THE RIVALS
IT was five o'clock on a fine spring afternoon. The model had just
resumed his ordinary raiment and departed, and Montagu Falconer was
cleaning his palette. To him entered a timorous maid.
"If you please, sir, Miss Leslie has called."
"That is quite possible," replied Montagu calmly, "but it does not
interest me."
"But she wants to see you, sir."
"I fear I cannot oblige her. It is Miss Marguerite's duty to receive
afternoon callers."
"Miss Marguerite is out, and Miss Leslie specially asked for you, sir,"
persisted the maid, trembling beneath her employer's cold blue eye.
Montagu Falconer ruminated for some moments. Unfortunately he omitted to
remove his eye from the maid, and that sensitive young person was on the
verge of an hysterical yell when he turned upon his heel and said
curtly:--
"Ask her what the devil she wants."
The maid humbly withdrew. Having closed the studio door behind her she
indulged in a few grimaces of a heartfelt and satisfying character, and
after pausing to admire herself for a brief space in a Venetian mirror
conveniently adjacent, returned to the drawing-room, where she took her
stand before Miss Leslie with downcast eyes.
"Mr. Falconer sends his compliments, miss," she announced deferentially,
"and would be very much obliged if you could say whether you wanted him
particular, because he is painting a picture."
Jean Leslie smiled. She was wondering what Montagu really had said. But
to the maid she merely replied:--
"Is the model there?"
"No, miss. Models go at five."
"Then say to Mr. Falconer that I should be greatly obliged if he could
see me for a few minutes, as I wish to consult him upon an important
matter."
When the maid had departed, Miss Leslie rose and walked to the window,
through which the afternoon sun was shining. Peggy's tastes rather
leaned to rose-coloured curtains and silk blinds. Jean Leslie arranged
these to her liking. Then, having adjusted her hat to the proper angle,
she sat down with her back to the light, and waited.
Presently Montagu entered.
"Well, Jean," he said affably,--he was flattered by his new rule of
consultant,--"you are looking very smart to-day."
"This testimonial is most gratifying," said Miss Leslie. "Do you like my
furs?"
Montagu surveyed her critically. He had a real eye for form and tone;
and he nodded approval.
"Yes," he said; "they suit you perfectly. And that bunch of violets adds
just the right touch of subdued colour."
"Thank you," said Miss Leslie meekly.
Montagu sat down on the other side of the hearth.
"However," he said importantly, "I believe I am correct in supposing
that you did not come here to show me your clothes." (In this he was not
so correct as he thought.) "I understand you wish to have my opinion on
some matter."
"Yes," said Miss Leslie. "It is a matter which I could confide to no one
but a very old and very trustworthy friend."
"Quite so, quite so," said Montagu, much gratified, but a little
staggered. For the last twenty years he had rarely encountered the lady
before him for more than five minutes without becoming embroiled with
her in a skirmish of some description; and pitched battles had been not
infrequent.
"I want to ask what you _think_, Montagu," continued Miss Leslie. "You
are one of the few people I know whom I would describe as a true man of
the world."
Montagu Falconer began to purr gently.
"Possibly," he said--"possibly! Well?"
"The fact is," confessed Miss Leslie, after a momentary hesitation, "I
have received an offer of marriage."
"Good God!" exclaimed Montagu. "Who is the"--he was about to say
"idiot," but corrected himself--"gentleman?"
"His name," said Miss Leslie, casting down her eyes, "is Adolphus
Prince. I have known him for many years."
"Extraordinary name! Is he old or young?"
Miss Leslie considered.
"He is about fifty," she said.
"Rather elderly," commented Montagu Falconer, who was only forty-eight.
"How old are you, by the way?"
"Forty-two," said Miss Leslie coyly.
"I am bound to say, Jean," remarked Montagu handsomely, "that you don't
look it. Now, what of this fellow? Is he a gentleman?"
"I hope so," said Miss Leslie humbly.
"But are you _sure_? You dear women, Jean, if I may say so, are too apt
to be carried away by your feelings. What is his station--his position?"
"He is a retired colonel of militia," replied Miss Leslie. (This
statement would have surprised Timothy, who would have it that his rival
was a superannuated tea-taster.) "He has lived a great deal in India,
and is now quite alone in the world."
"I see. One leg and no liver, I presume!" said Montagu facetiously.
Miss Leslie laughed appreciatively.
"You are as caustic as ever, Montagu," she said. "You spare none of us.
But what do you think I should do? I am a solitary woman. It is a dreich
business, living by one's self, is it not?"
"It is, it is," agreed Montagu, lapsing straightway into self-pity. "Too
true! Believe me, Jean, I know what it means, better than most."
"Still, you are not entirely alone," Miss Leslie reminded him. "You have
Peggy."
"It is a fact," admitted Falconer with an air of gloomy sarcasm, "that I
do possess a daughter; but for all practical purposes I might as well be
Robinson Crusoe. I never see her by day, for I am busy in the studio and
naturally do not want to be pestered. In the afternoon, as often as not,
she goes out or invites some people in. In either case I take my tea
alone, for I cannot stand her associates. When she does go out she
frequently returns only just in time to give me my dinner."
Miss Leslie nodded sympathetically.
"I am sorry," she said. "I had not realised things from your point of
view. It all shows how little we really know of one another's inner
lives."
"And the only nights upon which she ever seems to stay at home,"
concluded the neglected parent, "are those on which I go out."
Montagu was accustomed to go out about five nights a week, and his
daughter perhaps twice a month; so this statement may have been
approximately correct.
"I see I have often been thoughtless in my previous attitude toward you,
Montagu," said the contrite Miss Leslie. "We women are apt to forget
that a man--even a strong, self-reliant man--may sometimes unbend. He,
too, may desire companionship,--the right sort of companionship, of
course,--as much as the weakest woman. Forgive me!"
Montagu, highly appreciative of the very proper spirit displayed by Miss
Leslie, forgave her freely, and then launched into a further catalogue
of grievances, Adolphus Prince retiring for the time modestly into the
background.
When he had finished, Miss Leslie said:--
"Peggy is young, and perhaps thoughtless. When she marries--"
Montagu Falconer nearly bounded out of his chair. He was genuinely
alarmed.
"Marry? That child marry? Good God, Jean, don't suggest such a thing!
What would become of me, I should like to know. What does the girl want
to marry for? Hasn't she got a comfortable home of her own? Hasn't she
got me--her father--her only relation in the world--to take care of her?
My dear Jean, do not be romantic at your time of life, I beg of you! You
haven't been putting notions into her head, I hope?"
Miss Leslie hastened to still the tempest which she had created.
"How masterful you are, Montagu!" she said. "I declare, I am quite
afraid of you."
Again Montagu purred. In the course of a long and stormy acquaintance,
extending over twenty or more years, this was the first indication that
he had ever received that Jean Leslie regarded him with aught else than
a blend of amusement and compassion. A less vain and self-centred man
might have felt a little suspicious of such sudden and oppressive
adulation, but he did not. Montagu was one of those persons who like
flattery laid on with a trowel.
"I am sorry if I alarmed you," he said graciously; "but I feel very
strongly upon the subject. I haven't forgotten the trouble I had in
getting rid of that bargee, Whatsisname--that chauffeur-fellow! Curse
it! What was he called?--I have it--Meldrum! I foresaw trouble, of
course, from the day upon which my daughter persisted in dragging his
mangled remains into my best bedroom, instead of sending them to the
workhouse. During his convalescence I had to be perpetually on guard.
The fellow followed her about like an infernal dog. Once, when I had
occasion to reprove my daughter--my own daughter!--for some fault, he
showed his teeth and nearly flew at my throat! Oh, I had to be pretty
firm, I can tell you! However, I got him out of the house at last, and I
am glad to say that he has not shown his face here for some months."
"I like a man to be master in his own house," said Miss Leslie
approvingly. "I fear my friend Adolphus Prince has not your strength of
character, Montagu. I wonder if I should be happy with him," she added
musingly.
"He sounds to me," remarked the courteous Montagu, "a confirmed and
irreclaimable nincompoop. Has he a weak chest?"
"Yes. I wonder how you knew."
"Any money?"
"I believe not."
"Then why marry him?"
"Well," said Jean Leslie slowly, "I think I might be able to help him a
little. A lonely man is a very helpless creature. Not a man like you,
Montagu, but an ordinary man. Such a man lives, we will say, in chambers
or a flat. He may even have a comfortable house; but he lives alone for
all that. He is at the mercy of servants; when he is in doubt about
anything, he has no one to consult; when he has done a good piece of
work, he has no one to show it to; when he is out of heart, he has no
one to encourage him. If he wants company, he has to go out and look for
it, instead of finding it ready to hand by his own fireside. Altogether,
if he has not your great spirit and resources, Montagu, he is a very
miserable man."
The worst of the artistic temperament is that it is intensely
susceptible to the emotion of the moment. Describe joy, and it becomes
hilarious; describe sorrow, and it becomes tearful; describe fear, and
it becomes panic-stricken. Montagu Falconer positively shuddered.
"Yes," he said quakingly, "that is true--very true. And more than that.
It is not the weak man who suffers--or suffers most. The strong have
their moments of dejection, too, Jean. You would hardly believe it, but
even I--"
Miss Leslie, like a naughty little girl who is determined to make her
small brother's flesh creep before he retires to bed, continued
remorselessly:--
"And what has he to look forward to? Nothing! Nothing but old age, with
its increasing feebleness, and helplessness, and friendlessness. That is
all!"
She looked across at the shaking figure in the armchair, and suddenly
there was real pity and kindness in her eyes.
"I should like to be able to save a man from that, Montagu," she
remarked gently.
Montagu nodded his head. For once he had nothing to say.
"That is why," continued Jean Leslie in the same even tone, "I am
thinking of marrying Adolphus Prince. I am no longer a girl. I should
understand his moods, which are many: I could manage his house, and I
would not be likely"--she smiled modestly--"to go losing my heart to
some younger man after a year or two. And of course, when I saw that my
husband wanted to be left to himself and not bothered,--as all husbands
have a right to expect,--I should have my painting to occupy me."
"I will say the same for you, Jean," said Montagu Falconer almost
effusively; "you always had an appreciation of Art. But come, now! What
of this fellow? Is he a philistine--a bourgeois--a chromolithographer?"
"I am afraid poor Adolphus has little knowledge of Art--Art as you and I
know it," replied Miss Leslie regretfully. "But he is a good creature in
other respects."
Montagu Falconer began to walk excitedly about the room.
"There you are!" he said. "There you are! Isn't that a woman all over?
Here are you, Jean, with your splendid talents and comparative youth,
with a strongly developed sense of what is right and beautiful, prepared
to throw yourself away upon a half-pay, knock-kneed, blear-eyed
militiaman, who probably wears Jaeger boots and furnishes his rooms with
stuffed parrots and linoleum. The idea is unthinkable--impossible! You
cannot do it!"
"Then you forbid me to marry him?" said Miss Leslie timidly.
"Certainly I do," replied Montagu, noting to himself with intense
gratification that a man has only to be thoroughly firm with a woman to
win her complete submission. "You don't _care_ for the creature, I
suppose?"
"Not very deeply," confessed Miss Leslie. "He is just a friend--a very
old friend."
She sighed, rose from her seat, and held out her hand.
"Good-bye, Montagu," she said, "and thank you! I must be going now. It
was good of you to have such a long talk."
"I say, don't go yet," said Montagu. "I mean--" He hesitated. He hardly
knew what he did mean.
"I think I really must," replied Miss Leslie.
Montagu accompanied her silently to the door.
"You are going to take my advice, I trust?" he remarked as they stood
upon the steps.
Jean Leslie pondered.
"I suppose so," she said slowly. "A man's logic and common sense are so
invincible. Still, I owe you a grudge, all the same, for having deprived
me of my one romance. I am not likely to have another, you see!
Good-bye, Montagu, and thank you!"
She gave her counsellor a shy but grateful glance, and departed down the
street--a well-dressed, well-carried, and well-bred figure.
Next morning Montagu Falconer, after a disturbed and introspective
night, came down to breakfast at ten o'clock, and dismally surveyed Tite
Street through the dining-room window. There was a piercing east wind,
which penetrated through every nook and cranny. Peggy had breakfasted an
hour ago.
Montagu rang the bell for his coffee, and shivered. He was feeling stiff
in the joints this morning: could it be rheumatism? He would like to
consult some one about this. But of course there was no one to consult.
His daughter, naturally, was not at her post: she was downstairs
ordering dinner, or something of that kind. Besides, it could not be
rheumatism: rheumatism was an old man's complaint. Old man! Old men
suggested thoughts of Adolphus Prince. He had some one to consult about
_his_ troubles: he could take them to Jean. Montagu consigned Adolphus
to perdition. Who was Adolphus Prince, to monopolise--
Next moment Montagu, seized with a sudden idea, was at the telephone.
"Number, please?" said a haughty voice.
"I want seven-six-seven-one Chelsea, and I'm in a devil of a hurry," he
replied frantically; "so put me on as quick--"
"Br-r-r-r-r-! Ch'k! Number engaged," announced the instrument
dispassionately.
Montagu hung up the receiver, and swore. He was quite panic-stricken by
this time. So Adolphus Prince rang her up at ten o'clock in the morning,
did he? He would show the old dotard who was the better man!
Five minutes later he had secured his call, and was inviting Miss Leslie
to lunch with him at the Ritz.