II
The garden châlet 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 châlet, 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 of 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——’”
“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 duffers, 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 governess 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 later 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 rôle.
“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.”
“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, behind 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.
“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 painter. “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 stooped, 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 rôle 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 dropped 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.