THE CLIMAX OF COMEDY
Society has always a kindly feeling toward any person who furnishes material for talk. Even in those unhappy cases where the matter provided to the gossips is of an iniquitous sort, it is not easy utterly to condemn evil which has added a pleasant spice to conversation. It is true that in word the sinner may be entirely disapproved, but the disapproval is apt to be tempered by an evident feeling of gratitude for the excitement which the sin has provided to talkers. In lighter matters, where there is no reason to regard with reprobation the course discussed, the friendliness of the gossips is often covered with a sauce piquant of doubtful insinuation, of sneer, or of ridicule, but in reality it is evident that those who abuse do so, like Lady Teazle, in pure good nature. To be talked about in society is really to be awarded for the time being such interest as society is able to feel; and the interest of society is its only regard.
The engagement of Mrs. Neligage to Harry Bradish naturally set the tongues of all their acquaintances wagging, and many pretty things were said of the couple which were not entirely complimentary. The loves of elderly folk always present to the eyes of the younger generation an aspect somewhat ludicrous, and the buds giggled at the idea of nuptials which to their infantine minds seemed so venerable. The women pitied Bradish, who had been captured by the wiles of the widow, and the men thought it a pity that so gifted and dashing a woman as Mrs. Neligage should be united to a man so dull as her prospective husband. The widow did not wear her heart on her sleeve, so that daws who wished to peck at it found it well concealed behind an armor of raillery, cleverness, and adroitness. Bradish, on the other hand, was so openly adoring that it was impossible not to be touched by his beaming happiness. On the whole the match was felt to be a suitable one, although Mrs. Neligage had no money; and from the mingled pleasure of gossiping about the pair, and nominally condemning the whole business on one ground or another, society came to be positively enthusiastic over the marriage.
The affairs of Jack Neligage might in time be influenced by his mother's alliance with a man of wealth, but they were little changed at first. It is true that by some subtile softening of the general heart at the thought of matrimony in the concrete, as presented by the spectacle of the loves of Mrs. Neligage and Bradish, his social world was moved to a sort of toleration of the idea of his marrying Alice Endicott in spite of his poverty. People not in the least responsible, who could not be personally affected by such a match, began to wonder after all whether there were not some way in which it might be arranged, and to condemn Miss Wentstile for not making possible the union of two lovers so long and so faithfully attached. Society delights in the romantic in other people's families, and would have rolled as a sweet morsel under its tongue an elopement on the part of Jack and Alice, or any other sort of extravagant outcome. The marriage of his mother gave him a new consequence both by keeping his affairs in the public mind and by bringing about for him a connection with a man of money.
Miss Wentstile was not of a character which was likely sensitively to feel or easily to receive these beneficent public sentiments. She was a woman who was entirely capable of originating her own emotions, a fact which in itself distinguished her as a rarity among her sex. No human being, however, can live in the world without being affected by the opinions of the world; and it is probable that Miss Wentstile, with all her independence, was more influenced by the thought of those about her than could be at all apparent.
Mrs. Neligage declared to Jack that she meant to be very civil to the spinster.
"She's a sort of cousin of Harry's, you know," she remarked; "and it isn't good form not to be on good terms with the family till after you're married."
"But after the wedding," he responded with a lazy smile, "I suppose she must look out."
Mrs. Neligage looked at him, laughing, with half closed eyes.
"I should think that after the marriage she would do well to remember her place," was her reply. "I shall have saved her from the Count by that time, too; and that will give her a lesson."
But Providence spared Mrs. Neligage the task of taking the initiative in the matter of the Count. One day in the latter part of April, just before the annual flitting by which all truly patriotic Bostonians elude the first of May and the assessors, the widow went to call on her prospective relative. Miss Wentstile was at home in the drawing-room with Alice and the Count. Tea had been brought in, and Alice was pouring it.
"I knew I should be just in time for tea," Mrs. Neligage declared affably; "and your tea is always so delicious, Miss Wentstile."
"How do you do, Louisa," was Miss Wentstile's greeting. "I wish you'd let me know when you are at home. I wouldn't have called yesterday if I'd supposed you didn't know enough to stay in to be congratulated."
"I had to go out," Mrs. Neligage responded. "I was sorry not to see you."
"There was a horrid dog in the hall that barked at me," Miss Wentstile continued. "You ought not to let your visitors be annoyed so."
"It isn't my dog," the widow replied with unusual conciliation in her manner. "It belongs to those Stearnses who have the apartment opposite."
"I can't bear other people's dogs," Miss Wentstile declared with superb frankness. "Fido was the only dog I ever loved."
"Where is Fido?" asked the widow. "I haven't heard his voice yet."
Miss Wentstile drew herself up stiffly.
"I have met with a misfortune. I had to send dear Fido away. He would bark at the Count."
Whatever the intentions of Mrs. Neligage to conciliate, Providence had not made her capable of resisting a temptation like this.
"How interesting the instinct of animals is," she observed with an air of the most perfect ingenuousness. "They seem to know doubtful characters by intuition."
"Doubtful characters?" echoed Miss Wentstile sharply. "Didn't Fido always bark at you, Louisa?"
"Yes," returned the caller as innocently as ever. "That is an illustration of what I was saying."
"Oh, Madame Neleegaze ees so continuously to be drôle!" commented the Count, with a display of his excellent teeth. "So she have to marry, ees eet not?"
"Do you mean those two sentences to go together, Count?" Alice asked, with a twinkle of fun.
He stood apparently trying to recall what he had said, in order to get the full meaning of the question, when the servant announced Mrs. Croydon, who came forward with a clashing of bead fringes and a rustling of stiff silk. She was ornamented, hung, spangled, covered, cased in jet until she might not inappropriately have been set bodily into a relief map to represent Whitby. She advanced halfway across the space to where Miss Wentstile sat near the hearth, and then stopped with a dramatic air. She fixed her eyes on the Count, who, with his feet well apart, stood near Miss Wentstile, stirring his tea, and diffusing abroad a patronizing manner of ownership.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Wentstile," Mrs. Croydon said in a voice a little higher than common, "I will come to see you again when you haven't an assassin in your house."
There was an instant of utter silence. The remark was one well calculated to produce a sensation, and had Mrs. Croydon been an actress she might at that instant have congratulated herself that she held her audience spellbound. It was but for a flash, however, that Miss Wentstile was paralyzed.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed the spinster, recovering the use of her tongue.
"I mean," retorted Mrs. Croydon, extending her bugle-dripping arm theatrically, and pointing to the Count, "that man there."
"Me!" cried the Count.
"The Count?" cried Miss Wentstile an octave higher.
"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Neligage very softly, settling herself more comfortably in her chair.
"He tried to murder my husband," went on Mrs. Croydon, every moment with more of the air of a stage-struck amateur. "He challenged him!"
"Your husband?" the Count returned. "Eet ees to me thees teeme first know what you have one husband, madame."
"I thought your husband was dead, Mrs. Croydon," Miss Wentstile observed, in a voice which was like the opening of an outside door with the mercury below zero.
Mrs. Croydon was visibly confused. Her full cheeks reddened; even the tip of her nose showed signs of a tendency to blush. Her trimmings rattled and scratched on the silk of her gown.
"I should have said Mr. Barnstable," she corrected. "He was my husband once when I lived in Chicago."
The Count, perfectly self-possessed, smiled and stirred his tea.
"Ees eet dat de amiable Mrs. Croydon she do have a deeferent husband leek a sailor mans een all de harbors?" he asked with much deference.
Mrs. Neligage laughed softly, leaning back as if at a comedy. Alice looked a little frightened. Miss Wentstile became each moment more stern.
"Mr. Barnstable and I are to be remarried immediately," Mrs. Croydon observed with dignity. "It was for protecting me from the abuse of an anonymous novel that he offended you. You would have killed him for defending me."
The Count waved his teaspoon airily.
"He have eensult me," he remarked, as if disposing of the whole subject. "Then he was one great cowherd. He have epilogued me most abject."
Mrs. Neligage elevated her eyebrows, and turned her glance to Mrs. Croydon, who stood, a much overdressed goddess of discord, still in the middle of the floor.
"That is nonsense, Mrs. Croydon," she observed honeyedly. "Mr. Barnstable behaved with plenty of pluck. The apology was Jack's doing, and wasn't at all to your—your fiancé's discredit."
Miss Wentstile turned with sudden severity to Mrs. Neligage.
"Louisa," she demanded, "do you know anything about this affair?"
"Of course," was the easy answer. "Everybody in Boston knew it but you."
The Count put his teacup on the mantelpiece. He had lost the jauntiness of his air, but he was still dignified.
"Eet was one affaire d'honneur," he said.
"But why was I not told of this?" Miss Wentstile asked sharply.
"You?" Mrs. Croydon retorted with excitement. "Everybody supposed—"
Mrs. Neligage rose quickly.
"Really," she said, interrupting the speaker, "I must have another cup of tea."
The interruption stopped Mrs. Croydon's remark, and Miss Wentstile did not press for its conclusion.
"Count," the spinster asked, turning to that gentleman, who towered above her tall and lowering, "have you ever fought a duel?"
The Count shrugged his shoulders.
"All Shimbowski ees hommes d'honneur."
She made him a frigid bow.
"I have the honor to bid you good day," she said, with a manner so perfect that the absurdity of the situation vanished.
The Count drew himself up proudly. Then he in his turn bowed profoundly.
"You do eet too much to me honor," he said, with a dignity which was worthy of his family. "Ladies, votre serviteur."
He made his exit in a manner to be admired. Mrs. Croydon feigned to shrink aside as he passed her, but Mrs. Neligage looked at her with so open a laugh at this performance that confusion overcame the dame of bugles, and she moved forward disconcerted. She had not yet gained a seat, when Miss Wentstile faced her with all her most unrestrained fashion.
"I shouldn't think, Mrs. Croydon, that you, with the stain of a divorce court on you, were in position to throw stones at Count Shimbowski. He has done nothing but follow the customs to which he's been brought up."
"Perhaps that's true of Mrs. Croydon too," murmured Mrs. Neligage to Alice.
"If you wanted to tell me," Miss Wentstile went on, "why didn't you tell me when he was not here? No wonder foreigners think we are barbarians when a nobleman is insulted like that."
"I didn't mean to tell you," Mrs. Croydon stammered humbly. "It just came out."
"Why didn't you mean to tell me?" demanded Miss Wentstile, whose anger had evidently deprived her for the time being of all coolness.
"Why, I thought you were engaged to him!" blurted out Mrs. Croydon, fairly crimson from brow to chin.
"Engaged!" echoed Miss Wentstile, half breathless with indignation.
Mrs. Neligage came to the rescue, cool and collected, entirely mistress of herself and of the situation.
"Really, Mrs. Croydon," she suggested, smiling, "don't you think that is bringing Western brusqueness home to us in rather a startling way? We don't speak of engagements until they are announced, you know."
"But Miss Wentstile told me the other day that she might announce one soon," persisted Mrs. Croydon, into whose flushed face had come a look of baffled obstinacy.
Mrs. Neligage threw up her hands in a graceful little gesture. She played private theatricals infinitely better than Mrs. Croydon. There was in their art all the difference between the work of the most clumsy amateur and a polished professional.
"There is nothing to do but to tell it," she said, as if appealing to Miss Wentstile and Alice. "The engagement was that of Miss Endicott and my son. Miss Wentstile never for a moment thought of marrying the Count. She knew from me that he gambled and was a famous duelist."
Alice put out her hand suddenly, and caught that of the widow.
"Oh, Mrs. Neligage!" she cried.
The widow patted the girl's fingers. The face of Miss Wentstile was a study for a novelist who identifies art with psychology.
"Of course I ought not to have told, Alice," Mrs. Neligage went on; "but I'm sure Mrs. Croydon is to be trusted. It isn't fair to your aunt that this nonsensical notion should be abroad that she meant to marry the Count."
Mrs. Croydon was evidently too bewildered to understand what had taken place. She awkwardly congratulated Alice, apologized to Miss Wentstile for having made a scene, and somehow got herself out of the way.
"What an absolutely incredible woman! With the talent both she and Mr. Barnstable show for kicking up rows in society," observed Mrs. Neligage, as soon as the caller had departed, "I should think they would prevent any city from being dull. I trust they will pass the time till their next divorce somewhere else than here."