Something was wrong with Tommy Burgrave. Instead of flinging excited
hands in the direction of splendid equipage or beautiful woman, he sat
glum by Clementina’s side, while the most dazzling procession in Europe
passed before his eyes. Of course it was a little cockneyfied to sit on
a public bench on the edge of the great Avenue of the Champs Elysées;
but Clementina knew that consciousness of cockneydom would not disturb
the serenity of Tommy’s soul. Something else was the matter. He was ill
at ease. Gloom darkened his brow and care perched on his shoulders.
The car of thirty-five million dove-power which had brought the
wanderers, the day before, to Paris, had deposited Etta Concannon at the
house of some friends for a few hours’ visit, and Tommy and Clementina
at Ledoyen’s, where they had lunched. It was over the _truite à la
gelée_ that Tommy’s conversation had begun to flag. His melancholy
deepened as the meal proceeded. When they strolled, after lunch; across
to the Avenue, his face assumed an expression of acute misery. He sat
forward, elbows on knees, and traced sad diagrams on the gravel with the
point of his cane.
“My good Tommy,” said Clementina, at last—what on earth was the matter
with the boy?—“you look as merry as a museum.”
He groaned. “I’m in a devil of a fix, Clementina.”
“Indeed?”
What could he be in a fix about? Anything more aggravatingly,
insolently, excruciatingly happy than the pair of young idiots whom she
had accompanied in the thirty-five million dove-power car aforesaid, she
had never beheld in her life. Sometimes it was as much as she could do
to restrain herself from stopping the car and dumping the pair of them
down by the wayside and telling them to go and play Daphnis and Chloe by
themselves in the sylvan solitudes of France, instead of conducting
their antic gambols over her heartstrings. The air re-echoed deafeningly
with cooings, and the sky grew sickly with smiles. What could a young
man in love want more?
“It’s the biggest, awfullest mess that ever a fellow got into,” said
Tommy.
“Well, I suppose it’s your own fault,” she remarked, with just a touch
of the vindictive. She had emptied her heart of heaven and thrown it at
the boy’s feet, and he had not so much as said “thank you.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Tommy.
“That’s just like a man,” said Clementina. “Every one of you is ready
enough to cry _peccavi_, but it’s invariably somebody else’s _maxima
culpa_.”
“I didn’t cry _peccavi_ at all,” said Tommy. “I suppose I had better do
so, though,” he added, after a gloomy pause. “I’ve been a cad. I’ve been
abusing your hospitality. Any man of honour would kick me all over the
place. But I swear to you it was not my fault. How the deuce could I
help it?”
“Help what, my good Tommy?”
Tommy dug his stick fiercely in the gravel. “Help falling in love with
Etta. There! now it’s out. Of course you had no idea of it.”
“Of course not,” said Clementina; with a wry twist of her mouth, not
knowing whether to shriek with insane laughter or with pain at the final
cut of the whip with which she had flagellated the offending Eve. But
her grim sense of humour prevailed, though her strength allowed it to
manifest itself only in the twinkling of her keen eyes.
“I don’t know what you can think of me,” said Tommy.
She made no reply, reflecting on the success of her comedy. As she had
planned, so had it fallen out. She had saved her own self-respect—more,
her self-honour—and she had saved him from making muddy disaster of his
own life. The simplicity of the boy touched her deeply. The dear,
ostrich reasoning of youth! Of course she had no idea of it! She looked
at him, sitting there, as a man sometimes looks at a very pure
woman—with a pitying reverence in her eyes. But Tommy did not see the
look, contemplating as he was the blackness of his turpitude. For each
of them it was a wholesome moment.
“You see, not only was I your guest, but I held a kind of position of
trust,” continued Tommy. “She was, as it were, in my charge. If I had
millions, I oughtn’t to have fallen in love with her. As I’m absolutely
penniless, it’s a crime.”
“I don’t think falling in love with a sweet girl is a crime,” said
Clementina gently. “There’s one in that automobile”—she nodded in the
direction of a rosebud piece of womanhood in a carriage that was held up
by a block in the traffic, just in front of them. “If any man fell in
love with her right off; as she sat there, not knowing her, it wouldn’t
be a crime. It would be a divine adventure.”
“She’s not worth two penn’orth of paint,” said Tommy disparagingly—now
Clementina has told me that this was a singularly beautiful girl—such
are other women than his Dulcinea in the eyes of the true lover—“she
isn’t even doll-pretty. But suppose she were, for the sake of
argument—it might be a divine adventure for the fool who fell in love
with her and never told her; but for the penniless cad who went up and
told her—and got her love in return—it would be a crime.”
Now it must be remembered that Tommy was entirely ignorant of the fact
that a fortune of two thousand pounds, the spoils of Old Joe Jenks, was
coyly lying at his banker’s, who had made the usual acknowledgment to
the payer-in and not to the payee.
“So you’ve told Etta?” said Clementina, feeling curiously remote from
him and yet curiously drawn to him.
“This morning,” said Tommy, glowering at the ground. “In the hall of the
hotel, waiting for you to come down.”
“Oh!” said Clementina, who had deliberately lingered.
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Tommy with dark magnanimity. “It was the
fault of that damned glove. She asked me to button it for her. Why do
women wear gloves thirty sizes too small for them? Why can’t they wear
sensible easy things like a man? I was fussing over the infernal
thing—I had somehow got her arm perpendicular in front of her face and
I was bending down and she was looking up—oh, can’t you see?” He broke
off impatiently.
“Oh yes, I can see,” replied Clementina. “And I suppose Etta was utterly
indignant?”
“That’s the devil of it,” said the conquering but miserable lover. “She
wasn’t.”
“She wasn’t?” asked Clementina.
“No,” said Tommy.
“Then I’m shocked at her,” said Clementina. “She was in my charge,
enjoying my hospitality. She had no business to fall in love with—with
my—” she floundered for a second—“with my invalid guest.”
“Pretty sort of invalid I am,” said Tommy, who; through the masquerade
of woe, appealed to passers-by, especially to those of the opposite sex,
as the embodiment of fair Anglo-Saxon lustiness. “She isn’t to blame,
poor dear. I am, and yet, confound it! I’m not—for how could I help it?
But what the deuce there is in me, Clementina dear, for the most
exquisite thing God ever made to care for, God only knows.”
Clementina put her hand—the glove on it, so different from Etta’s, was
thirty sizes too large; it was of white cotton, and new—she had sent
the page-boy of the hotel that morning to buy her a pair—she put her
gloved hand on his. At the touch he raised his eyes to hers. He saw in
them something—he was too young and ingenuous to know what—but
something he had not seen in Clementina’s eyes before.
“You’re right, my dear boy,” she said. “God knows. That being so, it is
up to Him, as the Americans say, to make good. And He’ll make good. That
is, if you really love that little girl.”
“Love her!” cried Tommy. “Why——”
“Yes, yes,” Clementina interrupted hastily. “I’m convinced of it. You
needn’t go into raptures.” She had endured much the last few weeks. She
felt now that the penance of listening to amatory dithyrambics was
supererogatory. “All I want to know is that you love her like a man.”
“That I do,” said Tommy.
“And she loves you?”
Tommy nodded lugubriously. She loved him for nodding.
“Then why the devil are you trying to make me miserable on this
beautiful afternoon?”
He twisted round on the bench and faced her. “Then you’re not angry with
me—you don’t think I’ve been a blackguard?”
“I think the two of you are innocent lambs,” said Clementina.
Tommy grinned. He, the seasoned man of the world of twenty-three, to be
called an innocent lamb! Much Clementina knew about it.
“All the same,” said he, reverting to his gloom, “you’re different from
other people; you have your own way of looking at things. Ordinary folk
would say I had behaved abominably. Admiral Concannon would kick me out
of the house if I went and asked him for his daughter. It’s Gilbertian!
There’s a Bab Ballad almost on the same theme,” he laughed. “I guess I’d
better not speak to the Admiral yet awhile.”
“I guess not,” said Clementina. “Leave well alone for the present.”
This advice she gave to Etta when that young person, before going to
bed, told her the marvellous news. But Etta’s anxiety as to future ways
and means was the least of her preoccupations, which consisted, in the
main, of wonder at Tommy’s transcendent perfections, and at her
extraordinary good fortune in winning the favour of such a miracle of a
man. Clementina left her radiant and went to bed with a headache and a
bit of a heartache. The one little Elf of Romance that had crossed her
grey path she had snubbed unmercifully. Would ever another chance come
by? Would he not go back and tell his congeners of the flinty-bosomed,
sour-avised female who had nearly frightened him to death; and bid them
all beware of her devastating presence? It was no use her saying that
she loved the Elf with all her heart, but had to dissemble her love, for
the Elf, like the lover in the poem, would naturally ask the historic
question. Yet she did love him, and in the secrecy of her soul longed
for such another—but one perhaps who would put before her a less
Puckish proposition. How could she attract one? With what lure could she
entice him?
“Bosh!” she said, after a couple of sleepless hours. “It’s high time I
was back at work again.”
Now, be it here definitely stated that Clementina misjudged the Elf. He
was mightily amused by her treatment of him, and ran away with his elfin
thumb to his elfin nose in the most graceless and delicious manner
possible. He swore revenge. In his cobweb seat he thought hard. Then he
slapped his thighs and laughed, and returned to Elfland where he raised
a prodigious commotion.
The result of this will be duly set forth in the following pages.
“We leave Paris to-morrow,” said Clementina; buttoning her cotton
gloves. “I must work, and Tommy must work, and Etta must learn to cook
and sew and scrub saucepans. The holiday is about to end.”
Two sighs greeted the announcement.
“Can’t we have one other day?” Etta pleaded.
“You just need the extra day to make you quite fit again,” said Tommy.
Clementina, unmoved by pleading or sophistry, replied, “We start
to-morrow.”
Etta looked at Tommy and sorrowfully licked from her finger-tips the
squirted cream of an _éclair_. They had just finished tea at Colombin’s,
a form of amusement to which Etta was addicted. She liked the crowded
room, the band, the bustle of the waitresses and the warm smell of tea
and chocolate and pastry. She also had the perverted craving of female
youth to destroy its appetite for dinner. She looked at Tommy and
cleansed herself from _éclair_ like a dainty kitten; but Tommy’s eyes
were fixed to the entrance of the tea-room. He half rose from his chair.
“Lord Almighty, if that isn’t Uncle Ephraim!”
“Where?” cried Clementina.
He nodded, and Clementina, turning her head, saw Quixtus, one of a party
of four, two men and two ladies, threading their way between the
chattering tables under the guidance of a waitress. They found places
not far off. Quixtus sat down with his back to Clementina.
“I wonder whom he has got hold of,” said Tommy.
“She’s _awfully_ pretty,” said Etta, glancing at Mrs. Fontaine.
“Passable,” said Tommy. “I don’t care for women who look like nuns.”
“She doesn’t look a bit like a nun,” she contradicted. “She’s talking
and laughing like anything.”
Clementina said nothing, but studied the woman’s face. The portrait
painter’s instinct arose. She would like to get her in the sitter’s
chair and see what sort of a thing would come out on the canvas. The
woman seemed to be the mistress of the feast. It was she who apportioned
the seats and gave the orders; also it was she who led the animated
conversation. The party seemed to be intimate.
“Whatever the crowd is, they’re having a good time,” said Tommy, “An
unusual thing for my uncle.”
“Perhaps that’s because he’s crazy,” suggested Etta.
“Perhaps,” said Tommy. “I should like to knock some sanity into him,
though,” he added ruefully; “especially as things are at present.”
“So should I,” remarked Clementina, and again she scrutinised the
woman’s face.
“Perhaps his reason will come back when he sees Etta!” cried Tommy,
laughing boyishly. “I’ll go and present her.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said Clementina.
But Clementina, when they had risen to leave the tea-room, found that
she had counted without her hosts, who had arranged the crowded tables
in such a manner that in order to reach the exit door, she and her
charges had to pass immediately behind Huckaby, who sat facing Quixtus.
Chance had also caused a temporary blocking of the gangway a little
further on. The trio came to a compulsory standstill beside the
quartette. Tommy stretched out a frank hand.
“Hullo, Uncle Ephraim! What are you doing here?”
Quixtus rose and took the proffered hand, but he did not answer the
indiscreet question.
“How d’ye do, Tommy? I hope I see you well.” Then he became conscious of
Clementina, whom he greeted with stiff courtesy.
“I must present you to Miss Etta Concannon,” said Tommy. “This is my
uncle, Dr. Quixtus. We’ve been motoring all over France with Clementina.
Had a gorgeous time.”
Again Clementina looked at the woman with the nun’s face and the
alluring eyes, and this time the woman looked at Clementina. Between the
two pairs of eyes was a second’s invisible rapier play. Mrs. Fontaine
broke into a laugh.
“Won’t you introduce me, Dr. Quixtus?” And then, the introductions being
effected—“I hope you’re staying a long while in Paris.”
“We leave to-morrow,” snapped Clementina. “And you?” she asked, turning
to Quixtus.
He made a vague gesture. A week’s Seine water had flowed beneath the
bridges since he had first walked up the Rue de la Paix with Mrs.
Fontaine, and that week had been full of interest, morbid and otherwise.
Not only did he hug himself in his imaginary wrap of diabolical
wickedness, but also—if he could admit the truth—he was enjoying
himself enormously in the most blameless fashion. Mrs. Fontaine showing
no particular desire to leave Paris, he had adjourned his own departure
_sine die_.
“I am remaining some time yet,” he replied.
“In the interests of Prehistoric Man?”
The implication was brutal. Two little red spots rose to Mrs. Fontaine’s
cheeks. She conceived a sudden hatred for the rough-voiced, keen-eyed
creature with her untidy hair and caricature of a hat. A retort;
containing the counter-implication of Clementina’s resemblance to a
prehistoric woman, was tempting. But it would lay herself open to
obvious attack. She laughed.
“We are all helping Dr. Quixtus to recover from Prehistoric Man. He has
just been attending an Anthropological Congress.”
“Umph!” said Clementina.
“Where are you staying, Uncle Ephraim?” asked Tommy.
“At the Hôtel Continental.”
“I’ll come and look you up—to-night or to-morrow morning.”
Why should he not treat Quixtus as hard-hearted uncles are treated in
the story-books? _Videlicet_, why should not Etta and himself go hand in
hand before him, tell him their tragic and romantic history, and,
falling pathetically on their knees, beg for his blessing and
subvention? To thrust so fair a flower as Etta from him—surely he could
not be as crazy as all that? But Quixtus threw cold water on the ardent
fancy.
“I’m sorry to say that both to-night and to-morrow morning I shall be
engaged.”
“Then I’ll look you up in London when you get back,” said Tommy
cheerfully.
A gangway to the door being now clear, Clementina made perfunctory
adieux to Quixtus and his friends; and henlike, marshalling her two
chickens in front of her, sailed out of the tea-room.
“He doesn’t look at all horrid,” said Etta, when they reached the
street. “I wonder what makes him behave so. And how generous of you,
Tommy, to be so sweet to him!”
Tommy smiled as if he were compact of lofty qualities.
“I’ve been blessing him all the time,” he whispered in her ear, “for if
it hadn’t been for his craziness I shouldn’t be here with you.”
Clementina trudged on in silence until they turned into the Rue
Saint-Honoré, where their hotel was situated. Then she said suddenly:
“I don’t like your uncle, and I don’t like his friends. I’m sorry we ran
into them. If we stayed on in Paris we should be running into them every
day. I’m glad we’re clearing out to-morrow.”
Whereupon the Elf, who had returned from Elfland to haunt her, laughed
immoderately; for he knew that at the bureau of the hotel a telegram was
awaiting her.