THE STUPID SEX
Give a man his chance, and he has sufficient hardihood for anything.
Within a week of the accident Rob was in Dick Abinger's most luxurious
chair, coolly taking a cup and saucer from Nell, while Mary arranged a
cushion for his poor head. He even made several light-hearted jests, at
which his nurses laughed heartily--because he was an invalid.
Rob's improvement dated from the moment he opened his eyes and heard the
soft rustle of a lady's skirts in the next room. He lay quietly
listening, and realised by and by that he had known she was Mary Abinger
all along.
'Who is that?' he said abruptly to Dick, who was swinging his legs on
the dressing-table. Dick came to him as awkwardly as if he had been
asked to hold a baby, and saw no way of getting out of it. Sick-rooms
chilled him.
'Are you feeling better now, old fellow?' he asked.
'Who is it?' Rob repeated, sitting up in bed.
'That is my sister,' Dick said.
Rob's head fell back. He could not take it in all at once. Dick thought
he had fallen asleep, and tried to slip gently from the room,
discovering for the first time as he did so that his shoes creaked.
'Don't go,' said Rob, sitting up again. 'What is your sister's name?'
'Abinger, of course, Mary Abinger,' answered Dick, under the conviction
that the invalid was still off his head. He made for the door again, but
Rob's arm went out suddenly and seized him.
'You are a liar, you know,' Rob said feebly; 'she's not your sister.'
'No, of course not,' said Dick, humouring him.
'I want to see her,' Rob said authoritatively.
'Certainly,' answered Dick, escaping into the other room to tell Mary
that the patient was raving again.
'I heard him,' said Mary.
'Well, what's to be done?' asked her brother. 'He's madder than ever.'
'Oh no, I think he's getting on nicely now,' Mary said, moving toward
the bedroom.
'Don't,' exclaimed Dick, getting in front of her; 'why, I tell you his
mind is wandering. He says you're not my sister.'
'Of course he can't understand so long as he thinks your name is Simms.'
'But he knows my name is Abinger. Didn't I tell you I heard him groaning
it over to himself?'
'Oh, Dick,' said Mary, 'I wish you would go away and write a stupid
article.'
Dick, however, stood at the door, ready to come to his sister's
assistance if Rob got violent.
'He says you are his sister,' said the patient to Mary.
'So I am,' said Mary softly. 'My brother writes under the name of Noble
Simms, but his real name is Abinger. Now you must lie still and think
about that; you are not to talk any more.'
'I won't talk any more,' said Rob slowly. 'You are not going away,
though?'
'Just for a little while,' Mary answered. 'The doctor will be here
presently.'
'Well, you have quieted him,' Dick admitted.
They were leaving the room, when they heard Rob calling.
'There he goes again,' said Dick, groaning.
'What is it?' Mary asked, returning to the bedroom.
'Why did he say you were not his sister?' Rob said, very suspiciously.
'Oh, his mind was wandering,' Mary answered cruelly.
She was retiring again, but stopped undecidedly. Then she looked from
the door to see if her brother was within hearing. Dick was at the other
end of the sitting-room, and she came back noiselessly to Rob's bedside.
'Do you remember,' she asked, in a low voice, 'how the accident
happened? You know you were struck by a cab.'
'Yes,' answered Rob at once, 'I saw him kissing you. I don't remember
anything after that.'
Mary, looking like a culprit, glanced hurriedly at the door. Then she
softly pushed the invalid's unruly hair off his brow, and glided from
the room smiling.
'Well?' asked Dick.
'He was telling me how the accident happened,' Mary said.
'And how was it?'
'Oh, just as you said. He got bewildered at a crossing and was knocked
over.'
'But he wasn't the man to lose his reason at a crossing,' said Dick.
'There must have been something to agitate him.'
'He said nothing about that,' replied Mary, without blushing.
'Did he tell you how he knew my name was Abinger?' Dick asked, as they
went downstairs.
'No,' his sister said, 'I forgot to ask him.'
'There was that Christmas card, too,' Dick said suddenly. 'Nell says
Angus must be in love, poor fellow.'
'Nell is always thinking people are in love,' Mary answered severely.
'By the way,' said Dick, 'what became of the card? He might want to
treasure it, you know.'
'I--I rather think I put it somewhere,' Mary said.
'I wonder,' Dick remarked curiously, 'what sort of girl Angus would take
to?'
'I wonder,' said Mary.
They were back in Dick's chambers by this time, and he continued with
some complacency--for all men think they are on safe ground when
discussing an affair of the heart:--
'We could build the young lady up from the card, which, presumably, was
her Christmas offering to him. It was not expensive, so she is a careful
young person; and the somewhat florid design represents a blue bird
sitting on a pink twig, so that we may hazard the assertion that her
artistic taste is not as yet fully developed. She is a fresh country
maid, or the somewhat rich colouring would not have taken her fancy,
and she is short, a trifle stout, or a big man like Angus would not have
fallen in love with her. Reserved men like gushing girls, so she gushes
and says "Oh my!" and her nicest dress (here Dick shivered) is of a
shiny satin with a dash of rich velvet here and there. Do you follow
me?'
'Yes,' said Mary; 'it is wonderful. I suppose, now, you are never wrong
when you "build up" so much on so little?'
'Sometimes we go a little astray,' admitted Dick. 'I remember going into
a hotel with Rorrison once, and on a table we saw a sailor-hat lying,
something like the one Nell wears--or is it you?'
'The idea of your not knowing!' said his sister indignantly.
'Well, we discussed the probable owner. I concluded, after narrowly
examining the hat, that she was tall, dark, and handsome, rather than
pretty. Rorrison, on the other hand, maintained that she was a pretty,
baby-faced girl, with winning ways.'
'And did you discover if either of you was right?'
'Yes,' said Dick slowly. 'In the middle of the discussion a little boy
in a velvet suit toddled into the room, and said to us, "Gim'me my
hat."'
In the weeks that followed, Rob had many delicious experiences. He was
present at several tea-parties in Abinger's chambers, the guests being
strictly limited to three; and when he could not pretend to be ill any
longer, he gave a tea-party himself in honour of his two nurses--his one
and a half nurses, Dick called them. At this Mary poured out the tea,
and Rob's eyes showed so plainly (though not to Dick) that he had never
seen anything like it, that Nell became thoughtful, and made a number of
remarks on the subject to her mother as soon as she returned home.
'It would never do,' Nell said, looking wise.
'Whatever would the colonel say!' exclaimed Mrs. Meredith. 'After all,
though,' she added--for she had been to see Rob twice, and liked him
because of something he had said to her about his mother--'he is just
the same as Richard.'
'Oh no, no,' said Nell, 'Dick is an Oxford man, you must remember, and
Mr. Angus, as the colonel would say, rose from obscurity.'
'Well, if he did,' persisted Mrs. Meredith, 'he does not seem to be
going back to it, and universities seem to me to be places for making
young men stupid.'
'It would never, never do,' said Nell, with doleful decision.
'What does Mary say about him?' asked her mother.
'She never says anything,' said Nell.
'Does she talk much to him?'
'No; very little.'
'That is a good sign,' said Mrs. Meredith.
'I don't know,' said Nell.
'Have you noticed anything else?'
'Nothing except--well, Mary is longer in dressing now than I am, and she
used not to be.'
'I wonder,' Mrs. Meredith remarked, 'if Mary saw him at Silchester after
that time at the castle?'
'She never told me she did,' Nell answered, 'but sometimes I
think--however, there is no good in thinking.'
'It isn't a thing you often do, Nell. By the way, he saw the first Sir
Clement at Dome Castle, did he not?'
'Yes,' Nell said, 'he saw the impostor, and I don't suppose he knows
there is another Sir Clement. The Abingers don't like to speak of that.
However, they may meet on Friday, for Dick has got Mr. Angus a card for
the Symphonia, and Sir Clement is to be there.'
'What does Richard say about it?' asked Mrs. Meredith, going back
apparently upon their conversation.
'We never speak about it, Dick and I,' said Nell.
'What do you speak about, then?'
'Oh, nothing,' said Nell.
Mrs. Meredith sighed.
'And you such an heiress, Nell,' she said; 'you could do so much better.
He will never have anything but what he makes by writing; and if all
stories be true, half of that goes to the colonel. I'm sure your father
never will consent.'
'Oh yes, he will,' Nell said.
'If he had really tried to get on at the Bar,' Mrs. Meredith pursued,
'it would not have been so bad, but he is evidently to be a newspaper
man all his life.'
'I wish you would say journalist, mamma,' Nell said, pouting, 'or
literary man. The profession of letters is a noble one.'
'Perhaps it is,' Mrs. Meredith assented, with another sigh, 'and I dare
say he told you so, but I can't think it is very respectable.'
Rob did not altogether enjoy the Symphonia, which is a polite club
attended by the literary fry of both sexes; the ladies who write because
they cannot help it, the poets who excuse their verses because they were
young when they did them, the clergymen who publish their sermons by
request of their congregations, the tourists who have been to Spain and
cannot keep it to themselves. The club meets once a fortnight, for the
purpose of not listening to music and recitations; and the members, of
whom the ladies outnumber the men, sit in groups round little lions who
roar mildly. The Symphonia is very fashionable and select, and having
heard the little lions a-roaring, you get a cup of coffee and go home
again.
Dick explained that he was a member of the Symphonia because he rather
liked to put on the lion's skin himself now and again, and he took Mrs.
Meredith and the two girls to it to show them of what literature in its
higher branches is capable. The elegant dresses of the literary ladies,
and the suave manner of the literary gentlemen, impressed Nell's mother
favourably, and the Symphonia, which she had taken for an out-at-elbows
club, raised letters in her estimation.
Rob, however, who never felt quite comfortable in evening dress, had a
bad time of it, for Dick carried him off at once, and got him into a
group round the authoress of _My Baby Boy_, to whom Rob was introduced
as a passionate admirer of her delightful works. The lion made room for
him, and he sat sadly beside her, wishing he was not so big.
Both of the rooms of the Symphonia club were crowded, but a number of
gentlemen managed to wander from group to group over the skirts of
ladies' gowns. Rob watched them wistfully from his cage, and observed
one come to rest at the back of Mary Abinger's chair. He was a
medium-sized man, and for five minutes Rob thought he was Sir Clement
Dowton. Then he realised that he had been deceived by a remarkable
resemblance.
The stranger said a great deal to Mary, and she seemed to like him.
After a long time the authoress's voice broke in on Rob's cogitations,
and when he saw that she was still talking without looking tired, a
certain awe filled him. Then Mary rose from her chair, taking the arm of
the gentleman who was Sir Clement's double, and they went into the other
room, where the coffee was served.
Rob was tempted to sit there stupidly miserable, for the easiest thing
to do comes to us first. Then he thought it was better to be a man, and,
drawing up his chest, boldly asked the lion to have a cup of coffee. In
another moment he was steering her through the crowd, her hand resting
on his arm, and, to his amazement, he found he rather liked it.
In the coffee-room Rob could not distinguish the young lady who moved
like a swan, but he was elated with his social triumph, and cast about
for any journalist of his acquaintance who, he thought, might like to
meet the authoress of _My Baby Boy_. It struck Rob that he had no right
to keep her all to himself. Quite close to him his eye lighted on
Marriott, the author of _Mary Hooney: a Romance of the Irish Question_,
but Marriott saw what he was after, and dived into the crowd. A very
young gentleman, with large empty eyes, begged Rob's pardon for treading
on his toes, and Rob, who had not felt it, saw that this was his man.
He introduced him to the authoress as another admirer, and the
round-faced youth seemed such a likely subject for her next work that
Rob moved off comfortably.
A shock awaited him when he met Dick, who had been passing the time by
taking male guests aside and asking them in an impressive voice what
they thought of his great book, _Lives of Eminent Washer-women_, which
they had no doubt read.
'Who is the man so like Dowton?' he repeated, in answer to Rob's
question. 'Why, it is Dowton.'
Then Dick looked vexed. He remembered that Rob had been at Dome Castle
on the previous Christmas Eve.
'Look here, Angus,' he said bluntly, 'this is a matter I hate to talk
about. The fact is, however, that this is the real Sir Clement. The
fellow you met was an impostor, who came from no one knows where.
Unfortunately, he has returned to the same place.'
Dick bit his lip while Rob digested this.
'But if you know the real Dowton,' Rob asked, 'how were you deceived?'
'Well, it was my father who was deceived rather than myself, but we did
not know the real baronet then. The other fellow, if you must know,
traded on his likeness to Dowton, who is in the country now for the
first time for many years. Whoever the impostor is, he is a humorist in
his way, for when he left the castle in January he asked my father to
call on him when he came to town. The fellow must have known that Dowton
was coming home about that time; at all events, my father, who was in
London shortly afterwards, looked up his friend the baronet, as he
thought, at his club, and found that he had never set eyes on him
before. It would make a delicious article if it had not happened in
one's own family.'
'The real Sir Clement seems great friends with Miss Abinger,' Rob could
not help saying.
'Yes,' said Dick, 'we struck up an intimacy with him over the affair,
and stranger things have happened than that he and Mary----'
He stopped.
'My father, I believe, would like it,' he added carelessly, but Rob had
turned away. Dick went after him.
'I have told you this,' he said, 'because, as you knew the other man, it
had to be done, but we don't like it spoken of.'
'I shall not speak of it,' said miserable Rob.
He would have liked to be tearing through London again, but as that was
not possible he sought a solitary seat by the door. Before he reached it
his mood changed. What was Sir Clement Dowton, after all, that he should
be frightened at him? He was merely a baronet. An impostor who could
never have passed for a journalist had succeeded in passing for Dowton.
Journalism was the noblest of all professions, and Rob was there
representing it. The seat of honour at the Symphonia was next to Mary
Abinger, and the baronet had held it too long already. Instead of
sulking, Rob approached the throne like one who had a right to be there.
Sir Clement had risen for a moment to put down Mary's cup, and when he
returned Rob was in his chair, with no immediate intention of getting
out of it. The baronet frowned, which made Rob say quite a number of
bright things to Miss Abinger. When two men are in love with the same
young lady one of them must be worsted. Rob saw that it was better to be
the other one.
The frightfully Bohemian people at the Symphonia remained there even
later than eleven o'clock, but the rooms thinned before then, and Dick's
party were ready to go by half-past ten. Rob was now very sharp. It did
not escape his notice that the gentlemen were bringing the ladies'
cloaks, and he calmly made up his mind to help Mary Abinger on with
hers. To his annoyance, Sir Clement was too quick for him. The baronet
was in the midst of them, with the three ladies' cloaks, just as Rob
wondered where he would have to go to find them. Nell's cloak Sir
Clement handed to Dick, but he kept Mary's on his arm while he assisted
Mrs. Meredith into hers. It was a critical moment. All would be over in
five seconds.
'Allow me,' said Rob.
With apparent coolness he took Mary's cloak from the baronet's arm. He
had not been used to saying 'allow me,' and his face was white, but he
was determined to go on with this thing.
'Take my arm,' he said to Mary, as they joined the crowd that swayed
toward the door. After he said it he saw that he had spoken with an air
of proprietorship, but he was not sorry. Mary did it.
It took them some time to reach their cab, and on the way Mary asked Rob
a question.
'I gave you something once,' she said, 'but I suppose you lost it long
ago.'
Rob reddened, for he had been sadly puzzled to know what had become of
his Christmas card.
'I have it still,' he answered at last.
'Oh,' said Mary coldly; and at once Rob felt a chill pass through him.
It was true, after all, that Miss Abinger could be an icicle on
occasion.
Rob, having told a lie, deserved no mercy, and got none. The pity of it
is that Mary might have thawed a little had she known that it was only a
lie. She thought that Rob was not aware of his loss. A man taking
fickleness as the comparative degree of an untruth is perhaps only what
may be looked for, but one does not expect it from a woman. Probably the
lights had blinded Mary.
Rob had still an opportunity of righting himself, but he did not take
it.
'Then you did mean the card for me,' he said, in foolish exultation;
'when I found it on the walk I was not certain that you had not merely
dropped it by accident.'
Alas! for the fatuity of man. Mary looked up in icy surprise.
'What card?' she said. 'I don't know what you are talking about.'
'Don't you remember?' asked Rob, very much requiring to be sharpened
again.
He looked so woebegone, that Mary nearly had pity on him. She knew,
however, that if it was not for her sex, men would never learn anything.
'No,' she replied, and turned to talk to Sir Clement.
Rob walked home from the Langham that night with Dick, and, when he was
not thinking of the two Sir Clements, he was telling himself that he had
climbed his hill valiantly, only to topple over when he neared the top.
Before he went to bed he had an article to finish for the _Wire_, and,
while he wrote, he pondered over the ways of women; which, when you come
to think of it, is a droll thing to do.
Mr. Meredith had noticed Rob's dejection at the hotel, and remarked to
Nell's mother that he thought Mary was very stiff to Angus. Mrs.
Meredith looked sadly at her husband in reply.
'You think so,' she said, mournfully shaking her head at him, 'and so
does Richard Abinger. Mr. Angus is as blind as the rest of you.'
'I don't understand,' said Mr. Meredith, with much curiosity.
'Nor do they,' replied his wife contemptuously; 'there are no men so
stupid, I think, as the clever ones.'
She could have preached a sermon that night, with the stupid sex for her
text.