In the early morning seclusion of 14 Breath Street, Bond Street,
Anthony Brooks showed Vingie his little world.
"This is the salon," he explained proudly. She saw a medium-sized
room done in green and gold, vile with velvet, its mirrors molded and
twisted and gilded. She nodded speechlessly.
A tall blonde girl slumped across the carpet in a sidelong crawl, one
shoulder higher than the other, knees pressed together. The
expression on her face suggested contemptuous refusal to put a penny
in some one's missionary box. She exhibited one of the house's
evening gowns. Wherever trimming could go on it trimming was.
"Miss Dodsworthy, our star mannequin," beamed Anthony Brooks.
Vingie nodded again. She dared not speak.
"This," he continued, indicating a highly modern young person of
twenty-two, in black charmeuse that showed every line of her boyish
figure, bobbed haired, silk-ankled, manicured and made up to the
eyes, "is Miss Buxton, our manageress."
Vingie smiled genially on Miss Buxton with hell in her heart and put
out a slender hand.
"And this," concluded Anthony Brooks, in the manner of a chairman
introducing the comic turn, "is Miss Glymp, who is learning the
business."
Vingie beheld a sallow-faced girl of sixteen with black hair and the
sharpest eyes in the world. She wore her hair in a plait, dressed in
black alpaca, and appeared to be on the alert for a slap or a
scolding at any moment.
"Now then, Miss Glymp!" admonished Miss Buxton.
The eyes of Vingie flickered for one second in the eyes of Miss
Glymp, to breed complete understanding. A hand stretched out to
grasp Miss Glymp's little paw. "Good morning," said Vingie and the
undercurrent implied: "Don't worry, Cinderella. Watch me handle the
two ugly sisters!"
Anthony Brooks led Vingie away to his private office. The manageress
and the mannequin gazed after.
"Well, I never!" exclaimed Miss Buxton.
"Ts! Ts!" agreed Miss Dodsworthy, resuming a natural pose.
"A fine madam to bring into a respectable business, I don't think!"
elaborated Miss Buxton.
"Loathesome!" said Miss Dodsworthy languidly.
A faint giggle startled their ears. It came from Miss Glymp. It was
the first time she had ever dared to giggle.
"Now then, Sauce!" snarled Miss Buxton. "Have you tideed your
show-room? No! Then go and tidee it this instant!"
"You know, Anthony," said Vingie, leaning back in the visitor's
chair, "this place is absolutely fatal."
"I don't understand," he faltered, a little shocked at the use of his
Christian name.
"That room--those women! The room looks like a coffin-maker's dream
of Heaven, and the two women simply make one's skin feel like
sand-paper all over. The kid's all right. She's got some brains."
"What do you suggest?" inquired Anthony a little stiffly.
"Get the decorators in and get the women out I should think. No
decent person would put up with either. By the way, is that strange
garment on Miss Dodsworthy's rather limp back a fair specimen of the
goods we stock, Anthony? If so, I think a rebuilding sale is
indicated, with murderous reductions in all departments."
Anthony Brooks made a last ineffective stand against his beautiful
tyrant.
"For many years, my father, a respected man in the soft-goods trade,
ran this business on these lines. I propose to continue. True we
aren't showing a profit, but owing to post-war depression, high
taxation and so on, times are bad. However, a trade boom is
imminent----"
Vingie held up a reproving finger,
"Newspaper stuff," she answered cruelly. "I don't propose to sit
here till my chin sags, making an occasional ten pounds and thanking
God the brokers aren't in, Anthony. If we aren't booming in less
than a year I cut my losses and depart. I know all the people we
want to get, the people with money or influence or both, and I'll get
them. They don't live in Surbiton, but Surbiton will follow them,
and so will Manchester and Yorkshire. Also, we'll find a new staff.
Leave the women to me, my dear, and you keep the books and boss up
the commissionaire who stands outside. Do you agree?"
"I insist," he said weakly, "on these ladies being given another
chance."
Vingie sighed. "Ring the bell, please," she commanded. When Miss
Glymp arrived, her dark eyes snapping, Vingie put a hand
affectionately on her arm and requested the presence of Miss
Dodsworthy.
The star mannequin curved through the doorway in her filleted
fashion, put a hand up to her blonde head as though to reassure
herself of its existence and said:
"You wished for me, Mr. Brooks?"
"No," explained Vingie silkily, "I rather wanted to see you, Miss
Dodsworthy. The point is, were you born tired or do you consider it
lady-like?"
"_I_ don't think _I_ quite understand," observed Miss Dodsworthy
loftily.
"Perhaps you aren't well?" suggested Vingie.
"_I_ am in perfect health, _I_ thank you."
"I doubt if you could stand hacking ten miles to a meet, hunting all
day in the rain and hacking eighteen miles home, Miss Dodsworthy."
"_I_ am not acquainted with horse-riding, nor wish to be. _I_ have
my figure to consider," retorted Miss Dodsworthy looking at Vingie's
lines with a disparaging stare.
"Well, the fact is I'm a partner in this business now. If you care
to go through a stiff course of physical culture, and elocution, we
might be able to use you. Otherwise----"
"I do not think I should care----"
"Fired, Anthony," said Vingie briefly. "Good morning, Miss
Dodsworthy. Send Miss Buxton please."
"No wonder women hate one another. Anything more heartless I never
imagined," declared Anthony.
"Can't afford passengers, my friend. Oh, Miss Buxton, if you'll wash
that stuff off your face, and be taught how to make up properly, and
not show so much of your legs, and stop bullying that kid in there,
you can stay on. Otherwise, I'm afraid you'll have to go."
"Thank you, Mr. Brooks," said Miss Buxton, ignoring Vingie, "I should
like to leave instantly."
"I suggest a month's pay, each, Anthony," was Vingie's only comment.
"Now we'll ring up a good decorator, and get a typist along. We must
put out these sale notices, and start looking for a couple of decent
mannequins, and get on to the wholesale houses. I'll manage the
place for the time being, with that kid as my second string. Hurry,
there's a dear."
At night she found awaiting her a note from Sir Charles.
"My dear Virginia:
"Scrymgeour has acquainted me with your business transactions. He
seems filled with alarm. Personally, I take up the attitude of
Gamaliel who observed in another connection. 'If this council or
this work be of men it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye
cannot overthrow it.'
"Nevertheless I ought to warn you that in my experience a man who
will enter into financial arrangements with a woman to whom he is not
related by marriage or kinship is invariably an insufferable blighter.
"Your affectionate,
"Charles Gillespie."
"Poor darling," murmured Vingie sympathetically. "How I hate leaving
him, but it has to be. Some day I'll take Anthony down to Wynwood
and show how harmless he is."
She was too busy to do more than sigh. Anthony Brooks, far from
being one of nature's born gamblers, hung heavy on her hands,
grudging the expenditure of capital. Vingie drove him as with whips
to a decorative scheme of gray and powder blue, hired two sylphs who
displayed frocks like fallen angels, and replenished the stock in the
spirit of a girl trained from infancy to depend on clothes.
Nevertheless, prosperity lagged.
She sat one sunlit morning, the loveliest thing in London, opposite
him, staring across the private office of 14 Breath Street, Bond
Street, the curve of her chin propped on her two hands.
"Anthony," she said at last, "get me a taxi. I'm going to do what is
called 'enlist the services of the press.'"
"We can't afford any more advertising," began Anthony, but she waved
him aside.
"It won't cost anything, you poor fish. You never realize what good
copy I am, or how many people I know. Look at my face, my figure, my
name, my clothes! News editors have more sense than you, Anthony,
especially my darling Mr. Berriman."
At eleven thirty A.M. she found the pleasant man in the vast premises
of the _Daily Tale_, his clean-shaven, clever face alert for the
possibility of news. Telephones hedged him round, and damp proofs
fluttered all about him.
"My dear Miss Lauriston, how do you do? No doubt you bring me the
historic scoop at last!" he beamed, with one eye on the clock.
Vingie shook her head and smiled. She made a fair ornament in the
soulless, efficient room.
"Only a little personal one at the moment. I've started a frock
shop: 'Society beauty takes to commerce.' But any facilities
regarding divorce, blackmail, or scandal that come along are yours
for the asking, and I'll really buy a wee little bit of advertising
space if you insist. Don't you think you could send a nice
sympathetic reporter to interview me? Do make it a man though.
Women are so hard on their own kind."
Mr. Berriman began to think aloud in the terms of his craft.
"'Beauty in Business; Aristocrat Acquires Atelier; Gifted Girl's
Gesture in Gowns,'" he murmured. "I think we might risk half a
column, Miss Lauriston. There's always a certain sentimental
interest about putting a butterfly to work."
"Of course I take my work intensely seriously, Mr. Berriman."
"Undoubtedly. They always do. If you could spare half an hour at
three P.M.? Thank you so much!" murmured Mr. Berriman and bowed her
out.
Nevertheless, the rise of the business, the first steps of Anthony
Brooks toward becoming Lord Mayor of London, the solvency of Vingie
and many other miracles date from that historic afternoon. At the
bidding of his chief, Mr. Gilbert Anstruther, late of Oxford
University, took a taxicab westward, and wrote the famous interview
that began:
"In the Forest of Arden, which clods do call Breath Street, W., I
found Titania wielding magic shears. Fairies of surpassing beauty
displayed on their lovely forms those gossamer fabrics whose
composition is of dragonflies' wings. I would I were some sloe-eyed
daughter of the idle rich, that I might veil my charms in the woven
lyrics which the Honorable Virginia Lauriston, another of our
aristocracy to descend into the hustling marts of Commerce, is
merchandizing with such grace and brio in a promising new venture."
Here followed a Latin quotation, but the sub-editor swore and cut it
out.
It brought Vingie the Goold-Tamberlaine wedding to dress. Every
profiteer's wife rushed to Breath Street, where, surely an Honorable
would know exactly the right thing for her to wear. Vingie appeared
at important first nights, and the very select dance clubs in a
sequence of toilets that wrung tears of envy to ruin many a
carefully-wrought complexion. As a crowning triumph she designed the
gowns for the cabaret scene in one of Mr. Dorian's remarkable
super-revues.
On a day when the sun shone passionately into her little personal
room at Breath Street, where she sat at her Louis Quinze escritoire,
her eyes sparkling with the delirium of business, the little
side-curls that hid her ears darling enough to break any man's heart,
Lord Fordingbridge drew up his pair-horse phaeton outside these
arcadian premises.
The noble lord descended, caressed the shining quarter of the near
wheeler, nodded to the commissionaire, and ambled into the reception
room, his gray tall hat slightly a-tilt, a flaming carnation in the
button-hole of his gray frock coat. He removed the hat, and a genial
smile lightened his rubicund countenance as Miss Glymp came to
receive him. He patted her absently on the head.
"I should be greatly obliged if Miss Lauriston could spare me a
moment," he rumbled. "Will you run along like a good little gal and
tell her Lord Fordingbridge would like to see her, please?"
Miss Glymp, who had never hitherto had her head patted, been called a
little gal, or run along anywhere, disappeared in some disorder.
Lord Fordingbridge, who stood six feet two in his socks, prowled
absently into the salon and beheld the two sylphs posturing in
joy-gowns for a lady client. He screwed an eyeglass firmly into
position and began frankly to enjoy himself until Miss Glymp led him
to Vingie.
Lord Fordingbridge lifted her slender fingers to his lips, looked
doubtfully at the furniture, and subsided, with misgivings, on to a
window-seat.
"My dear, my dear, this is all very preposterous, and yet it has its
charm," he began. "You look positively blooming if I may say so.
Charles is widowed and despondent, but he tries to bear up. He asked
me to tell you Lycidas is an absolute gift for the Canterbury Stakes.
I can get you on at twenties, but mum's the word."
"I gamble in better things these days, George, dear. I'm quite
indecently well-off. Is there anything I can do for you?"
Lord Fordingbridge sighed.
"This place reminds me so much of a certain young woman's
surroundings in the Paris of my youth," he said irrelevantly. "Still
I couldn't very well call at your flat. I should have liked to send
Rupert--youth to youth, my dear Virginia--but alas, an estrangement
seems to have come between you two. Rupert's a great stickler for
etiquette. He declined to thrust himself on you. Y'see, I'm rather
at my wits' end, and I think you could help me if you would."
Vingie pressed a bell. "Russian tea and cigarettes, and I'm engaged
for the next hour," she commanded Miss Glymp. Lord Fordingbridge
sipped his amber drink, savored his cigarette and gazed at her
through half-shut eyes. She avoided his gaze and smoked quickly.
"Rupert and I--oh, well I expect I hurt his feelings. You see I
couldn't marry him--life's too exciting for marriage--and now I'm
busy I never see a man of any sort except Anthony, my partner.
Anthony's an awful dear in many ways, but----"
"I know, I know. Never without his regimental tie since Armistice
Day," sympathized his lordship, and paused. "I suppose," he went on
slowly, "I should be considered an impertinent old man if I asked
whether Miss Mauricette Maxwell comes here for her dresses?"
Vingie surveyed him thoughtfully.
"Not at the moment, but she will. She wears one of my gowns in
Dorian's revue, and after she saw it, what there was of it, I haven't
much doubt. What makes you ask?"
"It's a long story," declared his lordship dreamily. "I regret to
say it points to the depravity of man and the duplicity of woman.
All flesh is grass, my dear, but some grass is greener than other,
and in this case the man ought to know better. Still, which of us
who live in glass houses dares cast the first stone? He's a high
official if he's the man I think he is."
"Yes, dear, but what's all the mystery?"
"Ah!" exclaimed Lord Fordingbridge with the air of one laying down
the ace of trumps, "y'see Mauricette Maxwell isn't Mauricette Maxwell
at all. That is, she is as far as she goes--you follow me, don't
you?--but the contents of the bottle doesn't always correspond to the
label on the outside. She's not British or American, as she sounds.
I don't really know what she is. Her mother was French and her
father--_je ne sais quoi_. Let's presume he was a Pole, or a Magyar
or a Russian. Anyway Mauricette's linked up with Somebody's Secret
Service, and she's caught our poor friend X in her toils. That is, I
think it's X. It might be Y or Z. If anybody writes a check for her
account with you, I wish you'd let me see it before you pay it into
your bank. I'd like to hush things up if possible. Terrible thing
if it got in the papers. After all none of us'd like the skeleton in
his cupboard washed in public, would he?"
He rose to his feet with grave dignity and bent again over Vingie's
hand. He passed out to his phaeton, a fine survival of the old
school, gathered up the reins, and clattered splendidly away.
Vingie remained at her desk deep in thought.
"I don't like this idea of mixing up business with Foreign Office
work," she pondered. "On the other hand it may give me some kind of
hold over Rupert. I consider Rupert has behaved very badly just
because I wouldn't marry him. Who on earth would marry Rupert, or
any other man, at the first time of asking unless she were Miss Glymp
or some one like that? He's never written to me, or been to see me,
or asked me to dine with him. I think a little cruelty would do him
good."
The telephone bell tinkled faintly. Miss Mauricette Maxwell's maid
wished to make an appointment for Miss Mauricette Maxwell to discuss
the subject of frocks. Vingie put down the receiver with a little
gasp.
"Now, how much does George, or Rupert, or both of them know, and how
do they find it out?" she demanded solemnly of space.
Her brain began to weave the tortuous, involved plans peculiar to
females, all seemingly ridiculous, yet very much to the point if only
people knew.
"I think I'll take Anthony down to Wynwood in the car this week-end,"
she decided. "Rupert is sure to be there. It would seem appropriate
for him to know Anthony. Rupert's too fond of imagining nothing
exists outside his own world."
Though Anthony Brooks had not the faintest desire to visit Wynwood,
being perfectly happy to drowse away the week-end at Mon Plaisir, his
Surbiton home,--alternating perusal of the Sunday papers with a
little clock-golf on the lawn, fortified by the Sunday luncheon of
roast beef, two veg., trifle, and half a bottle of that excellent
Burgundy he picked up from a man in the city who unfortunately went
bankrupt,--yet Vingie had her way because clay can not presume to
argue with the potter.
She took him down personally in the little ten-horsepower "Wonderful"
she had bought out of her profits. The limited space precluded much
luggage, and Anthony wondered in misery whether he had sufficient
changes of raiment for stately surroundings.
Vingie presented him to Sir Charles and poured tea for him on the
sunlit terrace. The butler terrified him; he sat in gloom juggling
drearily with a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter.
"The enterprises of commerce hold great fascination for me," declared
Sir Charles, with his imperishable charm. "Observe how beautiful
woman lays the whole earth under tribute, from the silks and perfumes
of the East to the furs of the Arctic."
"Mostly wood-fiber and pussy-cat now-a-days, sir, I'm afraid,"
replied Anthony with ghastly mirth.
"I rejoice, moreover, that my ward has enjoyed the benefit of your
ripe experience in this undertaking of hers," pursued Sir Charles
blandly. "You have been the soul of good nature, Mr. Brooks.
Believe me I am not ungrateful."
"Not at all. Pleasure I'm sure," muttered the wretched guest,
reddening to the edge of his ears.
"Charles, darling," interrupted Vingie, "surely Rupert is somewhere
about? I haven't seen a sign of him."
"Oh, he'll be along presently. He got rather hot knocking the balls
about on the tennis courts and I think he's changing," explained Sir
Charles.
Even as he spoke, a tall immaculate figure, with all the aloofness of
a very superior god, stepped through the French window and advanced
toward them.
"Oh, hullo, Rupert!" Virginia began in a little bored drawl. "By the
way, have you met my friend, Anthony Brooks?"
"Ah! how do you do?" said Rupert impersonally. "Delightful day for
motoring down. I trust the car ran well, Virginia."
He seated himself apart, and glanced vaguely at Anthony Brooks rather
as a man inspects the bacillus of a new disease, striving as it were
to appear interested and failing entirely to conceal very natural
horror.
"We're making a great deal of money these days, Rupert," Vingie went
on. "I'm getting to be quite an heiress. Probably Charles has told
you."
"No," replied Rupert with terrible politeness. "I don't think we
discussed the matter. I should love to hear all about it, but Lacey
absolutely insisted that I should dine with him and stay over
to-morrow. He delivers his big speech on the Near East in the House
next week and he wished to discuss certain points with me. In fact
I'll have to run away almost at once. My kit is already in the car."
He rose and smiled like the moon shining upon the crests of the
Himalayas. "Good-by!" he claimed. "Good-by, Mr.--er--Brooks." With
a faint inclination of the head in Vingie's direction he retired as
he had come. Sir Charles gazed in rapture at the distant woods.
"We have indeed reason to be grateful to our ancestors for their
devoted efforts in afforestation, Mr. Brooks----" he began, while
Vingie's teeth met viciously in a macaroon biscuit.
Very soon after dinner she retired to rest, alleging fatigue. No
one's appearance at breakfast on Sunday coincided with that of
Anthony, and Sir Charles proved to be his only companion at luncheon.
As it transpired, he passed the day much as he would have done at his
Surbiton home, but he remembers the Burgundy at dinner as something
to dwell upon, and Sir Charles' port went straight to his heart. He
recalls gratefully an excellent cigar or two and has vague memories
of a discussion on trout-fishing afterward. Vingie compelled him to
leave very early on Monday morning in order to reach Breath Street by
nine A.M. Nevertheless he preserves a tender feeling for the
aristocracy. They understand, he declares, the art of living, and
devote much thought to that end.
Now, even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
On a day when the presence of bright sunshine coincided with the
weekly cheap train to London from Great Booking (a place of
ninety-three houses, not to be confused with Little Booking which
boasts only twenty-seven) Ella Fairbody decided to avail herself of
the railway company's generosity. She was a person accustomed to
make these gentle decisions from which, once made, she never departed.
She put on her gray organdie frock with the cerise touches, which she
had made herself aided by a paper pattern, because Ella was clever
with her needle and there is no use throwing money away on these
dressmakers, and the gray shoes and stockings and hat to match.
(Nevertheless she took her umbrella because you never know in this
climate.) She brushed her mid-brown hair rather carefully, and
rubbed a powder puff over her face with a pleasant, slight feeling of
wickedness. There was no need to add color because she had one of
those wild-rose complexions, although going on for twenty-seven. She
met Mrs. Hickman at the station, who, seeing Ella in her best dress,
standing on the up platform in time for the eleven-thirty train which
does not stop after Great Booking, said: "Are you going to London,
Miss Fairbody?" and Ella smiled and said, "Yes," and bridled a little
as though confessing to something rather devilish.
At two-thirty she passed through the door of 14 Breath Street, Bond
Street, paused, raised her head, and tilted it slightly to one side.
Her eyes told her the place was altered; her instinct told her the
alteration was for the worse. A faint perfume troubled her senses;
the decorative scheme smote her as somehow unchaste. Miss Glymp,
coming forward courageously instead of furtively, in a perfect little
frock, her hair perfectly arranged, offended Ella's sense of
righteousness.
"I want to see Mr. Brooks. Is he in his room?" she asked in the
voice she kept for servants.
"Mr. Brooks is engaged with Miss Lauriston at the moment. If you
will kindly take a seat I will inform you. What name may I say,
please?"
"Say, Miss Fairbody, his fiancée," replied Ella coldly.
Miss Glymp, internally convulsed by Ella's gown, glided perfidiously
to Anthony's room. She found him in animated discussion with Vingie,
who, cigarette in mouth, laid down her views on business policy.
"Miss Fairbody wishes to see you, sir," murmured Miss Glymp.
A pale perspiration bedewed Anthony's forehead. Although he had done
no wrong, vague sickness afflicted his internal economy.
Notwithstanding, he passed a care-worn hand over his brow and said:
"Please bring her here."
Vingie raised shocked eyebrows. "But, Anthony----" she began.
Anthony did not heed. Even as a condemned man on the morning of
execution reviews all the delicate and desirable things of life he is
about to leave, so Anthony Brooks said a mute farewell to the
pleasant associations of the last six months; the charm and genius of
Vingie, the business losses turned into a hundred per cent. net
profit, the glimpses of a delightful secure world not his own.
The door opened, and Ella came in, holding her umbrella across her
body as one nurses a baby. "Anthony, dear!" she exclaimed, halted
one pace from him, and held up her face in sure and certain hope.
In the fulfilment of his duty he bent and kissed her.
Vingie stood rooted to the carpet. She saw Anthony turn to her and
heard him say: "This is Miss Fairbody, my _fiancée_." There was that
in his eyes which almost evoked pity from her, but not quite.
She put out a slender hand, smiled, and murmured: "How do you do?"
but her heart cried out for whips and thumb screws to be applied to
Anthony. He should never have allowed the situation to occur. "I
expect you'll have all sorts of things to talk about," she went on
politely. "Perhaps you'll both come and have tea in my room at four
o'clock?" She passed out, an affecting figure, far too affecting in
fact. As the door closed behind her, Ella put her head very slightly
on one side.
"Anthony----" she began.
In her own room Vingie sat lonely, and reviewed the entire scheme of
things with marked distaste.
"It's very curious," she reflected, "but I s'spose human nature being
what it is, I oughtn't to be surprised. I haven't the vaguest
affection for Anthony and if he were to kiss me I should scream. Yet
the fact that he's engaged to that terrible young woman has taken
away every scrap of interest I ever had in this job. P'r'aps it's
because of her dreadful mind. She probably thinks I want him for
myself. Vingie, dear, your latest wild oat has run rather to seed
I'm afraid. How on earth am I to get out of all this? Anyhow for
sheer pride I simply must produce a man of my own."
A light yet firm knock fell on the door. It opened to reveal Ella
Fairbody. She closed the door, smiled in saintly fashion, seated
herself and folded her hands in her lap. She conveyed mutely that
she was glad her clothes were what they were, instead of resembling
Vingie's.
"Miss Lauriston," she began, "I wish to be quite frank."
"If there is anything to be quite frank about, Miss Fairbody,"
replied Vingie in her most silky voice, "that is undoubtedly the best
course."
Ella Fairbody sighed.
"The world is a very difficult place," she proceeded. "I've been
having a look round with Anthony, and I don't quite like the tone of
this establishment now it's altered. Those two mannequins for
instance--of course they may be good girls but they seem dreadfully
brazen. There used to be a Miss Buxton here--such a lady-like
person. And that Miss Glymp has become a very pert little girl. The
whole atmosphere here is quite changed; it's--well, it strikes me as
not quite nice."
"What is 'nice'?" asked Vingie.
Her visitor smiled even more icily.
"I think you know what I mean. Any woman would. And I do feel that
for a young man who's engaged to one girl to be in quite such close
association with another as Anthony is with you isn't quite--quite
wise. You see, people are so uncharitable. I understand that he's
been to stay with your people and you motored him down in your car,
and he has had dinner at your flat. That seems to me rather a
mistake."
"My dear woman, how on earth should I know he was engaged to you?"
demanded the goaded Vingie. "I never heard of you till half an hour
ago."
"Oh, of course in that case----" admitted Ella Fairbody, "it seems
strange though that he didn't tell you. Our love means a great deal
to Anthony." Her entire form shrieked dumbly the one word "liar!"
Another knock fell on the door. There entered the cashier bearing a
slip of pink paper. "Excuse me, Miss Lauriston," she murmured, "but
this is the check for Miss Maxwell's account. Your instructions were
to bring it to you at once."
"Thank you," said Vingie absently. She examined the check saw that
it bore the signature "Gerald Loxley, Capt. 91st Hussars" and leaped
at once to a brilliant rearguard action.
"Forgive me one moment," she continued, picked up the telephone
receiver and asked for the Foreign Office. "Miss Lauriston speaking.
Give me Lord Fordingbridge, please. Is that Lord Fordingbridge? Oh,
George, the Maxwell check has come. I wish you'd send Rupert down at
once to look at it. No, not made out in her name. Yes, a man. I
particularly want Rupert. Send him in a car, will you--it's rather
urgent. Thank you ever so. Good-by."
Ella Fairbody, whose mind had never worked at such a dizzy speed as
Vingie's, felt more than ever convinced of her hostess' iniquity.
Vingie turned to her with cruel calm.
"In the circumstances, of course, I shall withdraw from this
concern," she announced. "It seems a pity to take capital out of the
business just when it's booming, but that naturally is no affair of
mine. Perhaps you can spare Mr. Brooks for half an hour to arrange
the details? That's very kind of you, Miss Fairbody. Would you mind
telling him as you go out?"
He entered slowly, and for a second she pitied him even as on that
far-off day at the Savoy when he had seemed so young and distraught.
But hell holds no fury like a woman scorned. Vingie turned on him
the two glinting bits of green-gray ice that were her eyes and said:
"You might really have told me you were engaged, Anthony. I dislike
being accused of baby-snatching by peculiar young women."
Like a cornered rat he burst out in despairing fury:
"What about you? How do I know whether you're engaged or not? Why
should I take all the blame?"
"My poor thing," she answered mildly, "don't let's quarrel just as
we're about to part. Heaven knows you've enough trouble on your
hands. What on earth made you get engaged to such a very--shall I
say conventional?--person?"
"You ought to know. You told me once any woman could do anything she
liked with me. I'm damned if I can tell you why!" groaned the
stricken man before her.
"Mr. Rupert Frack to see you, moddom," announced Miss Glymp.
When Anthony had staggered forth Rupert stood before Vingie for a
moment with all his soul in his eyes. She sat with her elbows on the
desk, her beautiful head drooped, and she played absently with Miss
Maxwell's check. As he tried vainly to harden his heart she glanced
up reproachfully and said:
"Why don't you stop being such a brute to me?"
To this there is no more answer than to the classic question: "Why
don't you give up beating your wife?"
He commenced to flounder in the morass churned up by his conflicting
emotions.
"If only you'd chuck all this----" he exclaimed. She flung out her
hands, relinquishing the check.
"All this is giving up me. My partner's fiancée comes and accuses me
of man-stealing, I'm abused and humiliated, and still, Rupert, I've
played the game to the end, and done what I undertook to do for
George Fordingbridge and you. Here's the Maxwell woman's check.
It's signed by a Captain Gerald Loxley. Now I s'pose you'll want to
run off and arrest him and leave me to fight a lone hand all by
myself. Shall I ring and have a taxi called for you?"
"Captain Loxley? That clears us completely. We can now take up the
matter with the War Office!" announced Rupert triumphantly. Then his
proud look humbled. "My dear Virginia, you've been an absolute
brick. Your unselfishness in the midst of your own troubles moves me
deeply. Of course I was mad to think you would marry me; I'm not
half good enough for you. I should like to see the man who is. If
only you'll forgive me and let me help you whenever I may, in however
humble a capacity----"
Vingie rose from her chair. A faint glow of victory suffused her
oval cheek. She hummed lightly the latest fox-trot. "If you will be
kind enough to take me out of this hell!" she requested.
He stood in admiration while she pulled on the smartest little hat in
London. He admired the adorableness of her hands as she coaxed on
gloves. They went out side by side, a patrician pair, pausing only
at Anthony's room. Rupert held the door and followed Vingie into the
last arena of her business life.
Ella Fairbody sat placidly in the visitor's armchair; Anthony stood
in gloom before the fireplace. Ella Fairbody gasped almost audibly
to behold Vingie garbed for departure, attended by a most desirable
young man the sheen of whose silk hat, the cut of whose morning
clothes made Anthony in his business suit resemble a mouse in the
presence of lions.
"Anthony," said Vingie in her clear voice, "I'm going. Your
solicitors can settle up the details with mine. This has been a
peculiarly odious day, for which we have to thank Miss Fairbody
alone. Good-by! Please believe I don't bear you the smallest
ill-will."
She held out a hand in farewell. Ella knew that for the moment she
herself did not exist. She made a vow that Anthony should expiate
this moment all down the merciless years.
"Rupert, darling," cooed Vingie as his car bore them away, "be an
angel and dine with me at the flat to-night. To-morrow I shall give
it up and return to my poor Charles. I don't suppose the dear lamb
has had a happy moment since I went away."
"I should love to if you'll let me," answered Rupert, flinging his
traditions to the winds.
In the rich calm of Wynwood's drawing-room, Vingie sipped coffee like
a cat licking cream, and dwelt upon Sir Charles with maternal eyes.
"You don't know how delightful it is to share your roof again,
Charles," she said peacefully. "I shall never find any one like you
as a husband. You've spoiled the rest of mankind for me from
everlasting to everlasting. I begin to understand why you never
married. All the other women in the world would have scratched her
eyes out. The risk was too great, even to possess you."
"I confess I never thought of it in that way before, but perhaps you
are right," responded Sir Charles.
"I've come back financially restored and spiritually bankrupt,
darling."
"It is impossible to be at once spiritually and financially sound.
That is the real reason why I have never possessed any pecuniary
surplus, my dear Virginia."
The door opened to admit Lord Fordingbridge.
"I've dealt with those accursed dispatches at last. They are part of
the heavy price one pays for engaging in public life. You look
exceptionally beautiful to-night, Virginia, my child," he said
benignly.
She smiled up at him in great content.
"Tell me how that affair of Mauricette's check ended, George. It all
seems part of a bad dream, but I'd like to know."
Lord Fordingbridge creased his rubicund countenance into a
reminiscent smile.
"Ah!" he said, "I'm afraid that turned out to be a case of dog eating
dog. Y'see, we had our suspicions of the lady and kept our eyes
open, but the War Office had theirs too. So what do they do but tell
off a good-looking cavalryman to make the running with her and see if
she started asking awkward questions about how many bows and arrows
we had in reserve and all that kind of thing.
"Well, of course I couldn't know that, could I, so when you got
Captain Who-is-its check, I tipped it off to the Adjutant General,
and as Captain What's-his-name was acting under instructions, the
A.G. became quite tart about it. I'm afraid poor Rupert had a bad
quarter of an hour with him."
"So you sent Rupert, and the Adjutant General ticked him off," mused
Vingie. She rose gracefully to her feet, and extended a hand to Sir
Charles.
"I think for the only time in your life you're wrong, Charles," she
ended. "At the moment I am in truth spiritually and financially
sound. Night-night, you dear things!"
X
"Charles, darling," pleaded Vingie, "how did you ever come to be
possessed of a nephew like Rupert?"
Sir Charles beamed on her with courteous attention.
"My sister Ann married Arthur Frack, and they were blessed with a
son," he explained. "I always suspected Arthur--Heaven rest his
soul--of some obscure failing. His merits were considerable, and yet
he fell just short of distinction. Successively Governor of the
Leeward Islands and the Windward Islands, beyond a K.C.B. and a
pension he achieved little. Now Rupert will go far. He combines his
father's reverence for tradition and his mother's extreme
perseverance."
Vingie, toying with after-dinner coffee and cigarette in the small
Park Street drawing-room, presenting quite consciously a very
distracting figure, turned pensive eyes on the trim figure of her
guardian now lost in a reverie of his spacious bachelor past.
At last, with the lithe motion of a siren she rose, and composed her
slight loveliness gently upon his knee.
"Nice thing!" she crooned. "I adore unworthy men. They're so
broad-minded and adequate and sympathetic. Rupert's abominably
worthy. Charles, I'm going to confess to you, and instead of the
whipping I deserve you shall give me the most delicious advice. I'm
very hard up again, dreadfully in debt, a wee piece bored, and I know
a delightful man who might help me to a very pleasant and profitable
adventure. You don't feel it would be wrong of me, do you, Charles?'
"My dear Virginia," replied Sir Charles feebly, "there is only one
course for a girl to pursue when in doubt. She should say to
herself: 'What would the late Queen Victoria have done in my place?'
It is an infallible recipe."
Vingie took his face between her hands, kissed him lightly on the
brow, rose, sketched one or two steps of a fox-trot, and came to rest.
"I mean Mr. Berriman," she explained, "the news editor of the _Daily
Tale_. If I go and see him in a perfectly tailored brown suit, with
brown shoes and beige silk stockings, I _think_ he'll give me a job
on his paper. By the way, who exactly was Queen Victoria? I seem to
have heard the name."
The door opened quietly to admit Rupert, radiantly attired in the
height of fashion. His eyes mooned over Vingie in forlorn admiration.
"You promised," he explained, "that I might take you to the
Plinlimmons' dance. Rogers has the car at the door."
Vingie gazed at him fixedly.
"You are quite sure it _is_ a dance, and not a funeral? Your clothes
are the clothes of a roisterer, but your manner is that of a
respectable undertaker," she said patiently. "Nevertheless, I will
get my cloak."
When she had gone Rupert looked at Sir Charles, and Sir Charles
looked at Rupert. A dreadful sigh tore the younger man's bosom. Sir
Charles shook his head gravely.
"The poet sang of woman: 'When pain and anguish wring the brow, a
veritable angel thou,'" he observed. "Either woman has altered, or
the statement was inaccurate, for you exhibit as much pain and
anguish as any two ordinary hospitals, and it avails you nothing with
Virginia. My dear Rupert, you have just time for a whisky-and-soda
if you act quickly. It is the best advice I can offer on the spur of
the moment."
Newspaper men being hardened to shocks, the possessors of steel
nerves, and totally unsentimental, Mr. Berriman merely raised his
eyebrows when they announced the arrival of the Honorable Virginia
Lauriston. He instructed them to show her up and went on balancing
the scales of justice between a disturbance in the Sandjak of
Novibazar and a thrilling divorce in aristocratic circles. He rose
courteously when there appeared in his doorway a slim vision in a
brown suit, her slender ankles veiled in beige silk, her feet encased
in bench-made mahogany shoes, her hat raked celestially over her fair
hair.
"Perfectly charming of you to see me," declared Vingie in clear
tones. "I suspect you're frightfully busy."
She gave him a little gloved paw, sat down on a quite unworthy chair,
and waited. Mr. Berriman reflected absently how those shirts of
thick pajama silk set off an adorable throat if skilfully cut with a
V shaped opening.
"Not at all," he replied, "you're always considerate. What's the
news--another of your amazing ideas?"
Vingie gazed at him with blinding directness.
"I doubt if you'll call it a brain-wave when I tell you. I want a
job on your paper, Mr. Berriman, please."
(Curious how attractive a name sounds if spoken with a faint slurring
of the r's by an extremely pretty girl.)
"What sort of a job?" queried Mr. Berriman with a faint sigh for his
wasted life, a wife and three children in Brixton, the
unsophisticated cut of his tweed suit, and a few hundred other things.
"Any job that brings me a little money and excitement, I'm broke and
I'm bored. Wouldn't I be rather a novelty on your staff?"
"Can you write?" temporized Mr. Berriman like a drowning man
clutching at straws.
"Men have told me I write awfully good letters. I'm quite decently
educated, and I can ride and drive a car, and I'm not scared of
things. And of course, I know everybody."
Mr. Berriman stared out of the window for safety.
"I'll give you a chance at five pounds a week," he said at last, as
harshly as possible. "Report at ten-thirty to-morrow morning and ask
for Mr. Jennings."
Vingie surveyed him sadly.
"My dear, it would cost me more than that for lunches and taxis and
things," she explained. "Besides I should need a lot of new clothes.
Mine aren't suitable for a working girl. Do you know the price of a
suit like this--a perfectly plain little suit, with just a silk
lining to the coat and a few buttons and button-holes?"
"Well, let's say ten pounds, and a month on trial," amended Mr.
Berriman, feeling like a man caught putting a foreign coin in a
church collection.
"Is that _absolutely_ all my exclusive information would be worth?"
implored his visitor piteously. "I should have thought for the
society column alone--besides, I've got the Foreign Office at my
fingertips. I _did_ want so much to be on your paper, Mr. Berriman,
because we're friends, and you've been nice to me. But honestly I
couldn't afford it. I shall have to try the _Morning Globe_. Thank
you awfully for wasting so much time on me."
She stood up to take farewell. Her brown suit fell in the
straightest of straight lines. Mr. Berriman positively could not
resist wondering what that gently curving mouth would be like to
kiss, though it was none of his business. Besides, the mention of
the _Morning Globe_ irritated him. It did very well to wrap up fish
in, but as a newspaper he despised it.
"Then, subject to confirmation by my proprietor, fifteen pounds a
week," he said at last. "Remember, ten-thirty to-morrow and ask for
Mr. Jennings. Good morning, Miss Lauriston. I hope--er--we shall
find mutual pleasure in--er--our professional relationship."
He smiled mechanically, and took again her offered hand. Somebody
someday would marry this divine slip of a thing. He remembered that
his bank balance totaled fifty pounds, and that his life insurance
premium fell due in a fortnight. Probably the new recruit owed
hundreds of pounds without a second thought. Somehow life seemed
hardly fair--not that he grudged her one grain of powder for her
enchanting face.
Vingie tap-tapped gracefully along endless corridors to the lift. At
least six men turned their heads automatically to gaze after her
retreating form. She passed the driven carcass of Miss Allin, a
plain forty-three who wrote paragraphs beginning:
"'Straordinary how we girls thrive on the rush from lunch to dinner
and from dinner to dance, and go tearing in our latest frocklets from
Ascot to Cowes and from Cowes north after the wee brown grouse. As
Lady Fitz-Battleaxe said to me last night at Claridges----"
She issued from the lift on the ground floor and the chief
commissionaire, even an ex-Regimental-Sergeant-Major, tucked her with
pride into her little ten horsepower Wonderful car, winking in pale
gray and silver. Over luncheon she told Sir Charles, with simple
pride, the history of the morning's conquest. He shook his head
gravely, motioning away a second helping of the _entrée_.
"No good will come of it, my dear Virginia. The eagle can not mate
with the sparrow, and one does not place the thoroughbred in the
shafts of a cab. I suppose some people must necessarily provide
untruths flavored to suit the taste of the vulgar, but for you it
seems a deplorable occupation. However, we all have to eat a peck of
dirt before we die, and if you prefer to take yours at one meal I
suppose you know best."
"Be quiet, Charles!" she said reprovingly. "First there was William
Caxton, then Shakespeare, and now little Vingie. I wonder if Mr.
Jennings is youngish and rather good-looking? Even I couldn't do
much with some one fifty years old who has a beard."
Mr. Albert Bagford, sitting in his immense room furnished after the
Jacobean style, set his square jaw, poised his five feet seven of
sinewy dynamite as if he could leap from his chair, and hewed Mr.
Berriman in metaphorical pieces.
"Nobody would think I owned this paper!" he stormed. "Nobody would
think I rose from nothing to the position of a millionaire in order
to give the public news as news has never been given to the public
before. Anybody would think you owned it, and could slop out
miserable pap in your own knock-kneed style till the cows come home.
I s'pose this girl has put it across you--as if sentiment and
newspaper work had anything in common. Otherwise how could this sort
of tripe get set up and proved?"
He picked up a proof of an article from Vingie's pen, cleared his
throat, and read:
"Lady Avis Shillinghoe is engaged to Major Cordigan, M.C., 19th
Hussars. This represents the crowning achievement of a long
struggle. She was always a wretched little funk as a girl, and a
perfect laughing-stock in the hunting field. We can only suppose the
major worships the helpless type of female. I saw her dining at the
Ritz the other day in one of those insipid gowns that freeze the
blood of any woman with blood to freeze. She has written a number of
mawkish poems that lack both style and manner. Our congratulations
to the happy pair."
"Well," retorted Mr. Berriman, "perhaps you'd like to see her
yourself. I can't do anything. She has an extraordinary way with
her. Jennings is a pretty tough nut, but he feeds out of her hand.
The worst of it is that social stuff of hers brings in hundreds and
hundreds of letters. It's so popular I should be prepared to chance
a libel action or two."
"Nobody asked for your opinion, Berriman. Send this woman to me, and
notice the difference when I've finished with her. That's all."
Mr. Berriman went out wrapping what remained of philosophy about his
soul. He sought Vingie in the reporters' room. She sat writing
industriously and half a dozen young men watched her covertly as if
no girl had ever written before, poised ready to dash forward in her
service.
"The chief wants you, Miss Lauriston," said Mr. Berriman sorrowfully;
Vingie looked up with distaste.
"What a perfect nuisance!" she retorted. "I'm just in the middle of
the Fitzroy-Davenport wedding. However, p'r'aps I'd better see him."
She got up, settled the coat of her brown suit and sauntered out.
The half dozen young men held their breath, raised their eyebrows,
and stared speechlessly at Mr. Berriman. Mr. Berriman stared back.
"Evidently a public holiday," he observed acidly, and went away,
leaving the door open.
Vingie entered the room of Mr. Bagford without knocking. Its
vastness left her unmoved, for she was accustomed to vast rooms. She
saw a middle-aged man seated at an enormous writing table. He never
raised his bent head. He went on writing. A grandfather clock
ticked solemnly; not another sound broke the silence. In this
fashion Mr. Bagford had subdued scores of men, turning their bowels
to water. Vingie merely thought him a trifle ill-bred. She had
never known fear in her life.
She wandered across to the vast writing table, and in the absence of
a chair seated herself lightly on the table itself, four or five feet
from the absorbed proprietor. She felt in the side pocket of her
coat, produced a thin gold cigarette-case, chose a cigarette, lighted
it, smoked reflectively, removed the cigarette, and said with a great
effort of politeness:
"Well, Mr. Bagford, what's the news?"
Mr. Bagford sat up as if some one had struck him. He saw a slim
brown figure seated on his table smoking a cigarette. The figure
belonged to a girl, thus robbing him of certain expressions adequate
to the occasion. Moreover the girl showed no sign of fear, and being
accustomed to be feared the fact unnerved him. He picked up the
offending proof, glared at her in baffled fury and barked:
"Did you write this?"
Vingie removed the cigarette from between her lips.
"Mm!" she said.
"Are you aware," inquired Mr. Bagford dreadfully, "that it is
probably libelous and certainly in bad taste?"
Vingie smiled at him very sweetly.
"My dear," she explained, "you don't know Avis Shillinghoe as well as
I do. She'd sell her soul for a paragraph of any sort. As a matter
of fact I always trust the sub-editors to save me from libel. It's a
pity to cramp one's style. By the time they've done with it there'll
be precious little style left. If I started by suppressing myself
there wouldn't be anything at all."
"Good God!" exclaimed Mr. Bagford, smitten to the heart.
"Well," objected his lovely employee, "what do we have sub-editors
for?"
"I wonder," said Mr. Bagford, "exactly how you persuaded Berriman to
engage you." Vingie slid gracefully from the table and stood looking
at him.
"I have never," she responded slowly, "found it difficult to persuade
any man who had ordinary decent instincts to do anything I wanted.
He was perfectly right to get an expert for the society column.
Before I did it the thing was ridiculous to any one who knew what
society's like. You, of course, are the rudest person I ever met.
Besides, you're quite wrong."
If she had been a man Mr. Bagford would have dismissed him; if she
had been his wife or his daughter, supposing he had had a wife or
daughter, he would have stormed at her. As things were he smiled
tolerantly and said with a spacious air:
"Better lunch with me and we'll come to some understanding."
The brown boy-girl figure stiffened.
"Thank you. I am engaged for lunch."
"Well, then, to-morrow," amended Mr. Bagford.
"To-morrow also I'm engaged."
"Well, when aren't you engaged?'
"Never, as far as you're concerned," explained Vingie. "I
particularly dislike invitations from men I don't know."
No one rises from nothing to the possession of a million without
understanding human nature. Mr. Bagford's fighting face softened.
He called back in her the lovely April of his prime when he would
walk out of a well-paid job into the gutter rather than go back on
his principles. He rose and held out a square hand.
"I beg your pardon. You're right and I'm wrong over the lunch, and
I'm right and you're wrong over the paragraph," he said. "Won't you
forgive me and change your mind?"
A little enigmatic smile curled the lips of Vingie.
"In that case I'm delighted. Perhaps at one o'clock. Thanks ever so
much."
It was the other people at the Carlton who shook Mr. Bagford's
confidence. When Vingie arrived in his vast room at twelve
fifty-nine, the deference of his secretaries bolstered that feeling
of greatness absolutely essential if a man is ever to do great
things. The disciplined respect of the commissionaire and chauffeur,
the opulent calm of his car all ministered to the idea that he was
giving a pretty, mildly-gifted, yet otherwise unremarkable girl, a
treat.
Now at the Carlton they were polite to Mr. Bagford, but they
worshiped Vingie. The entire staff treated her as one beloved
hopelessly yet unswervingly. This fashion communicated itself to the
other guests. In particular, Lord Fordingbridge abandoned altogether
Miss Letitia Borrodaile of the Omnibus Theater to whom he was
purveying luncheon, and bent reverently over Vingie's hand.
"My dear, you look perfect--perfect!" he rumbled. "Charles tells me
you're a prop and mainstay of some terrible newspaper. I never read
them myself, and it seems impossible to connect you with anything so
depraved, but if any one can lift them out of the mire, you will
achieve that miracle."
Presently Mr. Bagford sat facing all that loveliness which was
Vingie, across her favorite table. He deferred gracefully to her
choice of food, acquiesced when she refused wine, and proceeded to
mold her to his purpose as he had molded everything as long as he
could remember.
"How," he inquired politely, "does the _Daily Tale_ strike you?"
Vingie propped her chin on her hands and gazed into his eyes.
"Lifeless--uninspired--commonplace," she answered sadly. "Hardly any
of it interests a woman. All we want is emotional adventure, and all
you give us is politics and wars. It's the way you handle
everything. You make even a great love-story seem dreary and
hackneyed. I s'pose men are a dull lot. They cease to be thrilled
after they've married and women go on being thrilled till they die."
"I'm not married," said Mr. Bagford hastily.
"Mentally you must have been born married," retorted Vingie. "The
Isaacs-Ferguson divorce case made Antony and Cleopatra look like a
village Darby and Joan, but when I tried to read it in the _Daily
Tale_ I nearly fell asleep. It's lack of soul, my dear Mr. Bagford.
You don't feel; you simply grind out all the old sentiments we're
supposed to possess and don't."
"This is very serious," declared her host, his fighting jaw set
doggedly. "I never realized it before. Something must be done."
"I loathe anything second-rate," went on Vingie with an adorable
sneer. "I'd rather die than be mixed up with a failure. I doubt if
I can stand your paper very long. You may have a circulation, but it
isn't because you've any merit. It's just that other people are a
shade worse--if possible."
"What would you suggest?" asked Mr. Bagford, who felt himself sagging
everywhere. Vingie shrugged her shoulders.
"Are you asking me to help, or are you ordering me about?" she
demanded.
"I'm asking you to help, if you'll be charitable enough," said Mr.
Bagford humbly.
With an inscrutable light in her eyes she offered him one of her very
own cigarettes. "We'll put this paper right together," she murmured
dreamily. "I'll work my fingers to the bone if you really _want_ me
to help."
Mr. Berriman, entering the vast room of Mr. Bagford, his lord, closed
the door quietly, paused and stood lost in contemplation. At the
Jacobean writing table sat two figures, a girl in a tan suit, molded
to her lissom figure, and a square-set man with a fighting jaw. The
fair head and the iron-gray bent very close together.
"Well," came in Vingie's clear tones, "I think we've got the woman's
side pretty well arranged for to-morrow's issue. There's _My Case
against Divorce_, by the Bishop of Banff, and that _Husbands for All_
correspondence, and an article entitled _Down with Men_, by Bathsheba
Stoat, the feminist creature. She ought to be boiled in oil, but we
must try to please every one."
Mr. Bagford frowned.
"It seems to me rather one-sided. How about dropping the bishop, and
having something about, say, _The Art of Fascination_, by a popular
actress?"
Mr. Berriman coughed. Mr. Bagford glanced up in annoyance. Vingie,
also glancing, flicked one eyelid very faintly.
"Excuse my interrupting," began Mr. Berriman, "but this has just come
in over the telephone. The Foreign Minister is taking a firm stand
on the Jugo-Czechian question. He is prepared to support the
Slogo-Moravians' claim to the province of Tiszch. The First Division
has received orders to mobilize, and the Mediterranean Fleet is in
readiness to sail at a moment's notice. There is a panic in
Jugo-Czechian financial circles, and the lo has fallen to ten
thousand to the pound sterling. That, of course, equals forty to a
penny, or two thousand to the dollar."
"Well, don't bother me about it," snapped Mr. Bagford. "You know
you've got standing orders to oppose the Foreign Minister whatever he
does. If he had supported the Jugo-Czechians against the
Slogo-Moravians I should oppose him just the same. After all,
somebody has to oppose the government. Get Brice to do a leader
about wasting the taxpayers' money on wildcat foreign adventures, and
go away."
Mr. Berriman sighed, and departed. As the door clicked Mr. Bagford
put down his pencil, leaned back in his chair and said:
"Virginia, I love you, will you marry me?"
"My dear Mr. Bagford," responded Vingie, who had often faced this
situation, "it's exceedingly kind of you to ask me, but why should I
marry you or any one else for that matter? I'm twenty-one and
perfectly independent. How would you have liked to be married at my
age?"
"That's altogether different. You're a girl and I'm a man,"
explained Mr. Bagford rather unnecessarily. "You need some one to
love and protect you, to provide you with a home--children--all that
life means to a woman. You weren't made for the drudgery and hustle
of a newspaper. You were intended to reign, a queen, in the house of
the man you love."
"I love Charles better than any man on earth, and I've reigned a
queen in his house ever since I was twelve. It's perfectly
respectable; I'm talking about Sir Charles Gillespie, my guardian.
I'm afraid I don't love you at all, and apart from love, you've
nothing to offer me that darling Charles hasn't provided over and
over again."
"I'd do anything in the world for you, Virginia," said Mr. Bagford
rather helplessly for a man in his position.
"Well, then, suppose you stop persecuting Lord Fordingbridge, the
Foreign Minister? He's my greatest pal, next to Charles--an absolute
angel. Besides, he can't be wrong, because he never does anything
without consulting Charles, and Charles knows everything."
"Will you consent to our engagement if I do?" came like a flash from
her lover.
Vingie leaned back in her chair, hands clasped behind her head.
"That depends how tight a corner Lord Fordingbridge is in. Still it
sounds quite bad enough. Would you really care to be engaged to me
simply so that I can save an old friend some embarrassment. Do you
call that fair, Mr. Bagford?"
The proprietor of the _Daily Tale_ summed up briefly the perfect
lines of her bent-back figure.
"All's fair in love and war," he answered grimly.
"Well, as long as there's no kissing and that sort of thing till I
give you permission, I agree," said Vingie, so quietly that he
started in his chair. "Will you please countermand Mr. Berriman's
instructions at once?"
"Of course I will," exclaimed Mr. Bagford, with a somewhat
uncalled-for chuckle, and pressed firmly an electric bell....
Through that beautiful friendship which existed between Vingie and
Sir Charles it was her custom to confess her triumphs and
peccadilloes even as a child confesses at its mother's knee.
Therefore, after dinner, since it chanced they were alone, she sat
inscrutably among sofa cushions and said in her most innocent manner:
"Charles, would you be surprised if I were to tell you I'm engaged?"
"Normally," replied Sir Charles, "I should not. Nevertheless, since
an engagement implies marriage and your views on marriage are
unsympathetic, I should consider you a little inconsistent. But
then, my dear Virginia, what woman is ever anything else?"
"He is Mr. Bagford, the proprietor of the _Daily Tale_. He's about
fifty, and he's worth at least a million," went on Vingie.
"Good God!" exclaimed Sir Charles with emotion. "I must apologize
for the expression, but the idea of your being linked with some
nameless journalist is really intolerable. Our world has fallen on
evil days, yet while there is still a Fortinbras, a Giffard, a
Plinlimmon, or a Rupert Frack, what have I done that you should
become Mrs. Bagford, _Mrs. Bagford_! Did you ever hear such a word!
The sound of it is positively ear-tearing."
"Well," replied Vingie with pious humility, "you always told me to
marry some one who would put me ahead of all the other girls in my
set--a coming man. Rupert may get a peerage, but Mr. Bagford will
have one. Besides I did it to help George Fordingbridge. Mr.
Bagford consented not to oppose George's foreign policy if I'd be
engaged."
A rigid expression overwhelmed Sir Charles' aristocratic face. He
passed a hand across his brow to hide an agony of mind.
"_Quis tantum de te licuit!_" he murmured, for he came of a
generation familiar with the classics. "Who has had his will of you
so far, my poor Virginia! So beautiful a sacrifice in so ironic a
cause! I beg your pardon. My mind is a little astray. Of course,
if you are happy, I congratulate you. But Bagford--Bagford! It will
be written on my heart, like Calais on the heart of the late Queen
Mary."
"Don't you think," asked Vingie with a little sigh, "that we really
ought to ask him down to Wynwood for the week-end? Of course, the
engagement isn't actually announced, but I'd like you to meet him.
He's rather like a lion, Charles, dear. When he roars every one
trembles from the editor down to the office boy."
"I will write to him this evening," agreed Sir Charles heavily.
"Fordingbridge and Rupert are to be there as well. It will prove a
sad holiday for Rupert--a faithful heart if ever there was one!"