“He’s clever enough to be wicked, anyway,” said Mrs. Sprowl. “Don’t tell me that every one of his sentimental affairs have been perfectly harmless.”

  “Has he had many?” asked Strelsa before she meant to.

  “Thousands, child. There was Betty Clyde — whose husband must have been an idiot — and Cynthia Challis — she married Prince Sarnoff, you remember — —”

  “The Sarnoffs are coming in February,” observed Chrysos Lacy.

  “I wonder if the Prince has had a tub since he left,” said Mrs. Sprowl. “How on earth Cynthia can endure that dried up yellow Tartar — —”

  “Cynthia was in love with Ricky I think,” said Susanne Lannis.

  “Most girls are when they come out, but their mothers won’t let ’em marry him. Poor Ricky.”

  “Poor Ricky,” sighed Chrysos; “he is so nice, and nobody is likely to marry him.”

  “Why?” asked Strelsa.

  “Because he’s — why he’s just Ricky. He has no money, you know. Didn’t you know it?”

  “No,” said Strelsa.

  “That’s the trouble — partly. Then there’s no social advantage for any girl in this set marrying him. He’ll have to take a lame duck or go out of his circle for a wife. And that means good-bye Ricky — unless he marries a lame duck.”

  “Some unattractive person of uncertain age and a million,” explained Mrs. Lannis as Strelsa turned to her, perplexed.

  “Ricky,” said the lady with abundant teeth, “is a lightweight.”

  “The lightness, I think, is in his heels,” said Strelsa. “He’s intelligent otherwise I fancy.”

  “Yes, but not intellectual.”

  “I think you are possibly mistaken.”

  The profusely dentate lady looked sharply at Strelsa; Susanne Lannis laughed.

  “Are you his champion, Strelsa? I thought you had met him last night for the first time.”

  “Mrs. Leeds is probably going the way of all women when they first meet Dicky Quarren,” observed Mrs. Sprowl with malicious satisfaction. “But you must hurry and get over it, child, before Sir Charles Mallison arrives.” At which sally everybody laughed.

  Strelsa’s colour was high, but she merely smiled, not only at the coupling of her name with Quarren’s but at the hint of the British officer’s arrival.

  Major Sir Charles Mallison had been over before, why, nobody knew, because he was one of the wealthiest bachelors in England. Now it was understood that he was coming again; and a great many well-meaning people saw that agreeable gentleman’s fate in the new beauty, Strelsa Leeds; and did not hesitate to tell her so with the freedom of fashionable banter.

  “Yes,” sighed Chrysos Lacy, sentimentally, “when you see Sir Charles you’ll forget Ricky.”

  “Doubtless,” said Strelsa, still laughing. “But tell me, Mrs. Sprowl, why does everybody wish to marry me to somebody? I’m very happy.”

  “It’s our feminine sense of fitness and proportion that protests. In the eternal balance of things material you ought to be as wealthy as you are pretty.”

  “I have enough — almost — —”

  “Ah! the ‘almost’ betrays the canker feeding on that damask cheek!” laughed Mrs. Lannis. “No, you must marry millions, Strelsa — you’ll need them.”

  “You are mistaken. I have enough. I’d like to be happy for a while.”

  The naïve inference concerning the incompatibility of marriage and happiness made them laugh again, forgetting perhaps the tragic shadow of the past which had unconsciously evoked it.

  After Strelsa and Mrs. Lannis had gone, a pair of old cats dropped in, one in ermine, the other in sea-otter; and the inevitable discussion of Strelsa Leeds began with a brutality and frankness paralleled only in kennel parlance.

  To a criticism of the girl’s slenderness of physique Mrs. Sprowl laughed loud and long.

  “That’s what’s setting all the men crazy. The world’s as full of curves as I am; plumpness to the verge of redundancy is supposed to be popular among men; a well-filled stocking behind the footlights sets the gaby agape. But your man of the world has other tastes.”

  “Jaded tastes,” said somebody.

  “Maybe they’re jaded and vicious — but they’re his. And maybe that girl has a body and limbs which are little more accented than a boy’s. But it’s the last shriek among people who know.”

  “Not such a late one, either,” said somebody. “Who was the French sculptor who did the Merode?”

  “Before that Lippo fixed the type,” observed somebody else.

  “Personally,” remarked a third, “I don’t fancy pipe-stems. Mrs. Leeds needs padding — to suit my notions.”

  “Wait a year,” said Mrs. Sprowl, significantly. “The beauty of that girl will be scandalous when she fills out a little more.... If she only had the wits to match what she is going to be! — But there’s a streak of something silly in her — I suspect latent sentiment — which is likely to finish her if she doesn’t look sharp. Fancy her taking up the cudgels for Ricky, now! — a boy whose wits would be of no earthly account except in doing what he is doing. And he’s apparently persuaded that little minx that he’s intellectual! I’ll have to talk to Ricky.”

  “You’d better talk to your nephew, too,” said somebody, laughing.

  “Who? Karl!” exclaimed the old lady, her little green eyes mere sparks in the broad expanse of face. “Let me catch him mooning around that girl! Let me catch Ricky philandering in earnest! I’ve made up my mind about Strelsa Leeds, and” — she glared around her, fanning vigorously— “I think nobody is likely to interfere.”

  * * *

  That evening, at the opera, Westguard came into her box, and she laid down the law of limits to him so decisively that, taken aback, astonished and chagrined, he found nothing to say for the moment.

  When he did recover his voice and temper he informed her very decidedly that he’d follow his own fancy as far as any woman was concerned.

  But she only laughed derisively and sent him off to bring Quarren who had entered the Vernons’ box and was bending over Strelsa’s shoulders.

  When Quarren obeyed, which he did not do with the alacrity she had taught him, she informed him with a brevity almost contemptuous that his conduct with Strelsa at the Wycherlys had displeased her.

  He said, surprised: “Why does it concern you? Mrs. Wycherly is standing sponsor for Mrs. Leeds — —”

  “I shall relieve Molly Wycherly of any responsibility,” said the old lady. “I like that girl. Can Molly do as much as I can for her?”

  He remained silent, disturbed, looking out across the glitter at Strelsa.

  Men crowded the Vernons’ box, arriving in shoals and departing with very bad grace when it became necessary to give place to new arrivals.

  “Do you see?” said the old lady, tendering him her opera glass.

  “What?” he asked sullenly.

  “A new planet. Use your telescope, Rix — and also amass a little common-sense. Yonder sits a future duchess, or a countess, if I care to start things for her. Which I shan’t — in that direction.”

  “There are no poor duchesses or countesses, of course,” he remarked with an unpleasant laugh.

  Mrs. Sprowl looked at him, ironically.

  “I understand the Earl of Dankmere, perfectly,” she said— “also other people, including young, and sulky boys. So if you clearly understand my wishes, and the girl doesn’t make a fool of herself over you or any other callow ineligible, her future will give me something agreeable to occupy me.”

  The blood stung his face as he stood up — a tall graceful figure among the others in the box — a clean-cut, wholesome boy to all appearances, with that easy and amiable presence which is not distinction but which sometimes is even more agreeable.

  Lips compressed, the flush still hot on his face, he stood silent, tasting all the bitterness that his career had stored up for him — sick with contempt for a self that could accept and swallow such things. For he had been well schooled, but scarcely to that contemptible point.

  “Of course,” he said, pleasantly, “you understand that I shall do as I please.”

  Mrs. Sprowl laughed:

  “I’ll see to that, too, Ricky.”

  Chrysos Lacy leaned forward and began to talk to him, and his training reacted mechanically, for he seemed at once to become his gay and engaging self.

  He did not return to the Vernons’ box nor did he see Strelsa again before she went South.

  The next night a note was delivered to him, written from the Wycherlys’ car, “Wind-Flower.”

  “My dear Mr. Quarren:

  “Why did you not come back to say good-bye? You spoke of doing so. I’m afraid Chrysos Lacy is responsible.

  “The dance at the Van Dynes was very jolly. I am exceedingly sorry you were not there. Thank you for the flowers and bon-bons that were delivered to me in my state-room. My violets are not yet entirely faded, so they have not yet joined your gardenia in the limbo of useless things.

  “Mr. Westguard came to the train. He is nice.

  “Mr. O’Hara and Chrysos and Jack Lacy were there, so in spite of your conspicuous absence the Legation maintained its gay reputation and covered itself with immortal blarney.

  “This letter was started as a note to thank you for your gifts, but it is becoming a serial as Molly and Jim and I sit here watching the North Carolina landscape fly past our windows like streaks of brown lightened only by the occasional delicious and sunny green of some long-leafed pine.

  “There’s nothing to see from horizon to horizon except the monotonous repetition of mules and niggers and evil-looking cypress swamps and a few razor-backs and a buzzard flying very high in the blue.

  “Thank you again for my flowers.... I wonder if you understand that my instinct is to be friends with you?

  “It was from the very beginning.

  “And please don’t be absurd enough to think that I am going to forget you — or our jolly escapade at the Wycherly ball. You behaved very handsomely once. I know I can count on your kindness to me.

  “Good-bye, and many many thanks — as Jack Lacy says— ‘f’r the manny booggy-rides, an’ th’ goom-candy, an’ the boonches av malagy grrapes’!

  “Sincerely your friend, “Strelsa Leeds.”

  That same day Sir Charles Mallison arrived in New York and went directly to Mrs. Sprowl’s house. Their interview was rather brief but loudly cordial on the old lady’s part:

  “How’s my sister and Foxy?” she asked — meaning Sir Renard and Lady Spinney.

  Sir Charles regretted he had not seen them.

  “And you?”

  “Quite fit, thanks.” And he gravely trusted that her own health was satisfactory.

  “You haven’t changed your mind?” she asked with a smile which the profane might consider more like a grin.

  Sir Charles said he had not, and a healthy colour showed under the tan.

  “All these years,” commented the old lady, ironically.

  “Four,” said Sir Charles.

  “Was it four years ago when you saw her in Egypt?”

  “Four years — last month — the tenth.”

  “And never saw her again?”

  “Never.”

  Mrs. Sprowl shook with asthmatic mirth:

  “Such story-book constancy! Why didn’t you ask your friend the late Sirdar to have Leeds pitched into the Nile. It would have saved you those four years’ waiting? You know you haven’t many years to waste, Sir Charles.”

  “I’m forty-five,” he said, colouring painfully.

  “Four years gone to hell,” said the old lady with that delicate candour which sometimes characterised her.... “And now what do you propose to do with the rest of ‘em? Dawdle away your time?”

  “Face my fate,” he admitted touching his moustache and fearfully embarrassed.

  “Well, if you’re in a hurry, you’ll have to go down South to face it. She’s at Palm Beach for the next three weeks.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She looked up at him, her little opaque green eyes a trifle softened.

  “I am trying to get you the prettiest woman in America,” she said. “I’m ready to fight off everybody else — beat ’em to death,” she added, her eyes snapping, then suddenly kind again— “because, Sir Charles, I like you. And for no other reason on earth!”

  Which was not the exact truth. It was for another man’s sake she was kind to him. And the other man had been dead many years.

  Sir Charles thanked her, awkwardly, and fell silent again, pulling his moustache.

  “Is — Mrs. Leeds — well?” he ventured, at length, reddening again.

  “‘Is — Mrs. Leeds — well?’ he ventured at length, reddening again.”

  “Perfectly. She’s a bit wiry just now — thin — leggy, y’ know. Some fanciers prefer ’em weedy. But she’ll plump up. I know the breed.”

  He shrank from her loud voice and the vulgarity of her comments, and she was aware of it and didn’t care a rap. There were plenty of noble ladies as vulgar as she, and more so — and anyway it was not this well-built, sober-faced man of forty-five whom she was serving with all the craft and insolence and brutality and generosity that was in her — it was the son of a dead man who had been much to her. How much nobody in these days gossiped about any longer, for it was a long time ago, a long, long time ago that she had made her curtsey to a young queen and a prince consort. And Sir Charles’s father had died at Majuba Hill.

  “There’s a wretched little knock-kneed peer on the cards,” she observed; “Dankmere. He seems to think she has money or something. If he comes over here, as my sister writes, I’ll set him straighter than his own legs. And I’ve written Foxy to tell him so.”

  “Dankmere is a very good chap,” said Sir Charles, terribly embarrassed.

  “But not good enough. His level is the Quartier d’Europe. He’ll find it; no fear.... When do you go South?”

  “To-morrow,” he said, so honestly that she grinned again.

  “Then I’ll give you a letter to Molly Wycherly. Her husband is Jim Wycherly — one of your sort — eternally lumbering after something to kill. He has a bungalow on some lagoon where he murders ducks, and no doubt he’ll go there. But his wife will be stopping at Palm Beach. I’ll send you a letter to her in the morning.”

  “Many thanks,” said Sir Charles, shyly.

  * * *

  CHAPTER IV

  STRELSA REMAINED SOUTH longer than she had expected to remain, and at the end of the third week Quarren wrote her.

  “Dear Mrs. Leeds:

  “Will you accept from me a copy of Karl’s new book? And are you ever coming back? You are missing an unusually diverting winter; the opera is exceptional, there are some really interesting plays in town and several new and amusing people — Prince and Princess Sarnoff for example; and the Earl of Dankmere, an anxious, and perplexed little man, sadly hard up, and simple-minded enough to say so; which amuses everybody immensely.

  “He’s pathetically original; plebeian on his mother’s side; very good-natured; nothing at all of a sportsman; and painfully short of both intellect and cash — a funny, harmless, distracted little man who runs about asking everybody the best and quickest methods of amassing a comfortable fortune in America. And I must say that people have jollied him rather cruelly.

  “The Sarnoffs on the other hand are modest and nice people — the Prince is a yellow, dried-up Asiatic who is making a collection of parasites — a shrewd, kindly, and clever little scientist. His wife is a charming girl, intellectual but deliciously feminine. She was Cynthia Challis before her marriage, and always a most attractive and engaging personality. They dined with us at the Legation on Thursday.

  “Afterward there was a dance at Mrs. Sprowl’s. I led from one end, Lester Caldera from the other. One or two newspapers criticised the decorations and favours as vulgarly expensive; spoke of a ‘monkey figure’ — purely imaginary — which they said I introduced into the cotillion, and that the favours were marmosets! — who probably were the intellectual peers of anybody present.

  “The old lady is in a terrific temper. I’m afraid some poor scribblers are going to catch it. I thought it very funny.

  “Speaking of scribblers and temper reminds me that Karl Westguard’s new book is stirring up a toy tempest. He has succeeded in offending a dozen people who pretend to recognise themselves or their relatives among the various characters. I don’t know whether the novel is really any good, or not. We, who know Karl so intimately, find it hard to realise that perhaps he may be a writer of some importance.

  “There appears to be considerable excitement about this new book. People seem inclined to discuss it at dinners; Karl’s publishers are delighted. Karl, on the contrary, is not at all flattered by the kind of a success that menaces him. He is mad all through, but not as mad as his redoubtable aunt, who tells everybody that he’s a scribbling lunatic who doesn’t know what he’s writing, and that she washes her fat and gem-laden hands of him henceforth.

  “Poor Karl! He’s already thirty-seven; he’s written fifteen books, no one of which, he tells me, ever before stirred up anybody’s interest. But this newest novel, ‘The Real Thing,’ has already gone into three editions in two weeks — whatever that actually means — and still the re-orders are pouring in, and his publishers are madly booming it, and several indignant people are threatening Karl with the law of libel, and Karl is partly furious, partly amused, and entirely astonished at the whole affair.

  “Because you see, the people who think they recognise portraits of themselves or their friends in several of the unattractive characters in the story — are as usual, in error. Karl’s people are always purely and synthetically composite. Besides everybody who knows Karl Westguard ought to know that he’s too decent a fellow, and too good a workman to use models stupidly. Anybody can copy; anybody can reproduce the obvious. Even photographers are artists in these days. Good work is a synthesis founded on truth, and carried logically to a conclusion.

  “But it’s useless to try to convince the Philistines. Once possessed with the idea that they or their friends are ‘meant,’ as they say, Archimedes’s lever could not pry them loose from their agreeably painful obsession.

 

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