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 debelleMadame 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 Pariscertainement, 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."
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.
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.
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."
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.