Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

XXIV
THE MISCHIEF OF A CAD

The fierce light of publicity which nowadays beats upon society has greatly lessened the picturesqueness of life. There is no longer the dusk favorable to crime, and the man who wishes to be wicked, if careful of his social standing, is constantly obliged to be content with mere folly, or, if desperate, with meanness. It is true that from time to time there are still those, even in the most exclusive circles, who are guilty of acts genuinely criminal, but these are not, as a rule, regarded as being in good form. The days when the Borgias invited their enemies to dinner for the express purpose of poisoning them, or visited nobles rich in money or in beautiful wives and daughters with the amiable intent to rob them of these treasures, are over, apparently forever. In the sixteenth century – to name a time typical – success made an excuse more than adequate for any moral obliquity; and the result is that the age still serves thrillingly the romantic dramatist or novel-writer. To-day success is held more than to justify iniquity in politics or commerce, but the social world still keeps up some pretext of not approving. There is in the best society really a good deal of hesitation about inviting to dinner a man who has murdered his grandmother or run away with the wife of his friend. Society is of course not too austere in this respect; it strives to be reasonable, and it recognizes the principle that every transaction is to be judged by the laws of its own class. In the financial world, for instance, conscience is regulated by the stock market, and society assumes that if a crime has been committed for the sake of money its culpability depends chiefly upon the smallness of the amount actually secured. Conservative minds, however, still object to the social recognition of a man who has notoriously and scandalously broken the commandments. He who has not the skill or the good taste to display the fruits of his wickedness without allowing the process by which they were obtained to be known, is looked at askance by these prudish souls. In all this state of things is great loss to the romancer, and not a little disadvantage to bold and adventurous spirits. Were the latter but allowed the freedom which was enjoyed by their forerunners of the sixteenth century, they would do much to relieve the tedium under which to-day the best society languishes.

This tendency of the age toward the suppression of violent and romantic transgressions in good society was undoubtedly largely responsible for the course taken by Sibley Langdon. Foiled in his plan of blackmailing Mrs. Neligage into being his companion on a European tour, he attempted revenge in a way so petty that even the modern novelist, who stops at nothing, would have regarded the thing as beneath invention.

Mr. Langdon had sent Mrs. Neligage her canceled note, with a floridly worded epistle declaring that its real value, though paid, was lost to him, since it lay in her signature and not in the money which the document represented. This being done, he had called once or twice, but the ignominy of living at the top of a speaking-tube carries with it the advantage of power to escape unwelcome callers, and he never found Mrs. Neligage at home. When they met in society Mrs. Neligage treated him with exactly the right shade of coolness. She did not give rise to any gossip. The infallible intuition of her fellow women easily discovered, of course, that there was an end of the old intimacy between the widow and Mr. Langdon, but nobody had the satisfaction of being able to perceive anything of the nature of a quarrel.

They met one evening at a dinner given by Mrs. Chauncy Wilson. The dinner was not large. There were Mr. and Mrs. Frostwinch, Mrs. Neligage, Alice Endicott, Count Shimbowski, and Mr. Langdon. The company was somewhat oddly assorted, but everybody understood that Mrs. Wilson did as she pleased, leaving social considerations to take care of themselves. She had promised Miss Wentstile, who still clung to the idea of marrying Alice to the Count, that she would ask the pair to dinner; and having done so, she selected her other guests by some principle of choice known only to herself.

The dinner passed off without especial incident. The Count took in Alice, and was by her treated with a cool ease which showed that she had come to regard him as of no consequence whatever. She chatted with him pleasantly enough at the proper intervals, but more of her attention was given to Mr. Frostwinch, her neighbor on the other side. She would never talk with the Count in French, although she spoke that tongue with ease, and his wooing, such as it was, had to be carried on in his joint-broken English. The engagement of May Calthorpe and Dick Fairfield, just announced, and the appearance of "Love in a Cloud" with the author's name on the title-page, were the chief subjects of conversation. The company were seated at a round table, so that the talk was for the most part general, and each person had something to add to the little ball of silken-fibred gossip as it rolled about. Mr. Frostwinch was May's guardian, and a man of ideas too old-fashioned to discuss his ward or her affairs in any but the most general way; yet even he did now and then add a word or a hint.

"They say," Mrs. Wilson observed, "that there's some kind of a romantic story behind the engagement. Mrs. Neligage, you ought to know – is it true that Richard Fairfield got Jack to go and propose for him?"

"If he did," was the answer, "neither you nor I will ever know it from Jack. He's the worst to get anything out of that I ever knew. I think he has some sort of a trap-door in his memory to drop things through when he doesn't want to tell them. I believe he contrives to forget them himself."

"You can't conceive of his holding them if he did remember them, I suppose," chuckled Dr. Wilson.

"Of course he couldn't. No mortal could."

"That's as bad as my husband," observed Mrs. Frostwinch, with a billowy motion of her neck, a movement characteristic and perhaps the result of unconscious cerebration induced by a secret knowledge that her neck was too long. "I tried to get out of him what Mr. Fairfield said when he came to see him about May; and I give you my word that after I'd worn myself to shreds trying to beguile him, I was no wiser than before."

"I tell you so entirely all my own secrets, Anna," her husband answered, "that you might let me keep those of other people."

"Indeed, I can't help your keeping them," was her reply. "That's what I complain of. If I only had a choice in the matter, I shouldn't mind."

"If Jack Neligage is in the way of proposing," Langdon observed in his deliberate manner, "I should think he'd do it for himself."

"Oh, bless you," Mrs. Neligage responded quickly, "Jack can't afford to marry. I've brought him up better than to suppose he could."

"Happy the man that has so wise a mother," was Langdon's comment.

"If you don't believe in marriages without money, Mrs. Neligage," asked Mrs. Wilson, "what do you think of Ethel Mott and Thayer Kent?"

"Just think of their marrying on nothing, and going out to live on a cattle ranch," put in Mrs. Frostwinch. "I wonder if Ethel will have to milk?"

Dr. Wilson gave a laugh full of amusement.

"They don't milk on cattle ranches," he corrected. "She may have to mount a horse and help at a round-up, though."

"Well, if she likes that kind of a burial," Mrs. Neligage said, "it's her own affair, I suppose. I'd rather be cremated."

"Oh, it isn't as bad as that," Mr. Frostwinch observed genially. "They'll have a piano, and that means some sort of civilization."

"I suppose she'll play the ranz des vaches on the piano," Mrs. Wilson laughed.

"Of course it's madness," Langdon observed, "but they'll like it for a while. I can't understand, though, how Miss Mott can be so foolish. I always supposed she was rather a sensible girl."

"Does this prove that she isn't?" asked Alice.

"Don't you think a girl that leaves civilization, and goes to live in the wilderness just to follow a man, shows a lack of cleverness?"

The seriousness of the tone in which Alice had asked her question had drawn all eyes in her direction, and it might easily be that the knowledge of the interest which she was supposed to have in penniless Jack Neligage would in any case have given to her words especial mark.

"That depends on what life is for," Alice answered now, in her low, even voice. "If she is happier with Thayer Kent on a cattle ranch than she would be anywhere else without him, I think she shows the best kind of sense."

"But think what a stupid life she'll lead," Langdon persisted. "She doesn't know what she's giving up."

"Eet ees très romanesque," declared the Count, "but eet weel to be triste. Weell she truthfully ride de cow?"

Politely veiled laughter greeted this sally, except from Dr. Wilson, who burst into an open guffaw.

"She'll be worth seeing if she does!" he ejaculated.

Mrs. Frostwinch bent toward Alice with undulating neck.

"You are romantic, of course, Alice," she remarked, "and you look at it like a girl. It's very charming to be above matter-of-fact considerations; but when the edge is worn off – "

She sighed, and shook her head as if she were deeply versed in all the misfortunes resulting from an impecunious match; her manner being, of course, the more effective from the fact that everybody knew that she had never been able to spend her income.

"But what is life for?" Alice said with heightened color. "If people are happy together, I don't believe that other things matter so much."

"For my part," Mrs. Wilson declared, "I think it will be stunning! I wish I were going out to live on a ranch myself, and ride a cow, as the Count says. Chauncy, why don't we buy a ranch? Think how I'd look on cow-back!"

She gave the signal to rise, and the ladies departed to the drawing-room, where they talked of many things and of nothing until the gentlemen appeared. Mr. Langdon placed himself so that he faced Mrs. Neligage across the little circle in which the company chanced to arrange itself.

"We've been talking of adventures," he said, "and Mr. Frostwinch says that nobody has any nowadays."

"I only said that they were uncommon," corrected Mr. Frostwinch. "Of course men do have them now and then, but not very often."

"Men! Yes, they have them," Mrs. Wilson declared; "but there's no chance nowadays for us poor women. We never get within sight of anything out of the common."

"You're enough out of the common to do without it, Elsie," laughed her husband.

"Madame Weelson ees an adventure eetself," the Count put in gallantly.

Mr. Langdon raised his head deliberately, and looked over to Mrs. Neligage.

"You could tell them differently, Mrs. Neligage," he said. "Your experience at Monte Carlo, now; that was far enough out of the common."

Her color went suddenly, but she met his eyes firmly enough.

"My adventures?" she returned. "I never had an adventure. I'm too commonplace a person for that."

"You don't do yourself justice," Langdon rejoined. "You haven't any idea how picturesque you were that night."

Telepathy may or may not be established on a scientific basis, but it is certain that there exists some occult power in virtue of which intelligence spreads without tangible means of communication. There was nothing in the light, even tones of Langdon to convey more intimation than did his words that mischief was afoot, yet over the group in Mrs. Wilson's drawing-room came an air of intentness, of alert suspense. No observer could have failed to perceive the general feeling, the perception that Langdon was preparing for some unusual stroke. The atmosphere grew electric. Mr. Frostwinch and his wife became a shade more grave than was their wont. They were both rather proper folk, and proper people are obliged to be continually watching for indecorums, lest before they are aware their propriety have its fine bloom brushed away. The Count moved uneasily in his chair. The unpleasant doubts to which he had been exposed as to how his own past would affect a Boston public might have made him the more sympathetic with Mrs. Neligage, and the fact that he had seen her at the tables at Monte Carlo could hardly fail to add for him a peculiar vividness to Langdon's words. Doctor and Mrs. Wilson were both openly eager. Alice watched Mrs. Neligage intently, while the widow faced Langdon with growing pallor.

"Madame Neleegaze ees all teemes de peecture," declared Count Shimbowski gallantly. "When more one teeme eet ees de oder?"

"She was more picturesque that time than another," laughed Langdon, by some amazing perception getting at the Count's meaning. "I'm going to tell it, Mrs. Neligage, just to show what you are capable of. I never admired anything more than I did your pluck that night. It's nonsense to say that women have less grit than men."

"Less grit!" cried Mrs. Wilson. "They have a hundred times more. If men had the spunk of women or women had the strength of men – "

"Then amen to the world!" broke in her husband. "Don't interrupt. I want to hear Langdon's story."

Alice Endicott had thus far said nothing, but as Langdon smiled as if to himself, and parted his lips to begin, she stopped him.

"No," she said, "he shan't tell it. If it is Mrs. Neligage's adventure, she shall tell it herself."

Mrs. Neligage flashed a look of instant comprehension, of gratitude, to Alice, and the color came back into her cheeks. She had been half cowering before the possibility of what Langdon might be intending to say, but this chance of taking matters into her own hands recalled all her self-command. Her eyes brightened, and she lifted her head.

"It isn't much to tell," she began, "and it isn't at all to my credit."

"I protest," interpolated Langdon. "Of course she won't tell a story about herself for half its worth."

"Be quiet," Alice commanded.

The eyes of all had been turned toward Mrs. Neligage at her last words, but now everybody looked at Alice. It was not common to see her take this air of really meaning to dominate. In her manner was a faint hint of the commanding manner of her aunt, although without any trace of Miss Wentstile's arrogance. She was entirely cool and self-possessed, although her color was somewhat brighter than usual. The words that had been spoken were little, yet the hearer heard behind them the conflict between herself and Langdon.

"I am not to be put down so," he persisted. "I don't care much about telling that particular story, but I can't allow you to bully me so, Miss Endicott."

"Go on, Mrs. Neligage, please," Alice said, quite as if she were mistress of ceremonies, and entirely ignoring Langdon's words except for a faint smile toward him.

"My adventure, as Mr. Langdon is pleased to call it," Mrs. Neligage said, "is only a thing I'm ashamed of. He is trying to make me confess my sins in public, apparently. He came on me one night playing at Monte Carlo when I lost a lot of money. He declares he watched me an hour before I saw him, but as I didn't play more than half that time – "

"I told you she would spoil the story," interrupted Langdon, "I – "

"You shall not interrupt, Mr. Langdon," Alice said, as evenly and as commandingly as before.

"Oh, everybody he play at Monte Carlo," put in the Count. "Not to play, one have not been dere."

"I've played," Mrs. Wilson responded. "I think it's the greatest fun in the world. Did you win, Mrs. Neligage?"

"Win, my dear," returned the widow, who had recovered perfectly her self-command; "I lost all that I possessed and most that I didn't. I wonder I ever got out of the place. The truth is that I had to borrow from Mr. Langdon to tide me over till I could raise funds. Was that what you wanted to tell, Mr. Langdon? You were the real hero to lend it to me, for I might have gone to playing again, and lost that too."

Langdon was visibly disconcerted. To have the tables so turned that it seemed as if he were seeking a chance to exploit his own good deeds left him at the mercy of the widow. Mrs. Neligage had told in a way everything except the matter of the necklace, and no man with any pretense of being a gentleman could drag that in now. It might have been slid picturesquely into the original story, whether that were or were not Mr. Langdon's intention; but now it was too late.

"I don't see where the pluck came in," pronounced Dr. Wilson.

"Oh, I suppose that was the stupid way in which I kept on losing," Mrs. Neligage explained. "I call it perfect folly."

"Again I say that I knew she'd spoil the story," Langdon said with a smile.

The announcement of carriages, and the departure of the Frostwinches brought the talk to an end. When Mrs. Neligage had said good-night and was leaving the drawing-room, Langdon stood at the door.

"You got out of that well," he said.

She gave him a look which should have withered him.

"It is a brave man that tries to blacken a woman's name," she answered; and went on her way.

In the dressing-room was Alice, who had gone a moment before. Mrs. Neligage went up to her and took her by the arms.

"How did you know that I needed to have a plank thrown to me?" she demanded. "Did I show it so much?"

Alice flushed and smiled.

"If I must tell the truth," she answered, "you looked just as I saw Jack look once in a hard place."

Mrs. Neligage laughed, and kissed her.

"Then it was Jack's mother you wanted to help. You are an angel anyhow. I had really lost my head. The story was horrid, and I knew he'd tell it or hint it. It wasn't so bad," she added, as Alice half shrank back, "but that I'll tell it to you some time. Jack knows it."

XXV
THE WAKING OF A SPINSTER

Miss Wentstile was as accustomed to having her way as the sun is to rising. She had made up her mind that Alice was to marry Count Shimbowski, and what was more, she had made her intention perfectly plain to her friends. It is easily to be understood that her temper was a good deal tried when it became evident that she could not force her niece to yield. Miss Wentstile commanded, she remonstrated, she tried to carry her will with a high hand by assuming that Alice was betrothed, and she found herself in the end utterly foiled.

"Then you mean to disobey me entirely," she said to Alice one day.

"I have tried all my life to do what you wanted, Aunt Sarah," was the answer, "but this I can't do."

"You could do it if you chose."

Alice was silent; and to remain silent when one should offer some sort of a remark that may be disputed or found fault with or turned into ridicule is one of the most odious forms of insubordination.

"Why don't you speak?" demanded Miss Wentstile sharply. "Haven't I done enough for you to be able to get a civil answer out of you?"

"What is there for me to say more, Aunt Sarah?"

"You ought to say that you would not vex and disobey me any more," declared her Aunt. "Here I have told everybody that I should pass next summer at the Count's ancestral castle in Hungary, and how can I if you won't marry him?"

"You might marry him yourself."

Her aunt glared at her angrily, and emitted a most unladylike snort of contempt.

"You say that to be nasty," she retorted; "but I tell you, miss, that I've thought of that myself. I'm not sure I shan't marry him."

Alice regarded her in a silence which drew forth a fresh volley.

"I suppose you think that's absurd, do you? Why don't you say that I'm too old, and too ugly, and too ridiculous? Why don't you say it? I can see that you think it; and a nice thing it is to think, too."

"If you think it, Aunt Sarah," was the demure reply, "there's no need of my saying it."

"I think it? I don't think it! I'm pleased to know at last what you think of me, with your meek ways."

The scene was more violent than usually happened between aunt and niece, as it was the habit of Alice to bear in silence whatever rudeness it pleased Miss Wentstile to inflict. Not that the spinster was accustomed to be unkind to the girl. So long as there was no opposition to her will, Miss Wentstile was in her brusque way generous and not ill-natured. Now that her temper was tried to the extreme, her worst side made itself evident; and Alice was wise in attempting to escape. She rose from the place where she had been sewing, and prepared to leave the room.

"Go to your room by all means," the spinster said bitterly, regarding her with looks of marked disfavor. "All I have to say is this: if I do marry the Count, and you find yourself without a home, you'll have nobody but yourself to thank for it. I'm sure you've had your chance."

Whether the antique heart of the spinster had cherished the design of attempting to glide into the place in the Count's life left vacant by the refusal of her niece is a fact known only to her attendant angels, if she had any. Certain it is that within twenty-four hours she had summoned that nobleman to her august presence.

"Count," she said to him, "I can't express to you how distressed I am that my niece has put such a slight on you. She is absolutely determined not to marry."

The Count as usual shrugged his shoulders, and remarked in mangled English that in America there was no authority; and that in his country the girl would not have been asked whether she was determined to marry or not. Her determination would have made no difference.

"That is the way it should be here," Miss Wentstile observed with feeling; "but it isn't. The young people are brought up to have their own way, no matter what their elders wish."

"Then she weell not to marry wid me?" he asked.

"No, there's no hope of it. She is as obstinate as a rock."

There was a brief interval of silence in which the Count looked at Miss Wentstile and Miss Wentstile looked at the floor.

"Count Shimbowski," she said at last, raising her eyes, "of course it doesn't make much difference to you who it is you marry if you get the money."

He gave a smile half of deprecation, and spread out his hands.

"One Shimbowski for de dot marries," he acknowledged, "but eet ees not wid all weemeens. Dat ees not honor."

"Oh, of course I mean if your wife was a lady."

"Eet ees for de dot only one Shimbowski would wid all Amereecans marry," he returned with simple pride.

Miss Wentstile regarded him with a questioning look.

"I am older than my niece," she went on, "but my dot would be half a million."

The whole thing was so entirely a matter of business that perhaps it was not strange that she spoke with so little sign of emotion. Most women, it is true, would hardly come so near to proposing to a man without some frivolous airs of coquetry; but Miss Wentstile was a remarkable and exceptional woman, and her air was much that in which she might have talked of building a new house.

"Ees eet dat de wonderful Mees Wentsteele would marry wid me for all dat dot?"

Miss Wentstile took him up somewhat quickly.

"I don't say that I would, Count," she returned; "but since you've been treated so badly by my niece, I thought I would talk with you to see how the idea struck you."

"Oh, eet weell be heavenly sweet to know what we weell be mine for all dat dot," the Count asserted, bowing with his hand on his heart.

She smiled somewhat acidly, and yet not so forbiddingly as to daunt him.

"If we are yours what is there left for me?" she asked.

"Ah," the Count sighed, with a shake of his head, "dat Engleesh – "

"Never mind," she interrupted, "I understand that if I do marry you I get the name and not much else."

"But de name!" he cried with fervor. "De Shimbowski name! Oh, eet ees dat de name weell be older dan dere was any mans een dees country."

"I dare say that is true," she responded, smiling more pleasantly. "My sentiments for the name are warm enough."

"De sentiments of de esteemfully Mees Wentsteele ees proud for me," he declared, rising to bow. "Ees eet dat we weell marry wid me? Mees Wentsteele ees more detracteeve for me wid her dot dan Mees Endeecott. Eet ees mooch more detracteeve."

"Well," Miss Wentstile said, rising also, "I thought I would see how the idea struck you. I haven't made up my mind. My friends would say I was an old fool, but I can please myself, thank heaven."

The Count took her hand and bowed over it with all his courtly grace, kissing it respectfully.

"Ah," he told her, echoing her words with unfortunate precision, "one old fool ees so heavenly keend!"

Miss Wentstile started, but the innocence of his intention was evident, and she offered no correction. She bade him good-by with a beaming kindness, and for the rest of the day carried herself with the conscious pride of a woman who could be married if she would.

For the next few days there was about Miss Wentstile a new atmosphere. She snubbed her niece with an air of pride entirely different from her old manner. She dropped hints about there being likely to be a title in the family after all, and as there could be no mystery what she must mean she attempted mystification by seeming to know things about the Count and his family more magnificent than her niece had ever dreamed of. She sent to a school of languages for an instructor in Hungarian, and when none was to be found at once, she purchased a grammar, and ostentatiously studied it before Alice. Altogether she behaved as idiotically as possible, and whether she really intended to go to the extreme of marrying Count Shimbowski and endowing him with her fortune or not, she at least contrived to make her friends believe that she was prepared to go to any length in her absurdity.

The announcement of the engagement of Dick Fairfield and May Calthorpe, which was made at once, of course produced the usual round of congratulatory festivities. May, as it is the moral duty of every self-respecting Bostonian to be, was related to everybody who was socially anybody, and great were the number of dinners which celebrated her decision to marry. It was too late in the season for balls, but that was of little consequence when she and her betrothed could have dined in half a dozen places on the same night had the thing been physically possible.

The real purpose of offering multitudinous dinners to a couple newly engaged has never been fully made clear. On first thought it might seem as if kindness to young folk newly come to a knowledge of mutual love were best shown by letting them alone to enjoy the transports inevitable to their condition. Society has decided otherwise, and keeps them during the early days of their betrothal as constantly as possible in the public eye. Whether this custom is the result of a fear lest the lovers, if left to themselves, might too quickly exhaust their store of fondness, or of a desire to enhance for each the value of the other by a display of general appreciation, were not easy to decide. A cynic might suggest that older persons feel the wisdom of preventing the possibility of too much reflection, or that they give all publicity to the engagement as a means of lessening the chances of any failure of contract. More kindly disposed reasoners might maintain that these abundant festivities are but testimony to the truth of Emerson's declaration that "all the world loves a lover." Philosophy, in the mean time, leaning neither to cynicism on the one hand nor to over-optimism on the other, can see in these social functions at least the visible sign that society instinctively recognizes in the proposed union a contract really public, since while men and women love for themselves they marry for the state.

Alice Endicott and Jack Neligage were naturally asked to many of these dinners, and so it came about that they saw a good deal of each other during the next few weeks. Their recent disagreement at first bred a faint coolness between them, but Jack was too good-natured long to keep up even the pretense of malice, and Alice too forgiving to cherish anger. The need, too, of hiding from the public all unpleasantness would in any case have made it necessary for them to behave as usual, and it is one of the virtues of social conventions that the need of being outwardly civil is apt to blunt the edge of secret resentments. Of course a healthy and genuine hate may be nourished by the irksomeness of enforced suavity, but trifling pique dies a natural death under outward politeness. Alice and Jack were not only soon as friendly as ever, but either from the reaction following their slight misunderstanding or from the effect of the sentimental atmosphere which always surrounds an engaged couple, their attitude became more confidential and friendly than ever.

They sat side by side at a dinner in which the Harbingers were officially testifying their satisfaction in the newly announced engagement. Jack had been doing his duty to the lady on the other side, and turned his face to Alice.

"What is worrying you?" he asked, his voice a little lowered.

She looked at him with a smile.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked. "I was flattering myself that I'd been particularly frolicsome all the evening."

"You have; that's just it."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that you've had to try."

"You must have watched me pretty closely," she remarked, flushing a little, and lowering her glance.

"Oh, I know you so well that I don't need to; but to be sure I have kept my eyes on you."

She played with her fork as if thinking, while his look was fixed on her face.

"I didn't think I was so transparent," she said. "Do you suppose other people noticed me?"

"Oh, no," he responded. "You don't give me credit for my keenness of perception. But what's the row?"

"Nothing," was her answer, "only – Well, the truth is that I've had a talk with Aunt Sarah that wasn't very pleasant. Jack, I believe she's going to marry the Count."

"I'm glad of it," was his laughing response. "He'll make her pay for all the nasty things she has done. He'll be a sort of public avenger."

Alice became graver. She shook her head, smiling, but with evident disapproval.

"You promised me long ago that you wouldn't say things against Aunt Sarah."

"No, I never did," he declared impenitently. "I only said that I'd try not to say things to you about her that would hurt your feelings."