“The peculiarity and originality of my genius, as Cluffer says, consists in the fact that I can’t do the things that might be expected of me—not for filberts; while I can do the things that mightn’t. If I can’t really hit off that laugh, I’ll have a woman in the wings to do it for me. But my impression is that I shall be all right at night. Don’t forget, Gormleigh, that you’re not to tub the chandelier altogether; I hate to play to a dark house.”
“Py vich innovation,” said Gormleigh afterwards, “de gonsbirators vas enapled to garry out their blan. Himmel!” he cried, dabbing his overflowing eyes with an antediluvian silk pocket-handkerchief, “shall I effer forget—no, not vile I lif—de face of dot jung man!”
For at the moment when Monte Polverino’s scorn of the lovely plebeian he has wedded is expressed in words—when Aquella, pierced to the heart by being called “a low-born vulgarian” and a “peasant huckster,” is about to utter her famous yell of frenzied laughter, the Old Stage-Doorers and the New Stage-Doorers hung out their boots. A chevaux de frise of walking-sticks, from each of which depended a pair of these indispensable articles of attire, graced the gallery, distinguished the upper circle, and appeared upon the level of the pit. Stricken to the soul, faltering and ghastly under his paint, and shaking in the most sumptuous pair of patent leathers, white kid topped, in which he had yet appeared, De Boo blankly contemplated the horrid spectacle; while Mrs. Gudrun, to whose somewhat latent sense of humor the spectacle appealed, burst into peal upon peal of the wildest laughter ever heard beyond the walls of an establishment for the care of the mentally afflicted. “The grandeur, poignancy, and reality of the acting,” wrote Cluffer, of the Morning Whooper, “was acknowledged by a crowded house with a deafening and unanimous outburst of applause.”
“Both Mrs. Gudrun and Mr. De Boo attained the highest level of dramatic expression,” pronounced Mullekens, of the Daily Tomahawk. “It was the touch of Nature which attunes the universe to one throb of universal relationship.”
The play was a success. Even the “Boo’s!” of both the clubs, united for the nonce in disapprobation, could not rob Leo of his laurels. He wears them to-day, for Pride of Race has enjoyed a tremendous run.
“We’ve made the beggar’s reputation instead of sending him back to the boot-shop and that poor girl,” said Ulick Snowle to Tom Glauber next day.
“Possibly,” said Tom Glauber, sniffing at his inseparable carnation. “But it’s all the better for the girl, I imagine, in the long run.”
A SPIRIT ELOPEMENT
When I exchanged my maiden name for better or worse, and dearest Vavasour and I, at the conclusion of the speeches—I was married in a traveling-dress of Bluefern’s—descended the steps of mamma’s house in Ebury Street—the Belgravian, not the Pimlican end—and, amid a hurricane of farewells and a hailstorm of pink and yellow and white confetti, stepped into the brougham that was to convey us to a Waterloo Station, en route for Southampton—our honeymoon was to be spent in Guernsey—we were perfectly well satisfied with ourselves and each other. This state of mind is not uncommon at the outset of wedded life. You may have heard the horrid story of the newly-wedded cannibal chief, who remarked that he had never yet known a young bride to disagree with her husband in the early stages of the honeymoon. I believe if dearest Vavasour had seriously proposed to chop me into cotêlettes and eat me, with or without sauce, I should have taken it for granted that the powers that be had destined me to the high end of supplying one of the noblest of created beings with an entrée dish.
We were idiotically blissful for two or three days. It was flowery April, and Guernsey was looking her loveliest. No horrid hotel or boarding-house sheltered our lawful endearments. Some old friends of papa’s had lent us an ancient mansion standing in a wild garden, now one pink riot of almond-blossom, screened behind lofty walls of lichened red brick and weather-worn, wrought-iron gates, painted yellow-white like all the other iron and wood work about the house.