It must be one of the
chief sources of diversion to the Father of Evil to watch the growth in
human minds and hearts of schemes for mischief. He has the satisfaction
of seeing his own ends served, the entertainment of observing a curious
and fascinating mental process, and all the while his vanity may be
tickled by the reflection that it is he who will receive the credit for
each cunningly developed plot of iniquity. That the fiend had been
agreeably entertained on this occasion was to be inferred from the
proceedings of Mrs. Neligage next morning, when the plans of the night
were being carried into effect.

As early in the day as calling was reasonably possible, Mrs. Neligage,
although it was Sunday, betook herself to see May Calthorpe. May, who
had neither father nor mother living, occupied the family house on
Beacon street, opposite the Common, having as companion a colorless
cousin who played propriety, and for the most part played it unseen.
The dwelling was rather a gloomy nest for so bright a bird as May.
Respectability of the most austere New England type pervaded the big
drawing-room where Mrs. Neligage was received. The heavy old furniture
was as ugly as original sin, and the pictures might have ministered to
the Puritan hatred for art. Little was changed from the days when May's
grandparents had furnished their abode according to the most approved
repulsiveness of their time. Only the brightness of the warm April sun
shining in at the windows, and a big bunch of dark red roses in a
crystal jug, lightened the formality of the stately apartment.

When May came into the room, however, it might have seemed that she had
cunningly retained the old appointments as a setting to make more
apparent by contrast her youthful fresh beauty. With her clear color,
her dark hair, and sparkling eyes, she was the more bewitching amid this
stately, sombre furniture, and in this gloomy old lofty room.

"My dear," Mrs. Neligage said, kissing her affectionately, "how well you
look. I was dreadfully afraid I should find you worried and unhappy."

May returned her greeting less effusively, and seemed somewhat puzzled
at this address.

"But why in the world should I look worried?" she asked.

Mrs. Neligage sat down, and regarded the other impressively in silence a
moment before replying.

"Oh, my dear child," she said dramatically, "how could you be so
imprudent?"

May became visibly paler, and in her turn sank into a chair.

"I don't know what you mean," she faltered.

"If you had lived in society abroad as much as I have, May," was the
answer, delivered with an expressive shake of the head, "you would know
how dreadfully a girl compromises herself by writing to a strange
gentleman."

May started up, her eyes dilating.

"Oh, how did you know?" she demanded.

"The Count thinks the most horrible things," the widow went on
mercilessly. "You know what foreigners are. It wouldn't have been so bad
if it were an American."

Poor May put her hands together with a woeful gesture as if she were
imploring mercy.

"Oh, is it the Count really?" she cried. "I saw that he had a red
carnation in his buttonhole yesterday, but I hoped that it was an
accident."

"A red carnation?" repeated Mrs. Neligage.

"Yes; that was the sign by which I was to know him. I said so in that
letter."

It is to be doubted if the Recording Angel at that moment wrote down to
the credit of Mrs. Neligage that she regretted having by chance stuck
that flower in the Count's coat at the County Club.

"You poor child!" she murmured with a world of sympathy in her voice.

The touch was too much for May, who melted into tears. She was a
simple-hearted little thing or she would never have written the unlucky
letters to Christopher Calumus, and in her simplicity she had evidently
fallen instantly into the trap set for her. She dabbed resolutely at her
eyes with her handkerchief, but the fountain was too free to be so
easily stanched.

"It will make a horrid scandal," Mrs. Neligage went on by way of
comfort. "Oh, I do hate those dreadful foreign ways of talking about
women. It used to make me so furious abroad that I wanted to kill the
men."

May was well on the way to sobs now.

"Such things are so hard to kill, too," pursued the widow. "Everybody
here will say there is nothing in it, but it will be repeated, and
laughed about, and it will never be forgotten. That's the worst of it.
The truth makes no difference, and it is almost impossible to live a
thing of that sort down. You've seen Laura Seaton, haven't you? Well,
that's just what ruined her life. She wrote some foolish letters, and it
was found out. It always is found out; and she's always been in a
cloud."

Mrs. Neligage did not mention that the letters which the beclouded Miss
Seaton had written had been to a married man and with a full knowledge
on her part who her correspondent was.

"Oh, Mrs. Neligage," sobbed May. "Do you suppose the Count will tell?"

"My dear, he showed me the letter."

"Oh, did he?" moaned the girl, crimson to the eyes. "Did you read it?"

"Read it, May? Of course not!" was the answer, delivered with admirable
appearance of indignation; "but I knew the handwriting."

May was by this time so shaken by sobs and so miserable that her
condition was pitiful. Mrs. Neligage glided to a seat beside her, and
took the girl in her arms in a fashion truly motherly.

"There, there, May," said she soothingly. "Don't give way so. We must do
something to straighten things out."

"Oh, do you think we could?" demanded May, looking up through her tears.
"Can't you get that letter away from him?"

"I tried to make him give it to me, but he refused."

It really seemed a pity that the widow was not upon the stage, so
admirably did she show sympathy in voice and manner. She caressed the
tearful maiden, and every tone was like an endearment.

"Somebody must get that letter," she went on. "It would be fatal to
leave it in the Count's possession. He is an old hand at this sort of
thing. I knew about him abroad."

She might have added with truth that she had herself come near marrying
him, supposing that he had a fortune to match his title, but that she
had luckily discovered his poverty in time.

"But who can get it?" asked May, checking her tears as well as was
possible under the circumstances.

"It must be somebody who has the right to represent you," Mrs. Neligage
responded with an air of much impressiveness.

"Anybody may represent me," declared May. "Couldn't you do it, Mrs.
Neligage?"

"My dear," the other answered in a voice of remonstrance, "a lady could
hardly go to a man on an errand like that. It must be a man."

May dashed her hands together in a burst of impatience and despair.

"Oh, I don't see what you gave it to him for," she cried in a lamentable
voice. "You might have known that I wouldn't have written it if I'd any
idea that that old thing was Christopher Calumus."

"And I wouldn't have given it to him," returned Mrs. Neligage quietly,
"if I'd had any idea that you were capable of writing to men you didn't
know."

May looked as if the tone in which this was said or the words themselves
had completed her demoralization. She was bewitching in her misery, her
eyes swimming divinely in tears, large and pathetic and browner than
ever, her hair ruffled in her agitation into tiny rings and pliant wisps
all about her temples, her cheeks flushed and moist. Her mouth, with its
trembling little lips, might have moved the sternest heart of man to
compassion and to the desire at least of consoling it with kisses. The
more firm and logical feminine mind of Mrs. Neligage was not, however,
by all this loveliness of woe turned away from her purpose.

"At any rate," she went on, "the thing that can't be altered is that you
have written the letter, and that the Count has it. I do pity you
terribly, May; and I know Count Shimbowski, so I know what I'm saying. I
came in this morning to say something to you, to propose something, that
is; but I don't know how you'll take it. It is a way out of the
trouble."

"If there's any way out," returned May fervently, "I'm sure I don't care
what it is; I'm ready for it, if it's to chop off my fingers."

"It isn't that, my dear," Mrs. Neligage assured her with a suggestion of
a laugh, the faint suggestion of a laugh, such as was appropriate to the
direful situation only alleviated by the possibility which was to be
spoken. "The fact is there's but one thing to do. You must let Jack act
for you."

"Oh, will he, Mrs. Neligage?" cried May, brightening at once.

It has been noted by more than one observer of life that in times of
trouble the mere mention of a man is likely to produce upon the feminine
mind an effect notably cheering. Whether this be true, or a mere
fanciful calumny of those heartless male writers who have never been
willing to recognize that the real glory of woman lies in her being able
entirely to ignore the existence of man, need not be here discussed. It
is enough to record that at the sound of Jack's name May did undoubtedly
rouse herself from the abject and limp despair into which she was
completely collapsing. She caught at the suggestion as a trout snaps at
the fisherman's fly.

"He will be only too glad to," said Mrs. Neligage, "if he has the
right."

She paused and looked down, playing with the cardcase in her hands. She
made a pretty show of being puzzled how to go on, so that the most
stupid observer could not have failed to understand that there was
something of importance behind her words. May began to knit her white
forehead in an evident attempt to comprehend what further complication
there might be in the affair under discussion.

"I must be plain," the widow said, after a slight, hesitating pause.
"What I have to say is as awkward as possible, and of course it's
unusual; but under the circumstances there's no help for it. I hope
you'll understand, May, that it's only out of care for you that I'm
willing to come here this morning and make a fool of myself."

"I don't see how you could make a fool of yourself by helping me," May
said naïvely.

The visitor smiled, and put out a trimly gloved hand to pat the fingers
of the girl as they lay on the chair-arm.

"No, that's the truth, May. I am trying to help you, and so I needn't
mind how it sounds. Well, then; the fact is that there's one thing that
makes this all very delicate. Whoever goes to the Count must have
authority."

"Well, I'm ready to give Jack authority."

"But it must be the authority of a betrothed, my dear."

"What! Oh, Mrs. Neligage!"

May sat bolt upright and stiffened in her chair as if a wave of liquid
air had suddenly gone over her.

"To send a man for the letters under any other circumstances would be as
compromising as the letters in the first place. Besides, the Count
wouldn't be bound to give them up except to your _fiancé_."

"That horrid Count!" broke out May with vindictive irrelevancy. "I wish
it was just a man we had to deal with!"

"Now Jack has been in love with you for a long time, my dear," pursued
Jack's mother.

"Jack! In love with me? Why, he's fond of Alice."

"Oh, in a boy and girl way they've always been the best of friends. It's
nothing more. He's in love with you, I tell you. What do you young
things know about love anyway, or how to recognize it? I shouldn't tell
you this if it weren't for the circumstances; but Jack is too delicate
to speak when it might look as if he were taking advantages. He is
furious about the letter."

"Oh, does he know too?" cried poor May. "Does everybody know?"

Her tears began again, and now Mrs. Neligage dried them with her own
soft handkerchief, faintly scented with the especial eastern scent which
she particularly affected. Doubtless a mother may be held to know
something of the heart and the opinions of her only son, but as Jack had
not, so far as his mother had any means of knowing, in the least
connected May Calthorpe with the letter given to Count Shimbowski, it is
perhaps not unfair to conclude that her maternal eagerness and affection
had in this particular instance led her somewhat far. It is never the
way of a clever person to tell more untruths than are actually needed by
the situation, and it was perhaps by way of not increasing too rapidly
her debit account on the books of the Recording Angel that Mrs. Neligage
replied to this question of May's with an evasion,--an evasion, it is
true, which was more effective than a simple, direct falsehood would
have been.

"Oh, May dear, you don't know the horrid way in which those foreign
rakes boast of what they call their conquests!"

The idea of being transformed from a human, self-respecting being into a
mere conquest, the simple, ignominious spoils of the chase, might well
be too much for any girl, and May became visibly more limp under it.

"The simple case is here," proceeded the widow, taking up again her
parable with great directness. "Jack is fond of you; he is too delicate
to speak of it, and he knows that this is a time when nobody but a
_fiancé_ has a right to meddle. If you had a brother, of course it would
be different; but you haven't. Something must be done, and so I came
this morning really to beg you, for Jack's sake and your own, to consent
to an engagement."

"Did Jack send you?" demanded May, looking straight into the other's
eyes.

Mrs. Neligage met the gaze fairly, yet there was a little hesitation in
her reply. It might be that she considered whether the risk were greater
in telling the truth or in telling a lie; but in the end it was the
truth that she began with. Before she had got half through her sentence
she had distorted it out of all recognition, indeed, but it is always an
advantage to begin with what is true. It lends to any subsequent
falsifying a moral support which is of inestimable value.

"He knows nothing of it at all," she confessed. "He is too proud to let
anybody speak for him, just as under the circumstances he is too proud
to speak for himself. Besides, he is poor, and all your friends would
say he was after your money. No, nothing would induce him to speak for
himself. He is very unhappy about it all; but he feels far worse for you
than for himself. Dear Jack! He is the most generous fellow in the
world."

"Poor Jack!" May murmured softly.

"Poor Jack!" the widow echoed, with a deep-drawn sigh. "It frightens me
so to think what might happen if he hears the Count boasting in his
insolent way. Foreigners always boast of their conquests! Why, May,
there's no knowing what he might do! And the scandal of it for you! And
what should I do if anything happened to Jack?"

Perhaps an appeal most surely touches the feminine heart if it be a
little incoherent. A pedant might have objected that Mrs. Neligage in
this brief speech altered the point of view with reckless frequency,
but the pedant would by the effect have been proved to be wrong. The
jumble of possibilities and of consequences, of woe to Jack, harm to
May, and of general inconsolability on the part of the mother finished
the conquest of the girl completely. She was henceforth only eager to do
whatever Mrs. Neligage directed, and under the instigation of her astute
counsellor wrote a note to the young man, accepting a proposal which he
had never heard of, and imploring him as her accepted lover to rescue
from the hands of Count Shimbowski the letter addressed to Christopher
Calumus. It is not every orator, even among the greatest, who can boast
of having achieved a triumph so speedy and so complete as that which
gladdened the heart of Mrs. Neligage when, after consoling and cheering
her promised daughter-in-law, she set out to find her son.




XVI

THE DUTY OF A SON


Simple were this world if it were governed by frankness, albeit
perchance in some slight particulars less interesting. Certainly if
straightforwardness ruled life, Mrs. Neligage would have fared
differently in her efforts that morning. She would have had no
opportunity in that case of displaying her remarkable astuteness, and
she would have left the life-threads of divers young folk to run more
smoothly. Knots and tangles in the lives of mortals are oftener
introduced by their fellows than by the unkindly fingers of the Fates,
although the blame must be borne by the weird sisters. The three might
well stand aghast that forenoon to see the deftness with which Mrs.
Neligage wrought her mischief. A fisherman with his netting-needle and a
kitten playing with the twine together produce less complication of the
threads than the widow that day brought about by the unaided power of
her wits.

Jack Neligage had chambers with Fairfield in a semi-fashionable
apartment-house. Both the young men had a certain position to maintain,
and neither was blessed with means sufficient to do it without much
stretching. Fairfield was industrious and Neligage was idle, which in
the end was more favorable to the reputation of the former and to the
enjoyment of the latter. Jack fared the better in material things,
because the man who is willing to run into debt may generally live more
expensively than he who strives to add to an inadequate income by the
fruit of his toil.

On this particular morning Dick had gone to church in the vain hope of
seeing May Calthorpe, while Jack was found by his mother smoking a
cigarette over the morning paper. He had just finished his late
breakfast, and opened his letters. The letters lay on the uncleared
breakfast table in various piles. The largest heap was one made of bills
torn to bits. Jack made it a matter of principle to tear up his bills as
soon as they came. It saved trouble, and was, he said, a business-like
habit. The second heap was composed of invitations to be answered; while
advertisements and personal letters made the others. Jack received his
mother with his usual joyous manner. It had been said of him that his
continual good nature was better than an income to him. It certainly
made him a favorite, it procured for him many an invitation, and it had
even the effect of softening the hard heart of many a creditor. He was
in appearance no less cheerful this morning for his talk with Wilson at
the County Club or for the mysterious hints of ill which his mother had
given him. It was all confoundedly awkward, he had commented to
Fairfield before retiring on the previous night, but hang it, what good
would it do to fret about it?

"Good-morning, mater," he greeted her. "You must have something mighty
important on your mind to come flying round here at this time in the
day."

"I have," she said, "and I want you to try for once in your life to take
things seriously."

"Seriously!" was his answer. "Don't I always take things seriously? Or
if I don't, it can't be in me, for I'm sure I have enough to make me
serious. Look at that pile of bills there."

Mrs. Neligage walked to the table, inspected first the invitations,
which she looked over with truly feminine attention, and then began to
pick up pieces of the torn-up bills.

"How in the world, Jack, do you ever know what you owe?" she asked.

"Know what I owe? Gad! I wouldn't know that for the world. Sit down, and
tell me what disagreeable thing brought you here."

"Why is it necessarily disagreeable?" she demanded, seating herself
beside the table, and playing with the torn paper.

"You said yesterday that you were in a mess."

"Yes," she replied slowly; "but that was yesterday."

"Does that mean that you are out of it? So much the better."

Mrs. Neligage clasped her hands in her lap, and regarded her son with a
strong and eager look.

"Jack," she began, "I want you to listen to me, and not interrupt. You
must hear the whole thing before you begin to put in your word. In the
first place, you are engaged to May Calthorpe."

The exclamation and the laugh which greeted this piece of information
were so nearly simultaneous that Jack might be given the benefit of the
doubt and so evade the charge of swearing before a lady.

"Why in the world, mother," he said, "must you come harping on that
string again? You know it's of no use."

"You are engaged now, Jack, and of course that makes a difference."

"Oh, bother! Do speak sensibly. What are you driving at?"

The widow regarded him with a serene face, and settled herself more
comfortably in her chair.

"I came to congratulate you on your engagement to Miss May Calthorpe,"
she said, with all possible coolness and distinctness.

"Indeed? Then I am sorry to tell you that you have wasted your labor. I
haven't even seen May since we left the County Club yesterday."

"Oh, I knew that."

"What in the world are you driving at, mother? Perhaps you don't mind
telling me who told you of the engagement."

"Oh, not in the least. May told me."

"May Calthorpe!"

It was not strange that Jack should receive the announcement with
surprise, but it was evident that there was in his mind more
bewilderment. He stared at his mother without further word, while she
pulled off her gloves and loosened her coat as if to prepare herself for
the explanation which it was evident must follow.

"Come, Jack," she remarked, when she had adjusted these preliminaries,
"we may as well be clear about this. I made an offer in your name to
May, and she has accepted it."

Jack rose from his seat, and stood over her, his sunny face growing
pale.

"You made an offer in my name?" he demanded.

"Sit down," she commanded, waving her hand toward his chair. "There is a
good deal to be said, and you'll be tired of standing before I tell it
all. Is there any danger that Mr. Fairfield may come in?"

Jack walked over to the door and slipped the catch.

"He is not likely to come," he said, "but it's sure now. Fire away."

He spoke with a seriousness which he used seldom. There were times when
lazy, good-tempered Jack Neligage took a stubborn fit, and those who
knew him well did not often venture to cross him in those moods. The
proverb about the wrath of a patient man had sometimes been applied to
him. When these rare occasions came on which his temper gave way he
became unusually calm and self-possessed, as he was now. It could not
but have been evident to his mother that she had to do with her son in
one of the worst of his rare rages. Perhaps the vexations of the
previous days, the pile of torn bills on the table, the icy greeting
Alice Endicott had given him yesterday, all had to do with the sudden
outbreak of his anger, but any man might have been excused for being
displeased by such an announcement as had just been made to Jack.

"I'm not going into your financial affairs, Jack," Mrs. Neligage
remarked, with entire self-possession, "only that they count, of
course."

"I know enough about them," he said curtly. "We'll take them for
granted."

"Very well then--we will talk about mine. You've hinted once or twice
that you didn't like the way I flirted with Sibley Langdon. I owe him
six thousand dollars."

If the widow had been planning a theatrical effect in her coolly
pronounced words, she had no reason to be disappointed at the result.
Jack started to his feet with an oath, and glared at her with angry
eyes.

"More than that," she went on boldly, though she cast down her glance
before his, "the money was to save me from the consequences of--"

Her voice faltered and the word died on her lips. Jack stood as if
frozen, staring with a hard face and lips tightly shut.

"Oh, Jack," she burst out, "why do you make me shame myself! Why can't
you understand? I'm no good, Jack; but I'm your mother."

Actual tears were in her eyes, and her breath was coming quickly. It is
always peculiarly hard to see a self-contained, worldly woman lose
control of herself. The strength of emotion which is needed to shake
such a nature is instinctively appreciated by the spectator, and affects
him with a pain that is almost too cruel to be borne. Jack Neligage,
however, showed no sign of softening.

"You must tell me the whole now," he said in a hard voice.

The masculine instinct of asserting the right to judge a woman was in
his tone. She wiped away her tears, and choked back her sobs. A little
tremor ran over her, and then she began again, speaking in a voice lower
than before, but firmly held in restraint.

"It was at Monte Carlo five years ago," she said. "I was there alone,
and the Countess Marchetti came. I'd known her a little for years, and
we got to be very intimate. You know how it is with two women at a
hotel. I'd been playing a little, just to keep myself from dying of
dullness. Count Shimbowski was there, and he made love to me as long as
he thought I had money, but he fled when I told him I hadn't. Well, one
day the countess had a telegram that her husband had been hurt in
hunting. She had just half an hour to get to the train, and she took her
maid and went. Of course she hadn't time to have things packed, and she
left everything in my care. Just at the last minute she came rushing in
with a jewel-case. Her maid had contrived to leave it out, and she
wouldn't take it. The devil planned it, of course. I told her to take
it, but she wouldn't, and she didn't; and I played, and I lost, and I
was desperate, and I pawned her diamond necklace for thirty thousand
francs."

"And of course you lost that," Jack said in a hard voice, as she paused.

"Oh, Jack, don't speak to me like that! I was mad! I know it! The worst
thing about the whole devilish business was the way I lost my head. I
look back at it now, and wonder if I'm ever safe. It makes me afraid;
and I never was afraid of anything else in my life. I'm not a 'fraid-cat
woman!"

He gave no sign of softening, none of sympathy, but still sat with the
air of a judge, cold and inexorable.

"What has all this to do with Sibley Langdon?" he asked.

"He came there just when the countess sent for her things. I was wild,
and I went all to pieces at the sight of a home face. It was like a
plank to a shipwrecked fool, I suppose. I broke down and told him the
whole thing, and he gave me the money to redeem the necklace. He was
awfully kind, Jack. I hate him--but he was kind. I really think I should
have killed myself if he hadn't helped me."

"And you have never paid him?"

"How could I pay him? I've been on the ragged edge of 

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/42831