Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

"I've told you already that I can't do anything until – "

"Oh, I know it," Wilson broke in. "I'm satisfied, but the committee is getting scared. The finances of the club are in an awful mess; there's no denying that. Some of the men on the committee, you see, are afraid of being blamed for letting the credits run on so."

Jack did not take advantage of the pause which gave him an opportunity to speak, and the other went on again.

"I'm awfully sorry, old man; but there's got to be an end somewhere, and nobody's been given the rope that you have."

"I can resign, of course," Jack said shortly.

"Oh, dry up that sort of talk! Nobody'd listen to your resigning. Everybody wants you here, and we couldn't spare you from the polo team."

"But if I can't pay up, what else can I do?"

"But you can't resign in debt, man."

Jack laughed with savage amusement.

"What the devil am I to do? I can't stay, and I can't leave. That seems to be about the size of it."

Dr. Wilson looked at his companion keenly, and there was in his tone some hesitation as he replied.

"You might sell – "

"Sell my ponies!" broke in Neligage excitedly. "When I do I'll give up playing."

"Oh, nonsense! Don't be so infernally stubborn. Harbinger'll buy one, and I'll buy a couple, and the others it doesn't matter about. You've always had twice as many as you need."

"So you propose that I shouldn't have any."

"You could use them just the same."

Jack swore savagely.

"Thank you," he returned. "I may be a beggar, but I won't be a beat."

Wilson laughed with his oily, chuckling laugh.

"I don't see," he observed with characteristic brusqueness, "why it is any worse to take a favor from a friend that offers it than to get it out of a club that can't help itself."

Jack's cheeks flushed, and he began an angry reply. Then he restrained himself.

"I won't quarrel with you for doing your official duty, Wilson," he said stiffly. "I'll fix things somehow or get out."

"Oh, hang it, man," returned the doctor good-naturedly, "you mustn't talk of getting out. I'll lend you what you need."

"Thank you, but you know I can't pay you."

"That's no matter. Something will turn up, and you may pay me when you get ready."

"No; I'm deep enough in the mire as it is. I won't make it worse by borrowing. That's the only virtue that I ever had, – that I didn't sponge on my friends. I'm just as much obliged to you; but I can't do it."

They had been sitting in the smoking-room before the fireplace where a smouldering log or two took from the air its spring chill. Jack as he spoke flung the stub of his cigar into the ashes, and rose with an air of considering the conversation definitely ended. Wilson looked up at him, his golden-brown eyes more sober than usual.

"Of course it is just as you say, old man," he remarked; "but if you change your mind, you've only to let me know."

Jack moved off with a downcast air unusual to him, but by the time he had encountered two or three men who were about the club-house, and had exchanged with them a jest or a remark about the coming game, his face was as sunny as ever. People were now arriving rather rapidly, and soon the stylish trap of Sibley Langdon came bowling up the driveway in fine style, with Mrs. Neligage sitting beside the owner. Jack was on the front piazza when they drove up, and his mother waved her hand to him gayly.

"Gad, Jack," one of the men said, "your mother is a wonder. She looks younger than you do this minute."

"I don't think she is," Jack returned with a grin; "but you're right. She is a wonderfully young woman to be the mother of a great cub like me."

Not only in her looks did Mrs. Neligage give the impression of youth, but her movements and her unquenchable vivacity might put to a disadvantage half of the young girls. She tripped up the steps as lightly as a leaf blown by the wind, her trim figure swaying as lithely as a willow-shoot. As she came to Jack she said to him in a tone loud enough to be heard by all who were on the piazza: —

"Oh, Jack, come into the house a moment. I want to show you a letter."

She dropped a gay greeting here and there as she led the way, and in a moment they were alone inside the house. Mrs. Neligage turned instantly, with a face from which all gayety had vanished as the color of a ballet-dancer's cheek vanishes under the pall of a green light.

"Jack," she said hastily, "I am desperate. I am in the worst scrape I ever was in, in my life. Can you raise any money?"

He looked at her a moment in amazed silence; then he laughed roughly.

"Money?" he retorted. "I am all but turned out of the club to-day for want of it. This is probably my last game."

"You are not in earnest?" she demanded, pressing closer to him, and putting her hand on his arm. "You are not really going to leave the club?"

"What else can I do? The committee think it isn't possible to let things go any longer."

She looked into his face, her own hardening. She studied him with a keen glance, which he met firmly, yet with evident effort.

"Jack," she said at length, her voice lower, "there is only one way out of it. Last night you wouldn't listen to me; but you must now. You must marry May Calthorpe. If you were engaged to her it would be easy enough to raise money."

"You talk as if she were only waiting for me to say the word, and she'd rush into my arms."

"She will, she must, if you'll have her. You wouldn't take her for your own good, but you've got to do it for mine. You can't let me be ruined just through your obstinacy."

"Ruined? What under the canopy do you mean, mother? You are trying to scare me to make me go your way."

"I'm not, Jack; upon my word I'm not! I tell you I'm in an awful mess, and you must stand by me."

Jack turned away from her and walked toward the window; then he faced her again with a look which evidently questioned how far she was really in earnest. There had been occasions when Mrs. Neligage had used her histrionic powers to get the better of her son in some domestic discussion, and the price of such success is inevitably distrust. Now she faced him boldly, and met his look with a nod of perfect comprehension.

"Yes, I am telling you the truth, Jacky. There is nothing for it but for us both to go to smash if you won't take May."

"Take May," he echoed impatiently, "how you do keep saying that! How can I take her? She doesn't care a straw about me anyway, and I've no doubt she looks on me as one of the old fellows."

"She being eighteen and you twenty-five," his mother answered, smiling satirically. "But somebody is coming. I can't talk to you now; only this one thing I must say. Play into my hands as you can if you will, and you'll be engaged to May before the week's over."

He broke into a roar of laughter which had a sound of being as much nerves as amusement.