Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

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."