Gelett Burgess

“ He was sitting indolently at his window one day, watching the daily pavement quarrel, whose actors were usually recruited from Paradise Alley across the street, when a green brougham came into the road from Tite street and drew up at the curb. From this alighted something in veil and lace and fashionable frippery—woman or angel, he guessed—and, as the crowd made way for her, she pushed open the iron gate of the tiny garden and rapped at the knocker with a gusto that rattled the windows. ”

“ Lady Méchante blew him a kiss. "You a thief! God help me! I can hardly believe my eyes!"
"Oh, I beg you not to inflict your Nonconformist morality upon me at this hour," she answered. "What, then, is your honesty—you, a city merchant? You buy, it is true, but you sell for more than you gave, cheating your victim out of one or two hundred per cent. What more do I? I take, here and there, what I can find, and I sell it again at an insignificant advance; think of the risks, too, should I fall in with those who are not gentlemen!" ”

“ Why, my dear fellow, when I think of the shame and deceptions of my own profession, the simulation of vices, the affectation of virtues, the eternal disguise of another's thoughts, speech and costume, the absolute impossibility of any spontaneous act—your own craft strikes me as being noble in comparison. You may at least be yourself, you do not have to wear the second-hand robes of Hypocrisy! ”

“ No matter how picturesque a man's trade may be, if he is not of the fibre of fancy, he grows dulled, sooner or later, to the beautiful opportunities of his vocation, and inevitably he gets to taking his emotions cavalierly. Leopold had done his poor best, in the earlier years of their married life, to satisfy his wife's idealism, but he was internally cursed with the fatal quality of "meaning well." Though, after the honeymoon, he had given himself up to her empire, she had never really succeeded in scanning any poetical quality into the bald prose of his profession. ”

“ She flitted here and there, breaking and entering, and now and again, as her moods grew more reckless, she hazarded interviews with her patrons. She confined her attentions to gentlemen whose birth and repute promised the greatest intellectual satisfaction, and she became a polite register of the town's bachelordom and jeunesse dorée. Many a youth awakened at two in the morning to find a beautiful woman, masked, but attired in tune with the latest cry, sitting in his favorite armchair, smoking a perfumed cigarette, waiting for him to compose his wits for the colloquy. ”

“ Bounder.
"Then accept your reward! Kiss me!" said Mrs. Gaillarde, slightly inclining her head.
"What ho! Before all these people?" cried Bounder.
"You are a poor fool," said the little widow. "One does not offer such a favor twice. You have lost that one forever. But you still have the watch, and it will stand you ten bob at least. Let that suffice. As for me, I have found my career. The world shall once more hear of Lady Méchante!" ”

“ Dear boy! It's a pity he hasn't brains! Why, he leaves ten-pound notes about, with poems on the back. No trick, either, for they cash all right. Why, you stupid, you have only to take a Gladstone bag and pick the swag everywhere you go. You'll find they're fond of me. I've been offered twenty guineas to drop my mask. The town's wild over me! You can make a thousand a week!"
"Why do you leave it, then?" asked the astounded Bounder.
"Never mind! I've a better graft than that. Will you do it or not, that's the question?"
"I will, if it's like that," said Guy. "When do I commence?" ”

“ Lady Méchante had long since begun to neglect the conspiracies of Soho, and was in open revolt, playing her own part in the town as a free lance, and reporting to no central authority, claiming no vote in the tribunal. Guy feared for her. She was already suspected, but he had defended her as well as his standing permitted; he had no suspicion yet of any cardinal lapse from the primitive morality of the clique. If such a mouse can love, he loved Florizelle, and love can accomplish marvels. His passion was in a fair way soon to make a man of him. ”

“ Tell me, do you believe in Affinities?" she asked.
"Affinities!" and Mortimer Stencill hid his smile. "Why, my dear, I am thirty-three! Go seek a chameleon. You may find Affinities to throw at the birds! My dear child, heaven forgive me, but I believe you are an American!"
Guy Bounder heard no more. His soul was sick with this sentimentality. Hardly had he left the house, however, before Mrs. Stencill opened the door where the two were conversing, and entered with a smile. Mortimer started guiltily. As for Lady Méchante, she had foregone the possibility of embarrassment long ago. ”

“ London, indeed, soon began to hear of Lady Méchante, as she had predicted. She fitted modern methods to modern needs, and, not content with harassing the better known districts of Society, she became an explorer, and laid her tribute upon new territories. Her ablest accomplice in this work was Guy Bounder, who, though a child compared with her, in the field of invention, was familiar with the machinery of the profession, having kept in touch with affairs while she was rusting in the aristocracy. ”

“ To-night wagers had been laid on Blankinsop, the American plunger, and men walked the streets about Cavendish Square, hoping for a sight of the green brougham. Gentlemen of fashion began to leave their house doors unlocked and their watches prominently displayed to net this butterfly. Her mots were retailed at afternoon functions; the women of the innermost circles conspired together to put a stop to the innovator. The man who had last received Lady Méchante was the popular hero until the next was chosen ”

“ For the first time in my life I have made a fool of myself. To think of Lady Méchante, Lady Méchaiite forcing her attentions on a man!" She turned her profile; it was indeed she, and Guy felt the portico sway under him.
"Florry, Florry here, for pleasure!" he muttered. "Calling on this play-actor, free? My Gawd!"
"I have had a strange life," she went on, "cursed by the continuous desire for human interest. Men may make their own friends, aye, and keep them with no fear. We women are bound to take what the gods send us. ”

“ The lady tittered to die at his plight, but kept the door of the carriage locked, while the driver fingered his whip apprehensively.
"Oh, you guy, Guy!" she screamed. "I told you to look sharp for the mask, and be careful of Colonel Wetmore. You'll eavesdrop on me, on Lady Méchante, will you? You'll report my case in Soho, my dear fellow, will you? Why couldn't you attend to your own affairs, Bounder? I'm shocked. You're a sight for the gods—not for a lady—my friend. Get to the Park, you inebriated tatterdemalion," and she rang the electric bell for the driver. ”

“ You, sir, are a criminal advocate; it is your business to defend or to prosecute, as your retainer bids; to shut your eyes to the verities and attempt to close others' vision. What are you but a licensed liar? It is the same to you whether you are keeping a criminal from his just deserts or stretching the neck of an innocent father whose little ones shall cast his blood upon your head! Sac-à-papier!My trade is open and holy beside yours. I pit my craft against organized society, and take all chances. ”

“ Never mind. You may yet regret your treatment of Lady Méchante. And now, sir, though I am far from angry, there is nothing I desire so much as a way to the door. I have a shattered ideal to nurse. It is very late. Yes, the tips of my fingers only. Well, perhaps we may yet be friends. Good-night!" She ran down stairs lightly and was into her brougham before Saul Edam could pursue.
Disastrous as was this sentimental experiment, she could not help confessing, whimsically, to Guy Bounder, who heard the tale with a lowering brow. ”

“ Mrs. Gaillarde answered. "I have still to test you. You Americans are so absurdly chivalrous that you must compensate somehow in your attitude toward women. Yes, I am a woman! Hate me now, despise me, and my long quest is over, and I shall return to respectability!" So saying, in a fervor of suspense she threw off her mask and fell to weeping.
Stencill's whole appearance changed. "Heavens!" he cried, as he saw her young, fresh face, lighted by imagination and sentiment, very beautiful. Then, "Hush!" and he sprang to the door and closed it. "My wife!" ”

“ Bounder nervous. Like most men, he preferred to make his own advances, and grew embarrassed when forced to play up to such trumps. There was, indeed, more difficulty in Lady Méchante's leniency than in her reserve, so her demeanor sobered him. He rose awkwardly.
"What do you mean?" he stammered.
Mrs. Gaillarde laughed wickedly, knowing her hold over him was so sure. "This, if I must put it into words of one syllable," she said. "I propose to ransack the town while you play ducks and drakes with these silly men. You take my brougham and my mask and entertain my friends. ”

“ It was called Something Crescent, a street on a curve, boasting front gardens elevated above the pavement.
It was a "typical London" evening, as tourists would call it, when Mrs. Gaillarde drove past the warehouses of Whiteley, the "Universal Provider," wondering whether, even in that famous magazine, she could find her quest—an interesting man. ”

“ No offers would induce his favor even to the extent of a kiss. It goes without saying that he did not allow the mask to be dropped for an instant.
All this while he trusted Florry as a dog trusts his master, but, once on the path of wonder, there was but a single destination. Lady Méchante, in her proper person, was heard of no more, and he began to suspect her disappearance. The spark traveled slowly, but at last it came upon some inflammable fibres of sensibility, when suspicion flamed up, burning with a fire colored with presentiment. Had Florry gone wrong? ”

“ Oh, I'm a high Willy, I am!"
"Here, take this for the present," said Lady Méchante, handing over a pair of ten-pound notes. "There's more to come when you've got your clothes out of pawn. I hope you haven't forgotten how to speak English, though, Guy; you're no use to me on the 'other side of the water.' I don't do much business in Battersea or the New Cut nowadays."
"My dear Mrs. Gaillarde," protested Mr. Bounder, with emphasis, "you will find that when you leave cards like this with me, Guy Forsythe Bounder, Esquire, is always at home. ”

“ You believe in competition. You know that honesty is an outworn policy in your business. It has as little place in mine. I know, too, that you play the stock market; you are, in short, a gambler. Well, then, you prefer chance, and I, skill. ”

“ Gaillarde, merrily, producing an enameled cigarette case. "I confess your room reeks. Now you are rehabilitated, you surely must notice it. Matches?" she added, and she shook the box as she passed it. "And now to business, for I see my carriage is creating an excitement in the neighborhood, and there are goings and comings on the stair. You can still do my bidding without unnecessary curiosity as to my motives?"
"Madam, I am your champion again," Mr. Bounder protested. "In our profession the days of chivalry have never died." ”

“ What ideas, thoughts, fancies, quips, jests, conceits, inventions, judgments, theories, speculations, notions, opinions, beliefs, sentiments, or what not you have, you must make over, for I must fill my head before morning breaks. I prefer a marketable commodity, surely, yet I shall not stick for commerce. Speak, then, if you dare answer a hot-headed woman! ”

“ Bless you, you needn't call! You may burgle us to your heart's content; the more scandal the better in our business. But the immediate fact is that there's been a man outside your window, listening. I thought you'd like to know. It seemed to me that he fainted away and fell off the roof of the portico. Anyway, he's gone, and he left this behind." She pointed to a small but exquisitely tooled silver lantern. It bore a monogram—"G. B."
"Guy Bounder!" cried Lady Méchante. "He was here, and he listened?"
"With interest," said Roberta Stencill. "As much as mine," she added, naïvely. ”

“ I am always at home on the fifth Wednesday in February, from eleven to quarter-to-twelve. . . . No, really?" And then, to Mr. Bounder she added, "Is it possible that there is a profession that my sex has not adventured? Are there, then, female burglars?"
"Heaven forbid!" said Mr. Bounder, "but I thought that one of your Ladyship's attainments and cleverness would have profited by your husband's tutelage."
"I am no Lady," said Mrs. Gaillarde. "I have dropped the sobriquet. Here are ladies around you ”

“ The man's life must, she thought, have been singularly dull. It would be a charity to write a note and leave it here for him, perhaps, and she was feeling for a pen when a noise behind her turned her head. ”

“ London is the dullest place on earth. If he is as much a 'card' as the others, heaven help me, for the devil won't! Yet what an actor he is! He ought to be the one at last! Heigho, I'm bored to death. Tim's my last chance; if he fails me, I'll join the Salvation Army and be a lieutenant of the Kennington Devil Drivers!"
IV Mortimer Stencill was an American, which fact may or may not have been the foundation of Lady Méchante's hopes. ”

“ He had a way with men and children. He was a woman-hater, to boot, and this alone was enough to pay for the trip to St. John's Wood. Up she went, then, and in she got by way of a parlor casement. She hoped he would be at home, for she was minded to steal a glimpse of his profile. There was an odor of good tobacco in the house as she tripped up stairs. She laid hand upon the door whence it proceeded most plainly, and walked in boldly. She was bound, this time, to put the matter to the touch without preliminary skirmish.
Sir Seton Maldivers was reading, but he rose hurriedly as she entered. ”

“ And give her the sight of real men and women living sane and untrammeled lives, I am sure she would be a new woman. She has balked and kicked over the traces because she felt the restraint, but once show her liberty and she will be tractable enough. She's a thousand times too good for London. ”

“ With all her prominence in the arena of gossip, scandal had not wounded her; there were too many men-about-town infatuated with Lady Méchante to make that safe.
III There was a time when Guy Bounder had kept up a dummy residence in Jermyn street and built from that pied-à-terre a flimsy fabric of fashionable prestige. It was at Madame Qui-Vive's, indeed, that Mrs. Gaillarde first encountered him after her re-entrance into Society, but Mr. Bounder's presence there would hardly bear investigation. There are paid, as well as paying guests, at the functions of the beau monde. ”

“ First among these came her innovations in the scandal market; she replaced the private detective in important divorce proceedings, and became a purveyor of sensation to the more lurid journals. Her skill in breaking and entering gave her marvelous proficiency and usefulness to her clients, but by reason of her intimate familiarity with the classes, she was enabled to select and obtain what ordinary thieves would hardly have noticed. ”

“ Bounder, pitifully. "I've heard the talk on the Row, and I know you've been up to some game with the Johnnies; but, my word! I don't see myself sitting in men's chambers in an evening gown, prattling Ascot and Goodwood at three in the morning! I'm out for the oof, Florry. Business is business. I don't complain, mind you. I know you're straight, as I said, and I don't pretend to fathom your tricks. If I didn't trust you, you know I have only to put them on to you at Soho Square."
"Sac-à-papier!" cried Mrs. Gaillarde. "Do I understand you to threaten me? Do you know I am Lady Méchante? ”