Читать книгу Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree - Bates Arlo, Putnam Eleanor - Страница 5

The usual mass of people came and went that afternoon at Mrs. Harbinger's. It was not an especially large tea, but in a country where the five o'clock tea is the approved method of paying social grudges there will always be a goodly number of people to be asked and many who will respond. The hum of talk rose like the clatter of a factory, the usual number of conversations were begun only to end as soon as they were well started; the hostess fulfilled her duty of interrupting any two of her guests who seemed to be in danger of getting into real talk; presentations were made with the inevitable result of a perfunctory exchange of inanities; and in general the occasion was very like the dozen other similar festivities which were proceeding at the same time in all the more fashionable parts of the city.

As time wore on the crowd lessened. Many had gone to do their wearisome duty of saying nothing at some other five o'clock; and the rooms were becoming comfortable again. The persons who had come early were lingering, and one expert in social craft might have detected signs that their remaining so long was not without some especial reason.

"If he is coming," Mrs. Neligage observed to Mr. Bradish, "I wish he would come. It is certainly not very polite of him not to arrive earlier if he is really trying to pass as the slave of Alice."

"Oh, he is always late," Bradish answered. "If you had not been in Washington you would have heard how he kept Miss Wentstile's dinner waiting an hour the other day because he couldn't make up his mind to leave the billiard table."

Mrs. Neligage laughed rather mockingly.

"How did dear Miss Wentstile like that?" asked she. "It is death for any mortal to dare to be late at her house, and she does not approve of billiards."

"She was so taken up with berating the rest of us for his tardiness that when he appeared she had apparently forgotten all about his being to blame in anything."

"She loves a title as she loves her life," Mrs. Neligage commented. "She would marry him herself and give him every penny she owns just to be called a countess for the rest of her life."

A stir near the door, and the voice of Graham announcing "Count Shimbowski" made them both turn. A brief look of intelligence flashed across the face of the widow.

"It is he," she murmured as if to herself.

"Do you know him?" demanded Bradish.

"Oh, I used to see him abroad years ago," was her answer. "Very likely he will have forgotten me."

"That," Bradish declared, with a profound bow, "is impossible."

The Count made his way across the drawing-room with a jaunty air not entirely in keeping with the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes. He was tall and wiry, with sandy hair and big mustaches. He showed no consciousness that he was being stared at, but with admirable self-possession saluted his hostess.

"How do you do, Count?" Mrs. Harbinger greeted him. "We began to think you were not coming."

"Ah, how do, Mees Harbeenger. Not to come eet would be to me too desolate. Bon jour, my deear Mees Wentsteele. I am so above-joyed to encountair you'self here. My deear Mees Endeecott, I kees your feengair."

"Beast!" muttered Jack Neligage to Fairfield. "I should like to cram a fistful of his twisted-up sentences down his snaky throat!"

"He must open his throat with a corkscrew in the morning," was the reply.

Miss Wentstile was smiling her most gracious.

"How do you feel to-day, Count?" she asked. "Does our spring weather affect you unpleasantly?"

The Count made a splendid gesture with both his hands, waving in the right the monocle which he more often carried than wore.

"Oh, what ees eet de weder een one land w'ere de peoples so heavenly keent ees?" he demanded oratorically. "Only eet ees Mees Endeecott do keel me wid her so great cheelleeness."

Miss Endicott looked up from her seat at the tea-table beside which the group stood. Her air was certainly sufficiently cold to excuse the Count for feeling her chilliness; and she answered without a glimmer of a smile.

"I'm not cruel," she said. "I wouldn't hurt a worm."

"But," the Count responded, shaking his head archly, "eet ees dat I be not a worm."

"I thought that all men were worms of the dust," Mrs. Harbinger observed.

The Count bowed his tall figure with finished grace.

"And all de weemens," he declared, "aire angles!"

"It is our sharpness, then, that is to be admired," Alice commented.

"Of course, Alice," Miss Wentstile corrected vixenishly, "the Count means angels."

"So many men," Alice went on without showing other sign of feeling than a slight flush, "have turned a woman from an angel into an angle."

"I do comprehend not," the Count said.

"It is no matter, Count," put in the hostess. "She is only teasing you, and being rude into the bargain. You will take tea? Alice, pour the Count some tea."

Alice took up a cup.

"How many lumps?" she asked.

"Loomps? Loomps? Oh, eet weel be sugaire een de tea. Tree, eef you weel be so goot weedeen eet."

Just as the Count, with profuse expressions of overwhelming gratitude to have been permitted so great an honor, had received his tea from the hand of Miss Endicott, and Miss Wentstile was clearing her throat with the evident intention of directing toward him some profound observation, Mrs. Neligage came briskly forward with outstretched hand.

"It would be generous of you, Count," she said, "to recognize an old friend."

He stared at her with evident astonishment.

"Ciel!" he exclaimed. "Ah, but eet weel be de belle Madame Neleegaze!"

She laughed as she shook hands, her dark eyes sparkling with fun.

"As gallant as ever, Count. It is good of you to remember me after so many years."

The Count regarded her with a look so earnest that he might easily be supposed to remember from the past, whatever and whenever it had been, many things of interest. Miss Wentstile surveyed the pair with an expression of keen suspicion.

"Louisa," she demanded, "where did you know the Count?"

The Count tried to speak, but Mrs. Neligage was too quick for him.

"It was at – Where was it, Count? My memory for places is so bad," she returned mischievously.

"Yees," he said eagerly. "Eet weel have been Paris certainement, ees eet not?"

She laughed more teasingly yet, and glanced swiftly from him to Miss Wentstile. She was evidently amusing herself, though the simple question of the place of a former meeting might not seem to give much opportunity.

"That doesn't seem to me to have been the place," she remarked. "Paris? Let me see. I should have said that it was – "

The remark was not concluded, for down went the Count's teacup with a splash and a crash, with startings and cries from the ladies, and a hasty drawing away of gowns. Miss Endicott, who had listened carefully to the talk, took the catastrophe coolly enough, but with a darkening of the face which seemed to show that she regarded the accident as intentional. The Count whipped out his handkerchief, and went down on his knee instantly to wipe the hem of Miss Wentstile's spattered frock; while Mrs. Neligage seemed more amused than ever.

"Oh, I am deesconsolate forever!" the Count exclaimed, in tones which were pathetic enough to have made the reputation of an actor. "I am broken een de heart, Mees Wentsteele."

"It is no matter," Miss Wentstile said stiffly.

A ring of the bell brought Graham to repair the damage as far as might be, and in the confusion the Count moved aside with the widow.

"That was not done with your usual skill, Count," she said mockingly. "It was much too violent for the occasion."

"But for what you speak of Monaco here?" he demanded fiercely. "De old Mees Wentsteele say dat to play de card for money ees villain. She say eet is murderous. She say she weel not to endure de man dat have gamboled."

"And you have gamboled in a lively manner in your time, Count. It's an old pun, but it would be new to you if you could understand it."

"I don't understand," he said savagely in French.

"No matter. It wasn't worth understanding," she answered, in the same tongue. "But you needn't have been afraid. I'm no spoil-sport. I shouldn't have told."

"She is an old prude," he went on, smiling, and showing his white teeth. "If she knew I had been in a duel, she would know me no more."

"She will not know from me."

"As lovely and as kind as ever," he responded. "Ah, when I remember those days, when I was young, and you were just as you are now – "

"Old, that is."

"Oh, no; young, always young as when I knew you first. When I was at your feet with love, and your countryman was my rival – "

Mrs. Neligage began to look as if she found the tables being turned, and that she had no more wish to have the past brought up than had the Count. She turned away from her companion. Then she looked back over her shoulder to observe, still in French, as she left him: —

"I make it a point never to remember those days, my friend."