Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Meanwhile the agent of the Ten had yielded his place to a sharp-featured shabby-looking fellow in black, dressed somewhat like a lawyer’s clerk, who laid a grimy hand on Tony’s arm, and with many apologetic gestures steered him through the crowd to the doors of the church. The Count held him by the other arm, and in this fashion they emerged on the square, which now lay in darkness save for the many lights twinkling under the arcade and in the windows of the gaming-rooms above it.

Tony by this time had regained voice enough to declare that he would go where they pleased, but that he must first say a word to the mate of the Hepzibah, who had now been awaiting him some two hours or more at the landing-place.

The Count repeated this to Tony’s custodian, but the latter shook his head and rattled off a sharp denial.

“Impossible, sir,” said the Count. “I entreat you not to insist. Any resistance will tell against you in the end.”

Tony fell silent. With a rapid eye he was measuring his chances of escape. In wind and limb he was more than a mate for his captors, and boyhood’s ruses were not so far behind him but he felt himself equal to outwitting a dozen grown men; but he had the sense to see that at a cry the crowd would close in on him. Space was what he wanted: a clear ten yards, and he would have laughed at Doge and Council. But the throng was thick as glue, and he walked on submissively, keeping his eye alert for an opening. Suddenly the mob swerved aside after some new show. Tony’s fist shot out at the black fellow’s chest, and before the latter could right himself the young New Englander was showing a clean pair of heels to his escort. On he sped, cleaving the crowd like a flood-tide in Gloucester bay, diving under the first arch that caught his eye, dashing down a lane to an unlit water-way, and plunging across a narrow hump-back bridge which landed him in a black pocket between walls. But now his pursuers were at his back, reinforced by the yelping mob. The walls were too high to scale, and for all his courage Tony’s breath came short as he paced the masonry cage in which ill-luck had landed him. Suddenly a gate opened in one of the walls, and a slip of a servant wench looked out and beckoned him. There was no time to weigh chances. Tony dashed through the gate, his rescuer slammed and bolted it, and the two stood in a narrow paved well between high houses.

II

The servant picked up a lantern and signed to Tony to follow her. They climbed a squalid stairway of stone, felt their way along a corridor, and entered a tall vaulted room feebly lit by an oil-lamp hung from the painted ceiling. Tony discerned traces of former splendour in his surroundings, but he had no time to examine them, for a figure started up at his approach and in the dim light he recognized the girl who was the cause of all his troubles.

She sprang toward him with outstretched hands, but as he advanced her face changed and she shrank back abashed.

“This is a misunderstanding--a dreadful misunderstanding,” she cried out in her pretty broken English. “Oh, how does it happen that you are here?”

“Through no choice of my own, madam, I assure you!” retorted Tony, not over-pleased by his reception.

“But why--how--how did you make this unfortunate mistake?”

“Why, madam, if you’ll excuse my candour, I think the mistake was yours--”

“Mine?”

--“in sending me a letter--”

“YOU--a letter?”

--“by a simpleton of a lad, who must needs hand it to me under your father’s very nose--”

The girl broke in on him with a cry. “What! It was YOU who received my letter?” She swept round on the little maid-servant and submerged her under a flood of Venetian. The latter volleyed back in the same jargon, and as she did so, Tony’s astonished eye detected in her the doubleted page who had handed him the letter in Saint Mark’s.

“What!” he cried, “the lad was this girl in disguise?”

Polixena broke off with an irrepressible smile; but her face clouded instantly and she returned to the charge.

“This wicked, careless girl--she has ruined me, she will be my undoing! Oh, sir, how can I make you understand? The letter was not intended for you--it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old friend of my mother’s, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance--oh, how can I ever excuse myself to you?”

“No excuses are needed, madam,” said Tony, bowing; “though I am surprised, I own, that any one should mistake me for an ambassador.”

Here a wave of mirth again overran Polixena’s face. “Oh, sir, you must pardon my poor girl’s mistake. She heard you speaking English, and--and--I had told her to hand the letter to the handsomest foreigner in the church.” Tony bowed again, more profoundly. “The English Ambassador,” Polixena added simply, “is a very handsome man.”

“I wish, madam, I were a better proxy!”

She echoed his laugh, and then clapped her hands together with a look of anguish. “Fool that I am! How can I jest at such a moment? I am in dreadful trouble, and now perhaps I have brought trouble on you also-- Oh, my father! I hear my father coming!” She turned pale and leaned tremblingly upon the little servant.

Footsteps and loud voices were in fact heard outside, and a moment later the red-stockinged Senator stalked into the room attended by half-a-dozen of the magnificoes whom Tony had seen abroad in the square. At sight of him, all clapped hands to their swords and burst into furious outcries; and though their jargon was unintelligible to the young man, their tones and gestures made their meaning unpleasantly plain. The Senator, with a start of anger, first flung himself on the intruder; then, snatched back by his companions, turned wrathfully on his daughter, who, at his feet, with outstretched arms and streaming face, pleaded her cause with all the eloquence of young distress. Meanwhile the other nobles gesticulated vehemently among themselves, and one, a truculent-looking personage in ruff and Spanish cape, stalked apart, keeping a jealous eye on Tony. The latter was at his wit’s end how to comport himself, for the lovely Polixena’s tears had quite drowned her few words of English, and beyond guessing that the magnificoes meant him a mischief he had no notion what they would be at.

At this point, luckily, his friend Count Rialto suddenly broke in on the scene, and was at once assailed by all the tongues in the room. He pulled a long face at sight of Tony, but signed to the young man to be silent, and addressed himself earnestly to the Senator. The latter, at first, would not draw breath to hear him; but presently, sobering, he walked apart with the Count, and the two conversed together out of earshot.

“My dear sir,” said the Count, at length turning to Tony with a perturbed countenance, “it is as I feared, and you are fallen into a great misfortune.”

“A great misfortune! A great trap, I call it!” shouted Tony, whose blood, by this time, was boiling; but as he uttered the word the beautiful Polixena cast such a stricken look on him that he blushed up to the forehead.

“Be careful,” said the Count, in a low tone. “Though his Illustriousness does not speak your language, he understands a few words of it, and--”

“So much the better!” broke in Tony; “I hope he will understand me if I ask him in plain English what is his grievance against me.”

The Senator, at this, would have burst forth again; but the Count, stepping between, answered quickly: “His grievance against you is that you have been detected in secret correspondence with his daughter, the most noble Polixena Cador, the betrothed bride of this gentleman, the most illustrious Marquess Zanipolo--” and he waved a deferential hand at the frowning hidalgo of the cape and ruff.

“Sir,” said Tony, “if that is the extent of my offence, it lies with the young lady to set me free, since by her own avowal--” but here he stopped short, for, to his surprise, Polixena shot a terrified glance at him.

“Sir,” interposed the Count, “we are not accustomed in Venice to take shelter behind a lady’s reputation.”

“No more are we in Salem,” retorted Tony in a white heat. “I was merely about to remark that, by the young lady’s avowal, she has never seen me before.”

Polixena’s eyes signalled her gratitude, and he felt he would have died to defend her.

The Count translated his statement, and presently pursued: “His Illustriousness observes that, in that case, his daughter’s misconduct has been all the more reprehensible.”

“Her misconduct? Of what does he accuse her?”

“Of sending you, just now, in the church of Saint Mark’s, a letter which you were seen to read openly and thrust in your bosom. The incident was witnessed by his Illustriousness the Marquess Zanipolo, who, in consequence, has already repudiated his unhappy bride.”

Tony stared contemptuously at the black Marquess. “If his Illustriousness is so lacking in gallantry as to repudiate a lady on so trivial a pretext, it is he and not I who should be the object of her father’s resentment.”

“That, my dear young gentleman, is hardly for you to decide. Your only excuse being your ignorance of our customs, it is scarcely for you to advise us how to behave in matters of punctilio.”

It seemed to Tony as though the Count were going over to his enemies, and the thought sharpened his retort.

“I had supposed,” said he, “that men of sense had much the same behaviour in all countries, and that, here as elsewhere, a gentleman would be taken at his word. I solemnly affirm that the letter I was seen to read reflects in no way on the honour of this young lady, and has in fact nothing to do with what you suppose.”

As he had himself no notion what the letter was about, this was as far as he dared commit himself.

There was another brief consultation in the opposing camp, and the Count then said:--“We all know, sir, that a gentleman is obliged to meet certain enquiries by a denial; but you have at your command the means of immediately clearing the lady. Will you show the letter to her father?”

There was a perceptible pause, during which Tony, while appearing to look straight before him, managed to deflect an interrogatory glance toward Polixena. Her reply was a faint negative motion, accompanied by unmistakable signs of apprehension.

“Poor girl!” he thought, “she is in a worse case than I imagined, and whatever happens I must keep her secret.”

He turned to the Senator with a deep bow. “I am not,” said he, “in the habit of showing my private correspondence to strangers.”

The Count interpreted these words, and Donna Polixena’s father, dashing his hand on his hilt, broke into furious invective, while the Marquess continued to nurse his outraged feelings aloof.

The Count shook his head funereally. “Alas, sir, it is as I feared. This is not the first time that youth and propinquity have led to fatal imprudence. But I need hardly, I suppose, point out the obligation incumbent upon you as a man of honour.”

Tony stared at him haughtily, with a look which was meant for the Marquess. “And what obligation is that?”

“To repair the wrong you have done--in other words, to marry the lady.”

Polixena at this burst into tears, and Tony said to himself: “Why in heaven does she not bid me show the letter?” Then he remembered that it had no superscription, and that the words it contained, supposing them to have been addressed to himself, were hardly of a nature to disarm suspicion. The sense of the girl’s grave plight effaced all thought of his own risk, but the Count’s last words struck him as so preposterous that he could not repress a smile.

“I cannot flatter myself,” said he, “that the lady would welcome this solution.”

The Count’s manner became increasingly ceremonious. “Such modesty,” he said, “becomes your youth and inexperience; but even if it were justified it would scarcely alter the case, as it is always assumed in this country that a young lady wishes to marry the man whom her father has selected.”

“But I understood just now,” Tony interposed, “that the gentleman yonder was in that enviable position.”

“So he was, till circumstances obliged him to waive the privilege in your favour.”

“He does me too much honour; but if a deep sense of my unworthiness obliges me to decline--”

“You are still,” interrupted the Count, “labouring under a misapprehension. Your choice in the matter is no more to be consulted than the lady’s. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is necessary that you should marry her within the hour.”

Tony, at this, for all his spirit, felt the blood run thin in his veins. He looked in silence at the threatening visages between himself and the door, stole a side-glance at the high barred windows of the apartment, and then turned to Polixena, who had fallen sobbing at her father’s feet.

“And if I refuse?” said he.

The Count made a significant gesture. “I am not so foolish as to threaten a man of your mettle. But perhaps you are unaware what the consequences would be to the lady.”

Polixena, at this, struggling to her feet, addressed a few impassioned words to the Count and her father; but the latter put her aside with an obdurate gesture.

The Count turned to Tony. “The lady herself pleads for you--at what cost you do not guess--but as you see it is vain. In an hour his Illustriousness’s chaplain will be here. Meanwhile his Illustriousness consents to leave you in the custody of your betrothed.”

He stepped back, and the other gentlemen, bowing with deep ceremony to Tony, stalked out one by one from the room. Tony heard the key turn in the lock, and found himself alone with Polixena.

III

The girl had sunk into a chair, her face hidden, a picture of shame and agony. So moving was the sight that Tony once again forgot his own extremity in the view of her distress. He went and kneeled beside her, drawing her hands from her face.

“Oh, don’t make me look at you!” she sobbed; but it was on his bosom that she hid from his gaze. He held her there a breathing-space, as he might have clasped a weeping child; then she drew back and put him gently from her.

“What humiliation!” she lamented.

“Do you think I blame you for what has happened?”

“Alas, was it not my foolish letter that brought you to this plight? And how nobly you defended me! How generous it was of you not to show the letter! If my father knew I had written to the Ambassador to save me from this dreadful marriage his anger against me would be even greater.”

“Ah--it was that you wrote for?” cried Tony with unaccountable relief.

“Of course--what else did you think?”

“But is it too late for the Ambassador to save you?”

“From YOU?” A smile flashed through her tears. “Alas, yes.” She drew back and hid her face again, as though overcome by a fresh wave of shame.

Tony glanced about him. “If I could wrench a bar out of that window--” he muttered.

“Impossible! The court is guarded. You are a prisoner, alas.--Oh, I must speak!” She sprang up and paced the room. “But indeed you can scarce think worse of me than you do already--”

“I think ill of you?”

“Alas, you must! To be unwilling to marry the man my father has chosen for me--”

“Such a beetle-browed lout! It would be a burning shame if you married him.”

“Ah, you come from a free country. Here a girl is allowed no choice.”

“It is infamous, I say--infamous!”

“No, no--I ought to have resigned myself, like so many others.”

“Resigned yourself to that brute! Impossible!”

“He has a dreadful name for violence--his gondolier has told my little maid such tales of him! But why do I talk of myself, when it is of you I should be thinking?”

“Of me, poor child?” cried Tony, losing his head.

“Yes, and how to save you--for I CAN save you! But every moment counts--and yet what I have to say is so dreadful.”

“Nothing from your lips could seem dreadful.”

“Ah, if he had had your way of speaking!”

“Well, now at least you are free of him,” said Tony, a little wildly; but at this she stood up and bent a grave look on him.

“No, I am not free,” she said; “but you are, if you will do as I tell you.”

Tony, at this, felt a sudden dizziness; as though, from a mad flight through clouds and darkness, he had dropped to safety again, and the fall had stunned him.

“What am I to do?” he said.

“Look away from me, or I can never tell you.”

He thought at first that this was a jest, but her eyes commanded him, and reluctantly he walked away and leaned in the embrasure of the window. She stood in the middle of the room, and as soon as his back was turned she began to speak in a quick monotonous voice, as though she were reciting a lesson.

“You must know that the Marquess Zanipolo, though a great noble, is not a rich man. True, he has large estates, but he is a desperate spendthrift and gambler, and would sell his soul for a round sum of ready money.--If you turn round I shall not go on!--He wrangled horribly with my father over my dowry--he wanted me to have more than either of my sisters, though one married a Procurator and the other a grandee of Spain. But my father is a gambler too--oh, such fortunes as are squandered over the arcade yonder! And so--and so--don’t turn, I implore you--oh, do you begin to see my meaning?”

She broke off sobbing, and it took all his strength to keep his eyes from her.

“Go on,” he said.

“Will you not understand? Oh, I would say anything to save you! You don’t know us Venetians--we’re all to be bought for a price. It is not only the brides who are marketable--sometimes the husbands sell themselves too. And they think you rich--my father does, and the others--I don’t know why, unless you have shown your money too freely--and the English are all rich, are they not? And--oh, oh--do you understand? Oh, I can’t bear your eyes!”

She dropped into a chair, her head on her arms, and Tony in a flash was at her side.

“My poor child, my poor Polixena!” he cried, and wept and clasped her.

“You ARE rich, are you not? You would promise them a ransom?” she persisted.

“To enable you to marry the Marquess?”

“To enable you to escape from this place. Oh, I hope I may never see your face again.” She fell to weeping once more, and he drew away and paced the floor in a fever.

Presently she sprang up with a fresh air of resolution, and pointed to a clock against the wall. “The hour is nearly over. It is quite true that my father is gone to fetch his chaplain. Oh, I implore you, be warned by me! There is no other way of escape.”

“And if I do as you say--?”

“You are safe! You are free! I stake my life on it.”

“And you--you are married to that villain?”

“But I shall have saved you. Tell me your name, that I may say it to myself when I am alone.”

“My name is Anthony. But you must not marry that fellow.”

“You forgive me, Anthony? You don’t think too badly of me?”

“I say you must not marry that fellow.”

She laid a trembling hand on his arm. “Time presses,” she adjured him, “and I warn you there is no other way.”

For a moment he had a vision of his mother, sitting very upright, on a Sunday evening, reading Dr. Tillotson’s sermons in the best parlour at Salem; then he swung round on the girl and caught both her hands in his. “Yes, there is,” he cried, “if you are willing. Polixena, let the priest come!”

She shrank back from him, white and radiant. “Oh, hush, be silent!” she said.

“I am no noble Marquess, and have no great estates,” he cried. “My father is a plain India merchant in the colony of Massachusetts--but if you--”

“Oh, hush, I say! I don’t know what your long words mean. But I bless you, bless you, bless you on my knees!” And she knelt before him, and fell to kissing his hands.

He drew her up to his breast and held her there.

“You are willing, Polixena?” he said.

“No, no!” She broke from him with outstretched hands. “I am not willing. You mistake me. I must marry the Marquess, I tell you!”

“On my money?” he taunted her; and her burning blush rebuked him.

“Yes, on your money,” she said sadly.

“Why? Because, much as you hate him, you hate me still more?”

She was silent.

“If you hate me, why do you sacrifice yourself for me?” he persisted.

“You torture me! And I tell you the hour is past.”

“Let it pass. I’ll not accept your sacrifice. I will not lift a finger to help another man to marry you.”

“Oh, madman, madman!” she murmured.

Tony, with crossed arms, faced her squarely, and she leaned against the wall a few feet off from him. Her breast throbbed under its lace and falbalas, and her eyes swam with terror and entreaty.

“Polixena, I love you!” he cried.

A blush swept over her throat and bosom, bathing her in light to the verge of her troubled brows.

“I love you! I love you!” he repeated.

And now she was on his breast again, and all their youth was in their lips. But her embrace was as fleeting as a bird’s poise and before he knew it he clasped empty air, and half the room was between them.

She was holding up a little coral charm and laughing. “I took it from your fob,” she said. “It is of no value, is it? And I shall not get any of the money, you know.”

She continued to laugh strangely, and the rouge burned like fire in her ashen face.

“What are you talking of?” he said.

“They never give me anything but the clothes I wear. And I shall never see you again, Anthony!” She gave him a dreadful look. “Oh, my poor boy, my poor love--‘I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, POLIXENA!’”

He thought she had turned light-headed, and advanced to her with soothing words; but she held him quietly at arm’s length, and as he gazed he read the truth in her face.

He fell back from her, and a sob broke from him as he bowed his head on his hands.

“Only, for God’s sake, have the money ready, or there may be foul play here,” she said.

As she spoke there was a great tramping of steps outside and a burst of voices on the threshold.

“It is all a lie,” she gasped out, “about my marriage, and the Marquess, and the Ambassador, and the Senator--but not, oh, not about your danger in this place--or about my love,” she breathed to him. And as the key rattled in the door she laid her lips on his brow.

The key rattled, and the door swung open--but the black-cassocked gentleman who stepped in, though a priest indeed, was no votary of idolatrous rites, but that sound orthodox divine, the Reverend Ozias Mounce, looking very much perturbed at his surroundings, and very much on the alert for the Scarlet Woman. He was supported, to his evident relief, by the captain of the Hepzibah B., and the procession was closed by an escort of stern-looking fellows in cocked hats and small-swords, who led between them Tony’s late friends the magnificoes, now as sorry a looking company as the law ever landed in her net.

The captain strode briskly into the room, uttering a grunt of satisfaction as he clapped eyes on Tony.

“So, Mr. Bracknell,” said he, “you have been seeing the Carnival with this pack of mummers, have you? And this is where your pleasuring has landed you? H’m--a pretty establishment, and a pretty lady at the head of it.” He glanced about the apartment and doffed his hat with mock ceremony to Polixena, who faced him like a princess.

“Why, my girl,” said he, amicably, “I think I saw you this morning in the square, on the arm of the Pantaloon yonder; and as for that Captain Spavent--” and he pointed a derisive finger at the Marquess--“I’ve watched him drive his bully’s trade under the arcade ever since I first dropped anchor in these waters. Well, well,” he continued, his indignation subsiding, “all’s fair in Carnival, I suppose, but this gentleman here is under sailing orders, and I fear we must break up your little party.”

At this Tony saw Count Rialto step forward, looking very small and explanatory, and uncovering obsequiously to the captain.

“I can assure you, sir,” said the Count in his best English, “that this incident is the result of an unfortunate misunderstanding, and if you will oblige us by dismissing these myrmidons, any of my friends here will be happy to offer satisfaction to Mr. Bracknell and his companions.”

Mr. Mounce shrank visibly at this, and the captain burst into a loud guffaw.

“Satisfaction?” says he. “Why, my cock, that’s very handsome of you, considering the rope’s at your throats. But we’ll not take advantage of your generosity, for I fear Mr. Bracknell has already trespassed on it too long. You pack of galley-slaves, you!” he spluttered suddenly, “decoying young innocents with that devil’s bait of yours--” His eye fell on Polixena, and his voice softened unaccountably. “Ah, well, we must all see the Carnival once, I suppose,” he said. “All’s well that ends well, as the fellow says in the play; and now, if you please, Mr. Bracknell, if you’ll take the reverend gentleman’s arm there, we’ll bid adieu to our hospitable entertainers, and right about face for the Hepzibah.”

The End of A Venetian Night’s Entertainment

XINGU

December, 1911

Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local distinction that the entertainment of distinguished strangers became one of its accepted functions; in recognition of which it duly extended to the celebrated “Osric Dane,” on the day of her arrival in Hillbridge, an invitation to be present at the next meeting.

The Club was to meet at Mrs. Ballinger’s. The other members, behind her back, were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede her rights in favor of Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive setting for the entertainment of celebrities; while, as Mrs. Leveret observed, there was always the picture-gallery to fall back on.

Mrs. Plinth made no secret of sharing this view. She had always regarded it as one of her obligations to entertain the Lunch Club’s distinguished guests. Mrs. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep footmen clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized staff of responsibilities. It was the more to be regretted that Mrs. Ballinger, whose obligations to society were bounded by the narrow scope of two parlour-maids, should have been so tenacious of the right to entertain Osric Dane.

The question of that lady’s reception had for a month past profoundly moved the members of the Lunch Club. It was not that they felt themselves unequal to the task, but that their sense of the opportunity plunged them into the agreeable uncertainty of the lady who weighs the alternatives of a well-stocked wardrobe. If such subsidiary members as Mrs. Leveret were fluttered by the thought of exchanging ideas with the author of “The Wings of Death,” no forebodings of the kind disturbed the conscious adequacy of Mrs. Plinth, Mrs. Ballinger and Miss Van Vluyck. “The Wings of Death” had, in fact, at Miss Van Vluyck’s suggestion, been chosen as the subject of discussion at the last club meeting, and each member had thus been enabled to express her own opinion or to appropriate whatever seemed most likely to be of use in the comments of the others. Mrs. Roby alone had abstained from profiting by the opportunity thus offered; but it was now openly recognised that, as a member of the Lunch Club, Mrs. Roby was a failure. “It all comes,” as Miss Van Vluyck put it, “of accepting a woman on a man’s estimation.” Mrs. Roby, returning to Hillbridge from a prolonged sojourn in exotic regions--the other ladies no longer took the trouble to remember where--had been emphatically commended by the distinguished biologist, Professor Foreland, as the most agreeable woman he had ever met; and the members of the Lunch Club, awed by an encomium that carried the weight of a diploma, and rashly assuming that the Professor’s social sympathies would follow the line of his scientific bent, had seized the chance of annexing a biological member. Their disillusionment was complete. At Miss Van Vluyck’s first off-hand mention of the pterodactyl Mrs. Roby had confusedly murmured: “I know so little about metres--” and after that painful betrayal of incompetence she had prudently withdrawn from farther participation in the mental gymnastics of the club.

“I suppose she flattered him,” Miss Van Vluyck summed up--“or else it’s the way she does her hair.”

The dimensions of Miss Van Vluyck’s dining-room having restricted the membership of the club to six, the non-conductiveness of one member was a serious obstacle to the exchange of ideas, and some wonder had already been expressed that Mrs. Roby should care to live, as it were, on the intellectual bounty of the others. This feeling was augmented by the discovery that she had not yet read “The Wings of Death.” She owned to having heard the name of Osric Dane; but that--incredible as it appeared--was the extent of her acquaintance with the celebrated novelist. The ladies could not conceal their surprise, but Mrs. Ballinger, whose pride in the club made her wish to put even Mrs. Roby in the best possible light, gently insinuated that, though she had not had time to acquaint herself with “The Wings of Death,” she must at least be familiar with its equally remarkable predecessor, “The Supreme Instant.”

Mrs. Roby wrinkled her sunny brows in a conscientious effort of memory, as a result of which she recalled that, oh, yes, she HAD seen the book at her brother’s, when she was staying with him in Brazil, and had even carried it off to read one day on a boating party; but they had all got to shying things at each other in the boat, and the book had gone overboard, so she had never had the chance--

The picture evoked by this anecdote did not advance Mrs. Roby’s credit with the club, and there was a painful pause, which was broken by Mrs. Plinth’s remarking: “I can understand that, with all your other pursuits, you should not find much time for reading; but I should have thought you might at least have GOT UP ‘The Wings of Death’ before Osric Dane’s arrival.”

Mrs. Roby took this rebuke good-humouredly. She had meant, she owned to glance through the book; but she had been so absorbed in a novel of Trollope’s that--

“No one reads Trollope now,” Mrs. Ballinger interrupted impatiently.

Mrs. Roby looked pained. “I’m only just beginning,” she confessed.

“And does he interest you?” Mrs. Plinth inquired.

“He amuses me.”

“Amusement,” said Mrs. Plinth sententiously, “is hardly what I look for in my choice of books.”

“Oh, certainly, ‘The Wings of Death’ is not amusing,” ventured Mrs. Leveret, whose manner of putting forth an opinion was like that of an obliging salesman with a variety of other styles to submit if his first selection does not suit.

“Was it MEANT to be?” enquired Mrs. Plinth, who was fond of asking questions that she permitted no one but herself to answer. “Assuredly not.”

“Assuredly not--that is what I was going to say,” assented Mrs. Leveret, hastily rolling up her opinion and reaching for another. “It was meant to--to elevate.”

Miss Van Vluyck adjusted her spectacles as though they were the black cap of condemnation. “I hardly see,” she interposed, “how a book steeped in the bitterest pessimism can be said to elevate, however much it may instruct.”

“I meant, of course, to instruct,” said Mrs. Leveret, flurried by the unexpected distinction between two terms which she had supposed to be synonymous. Mrs. Leveret’s enjoyment of the Lunch Club was frequently marred by such surprises; and not knowing her own value to the other ladies as a mirror for their mental complacency she was sometimes troubled by a doubt of her worthiness to join in their debates. It was only the fact of having a dull sister who thought her clever that saved her from a sense of hopeless inferiority.

“Do they get married in the end?” Mrs. Roby interposed.

“They--who?” the Lunch Club collectively exclaimed.

“Why, the girl and man. It’s a novel, isn’t it? I always think that’s the one thing that matters. If they’re parted it spoils my dinner.”

Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Ballinger exchanged scandalised glances, and the latter said: “I should hardly advise you to read ‘The Wings of Death,’ in that spirit. For my part, when there are so many books that one HAS to read, I wonder how any one can find time for those that are merely amusing.”

“The beautiful part of it,” Laura Glyde murmured, “is surely just this--that no one can tell HOW ‘The Wings of Death’ ends. Osric Dane, overcome by the dread significance of her own meaning, has mercifully veiled it--perhaps even from herself--as Apelles, in representing the sacrifice of Iphigenia, veiled the face of Agamemnon.”

“What’s that? Is it poetry?” whispered Mrs. Leveret nervously to Mrs. Plinth, who, disdaining a definite reply, said coldly: “You should look it up. I always make it a point to look things up.” Her tone added--“though I might easily have it done for me by the footman.”

“I was about to say,” Miss Van Vluyck resumed, “that it must always be a question whether a book CAN instruct unless it elevates.”

“Oh--” murmured Mrs. Leveret, now feeling herself hopelessly astray.

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Ballinger, scenting in Miss Van Vluyck’s tone a tendency to depreciate the coveted distinction of entertaining Osric Dane; “I don’t know that such a question can seriously be raised as to a book which has attracted more attention among thoughtful people than any novel since ‘Robert Elsmere.’”

“Oh, but don’t you see,” exclaimed Laura Glyde, “that it’s just the dark hopelessness of it all--the wonderful tone-scheme of black on black--that makes it such an artistic achievement? It reminded me so when I read it of Prince Rupert’s MANIÈRE NOIRE... the book is etched, not painted, yet one feels the colour values so intensely...”

“Who is HE?” Mrs. Leveret whispered to her neighbour. “Some one she’s met abroad?”

“The wonderful part of the book,” Mrs. Ballinger conceded, “is that it may be looked at from so many points of view. I hear that as a study of determinism Professor Lupton ranks it with ‘The Data of Ethics.’”

“I’m told that Osric Dane spent ten years in preparatory studies before beginning to write it,” said Mrs. Plinth. “She looks up everything--verifies everything. It has always been my principle, as you know. Nothing would induce me, now, to put aside a book before I’d finished it, just because I can buy as many more as I want.”

“And what do YOU think of ‘The Wings of Death’?” Mrs. Roby abruptly asked her.

It was the kind of question that might be termed out of order, and the ladies glanced at each other as though disclaiming any share in such a breach of discipline. They all knew that there was nothing Mrs. Plinth so much disliked as being asked her opinion of a book. Books were written to read; if one read them what more could be expected? To be questioned in detail regarding the contents of a volume seemed to her as great an outrage as being searched for smuggled laces at the Custom House. The club had always respected this idiosyncrasy of Mrs. Plinth’s. Such opinions as she had were imposing and substantial: her mind, like her house, was furnished with monumental “pieces” that were not meant to be suddenly disarranged; and it was one of the unwritten rules of the Lunch Club that, within her own province, each member’s habits of thought should be respected. The meeting therefore closed with an increased sense, on the part of the other ladies, of Mrs. Roby’s hopeless unfitness to be one of them.

II

Mrs. Leveret, on the eventful day, had arrived early at Mrs. Ballinger’s, her volume of Appropriate Allusions in her pocket.

It always flustered Mrs. Leveret to be late at the Lunch Club: she liked to collect her thoughts and gather a hint, as the others assembled, of the turn the conversation was likely to take. To-day, however, she felt herself completely at a loss; and even the familiar contact of Appropriate Allusions, which stuck into her as she sat down, failed to give her any reassurance. It was an admirable little volume, compiled to meet all the social emergencies; so that, whether on the occasion of Anniversaries, joyful or melancholy (as the classification ran), of Banquets, social or municipal, or of Baptisms, Church of England or sectarian, its student need never be at a loss for a pertinent reference. Mrs. Leveret, though she had for years devoutly conned its pages, valued it, however, rather for its moral support than for its practical services; for though in the privacy of her own room she commanded an army of quotations, these invariably deserted her at the critical moment, and the only line she retained--CANST THOU DRAW OUT LEVIATHAN WITH A HOOK?--was one she had never yet found the occasion to apply.

To-day she felt that even the complete mastery of the volume would hardly have insured her self-possession; for she thought it probable, even if she DID, in some miraculous way, remember an Allusion, it would be only to find that Osric Dane used a different volume (Mrs. Leveret was convinced that literary people always carried them), and would consequently not recognise her quotations.

Mrs. Leveret’s sense of being adrift was intensified by the appearance of Mrs. Ballinger’s drawing-room. To a careless eye its aspect was unchanged; but those acquainted with Mrs. Ballinger’s way of arranging her books would instantly have detected the marks of recent perturbation. Mrs. Ballinger’s province, as a member of the Lunch Club, was the Book of the Day. On that, whatever it was, from a novel to a treatise on experimental psychology, she was confidently, authoritatively “up.” What became of last year’s books, or last week’s even; what she did with the “subjects” she had previously professed with equal authority; no one had ever yet discovered. Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board. It was Mrs. Ballinger’s boast that she was “abreast with the Thought of the Day,” and her pride that this advanced position should be expressed by the books on her drawing-room table. These volumes, frequently renewed, and almost always damp from the press, bore names generally unfamiliar to Mrs. Leveret, and giving her, as she furtively scanned them, a disheartening glimpse of new fields of knowledge to be breathlessly traversed in Mrs. Ballinger’s wake. But to-day a number of maturer-looking volumes were adroitly mingled with the primeurs of the press--Karl Marx jostled Professor Bergson, and the “Confessions of St. Augustine” lay beside the last work on “Mendelism”; so that even to Mrs. Leveret’s fluttered perceptions it was clear that Mrs. Ballinger didn’t in the least know what Osric Dane was likely to talk about, and had taken measures to be prepared for anything. Mrs. Leveret felt like a passenger on an ocean steamer who is told that there is no immediate danger, but that she had better put on her life-belt.

It was a relief to be roused from these forebodings by Miss Van Vluyck’s arrival.

“Well, my dear,” the new-comer briskly asked her hostess, “what subjects are we to discuss to-day?”

Mrs. Ballinger was furtively replacing a volume of Wordsworth by a copy of Verlaine. “I hardly know,” she said somewhat nervously. “Perhaps we had better leave that to circumstances.”

“Circumstances?” said Miss Van Vluyck drily. “That means, I suppose, that Laura Glyde will take the floor as usual, and we shall be deluged with literature.”

Philanthropy and statistics were Miss Van Vluyck’s province, and she naturally resented any tendency to divert their guest’s attention from these topics.

Mrs. Plinth at this moment appeared.

“Literature?” she protested in a tone of remonstrance. “But this is perfectly unexpected. I understood we were to talk of Osric Dane’s novel.”

Mrs. Ballinger winced at the discrimination, but let it pass. “We can hardly make that our chief subject--at least not TOO intentionally,” she suggested. “Of course we can let our talk DRIFT in that direction; but we ought to have some other topic as an introduction, and that is what I wanted to consult you about. The fact is, we know so little of Osric Dane’s tastes and interests that it is difficult to make any special preparation.”

“It may be difficult,” said Mrs. Plinth with decision, “but it is absolutely necessary. I know what that happy-go-lucky principle leads to. As I told one of my nieces the other day, there are certain emergencies for which a lady should always be prepared. It’s in shocking taste to wear colours when one pays a visit of condolence, or a last year’s dress when there are reports that one’s husband is on the wrong side of the market; and so it is with conversation. All I ask is that I should know beforehand what is to be talked about; then I feel sure of being able to say the proper thing.”

“I quite agree with you,” Mrs. Ballinger anxiously assented; “but--”

And at that instant, heralded by the fluttered parlour-maid, Osric Dane appeared upon the threshold.

Mrs. Leveret told her sister afterward that she had known at a glance what was coming. She saw that Osric Dane was not going to meet them half way. That distinguished personage had indeed entered with an air of compulsion not calculated to promote the easy exercise of hospitality. She looked as though she were about to be photographed for a new edition of her books.

The desire to propitiate a divinity is generally in inverse ratio to its responsiveness, and the sense of discouragement produced by Osric Dane’s entrance visibly increased the Lunch Club’s eagerness to please her. Any lingering idea that she might consider herself under an obligation to her entertainers was at once dispelled by her manner: as Mrs. Leveret said afterward to her sister, she had a way of looking at you that made you feel as if there was something wrong with your hat. This evidence of greatness produced such an immediate impression on the ladies that a shudder of awe ran through them when Mrs. Roby, as their hostess led the great personage into the dining-room, turned back to whisper to the others: “What a brute she is!”

The hour about the table did not tend to correct this verdict. It was passed by Osric Dane in the silent deglutition of Mrs. Ballinger’s menu, and by the members of the Club in the emission of tentative platitudes which their guest seemed to swallow as perfunctorily as the successive courses of the luncheon.

Mrs. Ballinger’s deplorable delay in fixing a topic had thrown the Club into a mental disarray which increased with the return to the drawing-room, where the actual business of discussion was to open. Each lady waited for the other to speak; and there was a general shock of disappointment when their hostess opened the conversation by the painfully commonplace inquiry: “Is this your first visit to Hillbridge?”

Even Mrs. Leveret was conscious that this was a bad beginning; and a vague impulse of deprecation made Miss Glyde interject: “It is a very small place indeed.”

Mrs. Plinth bristled. “We have a great many representative people,” she said, in the tone of one who speaks for her order.

Osric Dane turned to her thoughtfully. “What do they represent?” she asked.

Mrs. Plinth’s constitutional dislike to being questioned was intensified by her sense of unpreparedness; and her reproachful glance passed the question on to Mrs. Ballinger.

“Why,” said that lady, glancing in turn at the other members, “as a community I hope it is not too much to say that we stand for culture.”

“For art--” Miss Glyde eagerly interjected.

“For art and literature,” Mrs. Ballinger emended.

“And for sociology, I trust,” snapped Miss Van Vluyck.

“We have a standard,” said Mrs. Plinth, feeling herself suddenly secure on the vast expanse of a generalisation: and Mrs. Leveret, thinking there must be room for more than one on so broad a statement, took courage to murmur: “Oh, certainly; we have a standard.”

“The object of our little club,” Mrs. Ballinger continued, “is to concentrate the highest tendencies of Hillbridge--to centralise and focus its complex intellectual effort.”

This was felt to be so happy that the ladies drew an almost audible breath of relief.

“We aspire,” the President went on, “to stand for what is highest in art, literature and ethics.”

Osric Dane again turned to her. “What ethics?” she asked.

A tremor of apprehension encircled the room. None of the ladies required any preparation to pronounce on a question of morals; but when they were called ethics it was different. The club, when fresh from the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” the “Reader’s Handbook” or Smith’s “Classical Dictionary,” could deal confidently with any subject; but when taken unawares it had been known to define agnosticism as a heresy of the Early Church and Professor Froude as a distinguished histologist; and such minor members as Mrs. Leveret still secretly regarded ethics as something vaguely pagan.

Even to Mrs. Ballinger, Osric Dane’s question was unsettling, and there was a general sense of gratitude when Laura Glyde leaned forward to say, with her most sympathetic accent: “You must excuse us, Mrs. Dane, for not being able, just at present, to talk of anything but ‘The Wings of Death.’”

“Yes,” said Miss Van Vluyck, with a sudden resolve to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. “We are so anxious to know the exact purpose you had in mind in writing your wonderful book.”

“You will find,” Mrs. Plinth interposed, “that we are not superficial readers.”

“We are eager to hear from you,” Miss Van Vluyck continued, “if the pessimistic tendency of the book is an expression of your own convictions or--”

“Or merely,” Miss Glyde hastily thrust in, “a sombre background brushed in to throw your figures into more vivid relief. ARE you not primarily plastic?”

“I have always maintained,” Mrs. Ballinger interposed, “that you represent the purely objective method--”

Osric Dane helped herself critically to coffee. “How do you define objective?” she then inquired.

There was a flurried pause before Laura Glyde intensely murmured: “In reading YOU we don’t define, we feel.”

Osric Dane smiled. “The cerebellum,” she remarked, “is not infrequently the seat of the literary emotions.” And she took a second lump of sugar.

The sting that this remark was vaguely felt to conceal was almost neutralised by the satisfaction of being addressed in such technical language.

“Ah, the cerebellum,” said Miss Van Vluyck complacently. “The Club took a course in psychology last winter.”

“Which psychology?” asked Osric Dane.

There was an agonising pause, during which each member of the Club secretly deplored the distressing inefficiency of the others. Only Mrs. Roby went on placidly sipping her chartreuse. At last Mrs. Ballinger said, with an attempt at a high tone: “Well, really, you know, it was last year that we took psychology, and this winter we have been so absorbed in--”

She broke off, nervously trying to recall some of the Club’s discussions; but her faculties seemed to be paralysed by the petrifying stare of Osric Dane. What HAD the club been absorbed in lately? Mrs. Ballinger, with a vague purpose of gaining time, repeated slowly: “We’ve been so intensely absorbed in--”

Mrs. Roby put down her liqueur glass and drew near the group with a smile.

“In Xingu?” she gently prompted.

A thrill ran through the other members. They exchanged confused glances, and then, with one accord, turned a gaze of mingled relief and interrogation on their unexpected rescuer. The expression of each denoted a different phase of the same emotion. Mrs. Plinth was the first to compose her features to an air of reassurance: after a moment’s hasty adjustment her look almost implied that it was she who had given the word to Mrs. Ballinger.

“Xingu, of course!” exclaimed the latter with her accustomed promptness, while Miss Van Vluyck and Laura Glyde seemed to be plumbing the depths of memory, and Mrs. Leveret, feeling apprehensively for Appropriate Allusions, was somehow reassured by the uncomfortable pressure of its bulk against her person.

Osric Dane’s change of countenance was no less striking than that of her entertainers. She too put down her coffee-cup, but with a look of distinct annoyance: she too wore, for a brief moment, what Mrs. Roby afterward described as the look of feeling for something in the back of her head; and before she could dissemble these momentary signs of weakness, Mrs. Roby, turning to her with a deferential smile, had said: “And we’ve been so hoping that to-day you would tell us just what you think of it.”

Osric Dane received the homage of the smile as a matter of course; but the accompanying question obviously embarrassed her, and it became clear to her observers that she was not quick at shifting her facial scenery. It was as though her countenance had so long been set in an expression of unchallenged superiority that the muscles had stiffened, and refused to obey her orders.

“Xingu--” she murmured, as if seeking in her turn to gain time.

Mrs. Roby continued to press her. “Knowing how engrossing the subject is, you will understand how it happens that the Club has let everything else go to the wall for the moment. Since we took up Xingu I might almost say--were it not for your books--that nothing else seems to us worth remembering.”

Osric Dane’s stern features were darkened rather than lit up by an uneasy smile. “I am glad to hear there is one exception,” she gave out between narrowed lips.

“Oh, of course,” Mrs. Roby said prettily; “but as you have shown us that--so very naturally!--you don’t care to talk about your own things, we really can’t let you off from telling us exactly what you think about Xingu; especially,” she added, with a persuasive smile, “as some people say that one of your last books was simply saturated with it.”

It was an IT, then--the assurance sped like fire through the parched minds of the other members. In their eagerness to gain the least little clue to Xingu they almost forgot the joy of assisting at the discomfiture of Mrs. Dane.

The latter reddened nervously under her antagonist’s direct assault. “May I ask,” she faltered out in an embarrassed tone, “to which of my books you refer?”

Mrs. Roby did not falter. “That’s just what I want you to tell us; because, though I was present, I didn’t actually take part.”

“Present at what?” Mrs. Dane took her up; and for an instant the trembling members of the Lunch Club thought that the champion Providence had raised up for them had lost a point. But Mrs. Roby explained herself gaily: “At the discussion, of course. And so we’re dreadfully anxious to know just how it was that you went into the Xingu.”