Chapter II

His Excellency the United States Ambassador was a sheep-faced old gentleman who became hopelessly mixed up in some railroads and escaped with impaired health and most of the stock. Wheat hit him hard a year later, and oil nearly ended him, but he became entangled in trolley wires and put them underground to save future annoyance to his legs. This naturally set him on his feet again; and he went to Washington where there is honour among—financiers, and where they practise statesmanship as she is taught. When his wife died and his daughter Amyce began to go to school, his future Excellency bobbed up and down in Congress with the caprice and abruptness of a bottled imp. The see-saw continued year after year; sometimes he had a bill passed, sometimes he blocked a bill; now and then he got other people’s money, now and then other people got his money; but it evened up in the end like dominoes—if you play long enough.

Then came the new administration, the stampede for office. Before his future Excellency made up his own mind, fate shoved him into the front rank, and he asked for the French mission and the odds were against him. The President weighed him—the scales of the mint are exquisitely adjusted—and, separating the dross from the pure metal, the mind from the material, the President found him available for the diplomatic mission and told him he might have it. So he took it and went.

His Excellency’s income permitted him to keep up his establishment in the rue de Sfax. Two neat attachés, military and naval, played croquet with him; his first secretary read Ollendorf to him, his daughter played hostess on national holidays, and Massenet every morning from ten to twelve. From three to four she swung in a hammock in the garden, and read Henry James.

It was at that hour and under those circumstances that Clifford first met Amyce. He was permitting his Excellency to beat him at croquet on the lawn; he loathed the game with a loathing untranslatable. He sat on the butt-end of his mallet, watching his Excellency pattering about from stake to stake, adjusting the balls with a chuckle, stooping to peer through wickets, calculating angles and split-shots.

His Excellency’s heavy, sheep-like face with its silvery tuft of side-whiskers was ruddy and minutely shaved. Always scrupulously dressed, he had the air of having been neatly attired by a doll’s costumer, then varnished. There was something about the old gentleman that recalled the irresponsible inertia of a manikin,—something, when he moved that resembled the automatic trot of a marionnette. He left an impression of not being responsible for either his clothes or his movements, but mutely referred you to his maker for guarantees that both were O. K. His hair was the glossy white that red hair frequently changes to; his eyes were pale hazel, lambent and vitreous as the eyes of a middle-aged sheep. His upper lip, also, seemed as though it were intended for cropping short grass.

He had taken to Clifford at once; he introduced him to the naval attaché and to the military attaché, to the first, second, and third secretaries of the Embassy. He did this partly because Clifford came armed with three good letters of introduction, partly because the United Service began to fight shy of the croquet-ground, and a substitute was necessary.

He did not, however, present him to his daughter; in fact Clifford had never even caught a glimpse of her, although on two occasions he had been bidden to dine at the Embassy. Stanley of the cavalry, the military attaché, had been pumped by Clifford without result. All he learned was that the young lady sometimes dined by herself.

However, that afternoon in early May, as Clifford sat glum and impatient on his mallet, and the Ambassador trotted about mauling the lawn, a young lady suddenly appeared under the trees by the hammock, glanced nonchalantly at his Excellency, languidly surveyed Clifford, and then, placing a hammock-pillow where it would do the most good, sat down in the hammock. It was gracefully done; she appeared to dissolve among a cloud of delicate draperies; her head indented the feather cushion; one small patent-leather toe glistened in the sunlight.

“She _is_ red-haired,” was Clifford’s first thought; the next was: “She is a beauty,—oh, my conscience!”

She was. Her eyes were those great tender grey eyes that must have been forgotten when Saint Anthony was tortured; her skin was snow and roses. But her hair, her splendid, glistening hair, heavy and red gold!—dazzling as sunlight on floss-silk!

“It’s your shot,” said his Excellency for the third time.

The Ambassador won the game; he proposed another and Clifford assented with a sickly smile. Inwardly he swore that he would be presented, willy-nilly, even though he had to drag his Excellency to the hammock.

“Confound him,” he thought; “have rumours of my reputation in the Quarter penetrated my country’s Embassy?”

They had not; yet, it was exactly because Clifford was an artist and inhabited the Latin Quarter that the Ambassador avoided taking him to the bosom of his family. Vague and dreadful stories had been afloat in the Embassy concerning the Quarter. His Excellency had read Trilby too. This may have weighed with him; he had that distrust of art and artists prevalent among Anglo-Saxons. He also had the Anglo-Saxon desire to explore the Quarter for him self, one day,—if all was true as rumour had it. Therefore Clifford was doubly welcome, for his croquet, and for what the future promised when his Excellency needed a companion to the veiled mysteries of the Rive Gauche. So, on the whole, Clifford was a good man to amuse him, but not at all the kind of man to amuse Amyce.

But Fate, busy, as usual, with other people’s business, began to meddle with the hammock cords where Amyce swung serenely reading Henry James.

Amyce rose just in time; there came a rapid unravelling of cords, and the collapsed hammock fell with a flop.

Flushed at the nearness of undignified disaster, Amyce shook out her fluffy skirts, Henry James tightly clasped in one hand, and looked appealingly at his Excellency.

The Ambassador started to rehang the hammock; Clifford said: “Permit me—”

“Not at all,” returned the Ambassador,—but that was where he collided with Fate.

Amyce smiled and looked relieved; Clifford rehung the hammock; Amyce thanked him. Then there was a pause during which both looked expectantly at his Excellency.

The Ambassador sullenly did his duty and took Clifford back to the lawn and beat him five games of croquet. But even this triumph was wet-blanketed, for Amyce, holding Henry James to her chin, came out to the lawn to “watch papa” and encourage “papa,” and condole with Clifford for his bad fortune. Only he knew how good that fortune had been—and, perhaps, she suspected it.

Amyce suggested tea on the lawn; his Excellency began to object, but Fate was there and took another fall out of his Excellency, for Amyce had already ordered it, and a servant appeared with tables and trays on the porch.

The Ambassador cropped thin slices of bread-and-butter; Amyce poured tea; Clifford, in a daze of love, saw everything through pink haze. From this dream he was abruptly roused by the advent of Captain Stanley of the cavalry. He saw Amyce feed the brute with tea; he heard her laugh softly when the Captain told some imbecile story or imitated Count Fantozzi. He measured the Captain, he accorded him six feet two, a pair of superb legs, and a cavalry moustache.

“Granted him cards and spades,” thought Clifford, “I’ll beat him yet. I know I can.”

He was an honest youth with no more vanity than you or I.