Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

“Ah!” said the little lady, who had covered her entire countenance, ears, and neck with a shiny mask of pinkish paste. “A word makes such a difference.” She dipped a hare’s-foot into a saucer of rouge, and with this compound impartially, as it seemed to Gerry, incarnadined her cheeks and chin. “Of course,” she went on, dipping a disemboweled powder-puff into a pot of French chalk and deftly applying it, “you are aware that she possesses in years the advantage of yourself.”

“I am twenty-three,” said Gerry proudly.

“She owns to more than that!” said the lovely Lottie’s mother. She had reddened her mouth, hitherto obliterated by the paste, into an alluring Cupid’s bow, and darkened in, above her wonderfully brilliant eyes, a pair of arch-provoking eyebrows. Now, as some inkling of the fateful revelation in store clamped Gerry’s jaws upon his stick and twined his legs in a death-grip about the supports of his chair, she rapidly, with a blue pencil, imparted to those brilliant eyes the Oriental languor, the divinely alluring, almond-lidded droop that distinguished Lottie’s, seized a tooth-brush, dipped it into a bottle, apparently of liquid soot, rapidly blackened her eyelashes, indicated with rose-pink a dimple on her chin, groped for a moment in a cardboard box that stood upon the ledge of her toilet table, produced a golden wig of streaming tresses, dexterously assumed it, pulled here, patted there, twisted a brow-tendril into shape—and turning, shed upon the paralyzed Gerry the smile that had enchained his heart.

“I told you Lottie would not be long,” said Lottie, “and I’ve made up under twenty minutes. You dear, silly, honorable, romantic boy, don’t stare in that awful way. Twenty-three indeed! And I told you I owned to more! I ought to, for I have a son at Harrow, and a daughter of seventeen besides.... Do try and shut your mouth. Why, you poor dear goose, I was making my bow to the boys in the gallery when you were playing with a Noah’s Ark. Shake hands, and go round in front and see me do my piece, as usual. I’ve got used to that nice fresh face of yours up in Box B, and applause is the breath of my nostrils, if I am old enough to be your mother. Leave your flowers; my girl at home has got quite to look out for them—and be off with you, because this”—she indicated the French chalk—“has got to go farther!” She gave Gerry her pretty hand and one of the brilliant smiles, as he blundered up from his chair, gasping apologies.

“Come and lunch with us to-morrow. You know my address, and I’ve told the Professor all about you. You’ll like the Professor—my husband. One of the best, though his wife says it. And the children——”

“Can I come in, mother?” said a clear voice outside.

“All right, pet!” called back Gerry’s late goddess, and a girl of seventeen came into the room. She was all that Gerry had dreamed.... His frozen blood began to thaw, and his tongue found words. Here was the ideal.

“But her name isn’t Lottie!” said his dethroned goddess, with a twinkle of the wondrous eyes. “However, you’re coming to lunch to-morrow, aren’t you?”

“With the greatest pleasure,” said Gerry. And as he went round to his box he carefully obliterated the name from the portrait cherished in his bosom for so many weeks, with the intention of filling it in with another to-morrow.

THE REVOLT OF RUSTLETON

A new-comer joined the circle of attentive listeners gathered round the easiest of all the easy-chairs in the smoking-room of the Younger Sons’ Club. The surrounded chair contained Hambridge Ost, a small, drab, livery man, with long hair and drooping eyelids, who, as cousin to Lord Pomphrey, enjoyed the immense but fleeting popularity of the moment. Everyone panted to hear the details of the latest Society elopement before the newspapers should disseminate them abroad. And Hambridge was not unwilling to oblige.

“The first inkling of the general trend of affairs, dear fellow,” said Hambridge, joining his long, pale finger-tips before him, and smiling at the new-comer across the barrier thus formed, “was conveyed to me by an agitated ring at the telephone in my rooms. Bucknell, my man, hello’ed. To Bucknell’s astonishment the ring-up came from 000, Werkeley Square, the town mansion of my cousin, Lord Pomphrey, which he knew to be in holland covers and the care of an ex-housekeeper. And Lady Pomphrey was the ringer. When I hello’ed her, saying, ‘Are you there, Annabella? So glad, but how unexpected; thought you were all enjoying your _otium cum_ down at Cluckham-Pomphrey’—my cousin’s country-seat in Slowshire, dear fellow—such a verbal flood of disjointed sentences came hustling over the wire, so to speak, that I felt convinced, even in the act of rubbing my ear, which tickled confoundedly, that something was quite absolutely wrong somewhere. Pomphrey—dear fellow!—was my first thought; then the Dowager—the ideal of a fine old Tory noblewoman of ninety-eight, who may drop, so to put it, any moment, dear creature, relieving her family of the charge of paying her income and leaving the Dower House vacant for Lord Rustleton, my cousin’s heir and his—ahem!—bride. Knowing that Rustleton was to lead the Hon. Celine Twissing to the altar of St. George’s, Hanover Square, early in the Winter season, it occurred to me, so to put it, that the demise of the Dowager could not have occurred at a more auspicious moment. Thank you, dear fellow, I _will_ smoke one of your particular Partagas, since you’re so good.”

Four men struck vestas simultaneously as Hambridge relieved the nicotian delicacy of its gold-and-scarlet cummerbund. Another man supplied him with an ash-tray. Yet another pushed a footstool under his pampered patent-leathers. Exhaling a thin blue cloud, the Oracle continued:

“Amidst my distracted relative’s fragmentary utterances I gleaned the name of Rustleton. Hereditary weak heart—circulation as limited as that of a newspaper which on strictly moral grounds declines to report Divorce Cases—and a disproportionate secretion of bile, so to put it, distinguishes him, dear fellow, from, shall I say, mortals less favored by birth and of lower rank. A vision of a hatchment over the door of 000, Werkeley Square—of the entire population of the county assisting at his obsequies, dear fellow—volted through my brain. I seized my hat, and rushed from my chambers in Ryder Street. An electric hansom had fortunately pulled up in front of ’em. I jumped in. ‘Where to?’ asked the chauffeur. ‘To a broken-hearted mother,’ said I, ‘000, Werkeley Square, and drive like the dooce!’”

Hambridge cleared his throat with some pomp, and crossed his little legs comfortably. Then he went on:

“Like the Belgian sportsman, who, in missin’ a sittin’ hare, shot his father-in-law in the stomach, mine was an effort not altogether wasted. All the blinds of the house were down, and the hysterical shrieks of Lady Pomphrey echoin’ through practically a desert of rolled-up carpets and swathed furniture, had collected a small but representative crowd about the area-railings. I leaped out of the motor-cab, threw the chauffeur the legal fare, and bein’ admitted to the house by an hysterical caretaker, ascended to my cousin’s boudoir, the sobs and shrieks of the distracted mother growing louder as I went. Dear fellows, when Lady Pomphrey saw me, heard me saying, ‘Annabella, I must entreat you as a near relative to calm yourself sufficiently to tell me the worst without delay, or to direct me to the nearest person who can supply authentic information,’ the floodgates of her sorrow were opened to such an extent that—possessing a constitution naturally susceptible to damp—I have had a deuce of a cold ever since.

“Lord Rustleton—always a nervous faddist, though the dearest of fellows—Rustleton had suddenly broken off his engagement to the Hon. Celine Twissing, only child and heiress of Lord Twissing of Hopsacks, the colossal financier figurehead, as I call him, of the Brewing Trade. Naturally, the young man’s mother was crushed by the blow. The marriage was to have been solemnized at the opening of the Winter Season—the trousseau was nearly ready, and the cake—a mammoth pile of elaborate indigestion—was bein’ built up in tiers at Guzzards’. The presents (includin’ a diamond and sapphire bangle from a Royal source) had come in in shoals. Nothing could be more confoundedly inopportune than Rustleton’s decision. For all her muscularity—and she is an unpleasantly muscular young woman—you’d marry her yourself to-morrow did you get the chance, dear fellow. _Vous n’êtes pas dégoûté._

“But Rustleton’s a difficult man—always was. His personal appearance ain’t prepossessin’, but he is Somebody, and looks it; d’ye foller me? You feel at once that a long line of ancestors, more or less distinguished, must have handed down the bilious tendency from father to son. Originally—which goes to prove that first impressions are the stronger—Lady Pomphrey tells me he could not stand Celine Twissing, wouldn’t have her for nuts, or at any price; but after the disaster to the steam yacht _Fifi_—run down by a collier at her moorings in Southampton Water, you recollect, when by pure force of muscle Miss Twissing snatched Lord Rustleton from a watery grave, so to put it—he seemed to cave in, as it were, and the engagement was formally announced. I thought his eye unsteady and his laugh hollow, when, with the rest of the family, I proffered my insignificant congratulations. On that occasion, dear fellow, he gave me two fingers instead of one, which amounts to a grip with him, and whispered to the effect that there was no use in cryin’ over spilled milk—a familiar saw which has sprung to my own lips at the most inopportune moments.

“Celine was undoubtedly in love. Her being in love, so to put it, added immensely to Rustleton’s discomfort. For the New Girl is, as well as a muscular being, a strenuous creature, omnivorous in her appetite for mental exercise, and from the latest theories in physics to the morality of the newest Slavonic novelist Rustleton was expected to range with her hour by hour. Her mass of knowledge oppressed him, her inexhaustible fund of argument exhausted him, her fiery enthusiasm reduced him to a condition of clammy limpness which was—I may say it openly—painful to witness. A backward Lower boy and an impatient Head Master might have presented such a spectacle. Thank you, I will take a Vermouth, since you are so kind. But the boy, in getting away for the holidays, had the advantage of Rustleton, poor fellow!”

Hambridge waited till the Vermouth came, and, sipping the tonic fluid, continued:

“These details, I need not say, were not culled from Lady Pomphrey, but extracted from Rustleton, who had rushed up to town and gone to earth at his Club, to the consternation of the few waiters who were not taking holidays at the seaside. Little by little I became master of the facts of the case, which was one of disparity from the outset. From the muscular as from the intellectual point Celine Twissing had always overshadowed her _fiancé_. But Celine’s intimate knowledge of the mode of conduct necessary—I quote herself—to sane living and clear thinking positively appalled him. Rustleton began the day with hot Vichy water, dry toast, weak tea, and a tepid immersion. _She_, Miss Twissing, commenced with Indian clubs, a three-quarter-mile sprint in sweaters, coffee, eggs, cold game-pie, ham, jam, muffins, and marmalade. Did she challenge the man, to whom she was soon to pledge lifelong obedience at the altar, to a single at lawn-tennis, she quite innocently served him twisters that he could only follow with his eye, and volleyed balls that infallibly hit it. At croquet she was a scientist, winning the game by the time Lord Rustleton had got through three hoops, and coming back to stand by his side and goad him to silent frenzy by criticism of his method. She is a red-hot motorist, and insisted upon taking Rustleton, wrapped in fur coats, and protected by goggles, as passenger in the back seat of her sixty-horse-power ‘Gohard’ when she competed in the Crooklands Circular Track One Thousand Mile Platinum Cup Race, for private owners only, professional drivers barred; and upon my honor, I believe she would have pulled up the winner and heroine of the hour had not the racing diet of bananas, meat jujubes, and egg-nog created such a revolt in Rustleton’s system, poor fellow, that at the sixth hour of the ordeal he was borne, almost insensible, and bathed in cold perspiration, from the _tonneau_ to a neighboring hotel.

“To anxiety, in combination with exploding tires, I attribute the fact of Miss Twissing’s finishing as Number Four. Dear fellow, since you are so good as to insist, I _will_ put that cushion behind the small of my back. Lumbago, in damp weather, is my particular bane. Thankee!”

Hambridge drew forth a spotlessly white handkerchief, flourished it, and trumpeted.

“Now we come to the crux, dear fellows. The Admirable Twissing, as many call her, not content with bein’ an acknowledged expert in salmon fishin’ and a darin’ rider to hounds, set her heart on Rustleton’s being practically the same. With a light trout-rod and a tin of worms he _has_ occasionally amoosed himself on locally-preserved waters; mounted on an easy-goin’ cob, he is, so to put it, fairly at home. Scotch and Norwegian rivers now, shall I say, claimed him as their sacrifice; highly-mettled hunters—the Hopsacks stables are famous—took five-barred gates and quickset hedges with him; occasionally even bolted with him, regardless of his personal predilections. In the same spirit his betrothed bride compelled him to fence with her; instructed him, at severe physical expense to himself, in the rules of jiu-jitsu. The final straw was laid upon the camel’s back when she insisted on his putting on the gloves with her, and standing up for half an hour every morning to be scientifically pummeled.”

The listeners’ mouths screwed themselves into the shape of long-expressive whistles. Glances of profound meaning were exchanged. One man said, with a gulp of sympathy, “_Poor_ beggar!”

“And so the worm turned,” said Hambridge Ost, running his forefinger round inside the edge of his collar. “Smarting from upper-cuts administered by the woman who was destined ere long to become the wife of his bosom, flushed from having his head in Chancery, gravely embarrassed by body-blows, dazzled by stars and stripes seen as the result of merciless punches received upon the nose, Rustleton summoned all his courage to the effort, and declined to take any more lessons. Miss Twissing, to do her justice, was thunderstruck.

“‘Oh!’ she said, her lips quivering—like a hurt child’s, according to Rustleton—‘and you were coming on so _capitally_—we were getting on so well. You are really gaining a knowledge of good boxing principles, you were actually benefiting by our light little friendly spars.’ Rustleton felt his nose, which was painfully swollen. ‘Of course, you could never, never become a first-rater. Your poor little muscles are too rigid. You haven’t the strength to hit a print of your knuckles into a pound of butter, but you might come to show form enough to funk a big duffer, supposing he went for you under the impression that you were as soft as you look. But, of course, if you mean what you say’—she pulled her gloves off and threw them into a corner of the gymnasium at Hopsacks specially fitted up for her by a noted firm—‘there they go. I’ll read the Greek Anthologists with you instead, or’—her eyes brightened—‘have you ever tried polo?’ she asked. ‘We have some trained ponies in the stable, and the largest croquet-lawn could be utilized for a ground, and I’ll wire to the County Players for clubs and a couple of members to teach us the rules of the game. You’ll like that?’

“‘I’m dashed if I shall!’ were the actual words that burst, so to put it, from Rustleton. Celine drew herself up and looked him over, from the feet upwards, as though she had never, so he says, seen him before. Five feet five—his actual height—gave her an advantage of five inches and a bit over. He begged her to be seated, and, standing before her in as dignified an attitude as it is possible to assume in a light suit of gymnasium flannels, with sawdust in your hair and a painfully swollen nose, he broke the ice and demanded his release from their engagement, saying that he felt it incumbent on him to live his own life in his own way, that Celine crushed, humiliated, and oppressed him by the mere vigor of her intellect and the exuberance of her physical personality—with considerably more to the same effect.

“She looked up when Rustleton, almost breathless, reached a full stop. ‘You give me your word of honor that there is no other woman in the case,’ she murmured; ‘I _can_ stand your not loving me, I _can’t_ your loving somebody else better.’ As Rustleton gave the required denial—scouted the bare idea—a tear ran down her cheek and dropped on her large powerful arms, which were folded upon her bust—really amazing, dear fellow, and one of her strong points. ‘That settles it,’ she uttered. ‘It’s understood, all’s off between us; you are free. And there is a through express to London at 3:25. But I’m afraid I must detain you a moment longer.’ She rang the bell, and told a servant to tell Professor Pudsey she was wanted in the gym. ‘Tell her to come in sparring kit, and be quick about it,’ were her actual words.

“Until the Professor appeared, Miss Twissing chatted quite pleasantly with Rustleton. The Professor was a large, flat-faced woman, of remarkable muscular development, with her hair coiled in a tight knob at the back of her head, her massive form attired in a thin jersey, short serge skirt, long stockings, and light gymnasium shoes. ‘Let me introduce my friend and resident instructress in boxing, fencing, and athletics,’ says Celine, ‘and one of the best, so to put it, that ever put a novice through his paces. Celebrated as the wife and trainer of the late Ponto Pudsey, Heavy-weight Champion of England, and holder of the Hyam’s Competition Belt three seasons running until beat by Bat Collins at the International Club Grounds in ’92. Pudsey dear’—she turned to the Professor—‘you know my little way when I’ve had a set-back. Instead of playing _le diable à quatre_ and being disagreeable and cantankerous all round, I simply send for you and say, as I say now, “Put up your hands, and do your best; I warn you I’m going in for a regular slugging match under the rules of the Amateur Boxing Association. Three rounds—the first and second of three minutes’ length, the third of four minutes’. This gentleman will act as time-keeper, and pick up whichever of us gets knocked out. He has plenty of time before he catches the express to town—and the lesson will be good for him.”’ She and the Professor shook hands, and, with heads erect, mouths firmly closed, eyes fixed, left toes straight, bodies evenly balanced, left arms workin’ loosely, rights well across mark, and so forth, started business in the most thorough-goin’ way. Such a bout of fisticuffs—accordin’ to Rustleton—you couldn’t behold outside the American prize-ring.”

“By—Jingo!” ejaculated one of the listeners.

“They led off in a perfectly scientific manner at the head, guarded and returned, retreated and advanced, ducked, feinted, countered, and cross-countered,” said Hambridge Ost, “until Rustleton grew giddy. Terrific hits were given and taken before he could command himself sufficiently to call ‘Time,’ the Professor with a black eye, Celine with a cut lip, both of ’em smilin’ and self-possessed to an astonishin’ degree; went in again at the end of the brief breathin’ space, and fairly outdid the previous round. When a smashin’ knock-out on the point of the jaw finally floored the Professor and she failed to come up to time, leavin’ Miss Twissing mistress of the gory field, Celine nodded significantly to Rustleton, and said, as she rolled down her sleeves, ‘That would have been for _you_, Russie, old boy, if there had been another woman in the case. As there isn’t—goodbye, and good luck go with you! I’m going to put dear old Pudsey to bed, and plaster this cut lip of mine.’”

“I like that girl!” declared the man who had said “By Jingo!” “A rattling good sort, I call her. But a punch-bag would have done as well as the Professor, I should have thought.” He tugged at his mustache and wrinkled his forehead thoughtfully. “A damaged lip is so fearfully disfiguring. Has it quite healed?”

“I know nothing of Miss Twissing,” said Hambridge, settling his necktie, “and desire to know nothing of that very unfeminine young person, who, I feel sure, would have been as good as her word and pounded Rustleton into a human jelly, had she been aware that there actually existed, if I may so put it, an adequate feminine reason for the dear fellow’s—shall I say, change of mind?”

“Of course,” said the man who had been anxious about Miss Twissing’s lip, “the little bounder—beg pardon! Of course, Rustleton was telling a colossal howler. As all the world knows, or will know when the newspapers come out to-morrow, there was another woman in the case.”

“Petsie Le Poyntz,” put in another voice, “of the West End Theater. Petsie of the lissom—ahem!—limbs, of the patent mechanical smile—mistress of the wink that convulses the gallery, and inventor of the kick that enraptures the stalls. Petsie, who has won her way into what Slump, of the _Morning Gush_, calls the ‘peculiar favor of the British playgoer,’ by her exquisite and spontaneous rendering of the ballad, ‘Buzzy, Buzzy, Busy Bee,’ sung nightly and at two _matinées_ per week in _The Charity Girl_. Petsie, once the promised bride of a thriving young greengrocer, now——”

“Now, Viscountess Rustleton,” said Hambridge Ost. “Don’t forget that, dear fellow, pray. I can conceive, even while I condemn my cousin’s ill-considered action in taking to his—shall I say bosom? yesterday morning at the Registrar’s—a young lady of obvious gifts and obscure parentage without letting his family into the secret—that he found her a soothing change from Miss Twissing. No Greek, no athletics, no strenuousness of any kind. An appearance distinctly pleasing, even off the boards, a certain command of repartee of the ‘You’re another’ sort, an agreeable friskiness varied by an inclination to lounge languidly—and there you have Petsie, dear fellow. The weddin’ breakfast took place at the Grill Room of the Savoy Hotel, the extra-sized table, number three, at the east upper end against the glass partition havin’ been specially engaged by the management of the West End Theater. That, not bein’ an invited guest, I ascertained from the waiter who usually looks after me when I lunch there. The _menu_ was distinctly a good ’un. _Hors d’œuvres_ ... a bisque, follered by _turban de turbot_.... Birds with bread-cream sauce, chipped potatoes, tomatoes stuffed, and a corn salad. Chocolate _omelette soufflée_—ices in the shape of those corrugated musk melons with pink insides, figs, and nectarines. Of course, a claret figured—Château-Nitouche; but, bein’ a theatrical entertainment, the Boy washed the whole thing down. The name of the liqueur I did not get hold of.”

“_Parfait Amour_, perhaps?” said a feeble voice, with a faint chuckle.

“As I have said, I failed to ascertain,” returned Hambridge Ost, with a dry little cough. “But as Lord Pomphrey, justly indignant with his heir for throwing over Miss Twissing, with whose hand goes a colossal fortune, has practically reduced his income to a mere”—he elevated his eyebrows and blew a speck of cigar-ash from his coat-sleeve—“_that_—the stirrup-cup that sped my cousin and his bride upon their wedding journey was certainly not, shall I say, _Aqua d’Oro?_”

There was a faint chorus of applause. Hambridge, repressing all sign of triumph, smoothed his preternaturally sleek head and uncrossed his little legs preparatory to getting out of his chair. The circle of listeners melted away; the man who had said “By Jingo!” straightened his hat carefully, staring at the reflection of a distinctly good-looking face in the mantel-glass.

“If she had known—if that girl Celine Twissing had known—the game that bilious little rotter meant to play, he’d have had his liqueur before his soup, and it would have been punch—not Milk Punch or Turtle Punch, but the real thing, with trimmings.” He arranged a very neat mustache with care. “Sorry she got her lip split,” he murmured; “hope it’s healed all right.... Waiter, get me a dozen Sobranie cigarettes. It’s a pity, a confounded pity, that the only man who is really able to appreciate that grand girl Celine Twissing happens to be a younger son. But, anyhow, I can have a shot at her, and I will.”

A DYSPEPTIC’S TRAGEDY

“He is a constant visitor,” observed Lady Millebrook.

“And a constant friend,” said Mrs. Tollebranch. A delicate flush mantled on her otherwise ivory cheek, her great gray eyes, famed for their far-away, saintly expression, shone through a gleaming veil of tears. With the lithe, undulating movement so characteristic of her, she crossed the velvety carpets to the window, and, lifting a corner of her silken blind, peeped out over her window-boxes of jonquils as the hall-door closed, and a well-dressed man with a slight stoop and a worn, dyspeptic countenance went slowly down the doorsteps and got into his cab. As though some subtle magnetic thrill had conveyed to him the knowledge that fair eyes looked on his departure, he glanced up and bowed, for one moment becoming a younger man, as a temporary glow suffused his pallid features. Then the cab drove off, and Mrs. Tollebranch, slipping her hand within the arm of Lady Millebrook, drew her back to her cosy seat within the radius of the fire-glow, and rang for tea.

“I did not have it up while poor Cadminster was here,” she explained. “The sight of Sally Lunn is horrible to him, and he is positively forbidden tea.”

“They say,” said Lady Millebrook, nibbling the Sally Lunn, “that he lives upon gluten biscuits, lean boiled mutton, and white fish, washed down by weak Medoc, mixed with hot water.”

“It is true,” returned her friend.

“And yet he dines out. I meet him comparatively often at other people’s tables,” said Lady Millebrook. “And here—invariably.” Her eyebrows wore the crumple of interrogation.

“The servants have orders to pass him over,” explained Mrs. Tollebranch, sipping her tea. “If Jerks or Wilbraham were to offer him a made dish, one, if not both of them, would be instantly dismissed.”

“My dear Clarice! Friendship is friendship.... But Jerks and Wilbraham.... Such invaluable servants! You cannot mean what you say!”

“I do mean it,” nodded Mrs. Tollebranch. “Oh, Bettine!” she murmured, clasping Lady Millebrook’s hand, “don’t look so surprised. If you only knew how much that man has sacrificed for me!”

“If there is anything upon which I pride myself,” observed Lady Millebrook, “it is my absolute lack of curiosity. And yet people are always telling me their secrets—the most intimate, the most important! ‘Bettine,’ they say, ‘you are a Grave!’ ... So I am; it is quite true. A thing once repeated in my hearing is buried for ever! We have not known each other very long, it is true, but you must have discovered that I am absolutely reliable! Talking of sacrifices, there are so many sorts. Now perhaps in your gratitude for this service rendered you by Lord Cadminster, you overrate. Perhaps it is really not so great as you imagine! Perhaps...! But I am not curious in the least!”

“Would it surprise you to hear,” queried Mrs. Tollebranch, “that Cadminster, two years ago, was _perfectly healthy!_ Not the cadaverous dyspeptic he is now; not the semi-invalid, but a robust, healthy, fresh-colored man of the out-of-doors, hardy English type?”

Lady Millebrook elevated her eyebrows. “Dear me,” she observed. “How very odd! And now—you know his horrid _soubriquet_—‘The Boiled Owl.’ He has earned it _since_, of course.”

“He had a splendid appetite once,” continued Mrs. Tollebranch, “an iron constitution—a perfect digestion. He gave them all three to save a woman’s honor. Oh! Bettine, can you guess who the woman was?”

“I never hazard guesses about my friends,” said the inexorable Lady Millebrook. “But I feel, somehow, that she may have been you?”

“I was weak,” admitted Mrs. Tollebranch, clasping her friend’s hand with agitated jeweled fingers. “But not wicked, Bettine. Promise me to believe that!”

“I never promise,” said Bettine, “but no one could look at you and doubt that ... whatever you might do, would be the outcome of irresistible impulse, _not_ the result of deliberate—ahem! My dearest, you interest me indescribably,” she cried, “and if I were the _least bit_ inclined to curiosity, I am sure I should implore you to go on.”

“You shall hear the story of Cadminster’s Great Sacrifice, Bettine,” said Mrs. Tollebranch, “and when you have heard, you will regard him——”

“As Bayard and all the other heroes of chivalry rolled into one, and dressed by a Bond Street tailor,” interrupted Lady Millebrook, with a glow of impatience in her fine dark eyes. “I think you mentioned two years ago?” she added, settling a little stray lock of her friend’s silken blonde hair, and sinking back among her cushions.

“Two years ago,” murmured Mrs. Tollebranch, “Willibrand became bitten with the Golf Spider. He is as wild about the game to-day,” she added, “as ever.”

“There is a proverb, ‘Once a golfer, always a golfer,’” put in Lady Millebrook. “I believe that to play the game successfully requires a vast amount of thought and judgment, which insensibly diverts a man’s mind from less harmless topics, and that it entails an invigorating and healthy action of the arms and legs, soothing to the nervous system, and improving in its effect upon the temper. Were I asked by any married woman of my acquaintance whether she should encourage her husband in his devotion to golf, or dissuade him from it, I should advise her to encourage the fad. The game, unlike others, can be played all the year round, in sunshine, rain, or snow.”

“Willibrand used to play it in the snow,” put in Mrs. Tollebranch, “with red balls. It was when we were spending March at Tobermuirie two years ago, that——”

“That Lord Cadminster performed the chivalrous action which resulted for him in the permanent loss of his digestion? Well?”

“Tobermuirie is the bleakest spot in North Britain,” began Mrs. Tollebranch, returning the teacups to the tray, and touching the electric bell in a manner which conveyed the intimation that she would not be at home to any caller for the next quarter of an hour. “The castle is one of the oldest inhabited residences in Europe, and, I verily believe, the coldest. If you would like to find out for yourself how easily a northern gale can penetrate walls ten feet thick in the thinnest places, come to us in July.”

“I shall make a point of it!” said Lady Millebrook, cuddling down into her warm, scented lair of cushions.

“Of course, the male division of the house-party was made up of golfing enthusiasts,” went on Mrs. Tollebranch. “Major Wharfling, Sir Roger Balcombe, Cadminster, who was as keen as Willibrand in those days, three Guardsmen, and D’Arsy Pontoise.”

“By the way, what has become of Pontoise?” queried Lady Millebrook. “One never meets him now as one used.”

“He scarcely ever leaves Paris, I believe,” returned Mrs. Tollebranch, rather constrainedly. “Since his reconciliation with the Duc, his great-uncle, and his marriage with Mademoiselle De Carapoix, who I have heard is a very strict Catholic and humpbacked——”

“Besides being a great heiress.... Of course, he is kept well within bounds. But what a fascinating creature Pontoise used to be. Bubbling with life, effervescing with spirits. Sadly naughty, too, I fear, for the names of at least half a dozen pretty married women used to be mixed up with his in all sorts of scan.... My dearest, I beg your pardon!”

“I, at least, was not wicked—only weak!” said Clarice, with icy dignity. “And as to there being five others——”

“My sweet, it was the vaguest hearsay. Nothing certain, except that Pontoise spoke perfect English and was a veritable Apollo! I can imagine the rigors of imprisonment in a Border castle in March to have been ameliorated by the fact of his being a guest under its aged roof. Did he play golf?”

Mrs. Tollebranch rose and took a dainty screen of crimson feathers from the high mantelshelf.

“He tried to learn,” she explained, holding the screen so as to shield her delicate complexion from the glowing heat of the log fire. “But the game baffled him. To play it properly, I believe, the mind must be dead to all other interests——”

“And Pontoise’s mind was unusually alive at that particular moment to things outside the sphere of golf,” mused Lady Millebrook. “Golf is a game for husbands, not for——” Her red lips closed on the unuttered word.

“Don’t say, ‘lovers’!” implored Clarice. “From beginning to end, Bettine, it was nothing but a flirtation. I will own that I was—attracted, almost fascinated. I had never met a human being whose nature was of so many colors ... whose soul....” She broke off.

“I have been informed on good authority,” observed Lady Millebrook, “that whenever Pontoise meant mischief he invariably talked about his soul. But do go on!

“Of course, you played golf also; and as one of the great advantages connected with the game is that you can choose your own partner, I may presume that Pontoise made acquaintance with it under your auspices, and that when he landed himself in the jaws of some terrific sand-bunker, you were at hand to help him out.”

“As his hostess, it was rather incumbent upon me,” explained Mrs. Tollebranch, “to make myself of use. Willibrand and Sir Roger Balcombe termed him a duffer; Major Wharfling is nothing but a professional, Cadminster and the Guardsmen were hard drivers all. And as Bluefern had made me a golfing costume which was a perfect dream——”

“You completed the conquest of Pontoise. I quite understand!” said Bettine. “In that frock, armed with a long spoon. I quite grasp it.”

“The golf course is very open at Tobermuirie,” went on Clarice, playing with the feather fan.

“But there are hillocks, and bumps and boulders, and things behind which Pontoise managed to get in a good many references to his soul. I grasp _that_ also,” observed Lady Millebrook.

“He did mention his soul,” admitted Mrs. Tollebranch. “He said that it had always been lonely, thirsting for the sympathy of a sister-spirit until——”

“Until he met you!”

“He did say as much. And he explained how, in sheer desperation of ever meeting the affinity, the flame for whom the spark of his being had been originally kindled, a man may drift into all kinds of follies, even gain the name of a libertine and a _roué_.”

“Quite true.”

“He has such wonderful eyes, like moss agates, and his profile is like the Hermes of Praxiteles, or would be but for the waxed mustache and crisp, golden beard. And there is a vibrating _timbre_ in his voice that goes to the very heart. One could not but be sorry for him.”

“I am sure you were very sorry indeed. But Pontoise, as one knows of him, would not long be content with that. Your heartfelt pity, and the tip of your little finger to kiss....” Lady Millebrook’s sleepily dark eyes smiled cynical amusement. “Those things are the _hors d’œuvres_ of flirtation. Soup, fish, made-dishes, roast, and sweets invariably succeed, with black coffee and a subsequent indigestion.”

Clarice avoided the glance of this feminine philosopher.

“Pontoise was always respectful,” she said, with a little note of defiance in her voice. “He never forgot what was due to me save once, when——”

“When it was borne in upon him too strongly what he owed to himself. And then he kissed you, and you were furiously angry.”

“Furious!” nodded Clarice, brushing her round chin with the edge of the crimson screen. “I vowed I would never speak to him again.”

“And how long did you keep that oath?” asked Bettine.

“We met at dinner in the evening, and of course one has to be civil. And when I went to bed, and he handed me my candlestick,” said Mrs. Tollebranch—“for gas is only laid as high as the first floor of the castle, and the electric light has never been heard of—he slipped a note into my hand. It implored my pardon, and declared that unless I would meet him in the golf-house on the links next day before lunch, and receive his profound apologies, he would terminate an existence which my well-deserved scorn had rendered insupportable. He spoke of the—the——” Clarice hesitated.

“The kiss,” put in Lady Millebrook, “and——”

“Said he had dared, in a moment of insanity, to desecrate the cheek of the purest woman breathing with lips that ought to be branded for their criminal presumption. He could never atone, he ended, but he could never forget.”

“And asked you in the postscript to meet him in the golf-house. I quite understand,” observed Lady Millebrook. “Of course, you didn’t go?”

Clarice’s lovely gray-blue eyes opened. Her sensitive lips quivered.

“Oh! but I am afraid....” She heaved a little regretful sigh over her past folly. “That is where I was weak, Bettine. I went. Oh, don’t laugh!”

“My child, this is hysteria,” explained Lady Millebrook, removing the filmy handkerchief from her lovely eyes. “Well—you went. You popped your head into the lion’s mouth—and somehow or other Cadminster played the _deus ex machina_, and got it out for you again.”

“The golf-house was a queer shanty, with a tarred roof,” said Mrs. Tollebranch retrospectively. “It held a bunker of coals, and stands for clubs, and a fireplace, and a folding luncheon-table, and camp-stools, and hampers. We used to lunch outside when it didn’t rain or snow, and inside when it did. Well, when Willibrand and Sir Roger Balcombe, Major Wharfling, the Guardsmen, and Cadminster were quite out of sight, Pontoise and I somehow found ourselves back at the golf-house. I was cold, and there was a fire there, and he looked so handsome and so miserable as he stood bare-headed by the door, waiting for me to enter, that——”

“The fly walked in. And then the spider——”

“He disappointed me, I will own,” said Clarice, with a little gulp. “After all his penitent protestations! I have never trusted men with agate-colored eyes since, and I never will. They have only one idea of women, and that is—the worst. But when I ordered him to let go my hands and get up from his knees, something in my face or voice seemed to tell him that I was really, really, in earnest, and he obeyed me, and moved suddenly away as I went to the door. The latch rattled as I lifted my hand, the door opened; Cadminster stood there, white from head to foot, for a sudden blizzard had swept down from the hills, and the links were four inches deep in snow. Oh! I shall never forget how tactful he was! ‘You have got here before the rest of us!’ he said, quite in a cheery, ordinary way. ‘Lucky for you! Tollebranch and the others are coming after me as hard as they can pelt, and we shall have to put out the “House Full” boards in a minute.’ And he began to rattle out the flaps of the luncheon-table, and get out things from the hamper, and then he looked at me, and said, as he lifted the lid from a great kettle of Irish stew that had been simmering over the fire, ‘Suppose you were to take the ladle and give this mess a bit of a stir, Mrs. Tollebranch! The fire will burn your face, I’m afraid, but what woman wouldn’t sacrifice her complexion in the cause of duty?’ Oh, Bettine, I could have blessed Cadminster as I seized that iron ladle, for seeming so natural and at ease. And then—almost before I had begun to stir the stew—while I was bending over the pot, Willibrand and the other men came in. What followed I can never forget!”

“Now we come to Cadminster’s great act of heroism?” interrogated Lady Millebrook.

“Willibrand came in stamping the snow off,” went on Mrs. Tollebranch. “So did all the other men. Willibrand sniffed the odor of the oniony stew with rapture. All the other men sniffed too.”

“The tastes of the male animal are extraordinarily simple,” observed Lady Millebrook, “in spite of the elaborate pretense carried on and kept up by him, of being a gourmand and a _connoisseur_. The coarsest dishes are those which appeal most irresistibly to his palate, and when I find it necessary for any length of time to chain Millebrook to his home, I order a succession of barbaric _plats_. By the time we have reached tripe and onions, served as an _entrée_, there is not a more domesticated husband breathing. But pray continue.”

“They all assembled round the stewpot,” went on Clarice, “and watched with absorbed interest the operation of turning its steaming contents into the dish that awaited them. Cadminster and Willibrand undertook this duty. Well——”

“Well?”

“Just as they heaved up the steaming cauldron, Willibrand called out, ‘Hulloa, what the deuce is that?’ His hands were occupied—he could not get at his eyeglass,” said Mrs. Tollebranch, “and so he peered and exclaimed, while I leaned over his shoulder and glanced into the stewpot. There, floating upon the surface of the muttony, oniony, carroty, potatoey mass, was”—she shuddered—“the letter Pontoise had given me with my candlestick on the preceding night!”

“My _dear_, how awful!” gasped Lady Millebrook.

“I had had it in my pocket,” explained Mrs. Tollebranch, “when I arrived at the golf-house. When I began to stir the stew I found the handle of the ladle too hot to be pleasant, and I pulled out my handkerchief to wrap round it.”

“Whisking Pontoise’s effusion out with it! How reckless not to have burned it!” cried Lady Millebrook.

“Imagine my feelings!” said Clarice. “There was the letter in the stewpot. As the contents were turned by Cadminster into the dish, I lost sight of the envelope beneath a greasy avalanche of fat mutton and vegetables. I remembered that Pontoise had referred to that unlucky kiss; I recalled Willibrand’s unfortunate tendency to outbursts of jealous rage without reason; I shuddered at the thought of the amount of reason that envelope contained. Self-control abandoned me—my brain spun round, I thought all lost ... and then—I caught Cadminster’s eye. There was encouragement in it—and hope. ‘Trust to me,’ it said, ‘I will save you!’”

“And——?”

“We sat down to table, and that stew was distributed, in large portions, to all those men. Cadminster assumed control of the ladle. He gravely asked me whether I cared about stew, and I gasped out something—what I don’t know, but I believe I said I didn’t. When the words were out, I knew that I had lost my only chance—that Cadminster had intended to help me to that fatal envelope. My fate hung in the balance as he filled plate after plate.... Who would get my letter in his gravy, amongst his vegetables? What would happen then? Would it be rendered illegible by grease, or would it not? I scarcely breathed, the suspense was so awful!” said Mrs. Tollebranch, clutching Lady Millebrook’s sleeve. “And then—Relief came. I grasped that man’s heroic motive—I understood the full nobility of his nature when——”

“When Cadminster helped himself to the letter! But, good heavens! you don’t mean to tell me,” cried Lady Millebrook, “that he _ate_ it?”

“He did, he did!” cried Mrs. Tollebranch, throwing herself into her friend’s sympathetic embrace. “Now you know why I call him a Bayard, and look upon him as my truest, noblest friend. Now you know....”

“Why he is a cadaverous dyspeptic! Of course. That document must have completely wrecked his constitution.”

“It has,” interrupted Clarice, with a little shower of tears.

“I shall never say again,” remarked Lady Millebrook, as she took an affectionate leave of her dearest friend but four, “that Romance and Chivalry have no existence in these modern times. To jump into a den full of lions and things to get a lady’s bracelet or save a lady’s glove may sound finer, though I am not sure. But to eat another man’s love-letter, envelope and all, to save a woman’s reputation ... there is the true ring of heroism about it, the glow that ennobles an ordinary, commonplace action into something superb. And, unless I mistake, Pontoise invariably penned his amatory effusions upon the very stiffest of parchment wove.... Darling, Lord Cadminster must dine with us.... Next Thursday; I will not take No!” ended Lady Millebrook; “and he may rely upon it that if either Jedbrook or Mills presume to offer him anything rich or oleaginous, either or both of them will be dismissed next day!”

RENOVATION

The hands of the Dresden clock upon the white travertine mantelshelf of Lady Sidonia’s boudoir pointed to the small hours. There was a discreet knock at the door. The maid, a pale, pretty young woman, who was wielding the hair-brush, laid the weapon down, and answered the knock.

“Who is it, Pauline?” asked Pauline’s mistress, with her eyes upon the mirror, which certainly framed a picture well worth looking at.

“Her Grace’s maid, my lady, asking whether you are too tired for a chat?”

“Say that I shall be delighted, and give me the blue Japanese kimono instead of this pink thing. Will my hair do? Because, if it needs no more brushing, you can go to bed.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

The door opened; trailing silks swept over the carpet....

“I can’t kiss you through all this brown-gold silk,” said the Duchess’s voice. “Stop, though! You shall have it on the top of your head.” And the kiss descended, light as a puff of thistle-down. “I kiss Cull there sometimes, when I want him to be in a good temper. He says it thrills right down to the tips of his toes.... You’re smiling! I guess you think the stock of thrills ought to be exhausted by this time—three years since we stood up together on the deck of Cluny F. Farradaile’s anchored airship, a posse of detectives from Blueberry Street guarding the ends of the fore and aft cables, where they were anchored three hundred feet below in the grounds of the N’York Æther Club, just to prevent any one of the dozens of Society girls who’d tried their level best to catch Cull and failed, from coming along with a bowie and cutting ’em.... You remember the pars. in all the papers, headed, ‘A Marriage Made in Heaven,’ I guess?”

“Of course, of course,” said the Duchess’s hostess and dearest friend.

“My invention,” said her Grace, “and mighty smart, I reckon. I’d always said I’d be married in a real original way—and I was. The only drawback to the affair was that she pitched—I mean the airship—and the Minister, and Cull, and Poppa, and the inventor—that’s Cluny F. Farradaile—were taken poorly before the close of the cer’mony. As for my sex, I’m proud to say that Amurrican women can rise superior even to air-sickness when Paris frocks are in question. But when they wound us down we were glad enough to get back to dry land. We found a representative of the Customs waiting for us, by the way; and if Poppa hadn’t gone to law about it, and proved that we were really fixed on to the States by our cables, we’d have had to plank down the duty on every jewel we’d got on. Say, pet, I’m perishing for a smoke!”

The Duchess was supplied with cigarettes. Pauline placed upon a little table the materials that “factorize,” as the Duchess would have said, towards the composition of cognac and soda, and glided out.

“Now I call that a real pretty, meek-looking creature,” said her Grace, blowing a little flight of smoke rings in the direction of the door. “If she’s as clever as she’s nice, Siddie, you’ve got a treasure!”

“She _is_ a good maid,” responded Lady Sidonia. “For one thing, she knows a great deal about the toilette, and on the subject of the complexion she’s really quite an authority. She knows something of massage, too—on the American system—for, though an English girl, she has lived in your country——”

“Oh!” said the Duchess, with an accent of interest. “Has she, indeed?”

“She’s reasonable, too,” went on the maid’s mistress; “and not a limpet in the way of sticking to one mode of doing the hair and refusing to learn any other. Then she can _wave_——”

“It is an accomplishment,” said the Duchess thoughtfully. “Now, my woman either frizzes you like a Fiji, or leaves you dank and straight like a mermaid. Why does hair never wave naturally—out of a novel? It’s a question for a Convention. And men—dear idiots!—are such believers in the reality of ripples. There! I’ve been implored over and over again for ‘just that little bit with the wave in it’ to keep in a locket—hundreds and hundreds of times. I guess Cull’s wiser now; but once you’ve seen your husband’s teeth in a tumbler, you’ve entered into a Conjugal Reciprocity Convention: ‘Believe in me—not as much of me as really belongs to me, but as much as you see—and I’ll return the compliment!’ Yes, I guess I’ll take some S. and B. It’s an English accomplishment, and I’ve mastered it thoroughly. We Amurricans rinse out with Apollinaris or ice-water, which isn’t half so comforting, especially in trouble.”

And the Duchess heaved a butterfly’s sigh, which scarcely stirred her filmy laces, and smoothed her prettiest eyebrow with one exquisite finger-tip.

“Trouble!” exclaimed her friend. “My dear, you’re the happiest of women. Don’t try to persuade me that you’ve got a silent sorrow!”

“Not exactly a silent one, because I’m going to confide in you; but still it is a sorrow.” The Duchess confided one hand to her dearest friend’s consoling clasp, and wiped away a tear with a minute handkerchief that would not have dried half a dozen. “Perhaps Amurrican blood is warmer than English; but, anyhow, our family affections are vurry much more strongly developed over in the States than yours are here. And I had a letter from Momma by yesterday’s mail that would have melted a heart of rock.” She dried a second tear. “If Momma lives till the end of Creation,” she said, “she will never, never get over it. And I don’t wonder!”

“Darling, if it would really do you any good to tell me——” breathed Lady Sidonia.

“I tell all my friends,” said the Duchess with a sigh; “and they’re invariably of one opinion—that Momma was cruelly victimized.”

“She is——”

“Call her forty, dear. It would be just cruel to say anything more. People call me lovely and all those things,” said the Duchess candidly, “and I allow they’re correct. Well, compared with what Momma was at my age, I’m real ordinary.”

“Oh!”

“Frozen fact! And you can grasp the idea that when—in spite of every effort—Momma began to lose her figure and her looks, she felt it!”

“Every woman must!”

“But the more she felt it, the more she seemed to expand.... Grief runs to fat, I do believe,” said the Duchess. “Of course, Poppa’s allowance to Momma being liber’l—even for a Corn King—she had unlimited funds at her disposal. To begin with, she rented a medical specialist.”

“Who dieted her?”

“My dear, for a woman accustomed to French cookery, and with the national predilection for cookies and candy, it must have been——”

“Torture!”

“One gluten biscuit and the eye of a mutton cutlet for dinner. Think of it! Beef-juice and dry toast for breakfast, ditto for supper. And she used to skip—a woman of that size, too—for hours! And her trainers came every morning at five o’clock, and they’d make her just put on a sweater and take her between them for a sharp trot round Central Park, just as if she’d been a gentleman jockey sworn to ride at so many stone for a Plate. And the number of stone Momma got off——”

“She _got_ them off?”

“I guess she got them off,” said the Duchess. “Poppa talked of having an elegant tombstone set up in Central Park to commemorate the greater portion of a wife buried there! then he gave up the notion. And then Momma made handsome presents to her specialist and her trainers, and contracted with the cleverest operator in N’York to make a face.”

“To make a face?” repeated Lady Sidonia.

“To make a face for Momma that matched her youthful figure,” said the Duchess composedly. “My! the time that man took in creating a surface to work on! She slept for a fortnight with her countenance covered with slices of raw veal.”

“Horrible!” shuddered the listener.

“And the massaging and steaming that went on!”

“I can imagine!”

“The foundations being properly laid——” continued the Duchess, lighting another cigarette.

Lady Sidonia went into a little uncontrollable shriek of laughter. “As though ... she had been a house!... Ha, ha, ha!”