Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

"I have tried all my life to do what you wanted, Aunt Sarah," was the answer, "but this I can't do."

"You could do it if you chose."

Alice was silent; and to remain silent when one should offer some sort of a remark that may be disputed or found fault with or turned into ridicule is one of the most odious forms of insubordination.

"Why don't you speak?" demanded Miss Wentstile sharply. "Haven't I done enough for you to be able to get a civil answer out of you?"

"What is there for me to say more, Aunt Sarah?"

"You ought to say that you would not vex and disobey me any more," declared her Aunt. "Here I have told everybody that I should pass next summer at the Count's ancestral castle in Hungary, and how can I if you won't marry him?"

"You might marry him yourself."

Her aunt glared at her angrily, and emitted a most unladylike snort of contempt.

"You say that to be nasty," she retorted; "but I tell you, miss, that I've thought of that myself. I'm not sure I shan't marry him."

Alice regarded her in a silence which drew forth a fresh volley.

"I suppose you think that's absurd, do you? Why don't you say that I'm too old, and too ugly, and too ridiculous? Why don't you say it? I can see that you think it; and a nice thing it is to think, too."

"If you think it, Aunt Sarah," was the demure reply, "there's no need of my saying it."

"I think it? I don't think it! I'm pleased to know at last what you think of me, with your meek ways."

The scene was more violent than usually happened between aunt and niece, as it was the habit of Alice to bear in silence whatever rudeness it pleased Miss Wentstile to inflict. Not that the spinster was accustomed to be unkind to the girl. So long as there was no opposition to her will, Miss Wentstile was in her brusque way generous and not ill-natured. Now that her temper was tried to the extreme, her worst side made itself evident; and Alice was wise in attempting to escape. She rose from the place where she had been sewing, and prepared to leave the room.

"Go to your room by all means," the spinster said bitterly, regarding her with looks of marked disfavor. "All I have to say is this: if I do marry the Count, and you find yourself without a home, you'll have nobody but yourself to thank for it. I'm sure you've had your chance."

Whether the antique heart of the spinster had cherished the design of attempting to glide into the place in the Count's life left vacant by the refusal of her niece is a fact known only to her attendant angels, if she had any. Certain it is that within twenty-four hours she had summoned that nobleman to her august presence.

"Count," she said to him, "I can't express to you how distressed I am that my niece has put such a slight on you. She is absolutely determined not to marry."

The Count as usual shrugged his shoulders, and remarked in mangled English that in America there was no authority; and that in his country the girl would not have been asked whether she was determined to marry or not. Her determination would have made no difference.

"That is the way it should be here," Miss Wentstile observed with feeling; "but it isn't. The young people are brought up to have their own way, no matter what their elders wish."

"Then she weell not to marry wid me?" he asked.

"No, there's no hope of it. She is as obstinate as a rock."

There was a brief interval of silence in which the Count looked at Miss Wentstile and Miss Wentstile looked at the floor.

"Count Shimbowski," she said at last, raising her eyes, "of course it doesn't make much difference to you who it is you marry if you get the money."

He gave a smile half of deprecation, and spread out his hands.

"One Shimbowski for de dot marries," he acknowledged, "but eet ees not wid all weemeens. Dat ees not honor."

"Oh, of course I mean if your wife was a lady."

"Eet ees for de dot only one Shimbowski would wid all Amereecans marry," he returned with simple pride.

Miss Wentstile regarded him with a questioning look.

"I am older than my niece," she went on, "but my dot would be half a million."

The whole thing was so entirely a matter of business that perhaps it was not strange that she spoke with so little sign of emotion. Most women, it is true, would hardly come so near to proposing to a man without some frivolous airs of coquetry; but Miss Wentstile was a remarkable and exceptional woman, and her air was much that in which she might have talked of building a new house.

"Ees eet dat de wonderful Mees Wentsteele would marry wid me for all dat dot?"

Miss Wentstile took him up somewhat quickly.

"I don't say that I would, Count," she returned; "but since you've been treated so badly by my niece, I thought I would talk with you to see how the idea struck you."

"Oh, eet weell be heavenly sweet to know what we weell be mine for all dat dot," the Count asserted, bowing with his hand on his heart.

She smiled somewhat acidly, and yet not so forbiddingly as to daunt him.

"If we are yours what is there left for me?" she asked.

"Ah," the Count sighed, with a shake of his head, "dat Engleesh – "

"Never mind," she interrupted, "I understand that if I do marry you I get the name and not much else."

"But de name!" he cried with fervor. "De Shimbowski name! Oh, eet ees dat de name weell be older dan dere was any mans een dees country."

"I dare say that is true," she responded, smiling more pleasantly. "My sentiments for the name are warm enough."

"De sentiments of de esteemfully Mees Wentsteele ees proud for me," he declared, rising to bow. "Ees eet dat we weell marry wid me? Mees Wentsteele ees more detracteeve for me wid her dot dan Mees Endeecott. Eet ees mooch more detracteeve."

"Well," Miss Wentstile said, rising also, "I thought I would see how the idea struck you. I haven't made up my mind. My friends would say I was an old fool, but I can please myself, thank heaven."

The Count took her hand and bowed over it with all his courtly grace, kissing it respectfully.

"Ah," he told her, echoing her words with unfortunate precision, "one old fool ees so heavenly keend!"

Miss Wentstile started, but the innocence of his intention was evident, and she offered no correction. She bade him good-by with a beaming kindness, and for the rest of the day carried herself with the conscious pride of a woman who could be married if she would.

For the next few days there was about Miss Wentstile a new atmosphere. She snubbed her niece with an air of pride entirely different from her old manner. She dropped hints about there being likely to be a title in the family after all, and as there could be no mystery what she must mean she attempted mystification by seeming to know things about the Count and his family more magnificent than her niece had ever dreamed of. She sent to a school of languages for an instructor in Hungarian, and when none was to be found at once, she purchased a grammar, and ostentatiously studied it before Alice. Altogether she behaved as idiotically as possible, and whether she really intended to go to the extreme of marrying Count Shimbowski and endowing him with her fortune or not, she at least contrived to make her friends believe that she was prepared to go to any length in her absurdity.

The announcement of the engagement of Dick Fairfield and May Calthorpe, which was made at once, of course produced the usual round of congratulatory festivities. May, as it is the moral duty of every self-respecting Bostonian to be, was related to everybody who was socially anybody, and great were the number of dinners which celebrated her decision to marry. It was too late in the season for balls, but that was of little consequence when she and her betrothed could have dined in half a dozen places on the same night had the thing been physically possible.

The real purpose of offering multitudinous dinners to a couple newly engaged has never been fully made clear. On first thought it might seem as if kindness to young folk newly come to a knowledge of mutual love were best shown by letting them alone to enjoy the transports inevitable to their condition. Society has decided otherwise, and keeps them during the early days of their betrothal as constantly as possible in the public eye. Whether this custom is the result of a fear lest the lovers, if left to themselves, might too quickly exhaust their store of fondness, or of a desire to enhance for each the value of the other by a display of general appreciation, were not easy to decide. A cynic might suggest that older persons feel the wisdom of preventing the possibility of too much reflection, or that they give all publicity to the engagement as a means of lessening the chances of any failure of contract. More kindly disposed reasoners might maintain that these abundant festivities are but testimony to the truth of Emerson's declaration that "all the world loves a lover." Philosophy, in the mean time, leaning neither to cynicism on the one hand nor to over-optimism on the other, can see in these social functions at least the visible sign that society instinctively recognizes in the proposed union a contract really public, since while men and women love for themselves they marry for the state.

Alice Endicott and Jack Neligage were naturally asked to many of these dinners, and so it came about that they saw a good deal of each other during the next few weeks. Their recent disagreement at first bred a faint coolness between them, but Jack was too good-natured long to keep up even the pretense of malice, and Alice too forgiving to cherish anger. The need, too, of hiding from the public all unpleasantness would in any case have made it necessary for them to behave as usual, and it is one of the virtues of social conventions that the need of being outwardly civil is apt to blunt the edge of secret resentments. Of course a healthy and genuine hate may be nourished by the irksomeness of enforced suavity, but trifling pique dies a natural death under outward politeness. Alice and Jack were not only soon as friendly as ever, but either from the reaction following their slight misunderstanding or from the effect of the sentimental atmosphere which always surrounds an engaged couple, their attitude became more confidential and friendly than ever.

They sat side by side at a dinner in which the Harbingers were officially testifying their satisfaction in the newly announced engagement. Jack had been doing his duty to the lady on the other side, and turned his face to Alice.