THE TWEED SUIT.
How long the silence lasted Mrs. Verulam was never able to determine.
Nor in after-days could she remember by which member of the party it
was broken. As a matter of fact, however, it was the young gentleman in
the tweed suit who spoke first. He took his hands out of his pockets
with a sort of deliberate carefulness, walked jauntily into the room,
and sharply whispered, in passing near the sofa against which poor
little Mrs. Verulam was hopelessly reared up:
"Introduce me as my husband!"
Mrs. Verulam's lips were dry. Her head swam, and she saw various
shapes, extremely bright in colour, dancing a sort of appalling polka
before her eyes. Gazing steadily at these dancing shapes, she said in a
piercing voice:
"Duchess—Mr. Van Adam!"
Then she sat down upon the springy sofa in such wise that she moved
several times up and down like a cork buoyed upon the waves of the sea.
And all the time she thus emulated a cork she kept her eyes fixed upon
the young man in the tweed suit, who appeared to rise and fall, or
rather to elongate and to diminish in telescope fashion, while he bowed
before the Duchess, and received in return a dignified and smiling
salutation. But the sofa subsided into a calm, and Mrs. Verulam was
obliged to collect herself. Mr. Rodney was addressing her in an excited
murmur:
"I had no idea, no notion at all, that you knew Mr. Van Adam."
"Oh yes."
"Besides, I fully understood he was in Florida."
"Oh no."
"This makes my paragraph all wrong."
"Oh yes."
"It is really most unfortunate."
"Oh no."
Mrs. Verulam felt like a pendulum, and that she would go on helplessly
alternating affirmatives and negatives for the next century or two. But
Mr. Rodney, who, being of a very precise habit, was seriously upset by
being given the lie direct—in tweed, too, on a London afternoon of
May!—repeated "Oh no!" in accents of such indignant amazement that
Mrs. Verulam was obliged to recover her equilibrium.
"Oh yes, I mean," she said. "Oh yes, yes, yes!"
This repetition signified the approach of hysteria. The young gentleman
in the tweed suit rapidly intervened.
"My kind hostess's invitation lured me from my orange-groves," he
said, in his deep contralto voice, fixing his large dark eyes with a
hypnotic expression upon Mrs. Verulam.
"Oh," the Duchess said, "then you are staying with Mrs. Verulam?"
"Yes," said the young gentleman, still looking at Mrs. Verulam.
"Oh yes," she began feebly. "Oh yes, yes——"
"Might I ask for a cup of tea, Mrs. Verulam?" he exclaimed, in what
might, with but slight exaggeration, be called a voice of thunder.
"Certainly," she answered, putting about fifteen lumps of sugar with a
shaking hand into the nearest cup. "You don't take sugar, I think?"
"Gouty?" said her Grace. "Ah, you and Pearl would sympathise. Let me
introduce you to my girl. Mr. Van Adam—Lady Pearl McAndrew."
Bows.
"I am not gouty, mother," Lady Pearl said, in her morose voice. "I
am only melancholy. And that"—she addressed herself to the tweed
suit—"is because I cannot, I will not, blind myself to the actual
condition of the world I see around me."
"Oh, my dear," said the Duchess, "Carlsbad would cure you. But," she
added to the tweed suit, "unfortunately, I can't afford to send her
there just at present."
The Lady Pearl grew large with vexation, as people of sensitive nature
will when, having elaborately surrounded themselves with an interesting
atmosphere, they find it ruthlessly dissipated by a Philistine allusion
to uric acid. She seemed about to make some almost apoplectic rejoinder
when Mr. Rodney mellifluously chipped in.
"I believe in the climate of Florida gout is practically unknown,"
he said, speaking obliquely towards the tweed suit. "My friend, Lord
Bernard Roche"—he paused, expectant of some eager exclamation from the
person whom Lord Bernard in his letters called "poor old Huskinson."
But none came. "Lord Bernard Roche, now in New York—City"—he again
paused, and once more in vain—"tells me so."
His conclusion was a trifle flurried. When we don't get what we want,
in conversation, we are apt to be put to confusion. Mr. Rodney looked
very hard indeed at the tweed suit, and then, although not introduced,
added to it:
"I think you know Lord Bernard? He tells me so in his very charming and
entertaining letters."
"Oh yes—Lord Bernard—oh yes, certainly," exclaimed the tweed suit,
with a sudden flaring vivacity.
"A very sympathetic nature," Mr. Rodney continued, in softest music. "I
am sure that you have found it so. A man to go to confidently in any
trouble."
"Oh, certainly. Most undoubtedly yes."
The Duchess had caught Mr. Rodney's gracious innuendo, and she now
chimed in, with her most basso-profondo manner:
"Ah, Mr. Van Adam! but in London you must forget all your troubles.
London is the most cheerful place imaginable."
"Oh, mother!"
"Yes, Pearl, it is for a healthy person. No doubt," to the tweed, "you
are staying for the season?"
The tweed looked towards Mrs. Verulam, and then, after a perceptible
pause, answered:
"Yes."
"Well, then," continued her Grace, who was aware of Huskinson Van
Adam's millionaire propensities, "you will soon be quite cheerful
again, I'll warrant. You have been over before, I suppose?"
"In Paris. I know Paris quite well, but not London."
"Paris is horrible," said the Lady Pearl. "The Bois de Boulogne makes
me sick."
Mr. Rodney's smooth hair nearly stood on end. Hearing Paris decried
was to his social and orthodox nature like blasphemy to the ears of an
exceptionally pious Pope. Such sayings ran in his veins like ice-cold
water, and almost gave him pneumonia. But, ere he could utter his
illness, another personality was added to the group in Mrs. Verulam's
drawing-room. This was a round and swart young man, with spectacles,
short legs, and a conceited manner. Probably he was announced by the
footman. But he seemed simply to be in the room, to have greeted
everyone except the tweed suit, to have sat down, taken a cup of tea,
and said, "Paris is the only place in the world!" before a person
desirous of doing so could exclaim "Knife!"
Such was the rapidity of that ardent creature—Mr. Ingerstall, artist
and egoist.
"Paris, I repeat," he reiterated, looking all round him, and speaking
with a clipping utterance, "is the only place in the world."
And he began to drink his tea with extraordinary swiftness of
absorption. No man on earth could assimilate a liquid in a shorter
space of time than Mr. Ingerstall. In his hands the commonest actions
assumed the dignity of feats. In his mouth the most ordinary remarks
took on an aspect of Mount Sinai.
Mr. Rodney breathed again. Paris had found a defender. The Lady Pearl
did not appear angry at being contradicted. She was accustomed to it,
and custom is everything. She looked mildly at Mr. Ingerstall and said:
"Really!"
Mr. Ingerstall handed his cup to Mrs. Verulam in order that it might
be refilled. Then, staring hard at the tweed suit, towards whom, as
a stranger, he thought it fit to address his educational remarks, he
cried:
"Really! There is no art except in Paris, no possibility of dining out
of Paris, no good dressmaker beyond the limits of Paris, no perfect
language except the perfect language of Paris, no gaiety, no nerve, no
acting, no dancing, no love-making worthy of the name, but in Paris!"
"Then, Mr. Ingerstall, why on earth do you always live in London?" the
Duchess said heavily.
"Because I find more caricatures there," said Mr. Ingerstall, taking
the second cup of tea from Mrs. Verulam's hands with the manner of a
conjurer at the head of his profession.
And again he stared at the tweed suit; then he turned to Mrs. Verulam
and exclaimed:
"Please introduce me to that gentleman."
"Mr. Ingerstall—Mrs.—Mr. Van Adam," said Mrs. Verulam.
It seemed to her that everybody in London was in her drawing-room
intent on the acquaintance of the hybrid friend who had brought her to
such confusion. Nevertheless, she found some comfort in the fact that,
so far, the tweed suit was accepted as genuine. But Mr. Ingerstall's
eyes were terribly sharp; and, then, he wore spectacles. And what
can be hidden from a vision naturally acute, and aided by glasses of
enormous power? Mrs. Verulam trembled.
"You know Paris?" said Mr. Ingerstall to the tweed suit.
"Yes; quite well."
"You agree with me, then?"
"Certainly," said the tweed suit, moving rather uneasily under the
piercing gaze of the artist.
Mr. Ingerstall's swart face was irradiated with a triumphal grin, which
was distinctly simian. He turned to the Duchess: "There, your Grace,"
he said; "you see there are others of my opinion."
"Ah! but Mr. Van Adam doesn't know London yet," the Duchess retorted.
"Then I'll show it him!" cried Mr. Ingerstall, with a glee that was
diabolic. "I'll show him Madame Tussaud's, the Piccadilly fountain, the
mosaics—heaven preserve us all!—in St Paul's, "glowing with life and
colour," as the poor dear Chapter expresses it, the Royal Academy—at
its very best this year—the sublime architecture of Buckingham Palace,
the restaurants out of which you are turned at half-past twelve, after
mumbling the final course of your abbreviated supper by the light of a
tallow-candle. Oh, I'll show Mr. Adams London!"
"Van Adam," interposed Mr. Rodney restoratively.
"Mr. Van Adam, London. Will you come with me?"
He thrust this last remark at the tweed suit, which replied in a rather
muffled voice:
"Thank you very much."
"That's settled, then," said Mr. Ingerstall, hastily devouring a
lozenge-shaped cake covered with pink sugar; "and then we'll see,
Duchess, whether this gentleman doesn't swear by blessed Paris to the
end of his life."
"Oh, really, Mr. Ingerstall, you ought to go to the Morgue instead of
to heaven when you die," her Grace rejoined tartly, as she turned
with great deliberation to Mrs. Verulam. "What are your plans for the
season, Mrs. Verulam? Are you going to Ascot?"
Mr. Rodney looked at his boots and endeavoured modestly to conceal
the simple and unostentatious fact that he felt himself a hero. Mrs.
Verulam hesitatingly replied:
"I haven't thought much about it as yet."
But this was too much for Mr. Rodney. To be snatched suddenly from
the summit of a candlestick and incontinently shovelled away under a
bushel is an event calculated to rouse the temper of the very mildest
_flaneur_ who ever wore polished boots. Mr. Rodney's fiddle face
assumed a sudden look of stern resolution, and in a voice a trifle
louder than usual he almost exclaimed:
"Mrs. Verulam has secured through me the finest house in the
neighbourhood of the course."
"If you want to go racing, you really ought to run across the Channel
and go to Longchamps," began Mr. Ingerstall with intense rapidity.
But the Duchess had had enough of him, and when the Duchess had had
enough of anybody, she could be like a park of artillery and a stone
wall combined. She could both decimate and offer a blank and eyeless
resistance to attack. On the present occasion she preferred to become
a stone wall to the chattering artist, and, presenting to him the
entirety of her back, she said with animation to Mr. Rodney:
"Indeed! Which house d'you mean?"
"Ribton Marches," that gentleman responded, in a way that was nearly
unbridled.
"The Bun Emperor's palace!" exclaimed her Grace in a thrilling bass.
"Mrs. Verulam, you are a public benefactor. Is Mr. Van Adam to be of
your party?"
Mrs. Verulam looked helplessly across at the tweed suit as if for
orders. Apparently she received them, for she suddenly said, "Yes,"
with a jerk.
The Duchess glanced from the sombre countenance of the Lady Pearl to
the tweed suit. It was evident from her protuberant eyeballs that her
mind was busily at work.
"Ribton Marches is a palace," she continued; "it would hold a regiment."
"Oh!" interposed Mr. Rodney, "I scarcely think that Mr. Lite would care
to entertain a——"
"I know Mr. Lite very well," the Duchess interrupted; "a most worthy,
generous man. He has given me thousands of buns from time to time."
"Does your Grace eat so many?" said the rasping voice of Mr. Ingerstall
from behind. "If you wish to get a really perfect bun, go to the
Maison——"
"For the school-children on the Duke's estates," the Duchess continued
inflexibly. "It has been a very great saving for us; and, in return,
all we have had to do is to let the good man use our names in his
advertising processes. 'Your buns are exquisite'—the phrase was mine.
You can see it in the _Daily Telegraph_ any day."
At the phrase, "your buns are exquisite," the phantom of a superior
smile flitted beneath the shadow of Mr. Rodney's sinister moustache.
He was thinking of the choice bit of prose to which the name of Lady
Sophia Tree was so soon to be appended.
"Have you made up your house-party yet?" the Duchess proceeded blandly
to Mrs. Verulam.
"Not yet. Indeed"—here Mrs. Verulam shot a rather cruel glance out
of her grey eyes at Mr. Rodney—"indeed, the matter of my having the
house——"
"The palace," interjected the Duchess.
"Is scarcely finally settled yet."
"I clinch it to-night at the Crystal Palace," murmured Mr. Rodney
through his teeth.
"The Crystal Palace!" cried Mr. Ingerstall; "there's a glass house
at which everybody should throw stones. Burmese warriors made of
chocolate, or something of the kind, plaster statues of Melancholy,
sardines in boxes mixed up with jet bracelets and bicycle exhibitions,
a concert-room like a fourth-rate swimming-bath, a—but you shall see
it," he cried to the tweed suit, who again replied hastily:
"Thank you very much."
"If your party is not made up, Mrs. Verulam," the Duchess resumed, "I
am sure the Duke and I and Pearl will be most happy to join it."
"Indeed, mother," said the Lady Pearl grievously, "I do not wish——"
"My dear, nonsense; it will do your gout a great deal of good,
breathing the pine-laden air, if Mrs. Verulam can find room for you——"
"I shall be delighted," said Mrs. Verulam, whose mental condition at
the moment rendered her quite prepared to accept any proposition, even
of murder or arson, that might be made to her.
"Then that is settled," the Duchess said briskly, rustling the skirt
of her gown as a signal of her imminent departure. "It will be an
advantage to you to have me at Ribton Marches, because I know all the
ins and outs of the place. The Duke and I lunched there with Mr. Lite
to sign our little token of approbation of his buns, and he showed me
everything. Well, really, we must be getting on. Come, Pearl——"
The Lady Pearl rose wearily. Her face still expressed either a tendency
to gout or an understanding of life; but it must be confessed that,
as she looked towards the tweed suit and bowed a dignified farewell,
a trace of animation crept into her manner, and she looked more
distinctly less respectable than the Duchess than she had on her entry
into Mrs. Verulam's drawing-room. The Duchess cordially shook the tweed
suit's hand at parting.
"Come and see us," she said vigorously.
"Many thanks."
"Come to-morrow."
The reply was a rather faint, "With pleasure."
"Mrs. Verulam will give you our address—Belgrave Square. You can get
a bus from the corner of Hamilton Place that will put you down at—oh,
but of course that doesn't matter to you. I wish the Duke had an
orange-grove. Good-bye, Mr. Ingerstall."
She looked him over meditatively; then she said:
"Perhaps you won't mind just coming out with us to hail a—thank you
very much. Good-bye."
She proceeded out of the room, followed by Lady Pearl and Mr.
Ingerstall, the latter of whom turned sharply at the door to say to the
tweed suit:
"Very well, then; I'll come to-morrow morning to show you London,
and increase your commendable love of Paris. Ah! when you see the
mosaics—mercy on us!"
He shot out of the room with his short arms raised towards heaven. A
moment later they heard his voice piercingly hailing a bus outside for
the Duchess.
Meanwhile Mr. Rodney was being terribly _de trop_. Mrs. Verulam had now
come to what is called the end of the tether. She wanted to bounce up
from her sofa, take Mr. Rodney by the shoulders, thrust him forcibly
out of the house, and then go into violent hysterics. This was what she
wanted to do. What she had to do was to sit quiet and see him becoming
suspicious, and, finally, jealous of the tweed suit, which also wanted
to go into hysterics. Mr. Rodney was considerably exercised, first by
finding that he had apparently told a lie in the _World_, secondly, by
being made suddenly aware that Mrs. Verulam had a male friend of whom
she had never spoken to him, and, moreover, a friend so intimate that
she summoned him from the orange-groves of Florida to stay alone with
her in London, all divorced as he was. All this greatly perturbed him,
and so soon as the Duchess was gone he promised himself the pleasure
of probing, with his usual exquisite dexterity, into the problem so
abruptly presented to him. He therefore sat tight, and began to look
very observant. Mrs. Verulam was gripped by the cold hands of despair.
She forced a faded smile.
"You mustn't forget your engagement at the Crystal Palace, Mr. Rodney,"
she said, with a terrible effort after sprightliness.
Mr. Rodney grew wrinkled, a habit of his when forced into painful
thought.
"I am not likely to forget any detail of my service to you," he said,
with a pressure that tended in the direction of emphasis. "But we do
not dine till half-past eight."
"The trains are very slow on that line, I believe," Mrs. Verulam added,
with a vagueness as to the different railway systems that would have
made her fortune as a director.
"Still, they do not take three hours to do the six miles," said Mr.
Rodney, with a distinct approach to sarcasm.
Mrs. Verulam collapsed. There was no more fight left in her. She shut
her eyes very tightly and tried not to breathe hard. When she opened
them again Mr. Rodney was looking at the tweed suit in a very crafty
manner.
"I have heard much of you, Mr. Van Adam," he said slowly.
"Indeed!"
"Yes. I have even had the pleasure of writing a little word about you."
The tweed suit started.
"May I ask where?"
Mr. Rodney laid his long white hand gently upon the _World_.
"Here."
The word dropped from him like a pebble. The tweed suit flushed
scarlet, and its dark eyes darted a look of boyish fury upon the demure
writer of paragraphs. But it only said, in a voice that slightly shook:
"Indeed!"
"May I have the pleasure of showing you?" said Mr. Rodney, gently
unfolding the journal for men and women, and laying one finger upon
the Van Adam paragraph. The tweed suit pretended to read it carefully.
"You will notice a slight mistake at the close," Mr. Rodney continued
in a resentful voice, and glancing from the tweed suit to Mrs. Verulam
and back again. "It would not have crept in" (errors have no other gait
than that generally attributed to the insect world) "had I known that
we were to have the unexpected pleasure of welcoming you to London."
"Thank you very much."
Mr. Rodney had now set foot upon the path of magnanimity. He bit his
lower lip, and took another step upon it.
"I shall be glad to rectify my error next week," he said.
"I am obliged to you."
"In the meanwhile, anything that I can do to render your short"—he
paused interrogatively; there was no rejoinder, and he continued—"stay
among us agreeable, I shall be only too happy to accomplish."
The tweed suit bowed convulsively, and Mrs. Verulam began to breathe
audibly upon her sofa.
"Mitching Dean," Mr. Rodney added, with a sense of glorious martyrdom,
"Mitching Dean is entirely at your service."
"Mitching Dean!" the tweed suit repeated, with a befogged intonation.
"Yes. Its butter, its roof, its roses——"
"Roses!" said the suit, as if trying to break an intolerable spell.
"Ah! the English roses are exquisite! I have some dark-red ones in my
room here."
Mrs. Verulam coughed sharply. Mr. Rodney's face grew a dull brick-red.
"Dark-red roses in your room?" he said. He looked rapidly at all the
drawing-room vases, and then cast a pale and reproachful glance at Mrs.
Verulam. Then he got up slowly. He felt that his investigation into the
relations of the pretty widow and the divorced American orange-grower
could not be pursued satisfactorily in such a moment of confusion and
despair. He must have time for thought. To-night he would free himself
as early as might be from the thraldom of the Bun Emperor. He would
wander amid the japanned-tin groves of the Crystal Palace. He would
seek the poetical solitude afforded by an exhibition of motor-cars, or
plunge into the peaceful villages of the chocolate-hued and inanimate
Burmese. To-night! to-night! He must think; he must collect himself;
he must reason; he must plan.
"My train," he murmured a little frantically; "I must catch it. I must
go! I must indeed!"
He spoke as if multitudes were endeavouring to hold him, and keep him
back from a stern purpose. He pressed Mrs. Verulam's hand. "Cruel!" he
murmured. He bowed to the tweed suit. "Au revoir!" He was at the door.
"My train! Good-bye!" He was gone, and instantly Mrs. Verulam on her
sofa, the tweed suit on its chair, were in violent hysterics.
Had Mr. Rodney left his hat behind by mistake and returned to fetch
it, he must have stood on the threshold petrified. As there is often
a method in madness, so there is sometimes a hilarity in hysteria.
There is the frantic laughter of the human soul making a sudden
and distracted exit from the prison in which it has been gradually
accumulating a frightful excess of emotion. It leaps out with hyæna
cry, and with the virulent cachinnations of a thing inhuman. Mrs.
Verulam's shriek of laughter as the hall-door closed behind Mr.
Rodney's thin back was far more terrible than Chloe Van Adam's burst
of tears. It flew up like a monstrous and horrible balloon, seeming to
take form, to sway, to swell as a gas-filled bladder, to burst with
a tearing desperation, to die down in a chuckle of agony. And as the
laughter of Mrs. Verulam faded with the sharp swiftness of hysteria
into a flood of tears, the tears of Chloe Van Adam bloomed into a
shriek of laughter. The two women took it in turns, as the children
say, to leap to the opposite poles of emotion, until the footman James,
below stairs, the faithful Marriner above, heard and trembled.
But all things must have an end, and at last the waves of tumult
receded and receded, the laughter leaped lower, the sobs subsided, and
presently an awful silence reigned, broken only by the sound of female
pants—not the rustle of rational dress, but the murmur of escaping
breaths, long, bronchial, and persistent. And then even these died
away, till you might have heard the note of the falling pin upon the
receptive carpet.
"Chloe!"
"Daisy!"
"Oh, oh, oh!"
"Ah, ah, ah!"
"Oh, don't—don't, or I shall begin again."
"So shall I! Oh, let us keep quiet! Oh, do let us—oh, do let
us—oh——"
"Hush!" cried Mrs. Verulam. And suddenly she sprang up, went over to
the tweed suit, clasped it in her arms and kissed it. "There, there!"
she said; "it's all over now. Oh, but why did you do it?"
"But why did you say that nobody would be let in?"
"I told Francis I was out. He must have forgotten to tell James. He
shall leave me to-morrow."
"And I thought I would give you a little surprise."
"You did! You did! When I saw you at the door I thought I should have
died!"
"And I wanted to be elsewhere."
"And Marriner! The extraordinary noise she made running upstairs. She
fell down twice. I heard her."
Mrs. Verulam leaned against Chloe and laughed till the tears ran down
her cheeks, but this time with honest merriment. And Chloe echoed her
with a delicious emulation. That gaiety did them good. A sense of
humour is often salvation. And, indeed, they might have been laughing
now had not their silver joviality been arrested by a flat-handed
thump on the drawing-room door. They stopped and looked at each other.
The flat-handed thump was repeated.
"Who on earth can this be?" whispered Mrs. Verulam apprehensively.
"Come in!"
The door stole open and the faithful Marriner appeared, with twisted
features, red eyes, and betouzled hair.
"Oh, ma'am!" she said. "Oh, my! Oh, dear, oh!"
She advanced into the room with her poor feet turned in, and wringing
her horrified hands. Her black dress was torn at the knees, showing how
she had fallen as she scrambled atticwards. Mrs. Verulam looked at the
dress, remembered once more the noise of the tumbles, and laughed again
till the tears ran out of her eyes.
"Poor Marriner!" she said. "Poor dear Marriner! Mr. Van Adam,
Marriner!" (She mimicked the voice of announcement.) "Mr. Van Adam!"
The faithful Marriner's complexion turned a blackish grey.
"Oh, ma'am, forgive me—forgive me!" she cried.
In another minute she might have been led to go back upon the whole
course of her education, and to utter some such damning exclamation as
"I didn't go for to do it!" but mercifully Chloe averted that imminent
calamity by saying:
"There, there, Marriner! Never mind. I made you. It was all my fault.
Besides, there is no serious harm done. At least, is there, Daisy?"
And she turned reflectively to Mrs. Verulam.
"Please shut the door, Marriner," Mrs. Verulam said.
The faithful Marriner did so, and then returned, still on turned-in
deplorable feet.
"And now let us be quite calm, and consider," Mrs. Verulam said.
"Marriner, you may sit down for a moment."
Marriner sank upon the edge of a chair, and tried to fold her hands
respectfully, but failed. She could not so soon command her body.
"Nobody recognised you, Chloe," said Mrs. Verulam; "not even Mr.
Ingerstall?"
"Horrid little man! No!"
"They all think you your husband?"
"Yes, they take me for Huskinson." A light sprang up in her eyes. "In
fact, so far as they are concerned, I am a man!"
"Tcha, tcha, tcha!" clicked Marriner, making the condemnatory noise so
dear to limited natures in moments of tension or surprise.
"Oh, Daisy, I wonder, would it be possible——"
She stopped and looked doubtfully at Marriner.
"Marriner is absolutely to be trusted," Mrs. Verulam answered to the
look.
"Oh yes, ma'am!" said the faithful one, beginning gradually to recover.
"Well, then—could I not? No, Daisy, I must speak to you alone! I know
that Marriner will keep the secret of this afternoon."
"Oh, ma'am, with my best blood!" cried Marriner, vaguely quoting from
historical novels, but meaning well.
She got up, gained the door, turned, repeated in a high voice "With my
best blood, ma'am!" and went softly out.
"Well, Chloe, what is it?"
"Didn't you tell me you longed to get out of society and couldn't?"
"Yes. I long to get out gracefully, and—er—just a little bit later
on in the season. You see, dear, there's the Ascot house, and the Duke
and Duchess coming. I must stay in the cage till the race week's over."
And Mrs. Verulam looked at Chloe a little awkwardly, all the problems
presented by the Florida divorce suit returning upon her.
"And I must stay in it, too, just—just till that lovely week's over,"
Chloe said with a coaxing accent. "Just till then, Daisy. I must see
the Bun Emperor's palace, and Mr. Pettingham's coloured slides, and the
Prince and Princess, and Sartorius—oh, I must! I must!"
"But how?"
"As Huskinson."
"What?"
Mrs. Verulam's voice grew shrill. But Chloe was persistent.
"Why not?" she urged with tender cunning. "You see I can do it. Nobody
will recognise me. Huskinson has never been in London, and has no
London friends. Women have lived as men before me. I read of one in the
papers who was a sailor for forty years without being discovered, and
of another who fought in battles, and got drunk, and swore, and was a
man in every way."
"My dear Chloe, you mustn't drink! Oh, but it's impossible!"
"No; but listen. It's heaven-sent—this mistake, I mean. I only
intended to show you alone I could be a man. But now, Daisy, you
want to get out of society! I want to get into it. We can do it
together—one go in, one get out, like the little man and woman in the
cardboard barometer. Let me stay here as Huskinson. You can compromise
yourself harmlessly with me, and I can have a good time just for a
month or two, just till after Ascot, anyway."
"You will have to see the mosaics!" said Mrs. Verulam.
"I'll bear that. I'll bear anything. The game is worth the candle.
Oh yes, it is. And then, after Ascot, I'll vanish—you'll perhaps be
dropped. It's a perfect plan. Now, isn't it? Isn't it?"
"Really, it is not bad," said Mrs. Verulam. "Yes, I might get out of
the cage through you, and yet preserve my self-respect."
"Of course you might. I say it's heaven-sent."
"Heaven-sent—but Francis!"
This sudden _cri de cœur_ alarmed Chloe for her friend's reason.
"Heaven—Francis!" she said helplessly.
What could such words mean but that poor Daisy's reason was tottering
upon its throne?
"The footman who let you in when you arrived! The footman who shall
leave my service to-morrow. How to keep his mouth shut! Wait! Did
anyone else see you?"
"Not a creature."
Mrs. Verulam knit her pretty brows.
"Francis loves Marriner," she said, in an inward voice of subtle
meditation. "Francis loves Marriner."
She paused.
"Does he? Why?"
"I can't think, but he does. It isn't only that Marriner told me so,
but he did himself; so I suppose it's true. Chloe, if we are to do this
dreadful thing, Francis' affection must be played upon."
"It sounds like a flower and a hose."
"It's a footman's heart and a woman's cleverness. Marriner shall
accept Francis on the condition of his keeping our secret from
everyone, especially from James."
"I see. It's all perfect. Oh, except my clothes!"
"Your clothes! Why, you've got them on!"
"But only these! I must have frock-coats, lavender pants—trousers, I
mean—silk hats, clawhammers, and—and—well, you know, Daisy—other
things. I can't have a man to measure me; at least, can I?"
Mrs. Verulam thought silently for a moment. Then she said: "You must be
ill."
"Why?"
"For a day or two. Your tweed shall go to a first-rate tailor.
Francis—Francis has been valet to the Marquis of Greenbank. He'll know
all about that. We'll measure your head in bed, and get the hats. Yes,
yes, we'll manage it all. Poor Mr. Rodney!"
A mischievous smile, the true little grin of the coquette, curled her
sweet lips.
"They were his roses I put into your room, Chloe," she said.
And Chloe laughed and echoed, "Poor Mr. Rodney!" Then she added, "And
James Bush, dear?"
Mrs. Verulam blushed.
"Come, dear, it is time for you to be ill," she said hastily. And she
took the tweed suit affectionately by the waist and led it from the
room.