Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

"You take the letter, Mrs. Harbinger, and read it for yourself. Then you show it to your friends. Let people know what sort of a man they are entertaining and making much of. Damme – I beg your pardon; my temper's completely roused up! – it makes me sick to see people going on so over anything that has a title on it. Why, damme – I beg your pardon, Mrs. Harbinger; I really beg your pardon! – in America if a man has a title he can rob henroosts for a living, and be the rage in society."

Mrs. Harbinger reached out her hand deliberately, and took the letter which was thus thrust at her. She had it safe in her possession before she spoke again.

"I shall be glad to see the letter," she said, "because I am curious to know about Count Shimbowski. That he is what he pretends to be in the way of family I am sure, for I have seen his people in Rome."

"Oh, he is a Count all right," Barnstable responded; "but that doesn't make him any better."

"As for the book," she pursued calmly, "you are entirely off the track. The Count cannot possibly have written it. Just think of his English."

"I've known men that could write English that couldn't speak it decently."

"Besides, he hasn't been in the country long enough to have written it. If he did write it, Mr. Barnstable, how in the world could he know anything about your affairs? It seems to me, if I may say so, that you might apply a little common sense to the question before you get into a rage over things that cannot be so."

"I was hasty," admitted Barnstable, an expression of mingled penitence and woe in his face. "I'm afraid I was all wrong about the Count. But the book has so many things in it that fit, things that were particular, why, of course when Mrs. – that lady yesterday – "

"Mrs. Neligage."

"When she said the Count wrote it, I didn't stop to think."

"That was only mischief on her part. You might much better say her son wrote it than the Count."

"Her son?" repeated Barnstable, starting to his feet. "That's who it is! Why, of course it was to turn suspicion away from him that his mother – "

"Good heavens!" Mrs. Harbinger broke in, "don't make another blunder. Jack Neligage couldn't – "

"I see it all!" Barnstable cried, not heeding her. "Mr. Neligage was in Chicago just after my divorce. I heard him say he was there that winter. Oh, of course he's the man."

"But he isn't a writer," Mrs. Harbinger protested.

She rose to face Barnstable, whose inflammable temper had evidently blazed up again with a suddenness entirely absurd.

"That's why he wrote anonymously," declared the other; "and that's why he had to put in real things instead of making them up! Oh, of course it was Mr. Neligage."

"Mr. Barnstable," she said with seriousness, "be reasonable, and stop this nonsense. I tell you Mr. Neligage couldn't have written that book."

He glared at her with eyes which were wells of obstinacy undiluted.

"I'll see about that," he said.

Without other salutation than a nod he walked away, and left her.

She gazed after him with the look which studies a strange animal.

"Well," she said softly, aloud, "of all the fools – "

XIV

THE CONCEALING OF SECRETS

Where a number of persons are in the same place, all interested in the same matter, yet convinced that affairs must be arranged not by open discussion but by adroit management, the result is inevitable. Each will be seeking to speak to some other alone; there will be a constant shifting and rearranging of groups as characters are moved on and off the stage in the theatre. Life for the time being, indeed, takes on an artificial air not unlike that which results from the studied devices of the playwright. The most simple and accurate account of what takes place must read like the arbitrary conventions of the boards; and the reader is likely to receive an impression of unreality from the very closeness with which the truth has been followed.

At the County Club that April afternoon there were so many who were in one way or another interested in the fate of the letter which in a moment of wild fun Mrs. Neligage had handed over to the Count, that it was natural that the movements of the company should have much the appearance of a contrived comedy. No sooner, for instance, had Barnstable hastened away with a new bee in his bonnet, than Mrs. Harbinger was joined by Fairfield. He had come on in advance of the girls, and now at once took advantage of the situation to speak about the matter of which the air was full.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I left the young ladies chatting with Mrs. Staggchase, and they'll be here in a minute. I wanted to speak to you."

She bestowed the letter which she had received from Barnstable in some mysterious recess of her gown, some hiding-place which had been devised as an attempted evasion of the immutable law that in a woman's frock shall be no real pocket.

"Go on," she said. "I am prepared for anything now. After Mr. Barnstable anything will be tame, though; I warn you of that."

"Mr. Barnstable? I didn't know you knew him till his circus last night."

"I didn't. He came to me here, and I thought he was going to apologize; but he ended with a performance crazier than the other."

"What did he do?" asked Fairfield, dropping into the chair which Barnstable had recently occupied. "He must be ingenious to have thought of anything madder than that. He might at least have apologized first."

"I wasn't fair to him," Mrs. Harbinger said. "He really did apologize; but now he's rushing off after Jack Neligage to accuse him of having written that diabolical book that's made all the trouble."

"Jack Neligage? Why in the world should he pitch upon him?"

"Apparently because I mentioned Jack as the least likely person I could think of to have written it. That was all that was needed to convince Mr. Barnstable."

"The man must be mad."

"We none of us seem to be very sane," Mrs. Harbinger returned, laughing. "I wonder what this particular madman will do."

"I'm sure I can't tell," answered Fairfield absently. Then he added quickly: "I wanted to ask you about that letter. Of course it isn't you that's been writing to me, but you must know who it is."

She stared at him in evident amazement, and then burst into a peal of laughter.

"Well," she said, "we have been mad, and no mistake. Why, we ought to have known in the first place that you were Christopher Calumus. How in the world could we miss it? It just shows how we are likely to overlook the most obvious things."

Fairfield smiled, and beat his fist on the arm of his chair.

"There," he laughed, "I've let it out! I didn't mean to tell it."

"What nonsense!" she said, as if not heeding. "To think that it was you that May wrote to after all!"

"May!" cried Fairfield. "Do you mean that Miss Calthorpe wrote those letters?"

The face of Mrs. Harbinger changed color, and a look of dismay came over it.

"Oh, you didn't know it, of course!" she said. "I forgot that, and now I've told you. She will never forgive me."

He leaned back in his chair, laughing gayly.

"A Roland for an Oliver!" he cried. "Good! It is only secret for secret."

"But what will she say to me?"