Chapter XXIV

“Oh--Murdock--how do you do?” said Melissa wretchedly. He had never before come up unannounced. Obviously the work of a ribald fate that he should do so now. If one could have turned him about with a hand on each of his gray tweed shoulders--thrust him forth ... locked him out ... ordered him away.... To have him see the Marchesa--who had hitherto only seen Granny!...

Melissa’s voice very nearly failed in her throat.

“Come in!” she muttered doggedly and Murdock followed her cheerfully over to the tea-table.

Over to the Marchesa, as well. Before whom, staring frankly, he stopped in his tracks. A hideous moment for Melissa. A moment of inarticulate torture. She had, however, as usual underestimated the Marchesa’s control of reserves.

“How do you do,” said the Marchesa graciously, putting out one heavily-ringed little hand ... “if Melissa isn’t going to present you--I shall speak for myself? I am Amalie Delano ... and who are _you_, young man?”

Unpredictable woman! Surely the mingled souls of Machiavelli and Ninon de l’Enclos returned in that frail frame. Very nearly, Melissa’s mouth fell open. She clenched her teeth just in time. Murdock was answering dazedly--without however any apparent question of that amazing introduction.

“Fleming’s my name ... sorry to look such an ass....”

“The noblest work of God--” murmured the Marchesa sweetly.

“I thought--for just a moment,” went on Murdock, conversationally floundering in the wake of a shock ... “you look such a lot like some one else ... Melissa knows ...” he cast an imploring glance at Melissa.

“Melissa!” said the Marchesa quickly--“this is too amusing! I see it all. Mr. Fleming has met Granny!”

Her air of triumph precluded any contradiction. She looked from Murdock to Melissa, took another brioche, regarded it sybaritically and bit into it with a good deal the zest of a royal Bengal biting into the jugular of a plump brown native.

“How utterly delicious!” continued the Marchesa, though whether she thus referred to situation or bun remained in doubt. She added calmly, looking Murdock full in the eyes and allowing a smile to widen the careful corners of the Cupid’s bow.... “Granny is my twin--you won’t believe it--of course!”

“Good Lord!” said Murdock simply. “No wonder!”

“Sit down, do!” said the Marchesa kindly. “Mayn’t he stay, Melissa?”

Melissa herself still standing, strangled helpless resentment and motioned Murdock to a chair. After which she sat down, facing the Marchesa upon the couch and busied among the tea-things hands that longed to shake that hyacinthine gray head from its shoulders.

“People never believe me when I tell them that Granny and I are twins,” the Marchesa, settling her neck-band and twitching out a curl above one ear, observed brightly--“because, in the first place it seems so absolutely incredible for me to be the twin of any one who is called Granny by half her acquaintances--and in the second place--really--she looks so much older than I do! I think I’m a saint to admit the relationship.”

“_Granny’s_ a saint!” said Murdock warmly.

“Lack of opportunity will make a saint of any woman,” returned the imperturbable Marchesa. “I don’t mean to reflect upon Mathilda--that’s her name, you know--but, nom d’un nom! She married--at nineteen--a man who should never have married at all--a congenital anchorite--he died a year later. A woman of any esprit would have married again--that is, unless, of course, she was a woman of too much esprit--well ... my poor Mathilda! She has spent her life in the service of others....”

“It’s written on her face,” said Murdock reverently.

“Yes--isn’t it!” cooed the Marchesa ... “those nasty little lines around the eyes and mouth! There’s simply nothing one can do about them without proper massage ... and Mathilda is too pure for massage--so there you are! I tell her she might have some consideration for me if not for herself--since we had the misfortune to come into the world together and it’s no good my looking less than my age--if she’s going to look more than hers ... it’s so easy to strike an average ... if you know anything at all about figures--or even if you don’t, and have a suspicious nature!”

She paused for breath and to ask for more tea.

Melissa sat dumbly raging. Any word of hers, beside being in the Marchesa’s present state, superfluous, might all too easily shatter the entire structure which that lady was so delicately uprearing. Granny must be drawn by the Marchesa’s hand--or none. No composite portrait would suffice. Beside which, Melissa saw to her incredulous disgust--could not help seeing--that Murdock was imperceptibly coming under the spell of that invincible small withered siren before him. He broke into a schoolboy chuckle as he handed her replenished cup.

“I’d certainly never take you for sisters!” he admitted.

“’Cre misere--I hope not!” cried the Marchesa airily. “As a man of the world, Mr. Fleming--as a man of the great world outside this very charming town of yours ...” (thus, at one stroke making Murdock a citizen of the universe and presenting him with the keys of New York) ... “I ask you--frankly--could two women be more unlike?”

“Ab-solutely!” said Murdock.

“It is not my fault--” said the Marchesa plaintively. “That my sister sees angels in men--where I pray only to see men among the angels.”

There was an eery and faintly unpleasant moment in which, blinking into nothingness across the rim of her tea-cup, she added, “One hasn’t much longer--to pray--perhaps.”

“Don’t say that!” offered Murdock clumsily.

The Marchesa set down her tea-cup--having drained it--and blew him a kiss. She reared a gallant and coquettish head. “I shall be seeing Mathilda in a day or so. Shall I tell her she has made a conquest? Poor soul--she doesn’t know the word!”

“Give her my love--if you please,” said Murdock boyishly. “And keep the--conquest--for yourself. I’ll bet you’d know what to do with it!”

“Melissa!” cried the Marchesa, and all her rings flashed in a fluttering gesture of both little hands, tremulous as ragged-winged butterflies in a garden at sunset ... “this is by all odds the most charming young man that I have met since--Leftenant Carmichael! Remember?”

“I remember,” said Melissa.

“He has the art of compliment,” said the Marchesa. She inquired of the pleased and flattered Murdock with caressing interest. “You were born in France--no?”

Murdock, who had been born in no stranger a place than Maryland, disclaimed France with natural reluctance.

“At least--” begged the Marchesa--“You were educated abroad?”

Murdock mentioned Harvard--without boasting.

“It is incredible!” sighed the Marchesa. “You have so much the manner ... that wonderful finesse....”

Maddening to see a man so buttered--and liking it--loving it--vulgarly speaking, lapping it up! Melissa, helpless as a painting on a wall, looked on in smiling silence--and longed to box Murdock’s ears. To scream in the Marchesa’s face.

No saint, Melissa--when it came to being crowded from the center of the stage by another woman--and that woman more than thirty years her senior!

“Come and see me!” said the Marchesa to Murdock upon leaving. She didn’t even ask Melissa to bring him. That word conquest had set every flower on her hat quivering. “I can give you tea from Japan--with a dash of--well, something Japan never knew....”

Mister Roderick’s tea!

Melissa would have drunk it on her knees. So far was hero worship bearing her. She wasn’t asked.

“You shall come another time, dear--I know how you hate these parties à trois!” said the Marchesa, smiling like all the felines in Cheshire.

When she had gone, Melissa sent Murdock away--without ceremony. She said she had a headache--if violent emotion react unfavorably upon one’s physical well-being--and the doctors tell us it does--perhaps she had.