“Oh--Murdock--how do you do?” said Melissa wretchedly. He had never
before come up unannounced. Obviously the work of a ribald fate that
he should do so now. If one could have turned him about with a hand on
each of his gray tweed shoulders--thrust him forth ... locked him out
... ordered him away.... To have him see the Marchesa--who had hitherto
only seen Granny!...
Melissa’s voice very nearly failed in her throat.
“Come in!” she muttered doggedly and Murdock followed her cheerfully
over to the tea-table.
Over to the Marchesa, as well. Before whom, staring frankly, he stopped
in his tracks. A hideous moment for Melissa. A moment of inarticulate
torture. She had, however, as usual underestimated the Marchesa’s
control of reserves.
“How do you do,” said the Marchesa graciously, putting out one
heavily-ringed little hand ... “if Melissa isn’t going to present
you--I shall speak for myself? I am Amalie Delano ... and who are
_you_, young man?”
Unpredictable woman! Surely the mingled souls of Machiavelli and Ninon
de l’Enclos returned in that frail frame. Very nearly, Melissa’s mouth
fell open. She clenched her teeth just in time. Murdock was answering
dazedly--without however any apparent question of that amazing
introduction.
“Fleming’s my name ... sorry to look such an ass....”
“The noblest work of God--” murmured the Marchesa sweetly.
“I thought--for just a moment,” went on Murdock, conversationally
floundering in the wake of a shock ... “you look such a lot like some
one else ... Melissa knows ...” he cast an imploring glance at Melissa.
“Melissa!” said the Marchesa quickly--“this is too amusing! I see it
all. Mr. Fleming has met Granny!”
Her air of triumph precluded any contradiction. She looked from Murdock
to Melissa, took another brioche, regarded it sybaritically and bit
into it with a good deal the zest of a royal Bengal biting into the
jugular of a plump brown native.
“How utterly delicious!” continued the Marchesa, though whether she
thus referred to situation or bun remained in doubt. She added calmly,
looking Murdock full in the eyes and allowing a smile to widen the
careful corners of the Cupid’s bow.... “Granny is my twin--you won’t
believe it--of course!”
“Good Lord!” said Murdock simply. “No wonder!”
“Sit down, do!” said the Marchesa kindly. “Mayn’t he stay, Melissa?”
Melissa herself still standing, strangled helpless resentment and
motioned Murdock to a chair. After which she sat down, facing the
Marchesa upon the couch and busied among the tea-things hands that
longed to shake that hyacinthine gray head from its shoulders.
“People never believe me when I tell them that Granny and I are twins,”
the Marchesa, settling her neck-band and twitching out a curl above
one ear, observed brightly--“because, in the first place it seems so
absolutely incredible for me to be the twin of any one who is called
Granny by half her acquaintances--and in the second place--really--she
looks so much older than I do! I think I’m a saint to admit the
relationship.”
“_Granny’s_ a saint!” said Murdock warmly.
“Lack of opportunity will make a saint of any woman,” returned the
imperturbable Marchesa. “I don’t mean to reflect upon Mathilda--that’s
her name, you know--but, nom d’un nom! She married--at nineteen--a man
who should never have married at all--a congenital anchorite--he died
a year later. A woman of any esprit would have married again--that is,
unless, of course, she was a woman of too much esprit--well ... my poor
Mathilda! She has spent her life in the service of others....”
“It’s written on her face,” said Murdock reverently.
“Yes--isn’t it!” cooed the Marchesa ... “those nasty little lines
around the eyes and mouth! There’s simply nothing one can do about them
without proper massage ... and Mathilda is too pure for massage--so
there you are! I tell her she might have some consideration for me if
not for herself--since we had the misfortune to come into the world
together and it’s no good my looking less than my age--if she’s going
to look more than hers ... it’s so easy to strike an average ... if you
know anything at all about figures--or even if you don’t, and have a
suspicious nature!”
She paused for breath and to ask for more tea.
Melissa sat dumbly raging. Any word of hers, beside being in the
Marchesa’s present state, superfluous, might all too easily shatter
the entire structure which that lady was so delicately uprearing.
Granny must be drawn by the Marchesa’s hand--or none. No composite
portrait would suffice. Beside which, Melissa saw to her incredulous
disgust--could not help seeing--that Murdock was imperceptibly coming
under the spell of that invincible small withered siren before him. He
broke into a schoolboy chuckle as he handed her replenished cup.
“I’d certainly never take you for sisters!” he admitted.
“’Cre misere--I hope not!” cried the Marchesa airily. “As a man of
the world, Mr. Fleming--as a man of the great world outside this very
charming town of yours ...” (thus, at one stroke making Murdock a
citizen of the universe and presenting him with the keys of New York)
... “I ask you--frankly--could two women be more unlike?”
“Ab-solutely!” said Murdock.
“It is not my fault--” said the Marchesa plaintively. “That my sister
sees angels in men--where I pray only to see men among the angels.”
There was an eery and faintly unpleasant moment in which, blinking into
nothingness across the rim of her tea-cup, she added, “One hasn’t much
longer--to pray--perhaps.”
“Don’t say that!” offered Murdock clumsily.
The Marchesa set down her tea-cup--having drained it--and blew him a
kiss. She reared a gallant and coquettish head. “I shall be seeing
Mathilda in a day or so. Shall I tell her she has made a conquest? Poor
soul--she doesn’t know the word!”
“Give her my love--if you please,” said Murdock boyishly. “And keep
the--conquest--for yourself. I’ll bet you’d know what to do with it!”
“Melissa!” cried the Marchesa, and all her rings flashed in a
fluttering gesture of both little hands, tremulous as ragged-winged
butterflies in a garden at sunset ... “this is by all odds the most
charming young man that I have met since--Leftenant Carmichael!
Remember?”
“I remember,” said Melissa.
“He has the art of compliment,” said the Marchesa. She inquired of the
pleased and flattered Murdock with caressing interest. “You were born
in France--no?”
Murdock, who had been born in no stranger a place than Maryland,
disclaimed France with natural reluctance.
“At least--” begged the Marchesa--“You were educated abroad?”
Murdock mentioned Harvard--without boasting.
“It is incredible!” sighed the Marchesa. “You have so much the manner
... that wonderful finesse....”
Maddening to see a man so buttered--and liking it--loving it--vulgarly
speaking, lapping it up! Melissa, helpless as a painting on a wall,
looked on in smiling silence--and longed to box Murdock’s ears. To
scream in the Marchesa’s face.
No saint, Melissa--when it came to being crowded from the center of
the stage by another woman--and that woman more than thirty years her
senior!
“Come and see me!” said the Marchesa to Murdock upon leaving. She
didn’t even ask Melissa to bring him. That word conquest had set every
flower on her hat quivering. “I can give you tea from Japan--with a
dash of--well, something Japan never knew....”
Mister Roderick’s tea!
Melissa would have drunk it on her knees. So far was hero worship
bearing her. She wasn’t asked.
“You shall come another time, dear--I know how you hate these parties à
trois!” said the Marchesa, smiling like all the felines in Cheshire.
When she had gone, Melissa sent Murdock away--without ceremony. She
said she had a headache--if violent emotion react unfavorably upon
one’s physical well-being--and the doctors tell us it does--perhaps she
had.