Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

"It is very kind of you," he murmured vaguely.

"Oh, don't mention it," responded she, more graciously than ever. "You are really one of us now, as I said; and I always feel strongly the ties of the literary guild."

"The guild owes you a great deal," Fairfield observed blandly.

Mrs. Croydon waved her hand engagingly in return for this compliment, incidentally with a waving of various adornments of her raiment which gave her the appearance in little of an army with banners.

"I didn't come just for compliments," she observed with much sweetness. "I am a business woman, and I know how to come to the point. My father left me to manage my own property, and so I've had a good deal of experience. When I see how women wander round a thing without being able to get at it, it makes me ashamed of them all. I don't wonder that men make fun of them."

"You are hard on your sex."

"Oh, no harder than they deserve. Why, in Chicago there are a lot of women that do business in one way or another, and I never could abide 'em. I never could get on with them, it was so hard to pin them down."

"I readily understand how annoying it must have been," Fairfield observed with entire gravity. "Did you say that you had business with me?"

"Yes," she answered. "I suppose that I might have written, but there are some things that are so much better arranged by word of mouth. Don't you think so?"

"Oh, there's no doubt of it."

"Besides," she went on, "I wanted to tell you how much I like your work, and it isn't easy to express those things on paper."

It would be interesting to know whether to Fairfield at that moment occurred the almost inevitable reflection that for Mrs. Croydon it was hard, if her manuscripts were the test, to express anything on paper.

"You are entirely right," he said politely. "It is easy enough to put facts into words, but when it comes to feelings such as you express, it is different, of course."

He confided to Jack Neligage later that he wondered if this were not too bold a flout, but Mrs. Croydon received it as graciously as possible.

"There is so complete a difference," she observed with an irrelevance rather startling, "between the mental atmosphere in Boston and that I was accustomed to in Chicago. Here there is a sort of – I don't know that I can express it exactly; it's part of an older civilization, I suppose; but I don't think it pays so well as what we have in Chicago."

"Pays so well?" he repeated. "I don't think I understand."

"It doesn't sell so well in a book," she explained. "I thought that it would be better business to write stories of the East for the West to buy; but I've about made up my mind that it'll be money in my pocket to write of the West for the eastern market."

Fairfield smiled under his big mustache, playing with a paper-knife.

"Pardon my mentioning it," he said, "but I thought you wrote for fame, and not for money."

"Oh, I don't write for money, I assure you; but I was brought up to be a business woman, and if I'm going to write books somebody ought to pay for them. Now I wanted to ask you what you will sell me your part in 'Love in a Cloud' for."

Whether this sudden introduction of her business or the nature of it when introduced were the more startling it might have been hard to determine. Certain it is that Fairfield started, and stared at his visitor as if he doubted his ears.

"My part of it?" he exclaimed. "Why, I wrote it."

"Yes," she returned easily, "but so many persons have supposed it to be mine, that it is extremely awkward to deny it; and you have become my collaborateur, of course, by writing on the other novels."

"I hadn't realized that," Dick returned with a smile.

"You've put so much of your style into my other books," she pursued, "that it's made people attribute 'Love in a Cloud' to me, and I think you are bound now not to go back on me. I don't know as you see it as I do, but it seems to me that since you took the liberty of changing so much in my other stories you ought to be willing to bear the consequences of it, especially as I'm willing to pay you well."

"But as long as you didn't write the book," Dick observed, "I should think you'd feel rather queer to have it said you did."

"I've thought of that," Mrs. Croydon said, nodding, with a flutter of silken tags, "but I reason that the ideas are so much my own, and the book is so exactly what I would have written if social duties hadn't prevented, that that ought not to count. The fact that so many folks think I wrote it shows that I might have written it."

"But after all you didn't write it," Fairfield objected. "That seems to make it awkward."

"Why, of course it would have been better if I had given you a sketch of it," Mrs. Croydon returned, apparently entirely unmoved; "but then of course you got so much of the spirit of 'Love in a Cloud' out of my other books – "

This was perhaps more than any author could be expected to endure, and least of all a young author in the discussion of his first novel.

"Why, how can you say that?" he demanded indignantly.

"Do you suppose," she questioned with a benign and patronizing smile, "that so many persons would have taken your book for mine in the first place if you hadn't imitated me or taken ideas from my other books?"

Dick sprang to his feet, and then sat down, controlling himself.

"Well," he said coldly, "it makes no difference. It is too late to do anything about it now. An edition of 'Love in a Cloud' with my name on the title-page comes out next Wednesday. If folks say too much about the resemblance to your books, I can confess, I suppose, my part in the others."

She turned upon him with a burst of surprise and indignation which set all her ribbon-ends waving in protest.

"That," she said, "is a professional secret. No man of honor would tell it."

She rose as she spoke, her face full of indignation.

"You have not treated me fairly," she said bitterly. "You must have seen that the book was attributed to me, and you knew the connection between 'Love in a Cloud' and my other books – "

"Other books!" exclaimed Dick.

Mrs. Croydon waved him into silence with a magnificent gesture, but beyond that took no notice of his words.

"You saw how everybody looked at me that day at Mrs. Harbinger's," she went on. "If you were going to give your name to the book why didn't you do it then?"

"I didn't think of you at all," was his answer. "I was too much amused in seeing that absurd Barnstable make a fool of himself with Count Shimbowski. Did you know that the Count actually challenged him?"

Wrath of celestial goddesses darkened the face of Mrs. Croydon as a white squall blackens the face of the sky. Her eyes glared with an expression as fierce if not as bright as the lightning.

"What do you say?" she screamed. "Challenge my husband?"

"Your husband!" ejaculated Dick, a staring statue of surprise.

"Yes, my husband," she repeated vehemently. "He didn't make a fool of himself that day! A man can't come to the defense of a woman but you men sneer at him. Do you mean that that beastly foreign ape dared to challenge him for that? I'd like to give him my opinion of him!"

When a man finds himself entertaining a wildcat unawares he should either expel the beast or himself take safety in flight. Dick could apparently do neither. He stood speechless, gazing at the woman before him, who seemed to be waxing in fury with every moment and every word. She swept across the short space between them in a perfect hurricane of streamers, and almost shook her fists in his face.

"I understand it all now," she said. "You were in it from the beginning! I suppose that when you worked on my books you took the trouble to find out about me, and that's where your material came from for your precious 'Love in a Cloud.' Oh, my husband will deal with you!"

Fairfield looked disconcerted enough, as well he might, confronted with a woman who was apparently so carried away by anger as to have lost all control of herself.

"Mrs. Croydon," he said, with a coldness and a dignity which could not but impress her, "I give you my word that I never knew anything about your history. That was none of my business."

"Of course it was none of your business!" she cried. "That's just what makes it so impertinent of you to be meddling with my affairs!"

Fairfield regarded her rather wildly.

"Sit down, please," he said beseechingly. "You mustn't talk so, Mrs. Croydon. Of course I haven't been meddling with your affairs, and – "

"And not to have the courage to say a word to prevent my husband's being dragged into a duel with that foreigner! Oh, it does seem as if I couldn't express my opinion of you, Mr. Fairfield!"

"My dear Mrs. Croydon – "

"And as for Erastus Barnstable," she rushed on to say, "he's quick-tempered, and eccentric, and obstinate, and as dull as a post; he never understood me, but he always meant well; and I won't have him abused."

"I hadn't any idea of abusing him," Dick pleaded humbly. "Really, you are talking in an extraordinary fashion."

She stopped and glared at him as if with some gleam of returning reason. Her face was crimson, and her breath came quickly. Women of society outside of their own homes so seldom indulge in the luxury of an unbecoming rage that Dick had perhaps never before seen such a display. Any well-bred lady knows how to restrain herself within the bounds of personal decorum, and to be the more effective by preserving some appearance of calmness. Mrs. Croydon had evidently lacked in her youth the elevating influence of society where good manners are morals. It was interesting for Dick, but too extravagantly out of the common to be of use to him professionally.

"I hope you are proud of your politeness this morning," Mrs. Croydon ended by saying; and without more adieu she fluttered tumultuously to the door.

XXIV

THE MISCHIEF OF A CAD

The fierce light of publicity which nowadays beats upon society has greatly lessened the picturesqueness of life. There is no longer the dusk favorable to crime, and the man who wishes to be wicked, if careful of his social standing, is constantly obliged to be content with mere folly, or, if desperate, with meanness. It is true that from time to time there are still those, even in the most exclusive circles, who are guilty of acts genuinely criminal, but these are not, as a rule, regarded as being in good form. The days when the Borgias invited their enemies to dinner for the express purpose of poisoning them, or visited nobles rich in money or in beautiful wives and daughters with the amiable intent to rob them of these treasures, are over, apparently forever. In the sixteenth century – to name a time typical – success made an excuse more than adequate for any moral obliquity; and the result is that the age still serves thrillingly the romantic dramatist or novel-writer. To-day success is held more than to justify iniquity in politics or commerce, but the social world still keeps up some pretext of not approving. There is in the best society really a good deal of hesitation about inviting to dinner a man who has murdered his grandmother or run away with the wife of his friend. Society is of course not too austere in this respect; it strives to be reasonable, and it recognizes the principle that every transaction is to be judged by the laws of its own class. In the financial world, for instance, conscience is regulated by the stock market, and society assumes that if a crime has been committed for the sake of money its culpability depends chiefly upon the smallness of the amount actually secured. Conservative minds, however, still object to the social recognition of a man who has notoriously and scandalously broken the commandments. He who has not the skill or the good taste to display the fruits of his wickedness without allowing the process by which they were obtained to be known, is looked at askance by these prudish souls. In all this state of things is great loss to the romancer, and not a little disadvantage to bold and adventurous spirits. Were the latter but allowed the freedom which was enjoyed by their forerunners of the sixteenth century, they would do much to relieve the tedium under which to-day the best society languishes.

This tendency of the age toward the suppression of violent and romantic transgressions in good society was undoubtedly largely responsible for the course taken by Sibley Langdon. Foiled in his plan of blackmailing Mrs. Neligage into being his companion on a European tour, he attempted revenge in a way so petty that even the modern novelist, who stops at nothing, would have regarded the thing as beneath invention.

Mr. Langdon had sent Mrs. Neligage her canceled note, with a floridly worded epistle declaring that its real value, though paid, was lost to him, since it lay in her signature and not in the money which the document represented. This being done, he had called once or twice, but the ignominy of living at the top of a speaking-tube carries with it the advantage of power to escape unwelcome callers, and he never found Mrs. Neligage at home. When they met in society Mrs. Neligage treated him with exactly the right shade of coolness. She did not give rise to any gossip. The infallible intuition of her fellow women easily discovered, of course, that there was an end of the old intimacy between the widow and Mr. Langdon, but nobody had the satisfaction of being able to perceive anything of the nature of a quarrel.

They met one evening at a dinner given by Mrs. Chauncy Wilson. The dinner was not large. There were Mr. and Mrs. Frostwinch, Mrs. Neligage, Alice Endicott, Count Shimbowski, and Mr. Langdon. The company was somewhat oddly assorted, but everybody understood that Mrs. Wilson did as she pleased, leaving social considerations to take care of themselves. She had promised Miss Wentstile, who still clung to the idea of marrying Alice to the Count, that she would ask the pair to dinner; and having done so, she selected her other guests by some principle of choice known only to herself.

The dinner passed off without especial incident. The Count took in Alice, and was by her treated with a cool ease which showed that she had come to regard him as of no consequence whatever. She chatted with him pleasantly enough at the proper intervals, but more of her attention was given to Mr. Frostwinch, her neighbor on the other side. She would never talk with the Count in French, although she spoke that tongue with ease, and his wooing, such as it was, had to be carried on in his joint-broken English. The engagement of May Calthorpe and Dick Fairfield, just announced, and the appearance of "Love in a Cloud" with the author's name on the title-page, were the chief subjects of conversation. The company were seated at a round table, so that the talk was for the most part general, and each person had something to add to the little ball of silken-fibred gossip as it rolled about. Mr. Frostwinch was May's guardian, and a man of ideas too old-fashioned to discuss his ward or her affairs in any but the most general way; yet even he did now and then add a word or a hint.

"They say," Mrs. Wilson observed, "that there's some kind of a romantic story behind the engagement. Mrs. Neligage, you ought to know – is it true that Richard Fairfield got Jack to go and propose for him?"

"If he did," was the answer, "neither you nor I will ever know it from Jack. He's the worst to get anything out of that I ever knew. I think he has some sort of a trap-door in his memory to drop things through when he doesn't want to tell them. I believe he contrives to forget them himself."

"You can't conceive of his holding them if he did remember them, I suppose," chuckled Dr. Wilson.

"Of course he couldn't. No mortal could."

"That's as bad as my husband," observed Mrs. Frostwinch, with a billowy motion of her neck, a movement characteristic and perhaps the result of unconscious cerebration induced by a secret knowledge that her neck was too long. "I tried to get out of him what Mr. Fairfield said when he came to see him about May; and I give you my word that after I'd worn myself to shreds trying to beguile him, I was no wiser than before."

"I tell you so entirely all my own secrets, Anna," her husband answered, "that you might let me keep those of other people."

"Indeed, I can't help your keeping them," was her reply. "That's what I complain of. If I only had a choice in the matter, I shouldn't mind."

"If Jack Neligage is in the way of proposing," Langdon observed in his deliberate manner, "I should think he'd do it for himself."

"Oh, bless you," Mrs. Neligage responded quickly, "Jack can't afford to marry. I've brought him up better than to suppose he could."

"Happy the man that has so wise a mother," was Langdon's comment.

"If you don't believe in marriages without money, Mrs. Neligage," asked Mrs. Wilson, "what do you think of Ethel Mott and Thayer Kent?"

"Just think of their marrying on nothing, and going out to live on a cattle ranch," put in Mrs. Frostwinch. "I wonder if Ethel will have to milk?"

Dr. Wilson gave a laugh full of amusement.

"They don't milk on cattle ranches," he corrected. "She may have to mount a horse and help at a round-up, though."

"Well, if she likes that kind of a burial," Mrs. Neligage said, "it's her own affair, I suppose. I'd rather be cremated."

"Oh, it isn't as bad as that," Mr. Frostwinch observed genially. "They'll have a piano, and that means some sort of civilization."

"I suppose she'll play the ranz des vaches on the piano," Mrs. Wilson laughed.

"Of course it's madness," Langdon observed, "but they'll like it for a while. I can't understand, though, how Miss Mott can be so foolish. I always supposed she was rather a sensible girl."

"Does this prove that she isn't?" asked Alice.

"Don't you think a girl that leaves civilization, and goes to live in the wilderness just to follow a man, shows a lack of cleverness?"

The seriousness of the tone in which Alice had asked her question had drawn all eyes in her direction, and it might easily be that the knowledge of the interest which she was supposed to have in penniless Jack Neligage would in any case have given to her words especial mark.

"That depends on what life is for," Alice answered now, in her low, even voice. "If she is happier with Thayer Kent on a cattle ranch than she would be anywhere else without him, I think she shows the best kind of sense."

"But think what a stupid life she'll lead," Langdon persisted. "She doesn't know what she's giving up."

"Eet ees très romanesque," declared the Count, "but eet weel to be triste. Weell she truthfully ride de cow?"

Politely veiled laughter greeted this sally, except from Dr. Wilson, who burst into an open guffaw.

"She'll be worth seeing if she does!" he ejaculated.

Mrs. Frostwinch bent toward Alice with undulating neck.

"You are romantic, of course, Alice," she remarked, "and you look at it like a girl. It's very charming to be above matter-of-fact considerations; but when the edge is worn off – "

She sighed, and shook her head as if she were deeply versed in all the misfortunes resulting from an impecunious match; her manner being, of course, the more effective from the fact that everybody knew that she had never been able to spend her income.

"But what is life for?" Alice said with heightened color. "If people are happy together, I don't believe that other things matter so much."

"For my part," Mrs. Wilson declared, "I think it will be stunning! I wish I were going out to live on a ranch myself, and ride a cow, as the Count says. Chauncy, why don't we buy a ranch? Think how I'd look on cow-back!"

She gave the signal to rise, and the ladies departed to the drawing-room, where they talked of many things and of nothing until the gentlemen appeared. Mr. Langdon placed himself so that he faced Mrs. Neligage across the little circle in which the company chanced to arrange itself.

"We've been talking of adventures," he said, "and Mr. Frostwinch says that nobody has any nowadays."

"I only said that they were uncommon," corrected Mr. Frostwinch. "Of course men do have them now and then, but not very often."

"Men! Yes, they have them," Mrs. Wilson declared; "but there's no chance nowadays for us poor women. We never get within sight of anything out of the common."

"You're enough out of the common to do without it, Elsie," laughed her husband.

"Madame Weelson ees an adventure eetself," the Count put in gallantly.

Mr. Langdon raised his head deliberately, and looked over to Mrs. Neligage.

"You could tell them differently, Mrs. Neligage," he said. "Your experience at Monte Carlo, now; that was far enough out of the common."

Her color went suddenly, but she met his eyes firmly enough.

"My adventures?" she returned. "I never had an adventure. I'm too commonplace a person for that."

"You don't do yourself justice," Langdon rejoined. "You haven't any idea how picturesque you were that night."

Telepathy may or may not be established on a scientific basis, but it is certain that there exists some occult power in virtue of which intelligence spreads without tangible means of communication. There was nothing in the light, even tones of Langdon to convey more intimation than did his words that mischief was afoot, yet over the group in Mrs. Wilson's drawing-room came an air of intentness, of alert suspense. No observer could have failed to perceive the general feeling, the perception that Langdon was preparing for some unusual stroke. The atmosphere grew electric. Mr. Frostwinch and his wife became a shade more grave than was their wont. They were both rather proper folk, and proper people are obliged to be continually watching for indecorums, lest before they are aware their propriety have its fine bloom brushed away. The Count moved uneasily in his chair. The unpleasant doubts to which he had been exposed as to how his own past would affect a Boston public might have made him the more sympathetic with Mrs. Neligage, and the fact that he had seen her at the tables at Monte Carlo could hardly fail to add for him a peculiar vividness to Langdon's words. Doctor and Mrs. Wilson were both openly eager. Alice watched Mrs. Neligage intently, while the widow faced Langdon with growing pallor.

"Madame Neleegaze ees all teemes de peecture," declared Count Shimbowski gallantly. "When more one teeme eet ees de oder?"

"She was more picturesque that time than another," laughed Langdon, by some amazing perception getting at the Count's meaning. "I'm going to tell it, Mrs. Neligage, just to show what you are capable of. I never admired anything more than I did your pluck that night. It's nonsense to say that women have less grit than men."

"Less grit!" cried Mrs. Wilson. "They have a hundred times more. If men had the spunk of women or women had the strength of men – "

"Then amen to the world!" broke in her husband. "Don't interrupt. I want to hear Langdon's story."

Alice Endicott had thus far said nothing, but as Langdon smiled as if to himself, and parted his lips to begin, she stopped him.

"No," she said, "he shan't tell it. If it is Mrs. Neligage's adventure, she shall tell it herself."

Mrs. Neligage flashed a look of instant comprehension, of gratitude, to Alice, and the color came back into her cheeks. She had been half cowering before the possibility of what Langdon might be intending to say, but this chance of taking matters into her own hands recalled all her self-command. Her eyes brightened, and she lifted her head.

"It isn't much to tell," she began, "and it isn't at all to my credit."

"I protest," interpolated Langdon. "Of course she won't tell a story about herself for half its worth."

"Be quiet," Alice commanded.

The eyes of all had been turned toward Mrs. Neligage at her last words, but now everybody looked at Alice. It was not common to see her take this air of really meaning to dominate. In her manner was a faint hint of the commanding manner of her aunt, although without any trace of Miss Wentstile's arrogance. She was entirely cool and self-possessed, although her color was somewhat brighter than usual. The words that had been spoken were little, yet the hearer heard behind them the conflict between herself and Langdon.

"I am not to be put down so," he persisted. "I don't care much about telling that particular story, but I can't allow you to bully me so, Miss Endicott."