Chapter IV: Part 4

"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 the poorhouse ever since. I don't know if the poorhouse has a ragged edge," she added, with something desperately akin to a smile, "but if it has edges of course they must be ragged."

Few persons have ever made a confession, no matter how woeful the circumstances, without some sense of relief at having spoken out the thing which was festering in the secret heart. Shame and bitter contrition may overwhelm this feeling, but they do not entirely destroy it. Mrs. Neligage would hardly have been likely ever to tell her story save under stress of bitter necessity, but there was an air which showed that the revelation had given her comfort.

"Has he ever spoken of it?" asked Jack, unmoved by her attempted lightness.

"Never directly, and never until recently has he hinted. Jack," she said, her color rising, "he is a bad man!"

He did not speak, but his eyes plainly demanded more.

"The other day,--Jack, I've known for a long time that it was coming. I've hated him for it, but I didn't know what to do. It was partly for that that I went to Washington."

"Well?"