clear and her hand steady. She paused an instant, poising her racquet.
She observed that Granton stood near the middle of his court. With a
quick step she moved to the very outer corner of her own and sent a
swift ball sharply under her opponent's left hand.
"Game; love set," called the scorer. "Sets two to one in favor of Miss
Mork."
And, amid what for Maugus was a really astonishing round of applause,
Betty, flushed but triumphant, walked to the net to shake hands with her
vanquished lover.
V.
It was astonishing how humble and forgiving her victory made Mistress
Betty. She was troubled with the fear that she had been unmaidenly, that
she had hurt Granton's feelings and alienated his friendship forever,
with a dozen more scruples quite as absurd and irrational.
She escaped as quickly as possible from her friends and their
congratulations, and hurried to her room on the pretext of dressing for
supper. There she cooled her hot cheeks, burning with exercise and
excitement, and looking ruefully at her image in the mirror, shook her
head reproachfully at the counterfeit presentment as at one who had
beguiled her into misdoing.
After supper she was sitting rather gloomily in a retired corner of the
piazza, when the defeated Granton approached. The reaction from the
afternoon's excitement had rendered the young lady's spirit rather
subdued, but she rallied at sight of the new-comer.
"Good-evening," he said. "Were you enjoying the sweets of victory?"
"I was enjoying the sweets of solitude," she returned, a little
pointedly.
Granton laughed.
"I suppose," he remarked, taking a vacant chair near her, "that I need
not apologize for my ill-judged remarks some time since about girls
and tennis. My afternoon's punishment ought to pass as a sufficient
expiation."
"Expiation is always a matter of feeling."
"Oh, as to that, I felt I had enough, I assure you," he laughed. "It may
not be gallant to say so, but it was really horrible to be beaten out of
my boots by a lady in broad daylight, in face of all Maugus assembled."
Betty was silent. The remorseful feeling rose again in her breast.
Granton spoke lightly enough, but she wondered if she had not humiliated
him terribly. She played nervously with her fan, hardly knowing how to
phrase it, yet longing to offer something in the way of apology.
"I hope," she began, "I hope--"
Nat regarded her closely in the fading light as she hesitated, and by
some happy inspiration divined her softened mood. He noted the downcast
eyes and troubled face. Without fully comprehending her mental state, he
yet found courage to move a trifle nearer.
"Yes?" he queried, laying his fingers upon the arm of her chair.
Betty looked at the hand which had approached so near, and a sudden
trepidation thrilled her. She opened and closed her fan nervously, but
made no attempt to finish her broken sentence.
"Betty," her lover said, leaning forward, "now I am in the dust at your
feet, you must at least let me speak. You've kept out of my way so for
the last two or three weeks that I was afraid you disliked me; but now
I understand where you have been. You know how much I care for you."
Still she did not raise her eyes.
"Don't you care for me?" he pleaded. "I've been in love with you all
summer. You must have known it."
He paused again, yet she did not answer, though a great tide of joy
thrilled her whole being. Her lover seized both her hands and bent down
until his cheek almost touched hers.
"Will you marry me, Betty?"
All her wilfulness and sauciness flashed in her eyes as she lifted her
glance at last to his and answered.
"I wouldn't if I hadn't beaten this afternoon."
With which implied consent he seemed perfectly satisfied.
Interlude Third.
MRS. FRUFFLES IS AT HOME.
MRS. FRUFFLES IS AT HOME.
In answer to the announcement that Mrs. Stephen Morgan Fruffles will,
on the afternoon of January 27, be at home from four to seven, all the
world--with the exception of her husband, who keeps significantly out of
the house, and at his club finds such solace as is possible under the
circumstances--has assembled to celebrate that rare and exciting event.
The parlors are thronged almost to suffocation; the air is warm,
and laden with a hundred odors, which combine to make it well-nigh
unbreathable; the constant babble of conversation goes on with the
steady click-clack of a mill-wheel, and several hundred people
persistently talk without saying anything whatever.
Mrs. Chumley Jones is there, in a most effective, costume of garnet
plush, adorned with some sort of long-haired black fur. She is conscious
of being perfectly well dressed, of being the best-known woman in the
parlors, and most of all is she now, as always, conscious of being the
one and only Mrs. Chumley Jones. Soothed and sustained by an unfaltering
trust in all these good things, she moves slowly through the rooms, or
stands at some convenient coign of vantage, dropping a word to this one
and to that, with just the right differences of manner fitted to the
degrees of the people whom she addresses.
"My dear Mrs. Fruffles," she remarks to the hostess, "you do always have
such enchanting receptions!"
"Oh, thank you, dear Mrs. Jones," responds the other, fully aware what
is expected of her; "I wish I could begin to have anything so charming
as your Fridays."
"Oh, so kind of you to say so," murmurs Mrs. Jones, with the expressive
shake of the head proper to the sentiment and the occasion.
Then she passes on to her duty elsewhere.
"How do you do, Mrs. Jones?" the voice of Ferdinand Maunder says at her
side. "Isn't it a lovely day? It is really like a Roman winter; don't
you think so?"
"Yes, it really is, Mr. Maunder."
"Yes, that's what I've been saying to myself all day."
"It is so much nicer of you to say it to me."
"Oh, Mrs. Jones, you are always so clever at turning things."
They smile at each other with perfect and well-bred inanity for a
second, and then Fred Lasceet slips in between them.
"How do you do, Mrs. Jones?"
"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Lasceet? It is ever so long since I have seen
you."
"So good of you to think it long. I am sure it seems an age to me."
Mr. Maunder having meanwhile glided through the crowd with an eel-like
elusiveness, Mrs. Chumley Jones is left with a remark upon which to form
her conversation for the afternoon.
"We have had such a strange winter; don't you think so, Mr. Lasceet? It
is really like a Roman winter."
"It really is; though I shouldn't have thought of it. You are always so
clever in thinking of things, Mrs. Jones."
"You are a sad flatterer, Mr. Lasceet."
Mr. Lasceet endeavors to look very sly and cunning, and while he gives
his mind to this endeavor another slips into his place.
"How do you do, Mrs. Jones?" says Percival Drummond.
"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Drummond? I haven't seen you for ever so long."
Mr. Lasceet melts into the swaying background, and is seen no more.
"It really is not nice of you to say so, Mrs. Jones," is Mr. Drummond's
response, "when I took you in to dinner at Mrs. Tiger's night before
last."
"Oh, dear me; how stupid of me! I really fear I am losing my mind. It is
the weather, I think. It is so like a Roman winter, don't you think?"
"Yes, it is a little."
"Oh, ever so much. How do you do, dear Mrs. Gray? I am delighted to see
you. I was just saying to Mr. Drummond that it seems to me that our
winter this year is so much like a Roman winter. Did you ever think of
it?"
"Oh, my dear, I have thought of nothing else all winter. Why, it is just
such a day as it was one afternoon two years ago when I was in Rome."
"Were you in Rome year before last?" Mr. Drummond inquires, with the
air of one to whom the answer of the question is of the most vital
importance, although he asks only for the sake of being silent no
longer.
"Yes, we went in October and stayed until March. You remember, Mrs.
Jones, that we dined with you the very day before we sailed."
"Why, yes, so you did. I had forgotten all about it. Are you going?"
"Yes, I really must go. I have three places more to call before I go
home, and we are going out to dinner."
"I shall see you if you dine at the Muchmen's."
"Oh, are you to be there? How lovely."
"I hope to take one of you in," Mr. Drummond says, with a smile of the
most brilliant vacuity.
"Are you to be there, too? Why, it will be quite a reunion. _Au
revoir._"
The crowd swallows Mrs. Gray, and at the same moment Mr. Drummond is
seized upon by a sharp-looking elderly female, who drags him off as if
she were conveying him into some sly corner where she may devour him
undisturbed. Mrs. Jones turns to move toward the other parlor.
At that moment she is accosted by a lady of an appearance so airy, both
as regards dress and manner, as to suggest that she is a mislaid member
of some ballet troupe.
"Why, how do you do?" she cried, with a vivacity quite in keeping with
her appearance. "My dear Mrs. Jones, I haven't seen you since I got back
from Europe."
"Why, Susie Throgmorton, is it really you? I didn't know you were home."
"That shows what an unimportant person I am."
"Oh, I knew you came home from Europe, but I thought you were still in
New York."
"Oh, I only went on to see Aunt Dinah for a couple of days. I got caught
in the most awful storm you ever saw."
"But the winter," Mrs. Chumley Jones observes, with an air of freshness
and conviction which is something beautiful to see, "has been as mild as
a Roman winter most of the time."
"Yes, it has been like a Roman winter."
The crowd separates them and they go their several ways, each repeating
that it is like a Roman winter; but meanwhile the same observation is
being scattered broadcast by Mr. Maunder, Mr. Lasceet, and Mr. Drummond,
so that, although there are a good many people in the room, they are in
a fair way of being all informed that the winter strongly resembles that
of Rome; a statement which, if true, may be regarded as of the highest
importance.
It is not until, entering the tea room, Mrs. Chumley Jones encounters
Mrs. Quagget, who talks more rapidly than any other known woman, that
she has anybody take the words out of her mouth; but before she can tell
Mrs. Quagget that it is like a Roman winter, Mrs. Quagget has imparted
that interesting information to her. It is all one, however, since
something has been said by one of them; and Mrs. Chumley Jones is not in
the least disconcerted. She still clings to the convenient remark, as
she did not take the trouble to bring one with her, and this one suits
her purpose admirably.
"My dear Miss Tarrart," she exclaims, as she comes upon a wintry young
lady of advanced stages of maturity, "how do you do? I haven't seen you
for an age."
"Why, how do you do, Mrs. Jones?" is the response, delivered in a manner
so emphatic as to convey the impression that the reason why Miss Tarrart
is so odd-looking is because she has put so much energy into her
greetings of her friends. "I am enchanted to see you. When do you go
abroad? I am sure one might almost think they were abroad in this
weather. It is so--"
"Yes," Mrs. Jones interposes, taking the words out of her mouth; "I
was just saying to Mrs. Quagget that this is really quite like a Roman
winter; don't you think so?"
"Yes, it is," Miss Tarrart answers, with the air of one who has been
beaten by unfair means. "It is like a Roman winter."
"Why don't you come and see me, Miss Tarrart? It really is not kind of
you to stay away so long."
"I am coming very soon; and you must come and see me."
"Oh, yes; I am coming. Do you know which way Mrs. Fruffles is? I really
must go."
"She is in the other room."
"Well, good-bye, dear."
"Good-bye."
The two separate, each thinking how fast the other is growing old. Mrs.
Chumley Jones, feeling that she has now done her whole duty, does not
even take the trouble any more to tell people that the winter is like a
Roman one. She merely makes her way to the hostess.
"Good-bye," she says. "One always has such lovely times at your house,
Mrs. Fruffles."
"Oh, it is so kind of you to say so, when your Fridays are so much
pleasanter."
"It is so kind of you to say so, my dear Mrs. Fruffles; but I am sorry
to say that I cannot agree with you."
"It is the weather partly," the hostess observes; "so many people have
said to me this afternoon that it seems like a Roman winter."
"Yes, I was just thinking of that very thing. Well, good-bye, my dear.
Be sure and come in on Friday."
"Oh, I wouldn't miss it for anything."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
And as far as Mrs. Chumley Jones is concerned, Mrs. Stephen Morgan
Fruffles ceases to be "At Home."
Tale the Fourth.
JOHN VANTINE.
JOHN VANTINE.
The relation of so improbable a story as the following is to be
justified only by its truth. The hero is a New York lawyer, sufficiently
well known to render the mention of his name, were it allowable to
give it, an ample guarantee for the entire trustworthiness of any
statement he might make; and it is perhaps to be regretted that his
invincible--albeit natural--dislike of publicity prevents the production
of evidence which would at least establish the fact that his own belief
in the appearances by which he was visited is complete and sincere.
Mr. Vantine, although a handsome and intellectual-looking man, is by
no means a person whose appearance would in any way single him out as
likely to be the hero of marvellous adventures. He is neither especially
imaginative nor credulous. He is simply a clear-headed and shrewd
business man, such as are nourished in the atmosphere of New York,
of all places in the wide world, perhaps, the one least likely to
nourish fancy or belief in the unseen. To see him going steadily
about his affairs down town, it is hardly probable that any observer,
however keen, would look on him as the probable object of remarkable
hallucinations, or of experiences so far from the ordinary course of
human life, as sure to be classed as such by ninety-nine men out of a
hundred.
Yet John Vantine, of whom most of his acquaintances would have said that
he was a commonplace man of business, lived for years a double life,
into which he did not venture to initiate even his wife, with whom he
lived on terms of the warmest sympathy and closest confidence.
It was on the morning of his wedding-day that certain impressions, which
in a vague shape had for years haunted him, first took form so definite
that he could not but think of them as something having a tangibility
of their own, different though it was from that of the ordinary things
which surround common human life. He was married at the home of his
bride, a pretty village in western Massachusetts. There being no hotel
of even decent comfort in the place, Vantine had passed the night at the
inn of a town half a dozen miles away, whence he drove over in the dewy
June morning to the scene of his marriage.
As he passed along between the fields starred with daisies, reflecting
in blissful mood upon the beauty of the day and the happiness it brought
to him, his horse came suddenly and without warning to a standstill.
John instinctively gathered up the reins to start the animal, when to
his unspeakable amazement he perceived a man in an Eastern dress of
great splendor standing beside the open carriage. His robes were of the
richest stuffs, while jewels sparkled from every part of his attire. He
was standing apparently upon a small rug, a circumstance which at the
moment impressed Vantine more than his mysterious presence. The stranger
saluted the young man with the most profound obeisances, and it was only
after repeated genuflections that he spoke. When he did address Vantine,
it was in a language of which the latter did not even know the name,
although in some astonishing way he still comprehended what was said.
"Great Master," the stranger greeted him, "will you receive an embassy
to congratulate you on your nuptials?"
Of course I cannot pretend here or elsewhere to give the exact words
in which my friend was addressed. It was some years before he confided
the story to me, and although I have endeavored to set the words down
exactly as he gave them, it must be borne in mind that he made no
attempt at literal verbal accuracy.
That a young man who had been nourished amid the hard commonplaces of
New York life should be astounded by an address of this sort was only
natural. That Vantine did not lose his head altogether was probably due
to certain vague and premonitory experiences which he never defined very
clearly, alluding to them as "passing fancies," "nebulous impressions,"
and by other phrases too general to convey exact meaning to my mind. On
the present occasion, however, beyond a rather prolonged silence before
he answered his interlocutor, he seems to have behaved much as might a
man stopped on the street by an ordinary acquaintance. When he spoke, he
simply and laconically answered "Yes;" and, as he did so, he swept with
his eye the wide horizon which the nature of the country laid open to
him, perceiving nowhere sign of anything unusual.
Scarcely, however, had the monosyllable left his lips when he saw
upon the woodside an enormous oriental rug cover the greensward, and
instantly upon it stood a numerous company, dressed in the most
splendid robes, saluting, and uttering stately but most enthusiastic
congratulations. In this, as in all other instances in which my friend
has seen figures, the lower portions have appeared first.
John sat in dignified and very probably half-stupefied silence during
this extraordinary scene, and suddenly, without warning, the whole
pageant vanished into the limbo from which it had come. He was once more
alone upon a country road, in the bright sunshine of a June forenoon. It
was his wedding morning, and, the vision or whatever it might properly
be called having vanished, there was obviously nothing to do but to
drive on and be married,--a course of action which he carried out to
the letter.
I have fancied, although it is a point upon which I am doubtful, that
John made some beginning of a confidence to his bride during the
honeymoon of this extraordinary occurrence, and that the levity with
which she received his first suggestions prevented his going further in
his disclosures. The reason is, however, of no great consequence, but
at least the fact is that he did not tell her. He gave a good deal of
thought to the matter, corresponded with the Psychical Society, of
London, not relating his own experience, but endeavoring to learn of a
parallel case. He had, too, some communication with the Theosophical
Society, of London, and even with the parent society, of Madras; and
he at one time contemplated making a confidant of Madame Blavatsky,
concerning whom, at that time, the European papers were full of
marvellous tales.
He does not seem, so far as I am able to gather from what he has told
me, to have hit upon any theory which afforded him a clue to the mystery
of his own case; and just as he had made up his mind that the whole was
a mere optical delusion, he had a second visitation.
He was in a Fifth Avenue car on the elevated road, returning home at
night. The car was compactly filled, but before him, as he sat facing
the middle of the car, was an open space, two or three feet square.
Looking up, as the train started after stopping at the Twenty-third
street station, John saw standing before him the same oriental figure
which had greeted him on his wedding day. The stranger's face beamed
with joy, and he scarcely waited to finish his profound salutation
before exclaiming, "It is a propitious hour, Great Master. The young
prince is a pearl beyond price."
Vantine's first instinct was to look at his neighbors, to see whether
they too beheld the apparition, if apparition it were. The man on his
right was looking up from his newspaper with the air of one who had
heard the strange words and wished to discover whence they came. The
man on the left was gazing at Vantine with an expression of bewildered
curiosity. John turned his eyes again to the spot where his strange
visitor had been.
The place was vacant.
My friend, in relating this, blamed himself severely that he had allowed
a natural diffidence to prevent his asking his neighbors whether they
had seen the "Great Mogul," as he began facetiously to dub the phantom
in his thoughts. "But," he added, "nobody likes to be taken for a raving
idiot, even by a stranger. They certainly looked as if they had seen the
figure, but I couldn't make up my mind to ask."
Reaching home, John found that his wife had been prematurely but safely
delivered of a lusty son. The messenger sent to his office had missed
him, and at the time of the appearance in the car, he declares that he
was not consciously even thinking of his wife's condition at all.
When he had time to collect his thoughts after this second visitation,
Vantine came firmly to the resolution that if he were ever favored
with a third sight of the "Great Mogul," he would at least endeavor to
discover whether the phantom were appreciable by the sense of touch. He
read much about "astral appearances," and a good many more things of
the sort, of which my own knowledge is too limited to permit my writing
at all. He formed a hundred theories, and he began to get somewhat
confused, to use his own expression, in regard to his identity. He was
half convinced that by some mis-working of the law of re-incarnation,
the spirit of some Eastern potentate had been put into his body.
"Or," said he, with a whimsicality which was evidently deeply tinctured
with a serious feeling, "that I had got into somebody's else body. If I
had known any possible way of stopping the thing, it wouldn't have been
so bad; but to have the 'Great Mogul' pop up like a jack-in-a-box,
without any warning, was taking me at a disadvantage that I think
decidedly unfair."
Not to lengthen unnecessarily a simple story, the speculations and
investigations of Vantine may be passed over, and the narrative confined
to the bare facts.
It was when John's boy was about two months old that the embassy which
had greeted John upon his wedding morning, or one closely resembling it,
put in an appearance in honor of the child's birth. The child and its
mother were taking their first drive, and Vantine came home to luncheon
rather earlier than usual, to find them out. He went into the library,
but had scarcely closed the door behind him, when the whole gorgeous
company of his wedding morning were before him, and so real did they
seem to him that John entirely forgot his intention of grasping the
"Great Mogul" by the arm, to convince himself of the reality of that
personage. The company overflowed with congratulations, rather florid to
my friend's occidentally trained taste, but doubtless poetical in the
extreme from an oriental point of view. Vantine was afterward amused and
a little surprised to remember how much as a matter of course he took
the adulation offered him, and the ease with which he played the rôle of
"Great Master."
But suddenly he became so thoroughly amazed that all power of speech
or motion seemed to forsake him. In the arms of the "Great Mogul" he
perceived his baby boy, or an image that seemed to be the child, and to
the babe the brilliant company were kneeling and swearing fealty. The
whole ceremony occupied about half an hour, at the end of which time
Vantine found himself once more alone, and upon going downstairs he met
his wife and the nurse with the baby returning from their drive.
"He's slept like a dormouse," Mrs. Vantine said, in answer to her
husband's inquiry. "I tried to rouse him once, but he wouldn't wake. I
was half frightened, but he seems all right now."
As they entered the parlor the maid came to inquire if Mr. Vantine had
brought company to luncheon, as she had heard voices in the library,--a
circumstance which proved that the sound of the voices of his ghostly
visitors was audible to other ears than his own.
John vainly wished that the baby, healthy, awake and cooing now, could
tell whether dreams or strange experiences had troubled its sleep while
its father had seen its image; but that is a point upon which he has
never received enlightenment.
It was one winter night when the baby was six months old that the "Great
Mogul" presented himself again. My friend had been taking a bath, and
was dressing for bed when the figure of his visions appeared, and with
every mark of terror and consternation prostrated itself at his feet.
"Great Master," it gasped in the usual formula, "pardon your slave's
intrusion. The enemy are upon us. They--"