i
the earl of beaumaris, a worthy and imposing personage, flushed from the nape of his neck to the high summit of his cranium—premature baldness figured amongst the family heredities—paced, in creaking patent-leather boots, up and down the castle library—a noble apartment of tudor design, lined with rare and antique volumes into which none ever looked. there were other persons present beside the dowager countess, and, to judge by the strainedly polite expression of their faces, the squeaking leather must have been playing havoc with their nerves.
“gustavus,” said the dowager at length, “you’re an english peer in your own castle, and not a pointsman on a broadway block, unless i’m considerably mistaken. sit down!”
“mother, i will not be defied!” said lord beaumaris. “i will not be bearded by my own child—a mere chit of a girl! had susanna been a boy i should have known how to deal with this spirit of insubordination. being a girl—and moreover, motherless—i abandon her to you. she has many things to learn, but let the first lesson you inculcate be this—that i positively refuse to be defied!”
“the child has, i gather, gone out to take the air when she ought to have stayed in and taken a scolding,” said lady beaumaris. “does anybody know of her whereabouts?”
242alaric osmond-omer, a languid, drab-complexioned, light-haired man of aristocratic appearance, never seen without the smoked eyeglass that concealed a diabolic squint, spoke:
“i saw her in a crimson golfing-jacket and a white tam-o’-shanter crossing the upper terrace. she carried an alpenstock, and was followed by quite a pack of dogs—incorporated in the body of one extraordinary mongrel which i have occasionally observed about the stable-yards. i gathered that she was going for a climb upon the cliffs. that was about half an hour ago!”
“alaric, you have attended every family council that i recollect since i became a member of this family, and have never before opened your lips,” said lady beaumaris, fixing the unfortunate alaric with her eye, which was still black and snappingly bright. “make this occasion memorable by offering a suggestion. you really owe us one!”
everybody present looked at alaric, who smiled helplessly and dropped his eyeglass, revealing the physical peculiarity it concealed. the effect of the diabolic squint, in combination with his mild features and somewhat foolish expression, conveyed a general impression of reserve force. he spoke, fumbling for the missing article, which had plunged rapturously into his bosom, with long, trim fingers, encrusted with mourning rings.
“the question at issue is—unless i have failed in my mental digest of the situation—how to bring susanna viscountess lymston—pardon me if i indulge a little my weakness for prolixity——”
the door creaked, and alaric broke off.
“my dear man,” said the dowager, “i never before heard you utter a sentence of more than two words’ length!”
“—to bring susanna, who is just seventeen and fiercely virginal in her expressed aversion to, and avoidance 243of, ordinary, everyday man—into compliance with your paternal wishes”—alaric bowed to lord beaumaris—“where the encouragement of a suitor is concerned!”
“i have appealed to her filial feelings—which do not appear to exist,” said lord beaumaris; “i have appealed to her reason—i doubt gravely whether the girl possesses any: ‘there is too much landed property, there are too many houses and too many heirlooms, and there is not enough ready money to keep things going,’ i said. her reply was: ‘sell some of the land and some of the houses and all of the pictures, and then there will be enough to keep up the rest.’ ‘my dear child, is it possible,’ i said, ‘that at your age, and occupying the position you occupy, you have no idea of what is meant by an entail?’ then i made her sit down here, in this library, opposite me, and laid plainly before her why it is necessary for her, as my daughter, to marry, and to marry wealth, position, and title. before i had ended she rose with a flaming face and burst into an hysterical tirade, which lasted ten minutes. i gather that she was willing to marry sir prosper le gai or the knight of the swan if either of these gentlemen proposed for her hand. neither being available, she intends, i gather, to write great poems, or paint great pictures, or go upon the stage.... go upon the stage! my blood curdled at the bare idea. it is still in that unpleasant condition.” lord beaumaris shuddered violently, and pressed his handkerchief to his nose. “if you have any advice to give, alaric,” he said bluntly, “oblige us by giving it. we are at a positive crux!”
the drab-complexioned, light-haired alaric responded:
“in my poor opinion—which may be crassly wrong—too much stress has been laid upon the necessity of susanna’s marrying.” at this point the contrast between the amiable vacuity of alaric’s face and the mephistophelian 244intelligence of his monocled eye was so extraordinary as to hold his listeners spellbound in their chairs. “i think we may take it that the principal feature of the child’s character is—call it determination amounting to obstinacy——”
“crass obstinacy!” burst from the earl.
“pig-headedness!” interjected the dowager.
“i think i remember hearing that in her nursery days the sure way to make her take a dose of harmless necessary medicine,” pursued alaric, his left eye fixed upon the door, “was to prepare the potion, pill, or what-not, sweeten, and then carefully conceal it from her. were she my daughter—which heaven for—which heaven has not granted!—i should make her take a husband in the same way.”
“an utterance possibly inspired, but as obscure as the generality. i fear, my dear alaric——” lord beaumaris began. the dowager cut him short.
“say, gus, can’t you let him finish? that’s what i call real mean—to switch a man off just when he’s beginning to grip the track.”
“mother, i bow to you,” lord beaumaris said, purpling with indignation. “pray continue, alaric!”
“hum along, alaric,” encouraged the dowager.
alaric, his countenance as the countenance of a little child, his right eye beaming with mildness, and his left eye as the eye of an intelligent fiend, went on:
“susanna has never yet seen the duke of halcyon—her cousin, and the husband for whom you destine her. when she does see him—i think i may be pardoned for saying——”
“she’ll raise cain,” agreed lady beaumaris. “girls think such heaps of good looks; i was like that myself, before i married your father, gus.”
“my dear mother, granted that halcyon’s gifts, both physical and mental, are not”—the earl coughed—“not 245of the kind best calculated to impress and win upon a romantic, willful girl!... he is, to speak plainly——”
“a hideous little troglodyte,” nodded the dowager, over her interminable shetland-wool knitting.
“odd, considering that his mother, when lady flora maccodrum, was, with the sole exception of myself, the handsomest young woman presented in the spring of 1845.”
“mother,” said lord beaumaris, “delightful as your reminiscences invariably are, alaric is waiting to resume.”
“i had merely intended to suggest,” said alaric, twirling his eyeglass by its black ribbon and turning his demure drab-colored countenance and balefully glittering left eye upon the earl and the dowager in turn, “that the duke of halcyon, like the rhubarb of susanna’s infancy, should be rendered tolerable, agreeable, and even desirable to our dear girl’s palate, by being forbidden and withheld. ask him here in september for the partridge shooting—as i understand you think of doing—but let him appear, not in his own character as a young english peer of immense wealth and irreproachable reputation, but as one of those literary and artistic ineligibles, who are encouraged by society to take every liberty with it—short of marrying its cousins, sisters, or daughters. let him encourage his hair to grow—wear a velvet coat, a flamboyant necktie, and silk stockings in combination with tweed knickerbockers. let him pay attention to susanna—as marked as he chooses. and do you, for your part”—he fixed lord beaumaris with his gleaming left eye—“discourage those attentions, and lose no opportunity of impressing upon your daughter that she is to discourage them too. given this tempting opportunity of manifesting her independent spirit, you will find—or i know 246nothing of susanna—that it will be pull baker, pull devil. and i know which will pull the hardest!”
lord beaumaris rose to his feet in superb indignation. he struck the attitude in which he had posed for his portrait, by millais, which hung at the upper end of the library, representing him in the act of delivering his maiden speech in parliament—an address advocating the introduction of footwarmers into the upper house, and opened upon alaric:
“your proposal—i do not hesitate to say it—is audacious. you deliberately expect that i—i, gustavus templebar bloundle-abbott bloundle, ninth earl of beaumaris, and head of this ancient family—should stoop to carry out a deception—and upon my only child. that i should take advantage of her willful youth, her undisciplined temper, to——”
“to bring about a match that will set every mother’s mouth watering, and secure your daughter’s son a dukedom, and a hundred and thirty thousand a year.... that’s so, and i guess,” said lady beaumaris, “you’ll do it, gus! you’re a representative english peer, it’s true, but on my side you’ve yankee blood in you, and the grandson of elijah k. van powler isn’t going to back out of a little bluff that’s going to pay. no, sir!” the dowager ran her knitting-needles through her wool ball, and rolled up her work briskly. “he’ll do it, alaric,” she said with conviction.
“mother,” exclaimed the earl in desperation. “you were my father’s choice, and heaven forbid that i should fail in respect towards a lady whom he honored with his hand. but when you suggest that to bring about this most desirable union, i should wallow, metaphorically, in dirt——”
“it’s pay dirt, gus,” said the dowager. “a hundred and thirty thousand a year, my boy!”
“mother!” cried lord beaumaris. “if i brought myself 247to grovel to such infamy, do you suppose for one moment halcyon——”
“that halcyon would tumble to the plot? there are no flies on halcyon,” said the dowager, “and you bet he’ll worry through—velvet coat, orange necktie, forehead, curls, and all!”
“then do i understand,” said lord beaumaris helplessly, “that i am to ask him to accept my hospitality in a character that is not his own, and appear at my table in a disguise! the idea is inexpressibly loathsome, and i cannot imagine in what character he could possibly appear.”
“as a painter—of the fashionable fresco brand—engaged if you like to decorate your new ballroom!” put in alaric in his level expressionless tones.
“but he can’t paint!” said the dowager. “that’s where we’re going to buckle up and collapse. he can’t paint worth a cent! that takes brain, and halcyon isn’t overstocked with ’em, i must allow.”
“get a man who has the brain and the ability to do the work,” said the imperturbable alaric.
“deception on deception!” groaned lord beaumaris.
“i have the very fellow in my eye,” pursued alaric: “remarkable clever a.r.a., and a kinsman of your own. perhaps you have forgotten him,” he continued, as lord beaumaris stiffened with polite inquiry, and the dowager elevated her handsome and still jetty eyebrows into interrogative arches; “perhaps—it’s equally likely—you never heard of him, but at least you remember his mother, janetta bloundle?”
“she married a person professionally interested in the restoration of perpendicular churches,” said lord beaumaris, “and though i cannot now recall his name, i remember hearing of his death, and forwarding a brief, condolatory postcard to his widow.”
“who joined him, wherever he is, six months ago.”
248“dear me!” said lord beaumaris, “that is quite too regrettable. however, it is too late in the day to send another postcard addressed to the surviving members of the family.”
“there is only a son,” said alaric, “and he is the rising artist to whom i suggest that you should offer a commission. he is strong in fresco, and has just executed a series of wall cartoons for the new naval and military idiot asylum, which will carry his name down to the remotest posterity.”
“might—i—ah!—ask his name?” said lord beaumaris.
“wopse,” responded alaric.
lord beaumaris shuddered.
“and the christian prefix?” he closed his eyes in readiness for the coming shock.
“halcyon.”
lord beaumaris opened his eyes, and the dowager uttered a slight snort of astonishment.
“a relationship existing upon the mother’s side between young wopse and the ducal house of halcyon,” said alaric, twirling his eyeglass faster: “it is not surprising that the poor lady should have improved upon the homespun anglo-saxonism of wopse by the best means in her power. at any rate the young fellow is well-looking and well-bred enough to carry both names in a creditable fashion.”
“you’ve taken considerable of a time about making it,” said lady beaumaris, “but i’m bound to say your suggestion ain’t worth shucks. given the real artistic and bohemian article to nibble at, is a girl like susanna likely to swallow the imitation article? i guess not!”
“i concur entirely with my mother, alaric,” said lord beaumaris. “you propose, in the person of this young man, to introduce an element of danger into our limited september house-party.”
249“you could let this mr. wopse live in the garden chalet, and commission the keeper’s wife to attend to him,” said the dowager, “but even then, how are you to make sure that——”
“that susanna does not associate with him? there is a simple method of divesting the young man of all attraction for a young creature of our dear girl’s temperament,” said alaric, “but for several reasons i shrink from recommending its selection.”
“pray mention it,” said lord beaumaris, with an uneasy laugh.
“let’s hear it!” said lady beaumaris.
“you have only,” said alaric, with great distinctness, “to call this young fellow by his christian name; to let him take lady beaumaris in to dinner; to put him up in your best room—the indian chintz suite—and generally to foster the idea——”
“that he is the duke of halcyon!” cried the dowager. “my stars! what a palais royal farce to be played under this respectable old roof.”
“you suggest a double—a doubly-infamous and objectionable deception! not a word more.... i will not hear it!” lord beaumaris rapped decidedly on the table, rose in agitation, and strode on creaking patent leathers to the door. “the question is closed forever,” said he, turning upon the threshold. “let no one refer to it again in my——”
the door, which had occasionally creaked throughout this discussion, smartly opened from without, and acting upon the earl’s offended person as a battering-ram, caused him to run forwards smartly, tripping over the edge of the worn, but still splendid turkey carpet. lord beaumaris saved himself by clinging to the high back of an ancestral chair, upon the seat of which he subsided, as the tall young figure of his daughter appeared on the threshold, her tam-o’-shanter cap, her long yellow 250locks, and her red golfing jacket shining with moisture, her fresh cheeks red with the cold kisses of the march winds.
“it began to snow like happy jack,” said susanna, pulling off her rough beaver gauntlet gloves, “so i came home. well, have you all done plotting? you look like conspirators—all—with the exception of alaric.”
this was true, for while the earl, his mother, and three other members of the family council, whom we have not found it necessary to describe, wore an air of somewhat guilty perturbation, the drab-colored, mild countenance of alaric, its diabolical left eye now blandly shuttered with its tinted eyeglass, alone appeared guiltless and unmoved.
“we’ve been discussing the september house-party,” explained this catesby, as susanna sat upon the elbow of his chair and affectionately rumpled his sparse, light-colored locks.
“and husbands for me!” said susanna, half throttling alaric with her strong young arm.
“susanna!” cried her father. “i am surprised! i say no more than that i am surprised!”
“and i say,” retorted susanna, in clear, defiant, ringing accents, as she swayed herself to and fro upon her narrow perch, “that it is beastly to be expected to marry just because money has got to be brought into the family. of course i shall marry one day—i don’t want to study law, or be a hospital nurse like that idiotic laura penglebury. but i don’t want to be a married woman until i’m tired of being a girl. i want to have lots of fun and do lots of things, and see lots of people, and make my mind up for my own self. and——”
lord beaumaris, who had long been fermenting, frothed over. “when you form an alliance, my child, you will form it with my sanction and my approval, and the husband you honor with your hand will be a 251person selected and approved of by me. by me! i will choose for you——”
“and suppose i choose for myself afterwards!” cried susanna, blue fire flashing from her defiant eyes.
“every woman is at heart—ahem!” muttered alaric, as lord beaumaris strove with incipient apoplexy. susanna continued, with a whimper in her voice:
“the young men you and grandmother point out to me as nice and eligible, and all that, are simply awful. they have no chins, or too much, and no teeth, or too many, and they don’t talk at all, or they gabble all the time, about nothing. they never read, they don’t care for art or poetry—they aren’t interested in anything but bridge and racing; and if you told them that beethoven composed the ‘honeysuckle and the bee,’ or that chopin wrote ‘when i marry amelia,’ they’d believe you. they like married women better than girls, and people who dance at theaters better than the married women——”
“pet, you’d better go to mademoiselle.... ask her, with my love, to fix you up some french history to translate,” lady beaumaris suggested.
“i should prefer a gallic verb,” lord beaumaris amended. “i marry in accordance with my parents’ wishes. thou marriest in accordance with thy parents’ wishes. he marries—and so on! and make a solid schoolroom tea while you are about it, my child,” he continued, as susanna bestowed a parting strangle upon alaric, kicked over a footstool, and rose to leave the room. “for i fear we are to be deprived of your society at dinner this evening.”
susanna’s lovely red underlip pouted; her blue eyes clouded with tears. she flashed a resentful look at her sire, and went out.
“she is not manageable by any ordinary methods,” said lord beaumaris, running his forefinger round the 252inside of his collar, and shaking his head. “in such a case contumacy must be combated with craft, and defiance met with diplomacy. alaric, regrettable as is the course you have counseled us to pursue, i feel inclined to adopt it.... i shall write to-night to make an appointment on wednesday with the duke of halcyon at the peers’ club, and—i shall be obliged if you will, at your early convenience—favor me with the address of the young man wopse.”
ii
the garden chalet was damp; it had been raining, and the glittering appearance of the walls betrayed the fact. “as though a bally lot of snails had been dancin’ a cotillon on ’em!” said the duke of halcyon. he yawned dismally as he opened the casement and leaned out, looking, in his gaudily-hued silken night-suit, like a tulip drooping from the window-sill. then the keeper’s wife came splashing up the muddy path carrying a tray covered with a mackintosh, and the knowledge that his breakfast would presently be set before him, and set before him in a lukewarm, flabby, and tepid condition, caused halcyon to groan. but presently, when bathed, shaved, and attired in a neat knickerbocker suit of tawny-orange velveteen, with green silk stockings and tan shoes, salmon-colored silk shirt, rainbow necktie, and panama, he issued, cigarette in mouth, from the chalet, and strolled in the direction of the newly-restored west wing, his grace’s equanimity seemed restored. he even hummed a tune, which might have been “the honeysuckle and the bee” or “god save the king,” as he mounted the short, wide, double flight of marble steps that led from the terrace, and, pushing open the glazed swing-doors, entered the ballroom, the entire space of which was filled by a bewildering maze 253of ropes and scaffolding, as though a giant spider had spun a cobweb in hemp and pine. a smell of turpentine and size was in the air, and a paint-table occupied a platform immediately under the skylight dome, the sides of which were already filled in with outlines, transferred from cartoons designed by the artist engaged to ornament the apartment. that gentleman, arrayed in a blue canvas blouse and wearing a deerstalker cap on the back of a well-shaped head, was actively engaged in washing in the values of a colossal nude figure-group with a bucket of sepia and a six-foot brush. he whistled rather queerly as his bright eye fell upon the intruder.
“you’re there, are you?” said the duke unnecessarily. “shall i come up?”
“if you can!” said halcyon wopse, with a decided smile, that revealed a very complete set of very white teeth. “but, to save time, perhaps i had better come down to you.” and the painter swung himself lightly down from stage to stage until he reached the ground-level of his august relative.
“put what you’ve got to tell me as clearly as you can,” said the duke. “i never was a sap at eton, and the classical names of these johnnies you’re thingambobbing on the what’s-a-name rather queer me.”
“the design outlined on the plaster in the central space on the left-hand side of the skylight dome,” said wopse, a.r.a., “is the ‘judgment of paris.’ the three figures of the rival goddesses are completely outlined, but, as you see, paris is only roughly blocked in.”
“i don’t see a city,” said the duke with some annoyance. “i only see a bit of a man. and, as for being block-tin——”
“paris was a man—or, rather, a youth,” said halcyon wopse, quoting—
“‘fair and disdainfully lidded, the shepherd of ida,
holding the golden apple, desired of——’”
254“hold on! when people get spouting it knocks me galley-west,” said the duke. “just tell me plainly what the beggar was to judge? goddesses? i savvy! and which of ’em took the biscuit—i mean the apple? venus? right you are! that’s as much as i can hold at one time, thanky!”
“sorry if i’ve over-estimated the extent of the accommodation,” said halcyon wopse, smiling and lighting a cigar.
“one of the partagas. now, hang it,” said the duke, “that is infernally stupid of my man.”
“of my man, you mean,” corrected the painter.
“i begin to think,” said the duke, “that i have, in falling in with the absurd plot, cooked up by that old footler, beaumaris, and swopping characters with a beg—with an artist fellow like you, in order to take the fancy of a long-haired, long-legged colt of a girl——”
“i presume you allude to lady lymston?” put in the painter coldly.
“of course. i say, in tumblin’ to the idea and embarkin’ in the game, i’ve made an ass of myself,” said the duke. “as for you, you’re in clover.”
“say nettles,” sighed the painter.
“passin’ under my name——”
“pardon,” said the painter. “the name is my own. and let us say, simply, that in changing identities with your grace in order to enable your grace to cast a glamour of artistic romance over a very ordinary——”
“eh?” interjected the duke.
“situation,” continued the painter. “in doing this i have laid up for myself a considerable store of regret.”
“regret! why, hang you! you’re chalkin’ up scores the whole bally time!” shrieked the duke, stamping his tan shoes on the canvas-protected parquet. “beaumaris’s guests—only a few purposely selected fogies and 255duffers, who don’t count, it’s true—believe you to be me. they flatter you and defer to you. you take the dowager in to dinner, and i’m left to toddle after with susanna’s french governess. i’m out of everything—and obliged to talk art, bally art—from mornin’ till night! while you—you’ve ridden to cub-hunts on my mounts—driven my motor-cars and bust my tires——”
“and very bad ones they are,” said the painter.
“you ride infernally well, and show off before the field at henworthy three gates, where the hardest riders in the county hang back. you ain’t afraid of a trappy take-off—you weren’t built for a broken neck,” screeched the incensed peer. “you play golf too, and win the coronation challenge cup for the lymston club, takin’ seven holes out of the eighteen, and holin’ the round in the score of sixty-eight.”
“it was my duty to maintain the honor of your grace’s rank once i had consented to assume it,” said the painter with a bow.
“and you’re a dead shot, confound you, knockin’ the birds over right and left, and getting a par. in every sportin’ newspaper for a record bag of four hundred. you’re a polo player too—hit a ball up and down the field and through the goals at each end, and look as if you didn’t care whether the ladies applauded you or not, da—hang you! and you must own to bein’ a bit of a cricketer, and consent to play in the county match on thursday, and i wouldn’t like to bet against your chances of makin’ a big score—an all-round admirable what’s-a-name of a fellow like you!”
“perhaps you’d better not,” the painter remarked calmly, knocking off the ash of his cigar. “but i should be glad to know the reason for this display of temper on your grace’s part, all the same,” he added. “if i rode like a tailor and shot like a duffer, hit your ponies’ legs instead of the ball, and played cricket like a german 256governess at a girls’ boarding-school, i could understand——”
“don’t you understand when i get back into my own skin again, i’ll have to live up to the reputation you’ve made me?” yelled halcyon. “i could pass muster before because nobody looked for anything. but now....”
“and what of my reputation? i think i heard you telling susanna——”
“susanna!” echoed the duke.
“she is susanna to your grace. did i not hear you telling her that chiaroscuro was an italian painter of the cinquecento—who, you said, was a pope who patronized art! you went on to say that chiaroscuro lived on hard eggs, and designed carnival cars, and that benvenuto cellini won the gold cup at ascot race meeting in ’91.”
“look here, we won’t indulge in mutual recriminations. it’s beastly bad form!” said the duke. “and though you can ride and all that, i never said i thought you could paint for nuts! in fact, between ourselves, i don’t half like havin’ these spooks on the ceilin’ set down to me.” he twisted his sandy little moustache, and fixed his eyeglass in his eye, and started. “here’s lady lymston comin’ over the lawn with a whole pack of dogs, to ask me how i’ve got on since yesterday.”
“take my blouse!” the painter denuded himself of the turpentiny garment, appearing in a well-cut tweed shooting-suit.
“get into that rag! not me, thanks! hand over your brush, and give me a leg up on that scaffoldin’, like a good chap. i’d better be discovered at work, i suppose,” said his grace of halcyon, as he slowly mounted to the platform under the dome.
he had just reached it when susanna’s fresh young voice was heard outside calling to her dogs, and a moment 257later she appeared. her fair cheeks were flushed, her blue eyes were bright with exercise. she wore a rough gray skirt, which, if less abbreviated than of yore, still showed a slim, arched foot and suggested a charming ankle. her white silk blouse was confined by a norwegian belt, and a loose beret cap of black velvet crowned her yellow head, its silken riches being now disposed in a great coil, through which a silver arrow was carelessly thrust. she started and reddened from her temples to the edge of lace at her round throat when the tweed-clad figure of the painter caught her eye, and gave him her hand with an indifference which was too ostentatious.
“i didn’t know you were interested in art,” she said.
“oh yes!” responded the painter. “at least, if this can be called art,” he added modestly.
“’ssh!” warned susanna. “he is up there, and will hear you.”
“he?” echoed the painter, reveling in the blush.
“did i hear my name?” called the duke sweetly, from above. “hulloa, lady lymston, that you? come to record progress? as you see, we’re going strong.” his six-foot brush menaced a juno’s draperies, a gallipot of size upset, trickled its contents through the planking; his velveteen coat-tails placed paris in peril, as he turned his back to the cartoon and resting his hands upon his knees, assumed a stooping attitude, and peered waggishly down over the edge of the scaffolding at susanna.
“take care—you!” shouted the painter, forgetting his aristocratic r?le.
“my foot is on my native thingumbob, ain’t it, lady lymston?” said the owner of the small, cockneyfied, grinning countenance above. “how do you like the wax-works? this is the”—he flourished the six-foot brush perilously—“this is the judgment of berlin.”
258“paris!” prompted the false duke hoarsely.
“he is trying to joke,” said susanna, in an undertone. “don’t discourage him.”
“i should think that would be difficult,” remarked wopse grimly.
“papa tries to be crushing, and cousin alaric’s rudeness is simply appalling,” said susanna, in a confidential undertone. “and grandmother walks over him as though he were a beetle—no! she would run away from a thing like that—i should say an earwig or a snail, so one feels bound to be a little nice.”
“if only out of opposition!” said the painter, with a keen look of intelligence, at which susanna blushed again.
“he is idiotic when he tries to be funny about art—and mixes up names and dates—and tells you that titian sang in opera and rubens is a popular composer. but he can paint, and alaric orme thinks he will be president of the academy one day. these cartoons are splendidly bold and effective.”
“you think so! wait till i’ve colored these girls up a bit,” said the duke, catching the end of the sentence. “then you’ll——” he dipped his brush and advanced it, dripping with cobalt, towards the group of goddesses.
“don’t touch them!” shouted wopse, in agony.
“why not?” asked susanna.
“i don’t know. excuse me, lady lymston, i believe the smell of this size isn’t wholesome,” wopse stammered. “i’ll get out into the air.” he bolted.
“good heavens!” he moaned, as he strode unseeing down a broad path of the dazzling west front pasture, “i can’t stand this! i’ll tell that idiot osmond-orme that the deception must come to an end....”
“why do you walk so fast?” said the voice of susanna, 259behind him. “i have had to race to catch you.”
“i am sorry,” said wopse, stopping and turning his troubled eyes upon the fair face of his young relation.
“let us walk on”—susanna cast an apprehensive glance behind her—“or somebody——”
“somebody will see us walking together!” said wopse acutely.
“it is so much nicer,” susanna said demurely, “when one can keep pleasant things to oneself. and we have had a good many walks and talks since you came down here, haven’t we? and cliff scrambles—and bicycle rides—and rows on the river. and the fun of it is that, although we are such pals, really, father and grandmother and uncle alaric believe that i positively detest you.” her young laugh rang out gayly; she thrust a sprig of lavender, perfumed and spicy, under the painter’s nose. he captured the tantalizing hand.
“do you not?”
“detest you! you know i don’t.”
“may i have it?” it was the sprig of lavender. but the painter looked at, and squeezed, the hand.
“if you promise to make a big score on thursday!”
susanna, it must be admitted, was learning coquetry.
“i will—if you are looking at me!”
“done!”
“done! come into the beech avenue,” the painter pleaded, “just for a few moments, before that little beast follows us. you know he will!”
“he can’t!” susanna’s golden eyelashes drooped upon crimson cheeks. “he can’t get down! i—i took away the ladder before i came away!” she owned. both hands were imprisoned, her blue eyes lifted, lost themselves in the brown ones that looked down at her.
“was that because you wanted—to be alone with me? was it?” demanded wopse.
260“oh, hal, don’t!”
“i’ll let you go when you have owned up, not before,” wopse said sternly.
susanna’s reply came in a whisper: “you—know—it—was!”
the whisper was so faint that wopse had to bend quite low to catch it. of course he need not have kissed susanna. but he did, as alaric osmond-orme and lord beaumaris appeared, walking confidentially together arm-in-arm.
“i think my little stratagem succeeds!” lord beaumaris had just said, in reference to the preference exhibited by his daughter for the society of the pretended painter. and alaric had responded:
“yes, as you say, my plan has proved quite a brilliant success!” when lord beaumaris clutched his cousin’s arm.
“merciful powers! susanna and that—that young impostor!”
alaric’s eyeglass fell with a click, and the diabolical left eye twirled and twisted fiendishly in its socket as its retina embraced the picture indicated.
“feign not to have observed.... well, susanna! how are you, halcyon. we are strolling towards the ballroom for a glimpse of wopse’s work.”
“we are stro——” lord beaumaris choked and purpled. alaric dragged him on.
“do you think?...” susanna’s cheeks were white roses now. “do you think—they——”
“saw me kiss you? not a doubt of it!”
“oh!” susanna confronted him with blazing eyes. “you!—you did it on purpose! it was a plot——”
she clenched her strong young hands, battling with the desire to buffet the handsome bronzed face before her. “i’ll never—never speak to you again!” she cried.
“you will not be allowed to,” groaned the poor 261painter. “our walks and rides and all the rest are over.... yes, there has been a plot, but not of the kind you suspect. i am a traitor—but not the kind of traitor you think me. lady lymston, i am not the duke of halcyon. i am a poor devil—i beg your pardon!—i am a painter; my name is wopse, and i have disgraced my profession by the part i have played!” he sat down miserably on a rustic bench.
“oh! it has been a put-up thing between you all!” susanna gasped. “oh!” she towered over wopse like an incensed young goddess.
“if i could only paint you like that! yes—i deserve that you should hate me. never mind who planned the thing, i should have known better than to soil my hands with a deception,” said wopse. “as for the duke——”
“the duke! do i understand that that earwig in velveteen is my cousin halcyon!” susanna’s voice was very cold.
“yes. i am a kind of cousin, too,” said wopse.
“but not that kind. those—those designs—the work on the ceiling. they are really yours?” susanna asked.
“mine, of course. do you think that fellow could have done them?” cried wopse, firing up. “i’ve risen at four every morning to work at them, and——”
“and you ride splendidly, and you’re a crack shot and polo player, and you’re going to win for the county eleven on thursday,” came breathlessly from susanna.
“ah, you won’t care to look at me now!” said the depressed wopse.
“won’t i?” susanna’s eyes were dancing, her cheeks were glowing, she pirouetted on the moss-grown ground of the avenue and dropped a little curtsey to the painter. “when doing it will drive father and grandmother and alaric and the earwig wild with rage.... when—when i like doing it, too! when——” she 262stooped, and her lips were very near wopse’s cheek—“when i love doing it!”
“oh, susanna!” cried the painter.
“my dear halcyon!” said lord beaumaris, peering short-sightedly upwards through a maze of scaffolding. “i think you may as well come down.”
“in other words—the game is up!” said alaric osmond-orme mildly. “come down, my dear fellow, and resume your own r?le of hereditary legislator. allow me to replace the ladder.” he did so.
“so that fellow’s done me! i guessed as much when that little—when susanna took away the ladder,” said the duke, preparing to descend. “and then when i saw him kiss her—there’s a remarkably good view of the gardens through the end window. i——” he pointed to some remarkable effects of color splashed upon the ground so carefully prepared by the painter. “i took it out of the beggar in the only way i could, don’t you know.”
“take it out of him still more,” suggested alaric, his tinted eyeglass concealing a fiendish twinkle, “by playing in the county cricket match. he’s entered in your name, you know!”
“you’re very obligin’,” said the duke, “but i don’t think i’m taking any.” he gracefully slithered to the floor as susanna and halcyon wopse entered the ballroom, radiant and hand in hand.
“papa,” said susanna, taking the bull by the horns, “mr. wopse and i are engaged. we mean to be married as soon as possible after the county cricket match.” she kissed the perturbed countenance of lord beaumaris, nodded to the duke, and walked over to alaric. “your plan has succeeded beautifully,” she said. “ain’t you pleased—and won’t you congratulate us?”
“i am delighted,” said the imperturbable alaric. he 263dropped his eyeglass and before the preternatural intelligence of his left eye even susanna quailed. “and i congratulate you both most heartily.” he smiled, and pressed the hands of susanna and her lover, and, moving away, stepped into the garden. there, unseen, he rubbed his hands, twinkling with mourning rings.
“i loved that boy’s mother very dearly, boy as i was then ...” said alaric. “as for susanna, if she knew that i knew she was listening at the library door....” he replaced his eyeglass, and his expression became, as usual, a blank.
