Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

"What! Oh, Mrs. Neligage!"

May sat bolt upright and stiffened in her chair as if a wave of liquid air had suddenly gone over her.

"To send a man for the letters under any other circumstances would be as compromising as the letters in the first place. Besides, the Count wouldn't be bound to give them up except to your fiancé."

"That horrid Count!" broke out May with vindictive irrelevancy. "I wish it was just a man we had to deal with!"

"Now Jack has been in love with you for a long time, my dear," pursued Jack's mother.

"Jack! In love with me? Why, he's fond of Alice."

"Oh, in a boy and girl way they've always been the best of friends. It's nothing more. He's in love with you, I tell you. What do you young things know about love anyway, or how to recognize it? I shouldn't tell you this if it weren't for the circumstances; but Jack is too delicate to speak when it might look as if he were taking advantages. He is furious about the letter."

"Oh, does he know too?" cried poor May. "Does everybody know?"

Her tears began again, and now Mrs. Neligage dried them with her own soft handkerchief, faintly scented with the especial eastern scent which she particularly affected. Doubtless a mother may be held to know something of the heart and the opinions of her only son, but as Jack had not, so far as his mother had any means of knowing, in the least connected May Calthorpe with the letter given to Count Shimbowski, it is perhaps not unfair to conclude that her maternal eagerness and affection had in this particular instance led her somewhat far. It is never the way of a clever person to tell more untruths than are actually needed by the situation, and it was perhaps by way of not increasing too rapidly her debit account on the books of the Recording Angel that Mrs. Neligage replied to this question of May's with an evasion, – an evasion, it is true, which was more effective than a simple, direct falsehood would have been.

"Oh, May dear, you don't know the horrid way in which those foreign rakes boast of what they call their conquests!"

The idea of being transformed from a human, self-respecting being into a mere conquest, the simple, ignominious spoils of the chase, might well be too much for any girl, and May became visibly more limp under it.

"The simple case is here," proceeded the widow, taking up again her parable with great directness. "Jack is fond of you; he is too delicate to speak of it, and he knows that this is a time when nobody but a fiancé has a right to meddle. If you had a brother, of course it would be different; but you haven't. Something must be done, and so I came this morning really to beg you, for Jack's sake and your own, to consent to an engagement."

"Did Jack send you?" demanded May, looking straight into the other's eyes.

Mrs. Neligage met the gaze fairly, yet there was a little hesitation in her reply. It might be that she considered whether the risk were greater in telling the truth or in telling a lie; but in the end it was the truth that she began with. Before she had got half through her sentence she had distorted it out of all recognition, indeed, but it is always an advantage to begin with what is true. It lends to any subsequent falsifying a moral support which is of inestimable value.

"He knows nothing of it at all," she confessed. "He is too proud to let anybody speak for him, just as under the circumstances he is too proud to speak for himself. Besides, he is poor, and all your friends would say he was after your money. No, nothing would induce him to speak for himself. He is very unhappy about it all; but he feels far worse for you than for himself. Dear Jack! He is the most generous fellow in the world."

"Poor Jack!" May murmured softly.

"Poor Jack!" the widow echoed, with a deep-drawn sigh. "It frightens me so to think what might happen if he hears the Count boasting in his insolent way. Foreigners always boast of their conquests! Why, May, there's no knowing what he might do! And the scandal of it for you! And what should I do if anything happened to Jack?"

Perhaps an appeal most surely touches the feminine heart if it be a little incoherent. A pedant might have objected that Mrs. Neligage in this brief speech altered the point of view with reckless frequency, but the pedant would by the effect have been proved to be wrong. The jumble of possibilities and of consequences, of woe to Jack, harm to May, and of general inconsolability on the part of the mother finished the conquest of the girl completely. She was henceforth only eager to do whatever Mrs. Neligage directed, and under the instigation of her astute counsellor wrote a note to the young man, accepting a proposal which he had never heard of, and imploring him as her accepted lover to rescue from the hands of Count Shimbowski the letter addressed to Christopher Calumus. It is not every orator, even among the greatest, who can boast of having achieved a triumph so speedy and so complete as that which gladdened the heart of Mrs. Neligage when, after consoling and cheering her promised daughter-in-law, she set out to find her son.

XVI

THE DUTY OF A SON

Simple were this world if it were governed by frankness, albeit perchance in some slight particulars less interesting. Certainly if straightforwardness ruled life, Mrs. Neligage would have fared differently in her efforts that morning. She would have had no opportunity in that case of displaying her remarkable astuteness, and she would have left the life-threads of divers young folk to run more smoothly. Knots and tangles in the lives of mortals are oftener introduced by their fellows than by the unkindly fingers of the Fates, although the blame must be borne by the weird sisters. The three might well stand aghast that forenoon to see the deftness with which Mrs. Neligage wrought her mischief. A fisherman with his netting-needle and a kitten playing with the twine together produce less complication of the threads than the widow that day brought about by the unaided power of her wits.

Jack Neligage had chambers with Fairfield in a semi-fashionable apartment-house. Both the young men had a certain position to maintain, and neither was blessed with means sufficient to do it without much stretching. Fairfield was industrious and Neligage was idle, which in the end was more favorable to the reputation of the former and to the enjoyment of the latter. Jack fared the better in material things, because the man who is willing to run into debt may generally live more expensively than he who strives to add to an inadequate income by the fruit of his toil.

On this particular morning Dick had gone to church in the vain hope of seeing May Calthorpe, while Jack was found by his mother smoking a cigarette over the morning paper. He had just finished his late breakfast, and opened his letters. The letters lay on the uncleared breakfast table in various piles. The largest heap was one made of bills torn to bits. Jack made it a matter of principle to tear up his bills as soon as they came. It saved trouble, and was, he said, a business-like habit. The second heap was composed of invitations to be answered; while advertisements and personal letters made the others. Jack received his mother with his usual joyous manner. It had been said of him that his continual good nature was better than an income to him. It certainly made him a favorite, it procured for him many an invitation, and it had even the effect of softening the hard heart of many a creditor. He was in appearance no less cheerful this morning for his talk with Wilson at the County Club or for the mysterious hints of ill which his mother had given him. It was all confoundedly awkward, he had commented to Fairfield before retiring on the previous night, but hang it, what good would it do to fret about it?

"Good-morning, mater," he greeted her. "You must have something mighty important on your mind to come flying round here at this time in the day."

"I have," she said, "and I want you to try for once in your life to take things seriously."

"Seriously!" was his answer. "Don't I always take things seriously? Or if I don't, it can't be in me, for I'm sure I have enough to make me serious. Look at that pile of bills there."

Mrs. Neligage walked to the table, inspected first the invitations, which she looked over with truly feminine attention, and then began to pick up pieces of the torn-up bills.

"How in the world, Jack, do you ever know what you owe?" she asked.

"Know what I owe? Gad! I wouldn't know that for the world. Sit down, and tell me what disagreeable thing brought you here."

"Why is it necessarily disagreeable?" she demanded, seating herself beside the table, and playing with the torn paper.

"You said yesterday that you were in a mess."

"Yes," she replied slowly; "but that was yesterday."

"Does that mean that you are out of it? So much the better."

Mrs. Neligage clasped her hands in her lap, and regarded her son with a strong and eager look.

"Jack," she began, "I want you to listen to me, and not interrupt. You must hear the whole thing before you begin to put in your word. In the first place, you are engaged to May Calthorpe."

The exclamation and the laugh which greeted this piece of information were so nearly simultaneous that Jack might be given the benefit of the doubt and so evade the charge of swearing before a lady.

"Why in the world, mother," he said, "must you come harping on that string again? You know it's of no use."

"You are engaged now, Jack, and of course that makes a difference."

"Oh, bother! Do speak sensibly. What are you driving at?"

The widow regarded him with a serene face, and settled herself more comfortably in her chair.

"I came to congratulate you on your engagement to Miss May Calthorpe," she said, with all possible coolness and distinctness.

"Indeed? Then I am sorry to tell you that you have wasted your labor. I haven't even seen May since we left the County Club yesterday."

"Oh, I knew that."

"What in the world are you driving at, mother? Perhaps you don't mind telling me who told you of the engagement."

"Oh, not in the least. May told me."

"May Calthorpe!"

It was not strange that Jack should receive the announcement with surprise, but it was evident that there was in his mind more bewilderment. He stared at his mother without further word, while she pulled off her gloves and loosened her coat as if to prepare herself for the explanation which it was evident must follow.

"Come, Jack," she remarked, when she had adjusted these preliminaries, "we may as well be clear about this. I made an offer in your name to May, and she has accepted it."

Jack rose from his seat, and stood over her, his sunny face growing pale.

"You made an offer in my name?" he demanded.