But at this juncture the delayed attack of hysteria swooped upon its victim. Summoning his young lady-assistant, Mr. Boman, with a few injunctions, placed the patient in her care. Then brushing a few bronze-hued hairs from his frock-coat, removing his dapper apron, and tidying his hair with a rapid application of the brush, he winked as one well pleased, and betook himself to Gobelin Tapestry Bridal Suite Number Four, in the character of a Messenger of Fate.
Three hours later the news had leaked out all over the Regent Street. The great vessel buzzed like a wasps’-nest, and the utmost resources of wireless telegraphy were taxed to communicate to sister ships upon the ocean and fellow-men upon the nearest land the astounding fact of the sudden collapse of the Rustleton marriage, owing to the arrival on the scene of a previous husband of the lady.
“Ach Himmel! it is klorious!” gasped Funkstein, waving a pale blue paper, “I haf here Petsie’s reply to de offer of de Syindigate—she comes to de Vest End Theatre; at an advanced salary returns—and de house will be cram-jammed to de doors for anoder tree hoondred berformances. It is an ill vind dot to nopody plows goot, mark my vords!”
Lord Pomphrey had just given utterance to a similar sentiment; Rustleton, on the other side of the Atlantic, had previously arrived at a like conclusion. Mr. Boman had entertained the same view from the outset of affairs. Petsie—again Le Poyntz—realizing the gigantic advertisement that the resurrection of her first proprietor involved, was gradually becoming reconciled to the situation. When all the characters of a tale are made content, is it not time the narrative came to a close?
“CLOTHES—AND THE MAN—!”
The smoking-room of the Younger Sons’ Club, the bow-windows of which command a view of Piccadilly, contained at the hour of two-thirty its full complement of habitual nicotians, who, seated in the comfortable armchairs, recumbent on the leather divans, or grouped upon the hearthrug, lent their energies with one accord to the thickening of the atmosphere.
Hambridge Ost, a small, drab-hued man with a triangular face, streakily-brushed hair, champagne-bottle shoulders, and feet as narrow as boot-trees without the detachable side-pieces, invariably encased in the shiniest of patent leathers,—Hambridge, from behind a large green cigar, was giving a select audience of very young and callow listeners the benefit of his opinions upon dress.
“If I proposed to jot down the small events of my insignificant private life, dear fellers, or had the gift—supposing I did commit ’em to paper—of makin’ ’em interesting ...” said Hambridge, raising his eyebrows to the edge of his carefully parted hair and letting them down again, “I don’t mind telling you, dear fellers, that the resultant volume or two would mark an epoch in autobiographical literature. But, like the violet—so to put it—I have, up to the present, preferred to blush unseen. Not that the violet can blush anything but purple—or blue in frosty weather, but the simile has up to now always held good in literature. Lord Pomphrey—a man appreciative to a degree of the talents of his relatives—has said to me a thousand times if one, ‘Confound you, Hambridge, why is not that, or this, or the other, so to put it, in print?’ But Pomphrey may be partial——”
“No, no!” exclaimed, in a very deep bass, a very young man in a knitted silk waistcoat and a singularly brilliant set of pimples. “No, no!”
“Much obliged, dear fellow,” said Hambridge, hoisting his eyebrows and letting them drop in his characteristic manner. “Some of my views may possess originality—even freshness when expressed, as I invariably express ’em, in a perfectly commonplace manner.”