Part 16

He stood apparently trying to recall what he had said, in order to get the full meaning of the question, when the servant announced Mrs. Croydon, who came forward with a clashing of bead fringes and a rustling of stiff silk. She was ornamented, hung, spangled, covered, cased in jet until she might not inappropriately have been set bodily into a relief map to represent Whitby. She advanced halfway across the space to where Miss Wentstile sat near the hearth, and then stopped with a dramatic air. She fixed her eyes on the Count, who, with his feet well apart, stood near Miss Wentstile, stirring his tea, and diffusing abroad a patronizing manner of ownership.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Wentstile," Mrs. Croydon said in a voice a little higher than common, "I will come to see you again when you haven't an assassin in your house."

There was an instant of utter silence. The remark was one well calculated to produce a sensation, and had Mrs. Croydon been an actress she might at that instant have congratulated herself that she held her audience spellbound. It was but for a flash, however, that Miss Wentstile was paralyzed.

"What do you mean?" exclaimed the spinster, recovering the use of her tongue.

"I mean," retorted Mrs. Croydon, extending her bugle-dripping arm theatrically, and pointing to the Count, "that man there."

"Me!" cried the Count.

"The Count?" cried Miss Wentstile an octave higher.

"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Neligage very softly, settling herself more comfortably in her chair.

"He tried to murder my husband," went on Mrs. Croydon, every moment with more of the air of a stage-struck amateur. "He challenged him!"

"Your husband?" the Count returned. "Eet ees to me thees teeme first know what you have one husband, madame."

"I thought your husband was dead, Mrs. Croydon," Miss Wentstile observed, in a voice which was like the opening of an outside door with the mercury below zero.

Mrs. Croydon was visibly confused. Her full cheeks reddened; even the tip of her nose showed signs of a tendency to blush. Her trimmings rattled and scratched on the silk of her gown.

"I should have said Mr. Barnstable," she corrected. "He was my husband once when I lived in Chicago."

The Count, perfectly self-possessed, smiled and stirred his tea.

"Ees eet dat de amiable Mrs. Croydon she do have a deeferent husband leek a sailor mans een all de harbors?" he asked with much deference.

Mrs. Neligage laughed softly, leaning back as if at a comedy. Alice looked a little frightened. Miss Wentstile became each moment more stern.

"Mr. Barnstable and I are to be remarried immediately," Mrs. Croydon observed with dignity. "It was for protecting me from the abuse of an anonymous novel that he offended you. You would have killed him for defending me."

The Count waved his teaspoon airily.

"He have eensult me," he remarked, as if disposing of the whole subject. "Then he was one great cowherd. He have epilogued me most abject."

Mrs. Neligage elevated her eyebrows, and turned her glance to Mrs. Croydon, who stood, a much overdressed goddess of discord, still in the middle of the floor.

"That is nonsense, Mrs. Croydon," she observed honeyedly. "Mr. Barnstable behaved with plenty of pluck. The apology was Jack's doing, and wasn't at all to your--your _fiancé's_ discredit."

Miss Wentstile turned with sudden severity to Mrs. Neligage.

"Louisa," she demanded, "do you know anything about this affair?"

"Of course," was the easy answer. "Everybody in Boston knew it but you."

The Count put his teacup on the mantelpiece. He had lost the jauntiness of his air, but he was still dignified.

"Eet was one _affaire d'honneur_," he said.

"But why was I not told of this?" Miss Wentstile asked sharply.

"You?" Mrs. Croydon retorted with excitement. "Everybody supposed--"

Mrs. Neligage rose quickly.

"Really," she said, interrupting the speaker, "I must have another cup of tea."

The interruption stopped Mrs. Croydon's remark, and Miss Wentstile did not press for its conclusion.

"Count," the spinster asked, turning to that gentleman, who towered above her tall and lowering, "have you ever fought a duel?"

The Count shrugged his shoulders.

"All Shimbowski ees _hommes d'honneur_."

She made him a frigid bow.

"I have the honor to bid you good day," she said, with a manner so perfect that the absurdity of the situation vanished.

The Count drew himself up proudly. Then he in his turn bowed profoundly.

"You do eet too much to me honor," he said, with a dignity which was worthy of his family. "Ladies, _votre serviteur_."

He made his exit in a manner to be admired. Mrs. Croydon feigned to shrink aside as he passed her, but Mrs. Neligage looked at her with so open a laugh at this performance that confusion overcame the dame of bugles, and she moved forward disconcerted. She had not yet gained a seat, when Miss Wentstile faced her with all her most unrestrained fashion.

"I shouldn't think, Mrs. Croydon, that you, with the stain of a divorce court on you, were in position to throw stones at Count Shimbowski. He has done nothing but follow the customs to which he's been brought up."

"Perhaps that's true of Mrs. Croydon too," murmured Mrs. Neligage to Alice.

"If you wanted to tell me," Miss Wentstile went on, "why didn't you tell me when he was not here? No wonder foreigners think we are barbarians when a nobleman is insulted like that."

"I didn't mean to tell you," Mrs. Croydon stammered humbly. "It just came out."

"Why didn't you mean to tell me?" demanded Miss Wentstile, whose anger had evidently deprived her for the time being of all coolness.

"Why, I thought you were engaged to him!" blurted out Mrs. Croydon, fairly crimson from brow to chin.

"Engaged!" echoed Miss Wentstile, half breathless with indignation.

Mrs. Neligage came to the rescue, cool and collected, entirely mistress of herself and of the situation.

"Really, Mrs. Croydon," she suggested, smiling, "don't you think that is bringing Western brusqueness home to us in rather a startling way? We don't speak of engagements until they are announced, you know."

"But Miss Wentstile told me the other day that she might announce one soon," persisted Mrs. Croydon, into whose flushed face had come a look of baffled obstinacy.

Mrs. Neligage threw up her hands in a graceful little gesture. She played private theatricals infinitely better than Mrs. Croydon. There was in their art all the difference between the work of the most clumsy amateur and a polished professional.

"There is nothing to do but to tell it," she said, as if appealing to Miss Wentstile and Alice. "The engagement was that of Miss Endicott and my son. Miss Wentstile never for a moment thought of marrying the Count. She knew from me that he gambled and was a famous duelist."

Alice put out her hand suddenly, and caught that of the widow.

"Oh, Mrs. Neligage!" she cried.

The widow patted the girl's fingers. The face of Miss Wentstile was a study for a novelist who identifies art with psychology.

"Of course I ought not to have told, Alice," Mrs. Neligage went on; "but I'm sure Mrs. Croydon is to be trusted. It isn't fair to your aunt that this nonsensical notion should be abroad that she meant to marry the Count."

Mrs. Croydon was evidently too bewildered to understand what had taken place. She awkwardly congratulated Alice, apologized to Miss Wentstile for having made a scene, and somehow got herself out of the way.

"What an absolutely incredible woman! With the talent both she and Mr. Barnstable show for kicking up rows in society," observed Mrs. Neligage, as soon as the caller had departed, "I should think they would prevent any city from being dull. I trust they will pass the time till their next divorce somewhere else than here."

XXVIII

THE UNCLOUDING OF LOVE

Miss Wentstile sat grimly silent until they heard the outer door downstairs close behind the departing guest. Then she straightened herself up.

"I thank you, Louisa," she said gravely; "you meant well, but how dared you?"

"Oh, I had to dare," returned Mrs. Neligage lightly. "I'm coming into the family, you know, and must help keep up its credit."

"Humph!" was the not entirely complimentary rejoinder. "If you cared for the credit of the family why didn't you tell me about the Count sooner? Is he really a fast man?"

"He's been one of the best known sports in Europe, my dear Miss Wentstile."

"Why didn't you tell me then?"

"Why should I? I wasn't engaged to Harry then, and if the Count wanted to reform and settle down, you wouldn't have had me thwart so virtuous an inclination, would you?"

"I thought you wanted him to marry Alice!"

"I only wanted Alice out of the way of Jack," the widow confessed candidly.

"Why?" Miss Wentstile asked.

The spinster was fond of frankness, and appreciated it when it came in her way.

"Because I hated to have Jack poor, and I knew that if Alice married him you'd never give them a cent to live on."

Alice, her face full of confusion and pain, moved uneasily, and put her hand on the arm of Mrs. Neligage once more, as if to stop her. The widow again patted the small hand reassuringly, but kept her eyes fixed full on those of the aunt.

"You took a different turn to-day," the spinster observed suspiciously.

"I had to save you to-day," was the ready answer; "and besides I can't do anything with Jack. He's bound to marry Alice whether you and I like it or not, and he's going to work in a bank in the most stupid manner."

To hear the careless tone in which this was said nobody could have suspected that this speech was exactly the one which could most surely move the spinster, and that the astute widow must have been fully aware of it.

"So you are sure I won't give Alice anything if she marries Jack, are you?" Miss Wentstile said. "Well, Alice, you are to marry Jack Neligage to save me from the gossips."

"It seems to me," Alice said, blushing very much, "that if I can't have any voice in the matter, Jack might be considered."

"Oh, my dear," returned Mrs. Neligage quickly, "do you suppose that if I made an alliance for Jack, he would be so undutiful as to object?"

Alice burst into a laugh, but Miss Wentstile, upon whom, in her ignorance of the engagement between Jack and May, the point was lost, let it pass unheeded.

"Well," she said, "I think I'll surprise you for once, Louisa. If Jack will stick faithfully to his place in the bank for a year, I'll give him and Alice the _dot_ I promised the Count."

Mrs. Neligage got away from Miss Wentstile's as soon as possible, leaving Alice to settle things with her aunt, and taking a carriage at the next corner, drove to Jack's lodgings. She burst into his room tumultuously, fortunately finding him at home, and alone.

"Oh, Jack," she cried, "I didn't mean to, but I've engaged you again!"

He regarded her with a quizzical smile.

"Matchmaking seems to be a vice which develops with your age," he observed. "I got out of the other scrape easily enough, and I won't deny that it was rather good fun. I hope that this isn't any worse."

"But, Jack, dear, this time it's Alice!"

"Alice!" he exclaimed, jumping up quickly.

"Yes, it's Alice, and you ought to be grateful to me, for she's going to have a fortune, too."

With some incoherency, for she was less self-contained than usual, Mrs. Neligage told him what had happened.

"See what it is to have a mother devoted to your interests," she concluded. "You'd never have brought Miss Wentstile to terms. You ought to adore me for this."

"I do," he answered, laughing, but kissing her with genuine affection. "I hope you'll be as happy as Alice and I shall be."

"I only live for my child," returned she in gay mockery. "For your sake I'm going to be respectable for the rest of my life. What sacrifices we parents do make for our children!"

* * * * *

Late that evening Jack was taking his somewhat extended adieus of Alice.

"After all, Jack," she said, "the whole thing has come out of the novel. We'll have a gorgeously bound copy of 'Love in a Cloud' always on the table to remind us--"

"To remind us," he finished, taking the words out of her mouth with a laugh, "that our love has got out of the clouds."

* * * * *

The Riverside Press PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON & CO. CAMBRIDGE, MASS. U.S.A.

* * * * *

Books by Arlo Bates.

LOVE IN A CLOUD. A Novel.

THE PURITANS. A Novel.

THE PHILISTINES. A Novel.

THE PAGANS. A Novel.

PATTY'S PERVERSITIES. A Novel.

PRINCE VANCE. The Story of a Prince with a Court in his Box. By ARLO BATES and ELEANOR PUTNAM.

A LAD'S LOVE.

UNDER THE BEECH-TREE. Poems.

TALKS ON WRITING ENGLISH.

TALKS ON THE STUDY OF LITERATURE.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK.