Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

He broke off to turn to toy with some of the ornaments on the table. In a moment Alice had suppressed her sobs, and he spoke again, but without meeting her look. His voice was hard and flippant.

"You see I have such a good time that I wouldn't give it up for the world. I think I'd better keep on as I'm going. The time makes us, and we have to abide by the fashion of the time."

"If that is the way you feel," she said coldly, "it is I who have presumed on old friendship."

He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed harshly.

"We have both been a little unnecessarily tragic, it seems to me," was his rejoinder. "Love isn't for a poor man unless he'll take it on the half-shell without dressing; and I fancy neither of us would much care for it that way. My bank-account is a standing reason why I shouldn't marry anybody."

"The sentiment does credit to Mr. Neligage's head if not to his heart," commented the sneering voice of Miss Wentstile, who at that moment came through the portières from the library. "I hope I don't intrude?"

"Certainly not," Alice answered with spirit. "Mr. Neligage was giving me a lesson in the social economics of matrimony; but I knew before all he has to tell."

"Then, my dear," her aunt said, "I trust he will excuse you. It is time we went to Mrs. Wilson's. I promised the Count that we would be there early."

IX

THE MISCHIEF OF A GENTLEMAN

The Goddess of Misfortune sometimes capriciously takes a spite against an entire family, so that all of its members are at the same time involved in one misadventure or another. She shows a malicious impulse to wreak her disfavor on all of a connection at once, apparently from a knowledge that misery begets misery, and that nothing so completely fills to overflowing the cup of vexation as the finding that those from whom sympathy would naturally be expected are themselves in a condition to demand rather than to give it. She apparently amuses herself in mere wantonness of enjoyment of the sufferings of her victims when no one of them is in a condition to cheer the others. She illustrated this unamiable trait of her celestial character next day in her dealing with the Neligages, mother and son.

It was a beautiful spring day, not too warm in the unseasonable fashion which often makes a New England April so detestable, but with a fresh air full of exhilaration. Even in the city the cool, invigorating morning was refreshing. It provoked thoughts of springing grass and swelling buds, it suggested the marsh-marigolds preparing their gold down amid the roots of rushes, it teased the sense with vague yet disquieting desires to be in the open. The sun called to mind the amethystine foliage, half mist and half leaves, which was beginning to appear in the woods, as if trailing clouds had become entangled among the twig-set branches. The wind brought a spirit of daring, as if to-day one could do and not count the cost; as if adventures were the normal experience of man, and dreams might become tangible with the foliage which was condensing out of the spring air. It was one of those rare days which put the ideal to shame.

The windows of Mrs. Neligage's little parlor were open, and the morning air with all its provoking suggestions was floating in softly, as she rose to welcome a caller. He was not in the first springtime of life, yet suggested a season which was to spring what Indian summer is to autumn. A certain brisk jauntiness in face, dress, and manner might mean that he had by sheer determination remained far younger than his years. He had a hard, handsome face, with cleanly cut features, and side whiskers which were perhaps too long and flowing. His hair was somewhat touched with gray, but it was abundant, and curled attractively about his high, white forehead. His dress was perfection, and gave the impression that if he had moral scruples – about which his hard, bright eyes might raise a doubt – it would be in the direction of being always perfectly attired. His manner as he greeted Mrs. Neligage was carefully genial, yet the spring which was in the air seemed in his presence to be chilled by an untimely frost.

"How bright you are looking this morning, Louise," Mr. Sibley Langdon said, kissing her hand with an elaborate air of gallantry. "You are really the incarnation of the spring that is upon us."

She smiled languidly, drawing away her hand and moving to a seat.

"You know I am getting old enough to like to be told I am young, Sibley," was her answer. "Sit down, and tell me what has happened in the month that I've been in Washington."

"Nothing can happen while you are away," he responded, with a smile. "We only vegetate, and wait for your return. You don't mind if I smoke?"

"Certainly not. How is Mrs. Langdon?"

He drew out a cigarette-case of tortoise-shell and gold, helped himself to a cigarette, and lighted it before he answered.

"Mrs. Langdon is as usual," he replied. "She is as ill and as pious as ever."

"For which is she to be pitied the more?"

"Oh, I don't know that she is to be pitied for either," Langdon responded, in his crisp, well-bred voice. "Both her illness and her piety are in the nature of occupations to her. One must do something, you know."

Mrs. Neligage offered no reply to this, and for half a moment the caller smoked in silence.

"Tell me about yourself," he said. "You cruelly refuse to write to me, so that when you are away I am always in the dark as to what you are doing. I've no doubt you had all Washington at your feet."

"Oh, there were a few unimportant exceptions," Mrs. Neligage returned, her voice a little hard. "I don't think that if you went on now you'd find the capital draped in mourning over my departure."

Langdon knocked the ashes from his cigarette with the deliberation which marked all his movements. Then he looked at his hostess curiously.

"You don't seem to be in the best of spirits this morning, Louise," he said. "Has anything gone wrong?"

She looked at him with contracting brows, and ignored his question as she demanded abruptly: —

"What did you come to say to me?"

"To say to you, my dear? I came as usual to say how much I admire you, of course."

She made an impatient gesture.

"What did you come to say?" she repeated. "Do you think I don't know you well enough to see when you have some especial purpose in mind?"

Sibley Langdon laughed lightly, – a sort of inward, well-bred laugh, – and again with care trimmed his cigarette.

"You are a person of remarkable penetration, and it is evidently of no use to hope to get ahead of you. I really came for the pleasure of seeing you, but now that I am here I may as well mention that I have decided to go abroad almost at once."

"Ah," Mrs. Neligage commented. "Does Mrs. Langdon go with you?"

He laughed outright, as if the question struck him as unusually droll.

"You really cannot think me so selfish as to insist upon her risking her fragile health by an ocean voyage just for my pleasure."

"I suspected that you meant to go alone," she said dryly.

"But, my dear child," he answered with no change of manner, "I don't mean to go alone."

She changed color, but she did not pursue the subject. She took up from the table a little Japanese ivory carving, and began to examine it with close scrutiny.

"You do not ask whom I hope to take with me," Langdon said.

She looked at him firmly.

"I have no possible interest in knowing," she responded.

"You are far too modest, Louise. On the contrary you have the greatest. I had hoped – "

He half hesitated over the sentence, and she interrupted him by rising and moving to the open window.

"It is so nice to have the windows open again," she said. "I feel as if I were less alone when there is nothing between me and the world. That big fat policeman over there is a great friend of mine."

"We are all your slaves, you see," Langdon responded, rising languidly and joining her. "By the way, I had a letter from Count Marchetti the other day."

Mrs. Neligage flushed and paled, and into her eye came a dangerous sparkle. She moved away from him, and went back to her seat, leaving him to follow again. She did not look at him, but she spoke with a determined manner which showed that she was not cowed.

"Before I go to bed to-night, Sibley," she said, "I shall write to the Countess the whole story of her necklace. I was a fool not to do it before."

He smiled indulgently.