“Struck it,” he said gruffly, almost defiantly. “Going to do a splash. All of us. Um! Um! Those boys helped.”
“Ah!” She shuddered. “Ah, my dear, my splashing days are ended. Even if it’s true, I’m too old for that.”
“Too old!” For the first time that Ruddy could remember, his father took the withered face between his hands. “Too old! Not a bit of it! Going to make a splash, I tell you. Going to be Lord Mayor of London. Going to be a duke, maybe an earl. Beauty forever. Appeals to women’s vanity. Going up like a rocket till I bust. Only I shan’t bust Um! Um! Going up this time never to come down.”
“Never to come down,” she whispered, “never.” The words seemed the sweetest music. She laughed softly to make him think that she did not take him seriously.
They strolled out into the evening redness and sat beside the boys on the steps. Sparrows were rustling in the ivy. The drone of London, like a mill-wheel turning, came to them across the walls. In the garden there was a sense of rest Mr. Sheerug’s portly glory looked out of place and disturbing in its old-fashioned quiet He must have felt that, for he stood up and removed his frock-coat, loosened his waistcoat buttons, and sat down in his shirt-sleeves. He looked less like Mr. Sheerug, the conqueror, who had eaten the canary, and more like the pigeon-flying Mr. Sheerug now.
With unwieldly awkwardness he put his arm about her shoulder and drew her gray head nearer. “Don’t mind, do you?” His voice was husky. “Can’t do it, somehow—never could unless I was making money. Oughtn’t to have married you. Uml Um! Often thought it Dragged you down. Well——”
And then he told them. He began with Duke Nineveh. “He’s a chap who introduces outsiders to something that he says is society. Tells ’em where to buy their clothes and all that. Gets tipped for it. Calls himself a black-and-white artist. Maybe he is—I don’t know: but he’s a man of ideas. His great idea is Madame Josephine—she’s in love with him.”
At mention of Madame Josephine Mrs. Sheerug fluttered. “But Alonzo, she can’t be the same Madame Josephine——”
“The same,” he said.
“The woman who used to dance at——?”