THE WILE OF A WOMAN
Before the Count had recovered himself sufficiently to go after Miss Endicott despite her look of contempt and her yet more significant amusement, Jack Neligage came toward him down the piazza, and called him by name.
"Oh, Count Shimbowski," Jack said. "I beg your pardon, but may I speak with you a moment?"
The Count looked after Miss Endicott, but he turned toward Neligage.
"I am always at your service," he said in French.
"I wanted to speak to you about that letter that my mother gave you yesterday. She made a mistake."
"A mistake?" the Count echoed, noncommittally.
"Yes. It is not for you."
"Well?"
"Will you give it to me, please?" Jack said.
"But why should I give it to you? Are you Christopher Calumus?"
"Perhaps," answered Jack, with a grin. "At least I can assure you that it is on the authority of the author of 'Love in a Cloud' that I ask for the letter."
"But I've already refused that letter to a lady."
"To a lady?"
"To Miss Endicott."
"Miss Endicott!" echoed Jack again, in evident astonishment. "Why should she want it?"
"She said that she had the authority of the writer, as you say that you have the authority of the man it was written to."
"Did you give it to her?"
"No; but if I did not give it to her, how can I give it to you?"
Neligage had grown more sober at the mention of Miss Endicott's name; he stood looking down, and softly beating the toe of his boot with his polo mallet.
"May I ask," he said at length, raising his glance to the Count's face, "what you propose to do with the letter?"
The other waved his hands in a gesture which seemed to take in all possible combinations of circumstances, while his shrug apparently expressed his inner conviction that whichever of these combinations presented itself Count Shimbowski would be equal to it.
"At least," he returned, "as Mrs. Harbinger has acknowledged that she wrote it, I could not give it up without her command."
Neligage laughed, and swung his mallet through the air, striking an imaginary ball with much deftness and precision.
"She said she wrote it, I know; but I think that was only for a lark, like mother's part in the play. I don't believe Mrs. Harbinger wrote it. However, here she comes, and you may ask her. I'll see you again. I must have the letter."
He broke into a lively whistle, and went off down the walk, as Mrs. Harbinger emerged through the window which a few moments before she had entered.
"I decided that I wouldn't go down to the brook," she said. "It is too warm to walk. Besides, I wanted to speak to you."
"Madame Harbeenger do to me too mooch of honneur," the Count protested, with his usual exuberance of gesture. "Eet ees to be me at her sarveece."
She led the way back to the chairs where her group had been sitting shortly before, and took a seat which placed her back toward the only other persons on the piazza, a couple of men smoking at the other end.
"Sit down, Count," she said, waving her hand at a chair. "Somebody will come, so I must say what I have to say quickly. I want that letter."
The Count smiled broadly, and performed with much success the inevitable shrug.
"You dat lettaire weesh; Madame Neleegaze dat lettaire weesh; Mr. Neleegaze dat lettaire weesh; everybody dat lettaire weesh. Count Shimbowski dat lettaire he keep, weell eet not?"
"Mrs. Neligage and Jack want it?" Mrs. Harbinger exclaimed. "What in the world can have set them on? Did they ask you for it?"
"Eet ees dat they have ask," the Count answered solemnly.
"I cannot understand that," she pursued thoughtfully. "Certainly they can't know who wrote it."
"Ees eet not dat you have said—"
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Harbinger interrupted him, with a smile, "I forgot that they were there when I confessed to it."
The Count laid his hand on his heart and rolled up his eyes,—not too much.
"I have so weesh' to tell you how dat I have dat beauteous lettaire adore," he said. "I have wear de lettaire een de pocket of my heart."
This somewhat startling assertion was explained by his pushing aside his coat so that the top of a letter appeared peeping out of the left pocket of his waistcoat as nearly over his heart as the exigencies of tailoring permitted.
"I shouldn't have let you know that I wrote it," she said.
"But eet have geeve to me so joyous extrodinaire eet to know!"
She regarded him shrewdly, then dropping her eyes, she asked:—
"Was it better than the other one?"
"De oder?" he repeated, evidently taken by surprise. "Ah, dat alone also have I treasured too mooch."
Mrs. Harbinger broke out frankly into a laugh.
"Come," she said, "I have caught you. You know nothing about any other. We might as well be plain with each other. I didn't write that letter and you didn't write 'Love in a Cloud,' or you'd know about the whole correspondence."
"Ah, from de Edengarten," cried the Count, "de weemens ees too mooch for not to fool de man. Madame ees for me greatly too clevaire."
"Thank you," she said laughingly. "Then give me the letter."
He bowed, and shrugged, and smiled deprecatingly; but he shook his head.
"So have Mees Endeecott say. Eef to her I geeve eet not, I can geeve eet not to you, desolation as eet make of my heart."
"Miss Endicott? Has she been after the letter too? Is there anybody else?"
"Madame Neleegaze, Mr. Neleegaze, Mees Endeecott, Madame Harbeenger," the Count enumerated, telling them off on his fingers. "Dat ees all now; but eef I dat lettaire have in my heart-pocket she weell come to me dat have eet wrote. Ees eet not so? Eet ees to she what have eet wrote dat eet weell be to geeve eet. I am eenterest to her behold."
"Then you will not give it to me?" Mrs. Harbinger said, rising.
He rose also, a mild whirlwind of apologetic shrugs and contortions, contortions not ungraceful, but as extraordinary as his English.
"Eet make me desolation een de heart," he declared; "but for now eet weell be for me to keep dat lettaire."
He made her a profound bow, and as if to secure himself against farther solicitation betook himself off. Mrs. Harbinger resumed her chair, and sat for a time thinking. She tapped the tip of her parasol on the railing before her, and the tip of her shoe on the floor, but neither process seemed to bring a solution of the difficulty which she was pondering. The arrivals at the club were about done, and although it still wanted some half hour to the time set for the polo game, most of those who had been about the club had gone over to the polo-field. The sound of a carriage approaching drew the attention of Mrs. Harbinger. A vehicle easily to be recognized as belonging to the railway station was advancing toward the club, and in it sat Mr. Barnstable. The gentleman was landed at the piazza steps, and coming up, he stood looking about him as if in doubt what to do next. His glance fell upon Mrs. Harbinger, and the light of recognition flooded his fluffy face as moonlight floods the dunes of a sandy shore. He came forward abruptly and awkwardly.
"Beg pardon, Mrs. Harbinger," he said. "I came out to find your husband. Do you know where I can see him?"
"He is all ready to play polo now, Mr. Barnstable," she returned. "I don't think you can see him until after the game."
She spoke rather dryly and without any cordiality. He stood with his hat in his two hands, pulling nervously at the brim.
"You are very likely angry with me, Mrs. Harbinger," he blurted out abruptly. "I ought to apologize for what I did at your house yesterday. I made a fool of myself."
Mrs. Harbinger regarded him curiously, as if she could hardly make up her mind how such a person was to be treated.
"It is not customary to have scenes of that kind in our parlors," she answered, smiling.
"I know it," he said, with an accent of deep despair. "It was all my unfortunate temper that ran away with me. But you don't appreciate, Mrs. Harbinger, how a man feels when his wife has been made the subject of an infamous libel."
"But if you'll let me say so, Mr. Barnstable, I think you are going out of your way to find trouble. You are not the only man who has been separated from his wife, and the chances are that the author of 'Love in a Cloud' never heard of your domestic affairs at all."
"But he must have," protested Barnstable with growing excitement, "why—"
"Pardon me," she interrupted, "I wasn't done. I say that the chance of the author of that book knowing anything about your affairs is so small as to be almost impossible."
"But there were circumstances so exact! Why, all that scene—"
"Really, Mr. Barnstable," Mrs. Harbinger again interrupted, "you must not go about telling what scenes are true. That is more of a publishing of your affairs than any putting them in a novel could be."
His eyes stared at her from the folds and undulations of his face like two remarkably large jellyfish cast by the waves among sand heaps.
"But—but," he stammered, "what am I to do? How would you feel if it were your wife?"
She regarded him with a glance which gave him up as incorrigible, and half turned away her head.
"I'm sure I can't say," she responded. "I never had a wife."
Barnstable was too much excited to be restrained by the mild jest, and dashed on, beginning to gesticulate in his earnestness.
"And by such a man!" he ran on. "Why, Mrs. Harbinger, just look at this. Isn't this obliquitous!"
He pulled from one pocket a handful of letters, dashed through them at a mad speed, thrust them back and drew another handful from a second pocket, scrabbled through them, discarded them for the contents of a third pocket, and in the end came back to the first batch of papers, where he at last hit upon the letter he was in search of.
"Only this morning I got this letter from a friend in New York that knew the Count in Europe. He's been a perfect rake. He's a gambler and a duelist. There, you take it, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it. You'll see, then, how I felt when that sort of a man scandaled my wife."
"But I thought that you received the letter only this morning," suggested Mrs. Harbinger, with a smile.
Her companion was too thoroughly excited to be interrupted, and dashed on.
"You take the letter, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it for yourself. Then you show it to your friends. Let people know what sort of a man they are entertaining and making much of. Damme—I beg your pardon; my temper's completely roused up!—it makes me sick to see people going on so over anything that has a title on it. Why, damme—I beg your pardon, Mrs. Harbinger; I really beg your pardon!—in America if a man has a title he can rob henroosts for a living, and be the rage in society."
Mrs. Harbinger reached out her hand deliberately, and took the letter which was thus thrust at her. She had it safe in her possession before she spoke again.
"I shall be glad to see the letter," she said, "because I am curious to know about Count Shimbowski. That he is what he pretends to be in the way of family I am sure, for I have seen his people in Rome."
"Oh, he is a Count all right," Barnstable responded; "but that doesn't make him any better."
"As for the book," she pursued calmly, "you are entirely off the track. The Count cannot possibly have written it. Just think of his English."
"I've known men that could write English that couldn't speak it decently."
"Besides, he hasn't been in the country long enough to have written it. If he did write it, Mr. Barnstable, how in the world could he know anything about your affairs? It seems to me, if I may say so, that you might apply a little common sense to the question before you get into a rage over things that cannot be so."
"I was hasty," admitted Barnstable, an expression of mingled penitence and woe in his face. "I'm afraid I was all wrong about the Count. But the book has so many things in it that fit, things that were particular, why, of course when Mrs.—that lady yesterday—"
"Mrs. Neligage."
"When she said the Count wrote it, I didn't stop to think."
"That was only mischief on her part. You might much better say her son wrote it than the Count."
"Her son?" repeated Barnstable, starting to his feet. "That's who it is! Why, of course it was to turn suspicion away from him that his mother—"
"Good heavens!" Mrs. Harbinger broke in, "don't make another blunder. Jack Neligage couldn't—"
"I see it all!" Barnstable cried, not heeding her. "Mr. Neligage was in Chicago just after my divorce. I heard him say he was there that winter. Oh, of course he's the man."
"But he isn't a writer," Mrs. Harbinger protested.
She rose to face Barnstable, whose inflammable temper had evidently blazed up again with a suddenness entirely absurd.
"That's why he wrote anonymously," declared the other; "and that's why he had to put in real things instead of making them up! Oh, of course it was Mr. Neligage."
"Mr. Barnstable," she said with seriousness, "be reasonable, and stop this nonsense. I tell you Mr. Neligage couldn't have written that book."
He glared at her with eyes which were wells of obstinacy undiluted.
"I'll see about that," he said.
Without other salutation than a nod he walked away, and left her.
She gazed after him with the look which studies a strange animal.
"Well," she said softly, aloud, "of all the fools—"