on the hearthrug, also worked in Berlin wool, in front of a small,
mysterious and palely-twinkling fire. As he did so the foldin’ doors
opposite, communicating with the boudoir, slowly opened, and Miss Jane
Ann Shyne, spinster, aged seventy, saw before her the long-dead romance
of her youth, resuscitated from the ashes of—wherever long-dead romances
are deposited, dear fellers. There was a faint, feminine scream—quite
Early Victorian in character—a rustle of old-fashioned satins—an
outburst of joyous barks from Tottles, a strong, bewildering perfume of
lavender water (triple extract), and the old lady sank, literally sank,
upon the white Irish poplin vest that added style and _cachet_ to De
Peauchamp-Walmerdale’s uncommonly fetchin’ costume.
“What more, dear fellers? The couple were united yesterday at
St. Neot’s, Knightsbridge. Every penny is settled on De
Peauchamp-Walmerdale, and Lady Tewsminster says she can now die happy,
her dear boy being provided for, for life. She naturally claims the
honors of the affair! Quite so, but without the clothes where would the
man have been? D’ye foller me, dear fellers? In my poor opinion, the
principal factor in the making of De Peauchamp-Walmerdale’s fortune was
the Man Behind the Shears. Do you foller me? So glad! Thought you
would.”
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA
“‘Let us be consistent,’” said Lady Pomphrey, her three saddle-bag chins
quivering with emotion, “‘or let us die’—that is what I have always
said. Here is my only niece, Wendoleth Caer-Brydglingbury, goes—actually
goes—and marries a Liberal Member of Parliament in a red necktie—who
makes speeches in townhalls and tents, and things, to masses of people,
all about pulling down the House of Lords and abolishing the Peerage,
and absolutely declines to allow his wife to drop her title. To you—so
intimate a friend, don’t you know?—I may say in confidence I am
sickened. I cannot imagine what the world is coming to. I could wish to
die and leave it, were it not that Jane and Charlotte are still
unmarried, and I have promised to present three of the _sweetest_
girls—well-bred Americans of the best type, without a trace of accent—at
the first Drawing-room of the Winter Season. And the family diamonds are
being reset in view of Rustleton’s approaching marriage—a union
satisfactory from every point of view, especially a mother’s.”
Lady Pomphrey paused for breath, and the intimate friend-they had met at
Bad Smellstein a fortnight previously while taking little early morning
walks, and drinking little glasses of excessively nauseous waters
warranted to correct the most aristocratic acidity—the intimate friend
murmured something sympathetic.
“Of course, I might have _known_ one _could_ look to _you_ for
comprehension and all that sort of thing,” said Lady Pomphrey,
graciously bending her head, which was enveloped in a large mushroom hat
of blue straw tied down all round with a drab silk veil, and patting the
intimate friend upon the knee with the stick of her celebrated green
silk sunshade. “One of those delightful literary creatures-was it
Algernon Meredith or George Swinburne?—has termed friendship ‘the
marriage of true minds.’ Ever since the Hambridge-Osts introduced us—in
a thunderstorm—at the firework display in the Park in honor of the Grand
Duke’s birthday—and being Sunday, I will _own_ that the nerve-shattering
meteorological demonstrations that drove us to shelter in that extremely
leaky Chinese pavilion seemed to me but a judgment upon German
Sabbath-breakers—ours has been such a union. Cemented by your
helpfulness in the matter of sandbags for a rattling window—Lord
Pomphrey is completely impervious to all such nerve-shattering tortures,
and will sleep happily in his cabin on the yacht in Cowes Roads through
a Royal Naval Review—and your timely ministrations with soda-mint
lozenges when acute indigestion virtually prostrated me after a
homicidal _plat_ of eels with cranberry-sauce, of which I foolishly
partook at the _table d’hôte_. The mysteriousness of it allured me. I
wished for once to feel like a German. Now I feel assured their
extraordinary diet accounts for much that is abstruse and metaphysical
in the national character. For you cannot possibly be normal if you are
fed upon abnormal things. And I am grateful that Rustleton has never
shown himself in the least susceptible to the attractions of their
women. I know—almost quite intimately—a Grand Duchess who has brought up
every one of her nine young daughters upon red-cabbage soup, with
sausage-meat balls and dumplings; and somehow it is suggested in the
girls’ complexions and figures—_especially_ the dumplings.”
The friend tittered. Lady Pomphrey placed upon the seat beside her a
straw handbag containing a Tauchnitz edition of the last new Mudie
novel, a black fan, a large bottle of frightfully strong salts, several
spare pocket-handkerchiefs, several indelible-ink pencils, and a
quantity of obsolete railway tickets, and became more confidential than
ever.
“Had I been consulted by destiny when the arrangement of Rustleton’s
matrimonial future came _sur le tapis_ I could not—with my expiring
breath I would repeat this—_could not_ be more completely satisfied. It
began by his hating her.... She hit him on the nose with a diabolo in
June at Ranelagh, and, ‘Mother,’ he said afterwards to me—his upper lip
perfectly rigid with wounded dignity—‘I should have greatly preferred to
have been born in the days of “Coningsby,” or “Lothair.” Muscular young
women create in me a feeling of _positive aversion_!’ He found her
agitating even at that early stage of affairs? How subtle of you to
_see_ that!”
The flattered friend murmured an interrogation.
“Who is she?” repeated Lady Pomphrey. “But surely the newspapers?... You
suffer too acutely from dancing spots in the field of vision ever to
read when undergoing a cure?... Poor dear, I can feel for you. She is
the Hon. Céline Twissing—will be Baroness Twissing of Hopsacks in her
own right when old Lord Twissing dies. He insisted upon _that_
arrangement in the interests of his only child; when the intimation was
conveyed from a Certain Quarter that the Jubilee Baronetcy he already
enjoyed would be changed into a Peerage did he encourage the idea. Quite
a bluff old English type, and I must say in hospitality Imperial.
‘Twissing’s Bonded Breweries.’... A colossal fortune, and that _sweet_
girl is to inherit nearly the whole. Shall I say that my heart went out
to her from the first instant I saw her? As a mother yourself, you will
understand! Here comes the young woman with the tray for our glasses.
_Ja, bitte, Ich danke Sie...._ You _don’t_ mean to tell me the creature
is a Cockney?... How distressing! I may be fanciful, possibly I am,”
said Lady Pomphrey, “but I do prefer my surroundings to be congruous and
in tone. I’m sure you feel what I convey? You do? How nice that is!...”
The friend smiled and inaudibly murmured something.
“Of course,” cried Lady Pomphrey, “you’re on thorns to hear all about
Rustleton’s love-match. As I told you, Céline Twissing—the _Christian_
name has been Gallicized from Selina—and why on earth not? _Céline_ is
an expert at diabolo. It’s a knack, sending these little black and red
demons as high as a house, or into your neighbor’s eye; and she is a
talented as well as a charming girl. With three languages, several
sciences, a system of physical-culture exercises, golf, tennis, and the
laws of hockey at her finger-ends, she would have gone far in these days
of violent recreations and brusque manners, even without a _dot_.
Masculine? Oh _dear no_! Perhaps deficient in reverence for what _we_
were taught to believe in as the superior sex. Perhaps lacking in
feminine _finesse_. I _have_ heard it said that the girl of the
twentieth century cannot cajole, and is ignorant how to be alluring.
Perhaps it is a pity. The woman who has a gift of managing difficult
people, smoothing absurd people down, and being perfectly amiable to the
absolutely objectionable is practically priceless as a greaser of the
social cog-wheels. Now Céline calls that sort of woman, plumply and
plainly, a hypocrite.... But is it not a woman’s _duty_ to be a
hypocrite, if telling the truth to everybody makes the world a place of
gnashing?” demanded Lady Pomphrey, making her eyebrows climb up out of
sight under the shadow of her mushroom hat.
The compliant friend assented.
“You understand, then, how dissonant was the chord Céline Twissing
struck in Rustleton. With his Plantagenet dash in the blood, his
hereditary intolerance of anything smacking of vulgarity, his medieval
attitude of chivalry towards Woman, his Early Victorian dislike of the
_outré_ and the _bizarre_, he frankly found her intolerable. ‘In a
drawing-room,’ he said to me in confidence, ‘that girl reminds me of a
Polar bear in a hothouse.’ Where the boy could have seen one I cannot
imagine—probably it was only a young man’s daring figure of speech.
Shall we walk about a little? I think I felt a twinge.”
The friend agreed, and, gently ambling up and down the Kreuzbrunnen
Promenade, Lady Pomphrey continued her narrative.
“Rustleton said she was a New Girl of the worst type. Then came the
diabolo affair, which, considering Céline’s remarkable knack, I cannot
think accidental. The bridge of Rustleton’s nose was seriously contused,
and his monocle was shattered—fortunately without danger to the eye. He
took no revenge beyond an epigram, quite worthy of La Rochefou—what’s
his name?... She is keen on dancing, unlike other muscular girls; and
said so in my boy’s near vicinity. ‘Why not? She has hops in her blood,’
he uttered. Of course, a little bird carried it to her ear.... How d’ye
do, Lady Frederica? How d’ye do, Count Pyffer? I quite agree with
you.... Piercing winds, varied by muggy airlessness and a distressingly
relaxing warmth, _have_ made the last eight days intolerable.... My
dear, where was I when I left off?” The suffering friend indicated the
point. Lady Pomphrey continued:
“And _after all_ they have come together. Quite a romance. If a mother’s
prayers have any influence, ... and I am old-fashioned enough to believe
they have.... But I knew Rustleton too well to breathe a hint of my
hopes. I did not stoop to intrigue, as some mothers would, to bring the
young people together. But dearest Jane, who is always my right hand,
conceived a devoted friendship for Céline just at the psychological
moment, and owing to that she and Rustleton were _constantly_ thrown in
each other’s way. Céline quite exerted herself to be overwhelmingly
unpleasant. Jane says that during a bicycling excursion in the
neighborhood of our place at Cluckham-Pomphrey, she offered to help him
to lift his machine over a stile, and would have done it unaided and
alone if Rustleton had not peremptorily seized the frame-bar, gripping
both her hands in his. On Jane’s authority, she crimsoned to the hat,
throwing him off like a feather, and, mounting her machine, was out of
sight in an instant. He was icily sarcastic on the subject of muscular
young women all the way home, and limited his dinner to clear soup and a
single cutlet with dry toast, while Céline went through all the courses
in her usual thoroughgoing way. They are not in the least ashamed to
eat, do you notice?—these golfing, hockey-playing, open-air young
people.... Now you and I can recall placing a solid barrier of five
o’clock cake and muffins between undue appetite and the eight o’clock
dinner, at which we merely toyed with our knives and forks, trusting to
our maids to have a tray of cold eatables ready in the bedroom for
consumption while our hair was being brushed. Of _course_! ‘but _these_
girls devour at tea, _wolf_ at dinner’—I quote Rustleton—‘and probably
stodge sandwiches and cold chicken and chocolate-wafers before they
plunge into their beds. When there, how they must snore!’
“His eye gleamed with such feverish malignancy as he said this, that I
involuntarily dropped a quantity of stitches in the silk necktie I was
knitting for him—a soothing neutral shade not calculated to call
attention to the tinge of bile in his complexion—and exclaimed, ‘Good
Heavens!’ He immediately begged my pardon and bade me ‘good-night,’
whispering that he had arranged to shoot over the lower sixty acres with
Stubbins, the head keeper—purely as a filial duty, Pomphrey not feeling
robust enough to undertake it this year....
“Whether it was my having breathed a hint of this to Jane—who is, as a
rule, a _grave_ for chance confidence—or whether Miss Twissing had
overheard, how can I say? But she and Stubbins were waiting for my boy
on the following morning, Stubbins—who loathes sporting women—in a state
of complacency that only a five-pound note could have brought about. Her
beautiful Bond-street self-ejecting breechloader, her cap, tweeds, and
gaiters were the _dernier cri_, and with the coolest self-possession she
wiped my poor boy’s eye over and over again. Out of thirty brace of
birds before luncheon only three and a half fell to his gun, and _those_
were of the red-legged French description, ‘bred for duffers to blaze
at,’ according to Lord Pomphrey. Rustleton went up to town that night,
charging Jane with all sorts of civil messages for Miss Twissing, and
slept at his Club, which was being painted and disagreed with him
excessively.”
The friend sighed sympathy.
“Even with every door and window open and a flat dish full of milk upon
the washstand,” said Lady Pomphrey, taking the friend’s arm and
emphasizing her utterances with the green sunshade, “white paint
permeates my whole being in a way that is perfectly indescribable. My
son inherits my receptiveness—perhaps my weakness-indeed, he came into
the world at Cluckham-Pomphrey during an early visit of ours, subsequent
to spring-cleaning, where, owing to an unhappy facility possessed by
Lord Pomphrey of being easily persuaded by self-interested persons, the
hall screen, grand staircase, and all the Jacobean paneling had been
covered by the local decorator with a creamy-hued, turpentiny and
glutinous mixture known as ‘Eggster’s Exquisite Enamel.’ It cost a
fortune to get off again, and some of it still lingers in the crevices
of the carving. My basket.... It is a little cumbrous, but I really
couldn’t think of letting you.... Well then, dear friend, if you
insist.... Now for the really remarkable ending of my boy’s story.
“He flew to his cousin for consolation. Now, Wendoleth
Caer-Brydglingbury is extremely sympathetic. Only for the color of her
hair-a violent Boadicean red, almost purple in some lights—Rustleton and
she—but I am devoutly thankful things have turned out as they _have_.
“‘A sea cruise,’ said Wendoleth promptly, ‘will get the white paint out
of your system quicker than anything I know; and your morbid feeling of
vexation with this girl, impatience of her persistency in continuing to
exist, and so forth, will vanish with other things. Mr. Mudge,’—the
person she has since married,—‘has kindly asked Papa and myself to join
his party on board the steam-yacht _Fifi_ for a trip to Lisbon, Madeira,
and the Canaries; join us. I assure you a complete welcome and at least
half a cabin.’ Rustleton recognized the cousinly kindness in Wendoleth’s
proposal, accepted, and went with her and Todmoxen—the Earl is still
robust, but not what he was in the ’seventies, nor is it to be
expected—down to Southampton to join the _Fifi_. Mudge is Liberal member
for the North Clogger Division of Mudderpool. But for a crimson
necktie—the Party badge—and a habit of hanging on to his own coat-lapels
when conversing, he is almost quite presentable, and, like all those
people who begin by not having twopence, he is astonishingly rich. His
welcome to Rustleton was cordial in the extreme. But when Rustleton
found Lord Twissing and his daughter already on board, discovered that
he was to share Twissing’s cabin, and that Céline slept in the one next
door, he was dismayed. He would have excused himself and left the _Fifi_
only that she was already on her way. Fate, like one of those curious
jelly-like creatures which wave their tentacles to attract their prey
and then clutch it and gradually absorb it, had wrapped its feelers
around my poor boy. He is now resigned, calm, content, even happy; but
when I think how he must have suffered.... My salts. In the basket. So
kind of you, and _so_ reviving.”
Lady Pomphrey inhaled with drooping eyelids and sniffed at the
salts-flagon from time to time as she embarked once more upon her
narrative way.
“The _Fifi_ anchored for the night, which promised to be squally, in
Southampton Water, about a quarter of a mile from Hythe Pier. Depressed
and discouraged, my boy retired to his cabin, leaving the entire party
screaming over ‘Bridge’ at a number of little tables in the saloon. He
had just put on his nightalines,—pink with a green stripe, the jacket
ornamented with green braid in loops, to match—and was attending to his
teeth with a palm-stick, when, with a terrific crash, all the electric
lights went out and the _Fifi_ was plunged in darkness. I shudder when I
realize the awfulness of all that. Don’t you?”
The friend supplied a shudder expressly manufactured for the purpose.
“A Welsh collier steamer, the _Rattletrap_, from Penwryg, had run
down Mr. Mudge’s yacht, becoming firmly embedded in the hull of the
craft—the details are graven on my memory,” said Lady Pomphrey
impressively—“immediately forward of the engine-room. The crew
turned out—not into the sea, but out of their hammocks—the ‘Bridge’
players rushed in confusion upon deck. In their evening dresses,
without being even able to save a bag from below, Mr. Mudge’s party
were dragged over the grimy bows of the collier. The crew scrambled
after. The captain of the _Rattletrap_, having ascertained that the
_Fifi_ was rapidly filling, and that all her passengers, as he
thought, were safe on board his vessel, was about to give the signal
from the bridge to reverse engines when, with an appalling scream a
lithe young girl in a crêpe de Chine evening wrap embroidered with
roses and turtle-doves—quite symbolic when you think of it—leaped
back upon the deck of the _Fifi_ and disappeared below. Guess who
she was, and whither she had gone? You can? You do? What romance in
real life, isn’t it? Céline Twissing had missed Rustleton, and,
knowing that he occupied the cabin next to her own, had rushed below
to save him.
“He had rung for his man and was waiting calmly to be dressed, when she
burst in the door with her shoulder—have you ever noticed her
shoulders?—and shrieked to him to come on deck and be saved. Wrapped in
a Scotch plaid which he had hastily thrown over his pyjamas at the
moment of her entrance, he defied her, rebuked her immodesty in entering
a gentleman’s dressing-room unannounced, ordered her to quit the cabin
and go back to her father. When properly attired to appear before
ladies, my boy, ever chivalrous and delicate-minded, said he would board
the _Rattletrap_. ‘Don’t you feel that this yacht is water-logged?’
screamed Céline Twissing. ‘Don’t you know she’ll sink under our feet in
another minute? Come on deck at _once_, you duffing little precisian,
unless you want me to carry you!’ He retorted with contempt. She
instantly seized him in her muscular arms—have you ever noticed her
arms?—threw him, Scotch plaid and all, over her shoulder, carried him up
the yacht’s companion-ladder, and amidst the cheers of the united crews
of the _Fifi_ and the _Rattletrap_, handed him over the bulwarks to the
men of the collier. Then she followed, the captain gave the order to go
astern, the collier reversed her engines, the water rushed into the
yacht, and she sank instantly. All that can be seen of her to-day is her
masts. And Céline Twissing and my boy are to be made one at St.
George’s, Hanover Square, in the first week of the Winter Season. Céline
will be married in white satin and _mousseline_ trimmed with silver
embroidery, and she goes away in a gown of putty-colored _velvelise_—the
new stuff. I believe she secretly adored Rustleton from the very
beginning, and he, I feel, is reconciled to the inscrutable appointments
of Providence. _How_ we have been chattering, haven’t we? Time for
luncheon now. Oh, I pray, no carp in beer, or eels with currant jelly.
But one never knows. _Au revoir_, dear! _Au revoir!_” And Lady Pomphrey
put up her green sunshade and sailed away.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's Off Sandy Hook and other stories, by Richard Dehan