MY DARLING IS SLANDERED
Three miles south of Irvington, Billings jumped wildly in the air and
yelled for me to stop.
"A _coleopteran_!" he shrieked excitedly as I throttled down. "A
_coleopteran_ struck me in the eye--one of the _hydrophilidae_ family!"
And hurling aside rugs and blankets, he twisted open the door and in a
moment was in the road running back. It was then I went back to the
crazy theory, for it was an open stretch of road and there wasn't a soul
in sight. But it was so funny to see his fat figure waddling along there
in the pajamas and bedroom slippers that Frances and I just threw back
our heads and screamed. Couldn't help it, by Jove!
And the frump, jogging along behind, looked just as funny. I wasn't
alarmed, for I knew she could control him. And, dash it, she did it by
humoring him! For we saw her twist her veil about the fork of the stick
he extended to her, and both of them went to slapping wildly at the air
and the ground. Presently they both came waddling back, she with a
butterfly and he with a bug which he was craning at with a lens he had
fished from his sleeve somewhere. He was trying to do this and at the
same time hold together a great armful of gaudy weeds he had gathered.
Billings got in and then I helped her. "Awfully jolly good of you to
humor his crazy whims," I whispered gratefully.
"Crazy!" she ejaculated, one foot on the running-board. "Why, he's just
getting sane! He's been a born fool all his life! And now, Jacky, as you
were saying of the _antennae_--" And she flopped eagerly by him and
together they bent over the glass.
It was rum, but I was getting along so swimmingly with Frances that I
didn't much care what they did. Seemed to be only about a minute more
and we were clipping through the curves of the Wolhurst park--Frances
pointed the way--and had slowed down under the _porte-cochere_.
The frump whispered to the man who opened the door.
"As quietly as possible, Wilkes," she said, "and without his father
seeing him."
"The judge is away, miss," said the man. "He drove down to the village
with Senator Soakem, who had to catch a train back to Albany; but I'm
looking for him every--"
"Be quick, then," jerked the frump. "You know what to do."
"I guess I do, miss," answered the butler gloomily. "I've _had_ to do it
often enough--Perkins and me. A good cold souse--that's the thing--and
then bed. _I_ know!"
Billings waved his hand to the frump as he mounted the stairway inside.
And then, dash it, he kissed his fingers.
"_Vale!_" he chirped, leaning over the marble balustrade. "_Vale, sed
spero non semper!_ I will resume the discussion _in propria persona_."
And, by Jove, if she didn't come back at him quick as lightning, and
with his own gibberish, too:
"_Confido et conquiesco!_" she cooed, waving her handkerchief.
Oh, it was tragical, dash it--that was the word, tragical! And yet the
frump looked almost happy. And as for Frances, except for being amused,
her brother's condition didn't seem to trouble her spirit at all. But
then, dash it, I remembered she was used to him this way. She did not
even wait, but with a bright smile and a murmured word to me, left her
friend and myself to await Wilkes' report.
The frump kind of glared down the deserted vista of the fine old hall
and shrugged her shoulders.
"Everybody loafing, as usual," she muttered sourly, and she hurled her
coat at the carven back of a great cathedral chair--and missed it.
It was clear that her type scorned conventionalities and knew how to
make themselves thoroughly at home.
"I hope you'll be made comfortable here, Mr. Lightnut," she said,
peeling a glove with a jerk, "but I have my doubts."
And she gave a kind of hollow laugh.
I shifted distressfully. "Oh, really now," I began protestingly, but she
marched right over me:
"I can assure you that a guest _here_ earns a martyr's crown," she said,
lifting her eyebrows. Then she shook her head, her lips compressed.
I coughed. _Couldn't_ say the thing I _wanted_ to say, you know--seemed
too devilish rude. Just have to stand it when they talk that way.
Pugsley says best thing to do is to purse up your lips and bob your
head--you don't have to mean it.
So I just went through all this and threw in a shrug, too. Thought no
use having her mad and working against me with Frances. Catch the idea?
Simple thing, you know, just to play her with my _finesse_.
"Awfully tiresome, these country places," I said sympathetically. I
screwed my glass at a couple of footmen who came into view at the far
end of the hall, and who were whispering and chuckling about something.
"Things seem to be run a bit loose, don't you know--that's a fact. Don't
mind for myself, but fancy a girl might find it rather trying visiting
here."
By Jove, how she opened her eyes at me--surprised, I knew, at finding me
such a devilish keen observer. My sympathy touched her, too, for her
eyeballs shone moist of a sudden and I saw her lip tremble as she
stared. Then she swallowed hard and slapped her gloves sharply across
her palm.
"It's Francis that's to blame for that sort of thing," she rasped,
nodding down the hall.
"Frances?" I ejaculated in protest. "Oh, here, I _say_, now--"
"You don't _know_ Francis, Mr. Lightnut!" Her jaw grounded with a snap,
and what a look she gave me! "Wait till you do--you just wait!" And eyes
and hands lifted to the ceiling.
I coughed again.
The cat! And _this_ was my darling's friend!
But her claws raked on: "I tell you you just can't be familiar with
grooms and hail-fellow-well-met with footmen without demoralizing
them--and that's what Francis does." She jerked this out viciously, and
while I gasped, went on: "_You_ know very well, Mr. Lightnut, if you
play cards and drink and carouse with your men-servants until two or
three o'clock in the morning, you can't reasonably look for respect from
them." She breathed heavily. "The trouble is, Francis has no
self-respect--no _pride_!"
Her uplifted hands fumbled and jerked the hat from her tossing head.
"Sometimes," she breathed through her teeth, "when I think of Francis, I
feel like I'd like to--" The words died behind her teeth as she ground
them--yes, _ground_ them. She jabbed the pins into the hat savagely and
at random and tossed it after the coat. And this time she put the
ball--in a big Benares jar that stood against the wall.
But I was counting forty-four!
Ever try that when you were angry and wanted to insult somebody?
Preacher told us about it once at the old Harvard Union, and _I_ thought
it a devilish good idea. Gives you time, you know, to think up the
things to say that otherwise you would be turning over in your mind
afterward as the scathing, clever things you _might_ have said.
So, by the twenty-eighth count, I had her; and jamming my hands almost
through my pockets, I faced her with a withering frown.
"By Jove, if I were you, Miss--er--" Dash me if I hadn't forgotten her
name! "If you feel that way, _I_ don't see why the de--H'm! I mean why
do you stay on here and--er--_sacrifice_ yourself?" I drawled this in
the most devilish sarcastic way! "I'd pack my jolly trunk and get as far
away as I could."
I added earnestly--coaxingly: "And _stay_ away, you know!"
And I took a deep breath, for I expected to see her wilt or go straight
up in the air. I knew it was a toss-up for either.
Not she! She just twisted a sour smile at me.
"Ummh!" she grunted. "Perhaps you don't know that Francis has suggested
that to me several times--frankly and rudely--when I have complained.
That may surprise you."
It did not surprise me--not at all, by Jove! What _did_ surprise me was
that my Frances had ever allowed this jolly female barnacle to fasten on
her in this way. Remembered a remark of Jack Ellsworth's about some
bounder visiting at his house that he said "the old man couldn't pry
loose with a crowbar." Devilish coarse way to express it, I had thought;
but now I understood.
[Illustration]
The frump was _this_ sort! Poor Frances! Poor Frances!
I was just considering the advisability of tactfully trying to shame
this girl into taking the next train, or whatever it is, back to China,
when suddenly my devilish active mind hit right on the explanation of
her conduct! Bores me, you know, the way things come to me at times when
I am not looking for them at all. Still, this time, I was rather glad.
Might confound her and put her on the run if she knew that a shrewd,
eagle-eyed man of the world had penetrated her mask.
So I coughed significantly in lieu of using her dashed name, and lifted
my monocle so I could bore her sidewise through narrowed eyes.
"Dare say you've put up with Frances though for _Jack's_ sake!" I let
her have it coldly, deliberately. "Brother Jack has been a sort of
compensation--_that's_ it, eh?"
And I shot her a foxy wink!
That is, I _almost_ did--pulled up, though, just on the brink. By Jove,
gave me cold marrows for an instant, thinking how I might have
compromised myself, you know. Besides, I could spare her _that_--had
rubbed it in so devilish raw, anyhow. That is, you would have thought
so; for that sort of thing said to a normal Yankee girl would have
stirred her pride or unchained the jolly lightnings from her eyes--_you_
know!
But dashed if this imported freak didn't suddenly nod with a sort of
chokey snuffle and reach out her hand for mine.
"How you _do_ understand!" she crooned unblushingly, and she leaked a
big cold tear down upon my hand and let another splash my cuff--and
Jenkins hadn't come with my things yet, dash it! "I _do_ try to be
patient about Francis for Jacky's sake--he asked me to: and I do try not
to mind the way things are run, but oh, Mr. Lightnut, what this place
needs is a _head_!" She almost squeezed my hand, and blinked damply at
me out of her pasty face. "And then," she snuffled, "I do so want to
make a home for my father and my brothers. They have _never_ known what
it was to have a _home_--think of it!"
I didn't want to think of it--besides, I didn't believe it. I knew
people _have_ to have homes, dash it--it's the law. If they go in for
that sort of thing--not having homes, you know--they're arrested. Still,
in a rum country like China, it might be different, of course. However,
I didn't take time to give this much thought, for I was so devilish
floored--irritated, you know--at the girl's cold-blooded, brazen
effrontery.
By Jove, I wondered if I _could_ pink her!
I wasn't sure. I had gone at her in a cunning, subtle way: the hand of
steel in the glove of what's-its-name, you know; the curving, velvet
thrust of the needle rapier--all that sort of rot--and she had merely
given me back a Roland for my what's-its-name. I felt a bit dashed, you
know.
Idea seized me that perhaps, though, something more brutally direct
would--
"See here," I said, fixing my monocle sternly and folding my arms--for I
had got back my hand under pretense of fixing my part. "You don't mean
to say that Jack would ever ask _you_ to take charge here!"
Rather plain and direct, that, don't you think? Sort of heavy broadsword
stroke, you know. But she took it full and clean--never winced or turned
a hair. Just looked thoughtful.
"Yes," she said slowly. "Jacky says it'll have to come to that some
day--_some_ arrangement. Neither of us ever want to marry."
"Oh!"
And my monocle dropped!
Couldn't chirp another word, you know! Just stood there, round-mouthed
and staring blankly--kind of fascinated, too, dash it--and wondering
what particular freak cult _hers_ was. And I felt myself getting redder
and redder every second! Then the awful thought came to me that this
advanced and emancipated dowd had been the friend and companion of my
darling--that her poisonous influence had been felt for months; was
being exerted still. I wondered how she could look me in the face, but
she _wasn't_. No, she had switched her head around and was glaring at
the servants down the hall. So I just swayed there, trying to think, and
boring at the back of her head, till it came to me dully that her hair
didn't match her what-you-call-'ems, and my dashed brain just seized on
and clung to this like a drowning man does to a what-you-may-call-it.
"_Thom_-as!" the frump exploded.
One of the footmen who was doubled over, red-faced and writhing, in the
exercise of some pleasantry with his companion, straightened with an
aggrieved air. He ambled toward us.
"Some specimens that Mr. Billings gathered--plants and foliage; he left
them in the car," jerked the frump. "See they are cared for."
The man nodded indifferently and slouched away.
Her frown gloomed after him and her voice snapped at his laggard heels:
"And Flora--send Flora to me. Is she asleep somewhere?"
She faced me with an acid grimace and shrug.
"You see how it is here, Mr. Lightnut," she grumbled querulously; "but
_you_ understand!"
Understand! By Jove, yes--I thought I _did_! I could see that the fellow
was just sullen under the too free and easy assumptions of a guest from
whom little had been experienced in the way of an occasional douceur.
And dashed if I blamed him!
But I murmured some jolly rubbish, hoping every instant that Wilkes
would come and lead me away.
"That's the way with them all here, from the housekeeper down," she went
on gloomily. "They take advantage of the fact that the mistress of the
house is abroad and the master absorbed and busy." Her voice quickened
sharply: "Then do you think they care two pins about the authority of a
silly girl who has been allowed to grow up untrained and ignorant of the
first a b c of anything practical?"
I felt my face tingling.
"See here--Oh, dash it all!" I protested. "That's not _fair_, you know!"
"Fair?" She bit the word out of the air and just glared at me. "Why,
they know she's a _fool_!"
I opened my mouth two or three times; then swallowed helplessly and grew
red. Somehow, it came back to me--a time when I was a little boy and my
nurse had been so shocked when I said "shucks!" I remembered how that
night she read to me a tract about swear words and told me how when I
grew up to be a big man, I would have to choose whether I was ever going
to learn to swear or not. She said that if I didn't choose right, a day
would come when I would be--oh, _so_ sorry!
And now, dash it, the day had come and I knew that she was right! For I
_was_ sorry, by Jove!