“_Virtue is our euphonism for reaction_.”
--La Rabide.
[Illustration: 9207]
ALF-PAST seven had just struck upon a church clock close by. Five
minutes passed, ten minutes, and then she appeared, more beautiful than
ever--irresistible, in fact.
“But is this a private room?” she asked, as she surveyed the comfortable
little apartment with the dinner laid for two, and the discreet waiter
opening the wine.
“It could not be more so, I assure you.”
She glanced at the two places. “Isn't my uncle coming?” she demanded.
I was prepared for this little formality, which, it seemed, spiced the
adventure for her.
“At the last moment he was indisposed,” I explained, gravely; “but he
will join us for dessert.” The impossibility of gainsaying this, and the
attractiveness of the present circumstances--such as they were without
an uncle--quickly induced her to accept this untoward accident with
resignation, and in a few minutes we were as merry a party of two as
you could wish to find. Our jests began to have a more and more friendly
sound.
“You do not care for this entrée?” I asked.
“It is rather hot for my taste.”
“Not so warm as my heart at this moment,” I declared.
“What nonsense you talk!” she cried. “It has some meaning in French,
though, I suppose.”
Yet she laughed delightfully.
“Much meaning,” I assured her.
“When was my uncle taken ill?” she asked, once.
Our eyes met and we mutually smiled.
“When you left his room with me,” I replied.
And this answer seemed perfectly to satisfy her.
“What do you do with yourself all day?” I asked.
Again she laughed.
“You will only laugh,” she said.
“I shall be as solemn as a judge, a jury, and three expert witnesses,” I
assured her.
“A friend and I are starting a women's mission.”
I certainly became solemn--dumfounded, for one instant, in fact. Then a
light dawned upon me.
“Your friend is a clergyman, I presume?” I asked.
I had noticed the poster of an evening paper with the words “Clerical
Scandal,” and I suppose that put this solution into my head.
“My friend is a she,” she replied, with a laugh. “Clergyman? No, thanks!
We are doing it all ourselves.”
“Ha, ha!” I laughed. “I see now what you mean! Excellent! Forgive my
stupidity.”
I did not see at all, but I supposed that there must be some English
idiom which I did not understand. Doubtless I had lost an innuendo, but
then one must expect leakage somewhere. Surely I was obtaining enough
and could afford to lack a little.
At last we arrived at dessert.
“I wonder if my uncle has come?” she said.
“I have just been visited by a presentiment,” I replied. “General
Sholto has retired to bed. This information has been conveyed to me by a
spirit--the spirit of love!”
She looked at me with a new expression. Ought I to have restrained my
ardor a little longer?
“Does he know I am here?” she asked, quickly.
“I assure you, on my honor, he has not the least notion!” I declared,
emphatically.
“Then--” she began, but words seemed to fail her. “Good-night,” she
said, dramatically, but with unmistakable emphasis.
She rose and stepped towards the door with the air of a tragedy queen.
A thought, too horrible to be true, rushed into my heated brain.
“Stop, one moment!” I implored her. “Do you mean to say that--that he is
_really_ your uncle?”
Her look of indignant consternation answered the question.
I sank into my chair, and, seeing me in this plight, she paused to
complete my downfall.
[Illustration: 0210]
“What did you imagine?” she asked.
I endeavored to collect my wits.
“Who did you think I was?” she demanded.
“Mademoiselle,” I replied, “behold a crushed, a penitent, a ridiculous
figure. I am even more ignorant of your virtuous country than I
imagined. Forgive me, I implore you! I shall endow your mission with
fifty pounds; I shall walk home barefoot; you have but to name my
penance and I shall undergo it!”
Whether it was that my contrition was so complete or for some more
flattering reason that I may not hint at, I cannot tell you to this day,
but certainly Miss Kerry proved more lenient than I had any right to
expect. Not that she did not give me as unpleasant a quarter of an
hour as I have ever tingled through. I, indeed, got “what for,” as the
English say. But before she left she had actually smiled upon me again
and very graciously uttered the words, “I forgive you.”
As for myself, I became filled with a glow of penitence and admiration;
the admiration being a kind of moral atonement which I felt I owed
to this virtuous and beautiful girl. At that moment the seven virtues
seemed incarnate in her, and the seven deadly sins in myself. I was
in the mood to pay her some exaggerated homage; I had also consumed
an entire bottle of champagne, and I offered her--my services in her
mission to woman! I should be her secretary, I vowed. Touched by my
earnestness, she at last accepted my offer, and when we parted and I
walked home in the moonlight, I hummed an air from a splendid oratorio.
Though the hour was somewhat late when I got in, it seemed to me
the commonest courtesy to pay another call upon General Sholto and
inquire--after his health, for example. I called, I found him in,
and not yet gone to bed as my presentiment had advised me, and in two
minutes we happened to be talking about his niece.
It appeared that she was the orphan and only child of his sister, and
that for some years Kate and her not inconsiderable fortune had been
left in his charge, but from the first I fear that she had proved rather
a handful for the old boy to manage.
“A fine girl, sir; a handsome girl,” he declared, “but a rum 'un if ever
there was. I'd once thought of living together, making a home and all
that; but, as I said, mossoo, she's a rum girl. You noticed her temper
this morning? Hang it, I was ashamed of her!”
“Where is she, then?” I asked.
“Living in a flat of her own with another woman. She is great on her
independence, mossoo. Fine spirit, no doubt, but--er--just a little dull
for me sometimes.”
“She is young,” I urged, for I seemed to see only Miss Kerry's side of
the argument. “And you, General--”
“Am old,” he said. “Hang it, she doesn't let me forget that.”
Evidently, I thought, my neighbor was feeling out of sorts, or he would
never show so little appreciation of his charming niece. I must take up
my arms on behalf of maligned virtue.
“I am certain she regards you with a deep though possibly not a
demonstrative affection,” I declared. “She does not know how to express
it; that is all. She is love inarticulate, General!”
“It hasn't taken you long to find that out,” said he; but observing the
confusion into which, I fear, this threw me, he hastened to add, with a
graver air: “Young women, mossoo, and young men too, for the matter of
that, have to get tired of 'emselves before they waste much affection on
any one else.”
I protested so warmly that the General's smile became humorous again.
“You forget the grand passion!” I exclaimed. “Your niece is at the age
of love.”
“Possibly a young man might--er--do the trick and that kind of thing,”
he replied. “But I don't think Kate is very likely to fall in love at
present--unless it's with one of her own notions.”
“Her own notions?” I asked.
“Well,” he explained, “the kind of man I'd back for a place would be a
good-looking cabby or a long-haired fiddler. She'd rig him out with
a soul, and so forth, to suit her fancy--and a deuce of a life they'd
lead!”
No use in continuing this discussion with such an unsympathetic and
unappreciative critic. He was unworthy to be her uncle, I said to
myself.
When I returned to my own rooms, I opened my journal and wrote this
striking passage:
“_Illusion gone, clear sight returns. I have found a woman worthy of
homage, of admiration, of friendship. Love (if, indeed, I ever felt that
sacred emotion for any) has departed to make room for a worthier tenant.
Reason rules my heart. I see dispassionately the virtues of Kate Kerry;
I regard them as the mariner regards the polar star_.'”'
I reproduce this extract for the benefit of the young, just as--to
pursue my original and nautical metaphor--they put buoys above a
dangerous wreck or mark a reef in the chart. It is on the same principle
as the awful example who (I am told) accompanies the Scottish temperance
lecturer.
[Illustration: 8000]