Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

IX
THE MISCHIEF OF A GENTLEMAN

The Goddess of Misfortune sometimes capriciously takes a spite against an entire family, so that all of its members are at the same time involved in one misadventure or another. She shows a malicious impulse to wreak her disfavor on all of a connection at once, apparently from a knowledge that misery begets misery, and that nothing so completely fills to overflowing the cup of vexation as the finding that those from whom sympathy would naturally be expected are themselves in a condition to demand rather than to give it. She apparently amuses herself in mere wantonness of enjoyment of the sufferings of her victims when no one of them is in a condition to cheer the others. She illustrated this unamiable trait of her celestial character next day in her dealing with the Neligages, mother and son.

It was a beautiful spring day, not too warm in the unseasonable fashion which often makes a New England April so detestable, but with a fresh air full of exhilaration. Even in the city the cool, invigorating morning was refreshing. It provoked thoughts of springing grass and swelling buds, it suggested the marsh-marigolds preparing their gold down amid the roots of rushes, it teased the sense with vague yet disquieting desires to be in the open. The sun called to mind the amethystine foliage, half mist and half leaves, which was beginning to appear in the woods, as if trailing clouds had become entangled among the twig-set branches. The wind brought a spirit of daring, as if to-day one could do and not count the cost; as if adventures were the normal experience of man, and dreams might become tangible with the foliage which was condensing out of the spring air. It was one of those rare days which put the ideal to shame.

The windows of Mrs. Neligage's little parlor were open, and the morning air with all its provoking suggestions was floating in softly, as she rose to welcome a caller. He was not in the first springtime of life, yet suggested a season which was to spring what Indian summer is to autumn. A certain brisk jauntiness in face, dress, and manner might mean that he had by sheer determination remained far younger than his years. He had a hard, handsome face, with cleanly cut features, and side whiskers which were perhaps too long and flowing. His hair was somewhat touched with gray, but it was abundant, and curled attractively about his high, white forehead. His dress was perfection, and gave the impression that if he had moral scruples – about which his hard, bright eyes might raise a doubt – it would be in the direction of being always perfectly attired. His manner as he greeted Mrs. Neligage was carefully genial, yet the spring which was in the air seemed in his presence to be chilled by an untimely frost.

"How bright you are looking this morning, Louise," Mr. Sibley Langdon said, kissing her hand with an elaborate air of gallantry. "You are really the incarnation of the spring that is upon us."

She smiled languidly, drawing away her hand and moving to a seat.

"You know I am getting old enough to like to be told I am young, Sibley," was her answer. "Sit down, and tell me what has happened in the month that I've been in Washington."

"Nothing can happen while you are away," he responded, with a smile. "We only vegetate, and wait for your return. You don't mind if I smoke?"

"Certainly not. How is Mrs. Langdon?"

He drew out a cigarette-case of tortoise-shell and gold, helped himself to a cigarette, and lighted it before he answered.

"Mrs. Langdon is as usual," he replied. "She is as ill and as pious as ever."

"For which is she to be pitied the more?"

"Oh, I don't know that she is to be pitied for either," Langdon responded, in his crisp, well-bred voice. "Both her illness and her piety are in the nature of occupations to her. One must do something, you know."

Mrs. Neligage offered no reply to this, and for half a moment the caller smoked in silence.

"Tell me about yourself," he said. "You cruelly refuse to write to me, so that when you are away I am always in the dark as to what you are doing. I've no doubt you had all Washington at your feet."

"Oh, there were a few unimportant exceptions," Mrs. Neligage returned, her voice a little hard. "I don't think that if you went on now you'd find the capital draped in mourning over my departure."

Langdon knocked the ashes from his cigarette with the deliberation which marked all his movements. Then he looked at his hostess curiously.

"You don't seem to be in the best of spirits this morning, Louise," he said. "Has anything gone wrong?"

She looked at him with contracting brows, and ignored his question as she demanded abruptly: —

"What did you come to say to me?"

"To say to you, my dear? I came as usual to say how much I admire you, of course."

She made an impatient gesture.

"What did you come to say?" she repeated. "Do you think I don't know you well enough to see when you have some especial purpose in mind?"

Sibley Langdon laughed lightly, – a sort of inward, well-bred laugh, – and again with care trimmed his cigarette.

"You are a person of remarkable penetration, and it is evidently of no use to hope to get ahead of you. I really came for the pleasure of seeing you, but now that I am here I may as well mention that I have decided to go abroad almost at once."

"Ah," Mrs. Neligage commented. "Does Mrs. Langdon go with you?"

He laughed outright, as if the question struck him as unusually droll.

"You really cannot think me so selfish as to insist upon her risking her fragile health by an ocean voyage just for my pleasure."

"I suspected that you meant to go alone," she said dryly.

"But, my dear child," he answered with no change of manner, "I don't mean to go alone."

She changed color, but she did not pursue the subject. She took up from the table a little Japanese ivory carving, and began to examine it with close scrutiny.

"You do not ask whom I hope to take with me," Langdon said.

She looked at him firmly.

"I have no possible interest in knowing," she responded.

"You are far too modest, Louise. On the contrary you have the greatest. I had hoped – "

He half hesitated over the sentence, and she interrupted him by rising and moving to the open window.

"It is so nice to have the windows open again," she said. "I feel as if I were less alone when there is nothing between me and the world. That big fat policeman over there is a great friend of mine."

"We are all your slaves, you see," Langdon responded, rising languidly and joining her. "By the way, I had a letter from Count Marchetti the other day."

Mrs. Neligage flushed and paled, and into her eye came a dangerous sparkle. She moved away from him, and went back to her seat, leaving him to follow again. She did not look at him, but she spoke with a determined manner which showed that she was not cowed.

"Before I go to bed to-night, Sibley," she said, "I shall write to the Countess the whole story of her necklace. I was a fool not to do it before."

He smiled indulgently.

"Oh, did I call up that old unpleasantness?" he observed. "I really beg your pardon. But since you speak of it, what good would it do to write to her now? It would make no difference in facts, of course; and it wouldn't change things here at all."

She sprang up and turned upon him in a fury.

"Sibley Langdon," she cried, "you are a perfect fiend!"

He laughed and looked at her with admiration so evident that her eyes fell.

"You have told me that before, and you are so devilish handsome when you say it, Louise, that I can't resist the temptation sometimes of making you repeat it. Come, don't be cross. We are too wise if not too old to talk melodrama."

"I shall act melodrama if you keep on tormenting me! What did you come here for this morning? Say it, and have done."

"If you take it that way," returned he, "I came only to say good-morning."

His coolness was unshaken, and he smiled as charmingly as ever.

"Tell me," he remarked, flinging his cigarette end into the grate and taking out his case again, "did you see the Kanes in Washington?"

He lighted a fresh cigarette, and for half an hour talked of casual matters, the people of their set in Washington, the new buildings there, the decorations, and the political scandals. His manner became almost deferential, and Mrs. Neligage as they chatted lost gradually all trace of the excitement which she had shown. At length the talk came round to their neighbors at home.

"I met Count Shimbowski at the club the other day," Langdon remarked, "and he alluded to the old days at Monte Carlo almost with sentiment. It is certainly amusing to see him passed round among respectable Boston houses."

"He is respectable enough according to his standards," she responded. "It is funny, though, to see how much afraid he is that Miss Wentstile should know about his past history."

"I suppose there's no doubt he's to marry Alice Endicott, is there?"

"There is Alice herself," Mrs. Neligage answered. "I should call her a pretty big doubt."

"At any rate," her companion observed, "Jack can't marry her. Miss Wentstile would never give them a penny."

"I have never heard Jack say that he wished to marry her," Mrs. Neligage responded coolly. "You are quite right about Miss Wentstile, though; she regards Jack as the blackest sheep imaginable."

Langdon did not speak for a moment or two, and when he did break silence his manner was more decided than before.

"What line do you like best to cross by?" he asked.

"I have been on so many," she answered, "that I really can't tell."

"It is safe to say then that you like a fast boat."

She made no reply, and only played nervously with the clever carving in her hand, where little ivory rats were stealing grain with eternal motionless activity.

"Of course if you were going over this spring," Langdon said, "we should be likely to meet somewhere on the other side; Paris, very possibly. It is a pity that people gossip so, or we might go on the same steamer."

She looked him squarely in the face.

"I am not going abroad this summer," she said distinctly.

"Oh, my dear Louise," returned he half mockingly, half pleadingly, "you really can't mean that. Europe would be intolerably dull without you."

She looked up, pale to the eyes.

"My son would be dull here without me," she said.

"Oh, Jack," returned the other, shrugging his shoulders, "he'll get on very well. If you were going, you know, you might leave him something – "

She started to her feet with eyes blazing.

"You had better go," she said in a low voice. "I have endured a good deal from you, Sibley; and I've always known that the day would come when you'd insult me. It will be better for us both if you go."

He rose in his turn, as collected as ever.

"Insult you, my dear Louise? Why, I wouldn't hurt your feelings for anything in the world. I give you leave to repeat every word that I have said to any of your friends, – to Miss Wentstile, or Letty Harbinger, or to Jack – "

"If I repeated them to Jack," she interrupted him, "he'd break every bone in your body!"

"Would he? I doubt it. At any rate he would have to hear me first; and then – "

Mrs. Neligage, all her brightness quenched, her face old and miserable, threw out her hands in despairing supplication.

"Go!" she cried. "Go! Or I shall do something we'll both be sorry for! Go, or I'll call that policeman over there."

He laughed lightly, but he moved toward the door.

"Gad!" he ejaculated. "That would make a pretty item in the evening papers. Well, if you really wish it, I'll go; but I hope you'll think over what I've said, or rather think over what I haven't said, since you haven't seemed pleased with my words. I shall come at one to drive you to the County Club."

He bade her an elaborate good-morning, and went away, as collected, as handsome, as debonaire as ever; while Mrs. Neligage, the hard, bright little widow who had the reputation of being afraid of nothing and of having no feelings, broke down into a most unusual fit of crying.

X
THE BUSINESS OF A CLUBMAN

The first game of polo for the season at the County Club was to be played that Saturday. The unusually early spring had put the turf in condition, and the men had had more or less practice. It was too soon, of course, for a match, but there was to be a friendly set-to between the County Club team and a team from the Oracle Club. It was not much more than an excuse for bringing the members out, and for having a mild gala, with fresh spring toilettes and spring buoyancy to add to the zest of the day.

Amusement is a business which calls for a good deal of brains if it is to be carried on successfully. Of course only professionals can hope to succeed in a line so difficult, and in America there are few real professionals in the art of self-amusement. Most men spoil their chances of complete success by dallying more or less with work of one sort or another; and this is fatal. Only he who is sincere in putting amusement first, and to it sacrifices all other considerations, can hope for true preëminence in this calling. Jack Neligage was one of the few men in Boston entirely free from any weakness in the way of occupation beyond that of pleasure-seeking; and as a consequence he was one of the few who did it well.

All forms of fashionable play came easily and naturally to Jack, and in them all he bore a part with tolerable grace. He was sufficiently adept at tennis in its day; and when that had passed, he was equally adroit in golf and in curling; he could lead a german better than anybody else; nobody so well managed assemblies and devised novel surprises in the way of decorations; nobody else so well arranged coaching trips or so surely made the life of a house party. All these things were part of his profession as a pleasure-seeker, and they were all done with a quick and merry spirit which gave to them a charm not to be resisted.

It was on the polo-field, however, that Jack was at his best. No man who hopes to keep up with the fashions can afford to become too much interested in any single sport, for presently the fad will alter, and he must perforce abandon the old delights; but polo held its own very well, and it was evidently the thing in which Jack reveled most. He was the leading player not of his club only, but of all the clubs about. His stud of polo-ponies was selected with more care than has often gone to the making of a state constitution, for the matters that are really important must be attended to with zeal, while public politics may be expected more or less to take care of themselves. His friends wondered how Neligage contrived to get hold of ponies so valuable, or how he was able to keep so expensive an outfit after he had obtained it; but everybody was agreed that he had a most wonderful lot.

The question of how he managed might have been better understood by any one who had chanced to overhear a conversation between Jack and Dr. Wilson, which took place just before luncheon that day. Dr. Wilson was chairman of the board of managers of the club. He was a man who had come into the club chiefly as the husband of Mrs. Chauncy Wilson, a lady whose stud was one of the finest in the state, and he was somewhat looked down upon by the men of genuine old family. He was good-humored, however; shrewd if a little unrefined; and he had been rich long enough to carry the burden of his wife's enormous fortune without undue self-consequence. To-day it became his duty to talk to Jack on an unpleasant matter of business.

"Jack," he said, "I've got to pitch into you again."

"The same old thing, I suppose."

"Same old thing. Sometimes I've half a mind to resign from the club, so as to get rid of having to drub you fellows about your bills."

Jack gnawed his mustache, twisting his cigar in his fingers in a way that threatened to demolish it altogether.

"I've told you already that I can't do anything until – "

"Oh, I know it," Wilson broke in. "I'm satisfied, but the committee is getting scared. The finances of the club are in an awful mess; there's no denying that. Some of the men on the committee, you see, are afraid of being blamed for letting the credits run on so."

Jack did not take advantage of the pause which gave him an opportunity to speak, and the other went on again.

"I'm awfully sorry, old man; but there's got to be an end somewhere, and nobody's been given the rope that you have."

"I can resign, of course," Jack said shortly.

"Oh, dry up that sort of talk! Nobody'd listen to your resigning. Everybody wants you here, and we couldn't spare you from the polo team."

"But if I can't pay up, what else can I do?"

"But you can't resign in debt, man."

Jack laughed with savage amusement.

"What the devil am I to do? I can't stay, and I can't leave. That seems to be about the size of it."

Dr. Wilson looked at his companion keenly, and there was in his tone some hesitation as he replied.

"You might sell – "

"Sell my ponies!" broke in Neligage excitedly. "When I do I'll give up playing."

"Oh, nonsense! Don't be so infernally stubborn. Harbinger'll buy one, and I'll buy a couple, and the others it doesn't matter about. You've always had twice as many as you need."

"So you propose that I shouldn't have any."

"You could use them just the same."

Jack swore savagely.

"Thank you," he returned. "I may be a beggar, but I won't be a beat."

Wilson laughed with his oily, chuckling laugh.

"I don't see," he observed with characteristic brusqueness, "why it is any worse to take a favor from a friend that offers it than to get it out of a club that can't help itself."

Jack's cheeks flushed, and he began an angry reply. Then he restrained himself.

"I won't quarrel with you for doing your official duty, Wilson," he said stiffly. "I'll fix things somehow or get out."

"Oh, hang it, man," returned the doctor good-naturedly, "you mustn't talk of getting out. I'll lend you what you need."

"Thank you, but you know I can't pay you."

"That's no matter. Something will turn up, and you may pay me when you get ready."

"No; I'm deep enough in the mire as it is. I won't make it worse by borrowing. That's the only virtue that I ever had, – that I didn't sponge on my friends. I'm just as much obliged to you; but I can't do it."

They had been sitting in the smoking-room before the fireplace where a smouldering log or two took from the air its spring chill. Jack as he spoke flung the stub of his cigar into the ashes, and rose with an air of considering the conversation definitely ended. Wilson looked up at him, his golden-brown eyes more sober than usual.

"Of course it is just as you say, old man," he remarked; "but if you change your mind, you've only to let me know."

Jack moved off with a downcast air unusual to him, but by the time he had encountered two or three men who were about the club-house, and had exchanged with them a jest or a remark about the coming game, his face was as sunny as ever. People were now arriving rather rapidly, and soon the stylish trap of Sibley Langdon came bowling up the driveway in fine style, with Mrs. Neligage sitting beside the owner. Jack was on the front piazza when they drove up, and his mother waved her hand to him gayly.

"Gad, Jack," one of the men said, "your mother is a wonder. She looks younger than you do this minute."

"I don't think she is," Jack returned with a grin; "but you're right. She is a wonderfully young woman to be the mother of a great cub like me."

Not only in her looks did Mrs. Neligage give the impression of youth, but her movements and her unquenchable vivacity might put to a disadvantage half of the young girls. She tripped up the steps as lightly as a leaf blown by the wind, her trim figure swaying as lithely as a willow-shoot. As she came to Jack she said to him in a tone loud enough to be heard by all who were on the piazza: —

"Oh, Jack, come into the house a moment. I want to show you a letter."

She dropped a gay greeting here and there as she led the way, and in a moment they were alone inside the house. Mrs. Neligage turned instantly, with a face from which all gayety had vanished as the color of a ballet-dancer's cheek vanishes under the pall of a green light.

"Jack," she said hastily, "I am desperate. I am in the worst scrape I ever was in, in my life. Can you raise any money?"

He looked at her a moment in amazed silence; then he laughed roughly.

"Money?" he retorted. "I am all but turned out of the club to-day for want of it. This is probably my last game."

"You are not in earnest?" she demanded, pressing closer to him, and putting her hand on his arm. "You are not really going to leave the club?"

"What else can I do? The committee think it isn't possible to let things go any longer."

She looked into his face, her own hardening. She studied him with a keen glance, which he met firmly, yet with evident effort.

"Jack," she said at length, her voice lower, "there is only one way out of it. Last night you wouldn't listen to me; but you must now. You must marry May Calthorpe. If you were engaged to her it would be easy enough to raise money."

"You talk as if she were only waiting for me to say the word, and she'd rush into my arms."

"She will, she must, if you'll have her. You wouldn't take her for your own good, but you've got to do it for mine. You can't let me be ruined just through your obstinacy."

"Ruined? What under the canopy do you mean, mother? You are trying to scare me to make me go your way."

"I'm not, Jack; upon my word I'm not! I tell you I'm in an awful mess, and you must stand by me."

Jack turned away from her and walked toward the window; then he faced her again with a look which evidently questioned how far she was really in earnest. There had been occasions when Mrs. Neligage had used her histrionic powers to get the better of her son in some domestic discussion, and the price of such success is inevitably distrust. Now she faced him boldly, and met his look with a nod of perfect comprehension.

"Yes, I am telling you the truth, Jacky. There is nothing for it but for us both to go to smash if you won't take May."

"Take May," he echoed impatiently, "how you do keep saying that! How can I take her? She doesn't care a straw about me anyway, and I've no doubt she looks on me as one of the old fellows."

"She being eighteen and you twenty-five," his mother answered, smiling satirically. "But somebody is coming. I can't talk to you now; only this one thing I must say. Play into my hands as you can if you will, and you'll be engaged to May before the week's over."

He broke into a roar of laughter which had a sound of being as much nerves as amusement.

"Is this a comic opera?" he demanded.

"Yes, dear Jacky," his mother retorted, resuming her light manner, "that's just what it is. Don't you miss your cue."

She left him, and went gayly forward to greet the new-comers, ladies who had just driven up, and Jack followed her lead with a countenance from which disturbance and bewilderment had not entirely vanished.