Richard Dehan

“ I am a traitor—but not the kind of traitor you think me. Lady Lymston, I am not the Duke of Halcyon. I am a poor devil—I beg your pardon!—I am a painter; my name is Wopse, and I have disgraced my profession by the part I have played!” He sat down miserably on a rustic bench.
“Oh! It has been a put-up thing between you all!” Susanna gasped. “Oh!” She towered over Wopse like an incensed young goddess. ”

“ She swallowed a little sob and dabbed her eyes again. “Oh, Galahad, they are madly in love with me, both of them. What, what am I to do?”
“Send them to the devil, the impudent young beggars!” snorted Galahad. And, striding up and down between the trembling china-tables with clenched fists and angry eyes, he said all the things he had longed to say about folly, and madness and infatuation.
A woman will always submit with a good grace to masculine upbraiding when she has reason to believe the upbraider jealous. Laura bore his reproaches with saintly sweetness. ”

“ A bottle of ink was balanced on the music-desk, a blotted scroll of paper obscured the yellowed keyboard. As the great composer worked at the score of his new opera, he breakfasted, taking draughts from the bottle, bites of sausage and bread, and sips of coffee at discretion. He was a quaint, ungainly figure, with vivacious eyes, and his ill-fitting auburn wig had served him, like the right lapel of his plaid dressing-gown, for a pen-wiper for uncounted years.
The Maestro was not alone in the dusty studio to which so many people, both of the great and little worlds, sought entrance in vain. ”

“ I gasped.
“And now,” groaned Lady Garlingham, “he has to carry it through life!”
There was a gabbling on the upper landing. The bride was coming down in a white cut-cloth, tailor-made gown and a picture hat, Leila and Sheila and a bonneted maid following. The bridegroom, in immaculate tweeds, appeared at a lower door, the smug face of his valet behind him. There was a rush of women, an insane kissing and shaking of hands, a glare of red carpet, a flapping of striped awning. Rice and confetti impregnated the air, the doorsteps were swamped with smartly-dressed people. ”

“ He sat up with an effort and stared at Laura. Laura rocked, prone amid cushions, knitting a silk necktie of a tender hue suited to a blonde complexion.
“Workhouse babies are invariably ugly, and unhealthy into the bargain,” she pouted.
“Some orphan child from a Home, that is pretty to look at and has had the distemper properly,” suggested Galahad.
“I don’t want an orphan from a Home,” objected Laura. “Besides, it wouldn’t be a twin.”
“There are such things as twin orphans, my dear Laura,” protested Galahad. ”

“ He owned a perfectly awful mother, whose ancestral pride and whose three chins must—nay, should—be leveled with the dust. His sisters, the Ladies Pope-Baggotte, Petsie said to herself with a smile, were foewomen unworthy of such steel as is forged in the coulisses of the musical comedy theaters. Yet should they, too, bite the dust. In a golden halo—partly hope, partly champagne—she saw Lady Rustleton sweeping, attired in electrifying gowns, onwards to the conquest of Society. ”

“ But Freddy only regained consciousness to lose it in the ravings of delirium. He had an attack of brain fever, in which he wandered through groves of bonnet shops, looking unavailingly for Cornelia. And then came the crisis, and he woke up with an ice-bandage on, to find himself in his bedroom at Glanmire House, with the Marchioness leaning over him.
“Mother, my heart is broken,” said the boy—he was really little more. “The world exists no more for me. Let me make my last hat—and leave it.” ”

“ It is the hat of hats for a jealous woman!”
“How dare you!” cried Mrs. Vivianson. But Freddy did not seem to hear her—he was rapt in the contemplation of the new masterpiece; and as he rose and gracefully placed it on his partner’s head, Miss Cornelia Vanderdecken was ushered in. She was superbly beautiful in the ivory-skinned, jetty-locked, slender American style, and she wore a hat that Freddy had made the day before, which set off her charms to admiration. ”

“ Perhaps. But Monsieur Freddy is Monsieur Freddy!” And her shrug was worthy of a Parisienne. “Why do you ask? ‘Is it true that he is the younger son of the Duke of Deershire?’ Dear Madame, to us he is Monsieur Freddy; and we seek no more.”
“A born tradeswoman!” thought Lady Glanmire, as the silver coins were exchanged for little colored silk tickets bearing mystic numbers. She moved forward and tendered two half-crowns; and Freddy’s partner and Freddy’s mother looked one another in the face. But Mrs. Vivianson maintained an admirable composure. ”

“ That’s my romance, dear—is there a drop of Bass left in that bottle? I’ve a thirst on me I wouldn’t sell for four ‘d.’ Spite and malice on the part of some I shall not condescend to accuse, helplessness on his part—poor, devoted dear!—and ignorance on mine, nipped it in the bud; and when he vanished from the stalls—didn’t turn up at the stage-door—appearing in the Royal Box, one night I shall never forget, with two young girls in white and a dowager in a diamond fender, I knew he’d given up the chase, and with it all thoughts of poor little downy Me. ”

“ I say no more than that I am surprised!”
“And I say,” retorted Susanna, in clear, defiant, ringing accents, as she swayed herself to and fro upon her narrow perch, “that it is beastly to be expected to marry just because money has got to be brought into the family. Of course I shall marry one day—I don’t want to study law, or be a hospital nurse like that idiotic Laura Penglebury. But I don’t want to be a married woman until I’m tired of being a girl. ”

“ Susanna said demurely, “when one can keep pleasant things to oneself. And we have had a good many walks and talks since you came down here, haven’t we? And cliff scrambles—and bicycle rides—and rows on the river. And the fun of it is that, although we are such pals, really, father and grandmother and Uncle Alaric believe that I positively detest you.” Her young laugh rang out gayly; she thrust a sprig of lavender, perfumed and spicy, under the painter’s nose. ”

“ Laura went on. “That they must be together, of course, goes without saying. And that, of course, increases the difficulty. But nobody could be so inhuman as to part twins.” Her lips quivered, and her eyes grew misty with unshed tears.
22“My dear Laura,” expostulated the puzzled Galahad, “you talk as though these two young men were six years old instead of six-and-twenty.”
“How changed you are!” Laura blinked away a tear. “You used to understand me so much better in the old days. Of course, they are grown up, that is plain to the meanest capacity. ”

“ Céline is an expert at diabolo. It’s a knack, sending these little black and red demons as high as a house, or into your neighbor’s eye; and she is a talented as well as a charming girl. With three languages, several sciences, a system of physical-culture exercises, golf, tennis, and the laws of hockey at her finger-ends, she would have gone far in these days of violent recreations and brusque manners, even without a dot. Masculine? Oh dear no! Perhaps deficient in reverence for what we were taught to believe in as the superior sex. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sir Giles had betrayed Cis as unconsciously as he had betrayed himself. “Really, Poll, I think you ought to keep the young man better to heel,” he had said. “He means no harm, but Mrs. Osborne is a dangerously fascinating woman, and a woman of that type possesses advantages over a girl. And, of course, I don’t suggest anything in the nature of disloyalty to yourself—Cis is the soul of honor and all that. ”

“ Signor Alberto Fumaroli, primo uomo, and possessor of a glorious tenor, was possessed by the idea that the chief soprano, De Melzi, the enchanting Teresa—still in the splendor of her youth, with ebony tresses, eyes of jet, skin of ivory, an almost imperceptible mustache, and a figure of the most seductive, doomed ere long to expand into a pronounced embonpoint—had adorned her classic temples with laurels which should by rights have decked his own. ”

“ Rustleton was shaken into consciousness of his marital 299responsibilities and a fur-lined overcoat; everybody kissed Petsie; all the women cried, Petsie included—but not unbecomingly. Her bridal gown, a walking-costume of white cloth trimmed with silver braid, contained a thoroughly contented young woman; her hat, a fascinating creation, trimmed with a rose-colored bird, a marquisette, and a real lace veil, crowned a completely happy wife. Tonnie possessed nothing extraordinary in the way of good looks or good brains, it was true; but Tonnie’s wife was wealthy in these physical attributes. ”

“ But the stage-doorkeeper paid no heed, busily engaged as he was in delivering letters from a rack on the wall, lettered S, into the hands of a slight little woman in a rather shabby tweed ulster and plain felt hat. Gerry’s heart jumped as he recognized his own handwriting upon one of the envelopes.... Surely the tiny tin gods had favored him! The little woman in the ulster and the plain felt hat must be lady’s maid to the brilliant Speranza. ”

“ Mrs. Gudrun occupied the easiest chair. Her feet, beautifully silk-stockinged and wonderfully shod, occupied the next comfortable; her silken draperies were everywhere, and a cigarette was between her finely cut lips. Her feather boa hung from an electric-globe branch, and her flowery diaphanous hat, bristling with diamond-headed pins, crowned the domelike brow of a plaster bust of the Bard of Avon.
“Well,” said the manageress, making smoke-rings and looking at De Hanna, “there’s no putting the bare fact to bed! We’ve not pulled off things as we had a right to expect.... ”

“ Lady Garlingham adroitly turned a slight groan into a little cough. “Indeed, I hardly know. All that seems burned into me is that I have become a dowager without adequate cause.”
Her pretty brown eyebrows crumpled; she dabbed her still charming eyes with an absurd little lace handkerchief. She wore a wonderful dress of something filmy in Watteau blue, and a Lamballe hat with a paradis. Through innumerable veils of tulle her complexion was really wonderful, considering, and her superb hair still tawny gold. ”

“ There was a snap, and the Pressman’s notebook was open on his knee. The pencil vibrated over the virgin page, when a curious utterance, between a wail, a cough, and a roar, made the hand that held it start.
“Yarr-rr! Ohowgh! Yarr!” The melancholy sound came from without, borne on the cool breeze of a late afternoon in March, through the open ventilators.
“Might that,” queried the young gentleman of the Press, “be an expression of opinion on the part of the elephant?”
“Lord love you, no!” said the Second Officer. “It’s the leopard.” He added after a second’s pause: “Or the puma.” ”

“ She has bought a hat every day for three weeks past. Good for business in one way, but bad for it in another. If he should marry, what becomes of the Maison Freddy?”
She sighed and passed between the curtains. It was the slack time after luncheon, and Freddy was enjoying a moment’s interval. Stretched on his divan, his embroidered slippers elevated in the air, he smoked a perfumed cigarette surrounded by the materials of his craft. He smiled at Mrs. Vivianson as she entered, and then raised his aristocratic eyebrows in surprise. ”

“ Teddy Candelish—Teddy of the cherubic smile and the golden mustache, constantly described by the Theatrical Piffer as the most ubiquitous of acting-managers—sat in his sanctum before an American roll-top desk, checking off applications for free seats and filing unpaid bills. Gormleigh, the stage-director, balanced himself on the end of a saddle-bag sofa, chewing an unlighted cigar; De Hanna, the representative of the Syndicate, was going over the books at a leather-covered table, his eyeglasses growing dim in the attempt to read anything beyond deficit in those neatly kept columns. ”

“ Glancing over the paper in the saloon carriage, he had seen the impertinent upper lip of the De Melzi, tipped with the faintest line of shadow, curl with delight as she scanned each accursed column in turn, and handed the paper to her aunt (a vast person invariably clad in the tightest and shiniest of black satins, and crowned with a towering hat of violet velvet adorned with once snowy plumes and crushed crimson roses) , who went everywhere with her niece, and mounted guard over the exchequer. ”