Part 24

“Rustleton said she was a New Girl of the worst type. Then came the diabolo affair, which, considering Céline’s remarkable knack, I cannot think accidental. The bridge of Rustleton’s nose was seriously contused, and his monocle was shattered—fortunately without danger to the eye. He took no revenge beyond an epigram, quite worthy of La Rochefou—what’s his name?... She is keen on dancing, unlike other muscular girls; and said so in my boy’s near vicinity. ‘Why not? She has hops in her blood,’ he uttered. Of course, a little bird carried it to her ear.... How d’ye do, Lady Frederica? How d’ye do, Count Pyffer? I quite agree with you.... Piercing winds, varied by muggy airlessness and a distressingly relaxing warmth, _have_ made the last eight days intolerable.... My dear, where was I when I left off?” The suffering friend indicated the point. Lady Pomphrey continued:

“And _after all_ they have come together. Quite a romance. If a mother’s prayers have any influence, ... and I am old-fashioned enough to believe they have.... But I knew Rustleton too well to breathe a hint of my hopes. I did not stoop to intrigue, as some mothers would, to bring the young people together. But dearest Jane, who is always my right hand, conceived a devoted friendship for Céline just at the psychological moment, and owing to that she and Rustleton were _constantly_ thrown in each other’s way. Céline quite exerted herself to be overwhelmingly unpleasant. Jane says that during a bicycling excursion in the neighborhood of our place at Cluckham-Pomphrey, she offered to help him to lift his machine over a stile, and would have done it unaided and alone if Rustleton had not peremptorily seized the frame-bar, gripping both her hands in his. On Jane’s authority, she crimsoned to the hat, throwing him off like a feather, and, mounting her machine, was out of sight in an instant. He was icily sarcastic on the subject of muscular young women all the way home, and limited his dinner to clear soup and a single cutlet with dry toast, while Céline went through all the courses in her usual thoroughgoing way. They are not in the least ashamed to eat, do you notice?—these golfing, hockey-playing, open-air young people.... Now you and I can recall placing a solid barrier of five o’clock cake and muffins between undue appetite and the eight o’clock dinner, at which we merely toyed with our knives and forks, trusting to our maids to have a tray of cold eatables ready in the bedroom for consumption while our hair was being brushed. Of _course_! ‘but _these_ girls devour at tea, _wolf_ at dinner’—I quote Rustleton—‘and probably stodge sandwiches and cold chicken and chocolate-wafers before they plunge into their beds. When there, how they must snore!’

“His eye gleamed with such feverish malignancy as he said this, that I involuntarily dropped a quantity of stitches in the silk necktie I was knitting for him—a soothing neutral shade not calculated to call attention to the tinge of bile in his complexion—and exclaimed, ‘Good Heavens!’ He immediately begged my pardon and bade me ‘good-night,’ whispering that he had arranged to shoot over the lower sixty acres with Stubbins, the head keeper—purely as a filial duty, Pomphrey not feeling robust enough to undertake it this year....

“Whether it was my having breathed a hint of this to Jane—who is, as a rule, a _grave_ for chance confidence—or whether Miss Twissing had overheard, how can I say? But she and Stubbins were waiting for my boy on the following morning, Stubbins—who loathes sporting women—in a state of complacency that only a five-pound note could have brought about. Her beautiful Bond-street self-ejecting breechloader, her cap, tweeds, and gaiters were the _dernier cri_, and with the coolest self-possession she wiped my poor boy’s eye over and over again. Out of thirty brace of birds before luncheon only three and a half fell to his gun, and _those_ were of the red-legged French description, ‘bred for duffers to blaze at,’ according to Lord Pomphrey. Rustleton went up to town that night, charging Jane with all sorts of civil messages for Miss Twissing, and slept at his Club, which was being painted and disagreed with him excessively.”

The friend sighed sympathy.

“Even with every door and window open and a flat dish full of milk upon the washstand,” said Lady Pomphrey, taking the friend’s arm and emphasizing her utterances with the green sunshade, “white paint permeates my whole being in a way that is perfectly indescribable. My son inherits my receptiveness—perhaps my weakness-indeed, he came into the world at Cluckham-Pomphrey during an early visit of ours, subsequent to spring-cleaning, where, owing to an unhappy facility possessed by Lord Pomphrey of being easily persuaded by self-interested persons, the hall screen, grand staircase, and all the Jacobean paneling had been covered by the local decorator with a creamy-hued, turpentiny and glutinous mixture known as ‘Eggster’s Exquisite Enamel.’ It cost a fortune to get off again, and some of it still lingers in the crevices of the carving. My basket.... It is a little cumbrous, but I really couldn’t think of letting you.... Well then, dear friend, if you insist.... Now for the really remarkable ending of my boy’s story.

“He flew to his cousin for consolation. Now, Wendoleth Caer-Brydglingbury is extremely sympathetic. Only for the color of her hair-a violent Boadicean red, almost purple in some lights—Rustleton and she—but I am devoutly thankful things have turned out as they _have_.

“‘A sea cruise,’ said Wendoleth promptly, ‘will get the white paint out of your system quicker than anything I know; and your morbid feeling of vexation with this girl, impatience of her persistency in continuing to exist, and so forth, will vanish with other things. Mr. Mudge,’—the person she has since married,—‘has kindly asked Papa and myself to join his party on board the steam-yacht _Fifi_ for a trip to Lisbon, Madeira, and the Canaries; join us. I assure you a complete welcome and at least half a cabin.’ Rustleton recognized the cousinly kindness in Wendoleth’s proposal, accepted, and went with her and Todmoxen—the Earl is still robust, but not what he was in the ’seventies, nor is it to be expected—down to Southampton to join the _Fifi_. Mudge is Liberal member for the North Clogger Division of Mudderpool. But for a crimson necktie—the Party badge—and a habit of hanging on to his own coat-lapels when conversing, he is almost quite presentable, and, like all those people who begin by not having twopence, he is astonishingly rich. His welcome to Rustleton was cordial in the extreme. But when Rustleton found Lord Twissing and his daughter already on board, discovered that he was to share Twissing’s cabin, and that Céline slept in the one next door, he was dismayed. He would have excused himself and left the _Fifi_ only that she was already on her way. Fate, like one of those curious jelly-like creatures which wave their tentacles to attract their prey and then clutch it and gradually absorb it, had wrapped its feelers around my poor boy. He is now resigned, calm, content, even happy; but when I think how he must have suffered.... My salts. In the basket. So kind of you, and _so_ reviving.”

Lady Pomphrey inhaled with drooping eyelids and sniffed at the salts-flagon from time to time as she embarked once more upon her narrative way.

“The _Fifi_ anchored for the night, which promised to be squally, in Southampton Water, about a quarter of a mile from Hythe Pier. Depressed and discouraged, my boy retired to his cabin, leaving the entire party screaming over ‘Bridge’ at a number of little tables in the saloon. He had just put on his nightalines,—pink with a green stripe, the jacket ornamented with green braid in loops, to match—and was attending to his teeth with a palm-stick, when, with a terrific crash, all the electric lights went out and the _Fifi_ was plunged in darkness. I shudder when I realize the awfulness of all that. Don’t you?”

The friend supplied a shudder expressly manufactured for the purpose.

“A Welsh collier steamer, the _Rattletrap_, from Penwryg, had run down Mr. Mudge’s yacht, becoming firmly embedded in the hull of the craft—the details are graven on my memory,” said Lady Pomphrey impressively—“immediately forward of the engine-room. The crew turned out—not into the sea, but out of their hammocks—the ‘Bridge’ players rushed in confusion upon deck. In their evening dresses, without being even able to save a bag from below, Mr. Mudge’s party were dragged over the grimy bows of the collier. The crew scrambled after. The captain of the _Rattletrap_, having ascertained that the _Fifi_ was rapidly filling, and that all her passengers, as he thought, were safe on board his vessel, was about to give the signal from the bridge to reverse engines when, with an appalling scream a lithe young girl in a crêpe de Chine evening wrap embroidered with roses and turtle-doves—quite symbolic when you think of it—leaped back upon the deck of the _Fifi_ and disappeared below. Guess who she was, and whither she had gone? You can? You do? What romance in real life, isn’t it? Céline Twissing had missed Rustleton, and, knowing that he occupied the cabin next to her own, had rushed below to save him.

“He had rung for his man and was waiting calmly to be dressed, when she burst in the door with her shoulder—have you ever noticed her shoulders?—and shrieked to him to come on deck and be saved. Wrapped in a Scotch plaid which he had hastily thrown over his pyjamas at the moment of her entrance, he defied her, rebuked her immodesty in entering a gentleman’s dressing-room unannounced, ordered her to quit the cabin and go back to her father. When properly attired to appear before ladies, my boy, ever chivalrous and delicate-minded, said he would board the _Rattletrap_. ‘Don’t you feel that this yacht is water-logged?’ screamed Céline Twissing. ‘Don’t you know she’ll sink under our feet in another minute? Come on deck at _once_, you duffing little precisian, unless you want me to carry you!’ He retorted with contempt. She instantly seized him in her muscular arms—have you ever noticed her arms?—threw him, Scotch plaid and all, over her shoulder, carried him up the yacht’s companion-ladder, and amidst the cheers of the united crews of the _Fifi_ and the _Rattletrap_, handed him over the bulwarks to the men of the collier. Then she followed, the captain gave the order to go astern, the collier reversed her engines, the water rushed into the yacht, and she sank instantly. All that can be seen of her to-day is her masts. And Céline Twissing and my boy are to be made one at St. George’s, Hanover Square, in the first week of the Winter Season. Céline will be married in white satin and _mousseline_ trimmed with silver embroidery, and she goes away in a gown of putty-colored _velvelise_—the new stuff. I believe she secretly adored Rustleton from the very beginning, and he, I feel, is reconciled to the inscrutable appointments of Providence. _How_ we have been chattering, haven’t we? Time for luncheon now. Oh, I pray, no carp in beer, or eels with currant jelly. But one never knows. _Au revoir_, dear! _Au revoir!_” And Lady Pomphrey put up her green sunshade and sailed away.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's Off Sandy Hook and other stories, by Richard Dehan