The Cords of Vanity. A Comedy of Shirking Read online

  "You are a rogue," I commented, in my soul, "and I like you all the better for it."

  Aloud, I stated: "What follows is that we can no more keep away from a creditable sort of garden than a moth can from a lighted candle. Consider, then, my position. Here am I on one side of the wall, and with my peach-tree, to be sure—but on the other side is one of the most famous masterpieces of formal gardening in the whole country. Am I to blame if I succumb to the temptation? Surely not," I argued; "for surely to any fair-minded person it will be at once apparent that I am brought to my present very uncomfortable position upon the points of these very humpy iron spikes by a simple combination of atavism and injustice,—atavism because hereditary inclination draws me irresistibly to the top of the wall, and injustice because Miss Hugonin's perfectly unreasonable refusal to admit visitors prevents my coming any farther. Surely, that is at once apparent?"

  But now the girl yielded to my grave face, and broke into a clear, rippling carol of mirth. She laughed from the chest, this woman. And perched in insecure discomfort on my wall, I found time to rejoice that I had finally discovered that rarity of rarities, a woman who neither giggles nor cackles, but has found the happy mean between these two abominations, and knows how to laugh.

  "I have heard of you, Mr. Townsend," she said at last. "Oh, yes, I have heard a deal of you. And I remember now that I never heard you were suspected of sanity."

  "Common-sense," I informed her, from my pedestal, "is confined to that decorous class of people who never lose either their tempers or their umbrellas. Now, I haven't any temper to speak of—or not at least in the presence of ladies,—and, so far, I have managed to avoid laying aside anything whatever for a rainy day; so that it stands to reason I must possess uncommon sense."

  "If that is the case," said the girl "you will kindly come down from that wall and attempt to behave like a rational being."

  I was down—as the phrase runs,—in the twinkling of a bed-post. On which side of the wall, I leave you to imagine.

  "—For I am sure," the girl continued, "that I—that Margaret, I should say,—would not object in the least to your seeing the gardens, since they interest you so tremendously. I'm Avis Beechinor, you know,—Miss Hugonin's cousin. So, if you like, we will consider that a proper introduction, Mr. Townsend, and I will show you the gardens, if—if you really care to see them."

  My face, I must confess, had fallen slightly. Up to this moment, I had not a suspicion but that it was Miss Hugonin I was talking to: and I now reconsidered, with celerity, the information Byam had brought me from Selwoode.

  "For, when I come to think of it," I reflected, "he simply said she was older than Miss Hugonin. I embroidered the tale so glibly for Peter's benefit that I was deceived by my own ornamentations. I had looked for corkscrew ringlets and false teeth a-gleam like a new bath-tub in Miss Hugonin's cousin,—not an absolutely, supremely, inexpressibly unthinkable beauty like this!" I cried, in my soul. "Older! Why, good Lord, Miss Hugonin must be an infant in arms!"

  But my audible discourse was prefaced with an eloquent gesture. "If I'd care!" I said. "Haven't I already told you I was a connoisseur in gardens? Why, simply look, Miss Beechinor!" I exhorted her, and threw out my hands in a large pose of admiration. "Simply regard those yew-hedges, and parterres, and grassy amphitheatres, and palisades, and statues, and cascades, and everything—everything that goes to make a formal garden the most delectable sight in the world! Simply feast your eyes upon those orderly clipped trees and the fantastic patterns those flowers are laid out in! Why, upon my word, it looks as if all four books of Euclid had suddenly burst into blossom! And you ask me if I would care! Ah, it is evident you are not a connoisseur in gardens, Miss Beechinor!"

  And I had started on my way into this one, when the girl stopped me.

  "This must be yours," she said. "You must have spilled it coming over the wall, Mr. Townsend."

  It was Peter's cigarette-case.

  "Why, dear me, yes!" I assented, affably. "Do you know, now, I would have been tremendously sorry to lose that? It is a sort of present—an unbirthday present from a quite old friend."

  She turned it over in her hand.

  "It's very handsome," she marvelled. "Such a pretty monogram! Does it stand for Poor Idiot Boy?"

  "Eh?" said I. "P.I.B., you mean? No, that stands for Perfectly Immaculate Behaviour. My friend gave it to me because, he said, I was so good. And—oh, well, he added a few things to that,—partial sort of a friend, you know,—and, really—Why, really, Miss Beechinor, it would embarrass me to tell you what he added," I protested, and modestly waved the subject aside.

  "Now that," my meditations ran, "is the absolute truth. Peter did tell me I was good. And it really would embarrass me to tell her he added 'for-nothing.' So, this far, I have been a model of veracity."

  Then I took the case,—gaining thereby the bliss of momentary contact with a velvet-soft trifle that seemed, somehow, to set my own grosser hand a-tingle—and I cried: "Now, Miss Beechinor, you must show me the pergola. I am excessively partial to pergolas."

  And in my soul, I wondered what a pergola looked like, and why on earth I had been fool enough to waste the last three days in bedeviling Peter, and how under the broad canopy of heaven I could ever have suffered from the delusion that I had seen a really adorable woman before to-day.

  3

  But, "She is entirely too adorable," I reasoned with myself, some three-quarters of an hour later. "In fact, I regard it as positively inconsiderate in any impecunious young person to venture to upset me in the way she has done. Why, my heart is pounding away inside me like a trip-hammer, and I am absolutely light-headed with good-will and charity and benevolent intentions toward the entire universe! Oh, Avis, Avis, you know you hadn't any right to put me in this insane state of mind!"

  I was, at this moment, retracing my steps toward the spot where I had climbed the wall between Gridlington and Selwoode, but I paused now to outline a reproachful gesture in the direction from which I came.

  "What do you mean by having such a name?" I queried, sadly. "Avis! Why, it is the very soul of music, clear, and sweet and as insistent as a bird-call, an unforgettable lyric in four letters! It is just the sort of name a fellow cannot possibly forget. Why couldn't you have been named Polly or Lena or Margaret, or something commonplace like that, Avis—dear?"

  And the juxtaposition of these words appealing to my sense of euphony, I repeated it, again and again, each time with a more relishing gusto. "Avis dear! dear Avis! dear, dear Avis!" I experimented. "Why, each one is more hopelessly unforgettable than the other! Oh, Avis dear, why are you so absolutely and entirely unforgettable all around? Why do you ripple all your words together in that quaint fashion till it sounds like a brook discoursing? Why did you crinkle up your eyes when I told you that as yet unbotanised flower was a Calycanthus arithmelicus? And why did you pout at me, Avis dear? A fellow finds it entirely too hard to forget things like that. And, oh, dear Avis, if you only knew what nearly happened when you pouted!"

  I had come to the wall by this, but again I paused to lament.

  "It is very inconsiderate of her, very thoughtless indeed. She might at least have asked my permission, before upsetting my plans in life. I had firmly intended to marry a rich woman, and now I am forming all sorts of preposterous notions—"

  Then, on the bench where I had first seen her, I perceived a book. It was the iron-gray book she had been reading when I interrupted her, and I now picked it up with a sort of reverence. I regarded it as an extremely lucky book.

  Subsequently, "Good Lord!" said I, aloud, "what luck!"

  For between the pages of Justus Miles Forman's Journey's End—serving as a book-mark, according to a not infrequent shiftless feminine fashion,—lay a handkerchief. It was a flimsy, inadequate trifle, fringed with a tiny scallopy black border; and in one corner the letters M. E. A. H., all askew, contorted themselves into any number of flourishes and irrelevant tendrils.

  "Now M. E.
A. H. does not stand by any stretch of the imagination for Avis Beechinor. Whereas it fits Margaret Elizabeth Anstruther Hugonin uncommonly well. I wonder now—?"

  I wondered for a rather lengthy interval.

  "So Byam was right, after all. And Peter was right, too. Oh, Robert Etheridge Townsend, your reputation must truly be malodorous, when at your approach timid heiresses seek shelter under an alias! 'I have heard a deal of you, Mr. Townsend'—ah, yes, she had heard. She thought I would make love to her out of hand, I suppose, because she was wealthy—"

  I presently flung back my head and laughed.

  "Eh, well! I will let no sordid considerations stand in the way of my true interests. I will marry this Margaret Hugonin even though she is rich. You have begun the comedy, my lady, and I will play it to the end. Yes, I fell honestly in love with you when I thought you were nobody in particular. So I am going to marry this Margaret Hugonin if she will have me; and if she won't, I am going to commit suicide on her door-step, with a pathetic little note in my vest-pocket forgiving her in the most noble and wholesale manner for irrevocably blighting a future so rich in promise. Yes, that is exactly what I am going to do if she does not appreciate her wonderful good fortune. And if she'll have me—why, I wouldn't change places with the Pope of Rome or the Czar of all the Russias! Ah, no, not I! for I prefer, upon the whole, to be immeasurably, and insanely, and unreasonably, and unadulteratedly happy. Why, but just to think of an adorable girl like that having so much money!"

  All in all, my meditations were incoherent but very pleasurable.

  25. He Advances in the Attack on Selwoode

  1

  "Well?" said Peter.

  "Well?" said I.

  "What's the latest quotation on heiresses?" Mr. Blagden demanded. "Was she cruel, my boy, or was she kind? Did she set the dog on you or have you thrashed by her father? I fancy both, for your present hilarity is suggestive of a gentleman in the act of attendance on his own funeral." And Peter laughed, unctuously, for his gout slumbered.

  "His attempts at wit," I reflectively confided to my wine-glass, "while doubtless amiably intended, are, to his well-wishers, painful. I daresay, though, he doesn't know it. We must, then, smile indulgently upon the elephantine gambols of what he is pleased to describe as his intellect."

  "Now, that," Peter pointed out, "is not what I would term a courteous method of discussing a man at his own table. You are damn disagreeable this morning, Bob. So I know, of course, that you have come another cropper in your fortune-hunting."

  "Peter," said I, in admiration, "your sagacity at times is almost human! I have spent a most enjoyable day, though," I continued, idly. "I have been communing with Nature, Peter. She is about her spring-cleaning in the woods yonder, and everywhere I have seen traces of her getting things fixed for the summer. I have seen the sky, which was washed overnight, and the sun, which has evidently been freshly enamelled. I have seen the new leaves as they swayed and whispered over your extensive domains, with the fret of spring alert in every sap cell. I have seen the little birds as they hopped among said leaves and commented upon the scarcity of worms. I have seen the buxom flowers as they curtsied and danced above your flower-beds like a miniature comic-opera chorus. And besides that—"

  "Yes?" said Peter, with a grin, "and besides that?"

  "And besides that," said I, firmly, "I have seen nothing."

  And internally I appraised this bloated Peter Blagden, and reflected that this was the man whom Stella had loved; and I appraised myself, and remembered that this had been the boy who once loved Stella. For, as I have said, it was the twenty-eighth of April, the day that Stella had died, two years ago.

  2

  The next morning I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon the wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy.

  "For, in spite of appearances," I debated with myself, "it is barely possible that the handkerchief was not hers. She may have borrowed it or have got it by mistake, somehow. In which case, it is only reasonable to suppose that she will miss it, and ask me if I saw it; on the contrary, if the handkerchief is hers, she will naturally understand, when I return the book without it, that I have feloniously detained this airy gewgaw as a souvenir, as, so to speak, a gage d'amour. And, in that event, she ought to be very much pleased and a bit embarrassed; and she will preserve upon the topic of handkerchiefs a maidenly silence. Do you know, Robert Etheridge Townsend, there is about you the making of a very fine logician?"

  Then I consulted my watch, and subsequently grimaced. "It is also barely possible," said I, "that Margaret may not come at all. In which case—Margaret! Now, isn't that a sweet name? Isn't it the very sweetest name in the world? Now, really, you know, it is queer her being named Margaret—extraordinarily queer,—because Margaret has always been my favourite woman's name. I daresay, unbeknownst to myself, I am a bit of a prophet."

  3

  But she did come. She was very much surprised to see me.

  "You!" she said, with a gesture which was practically tantamount to disbelief. "Why, how extraordinary!"

  "You rogue!" I commented, internally: "you know it is the most natural thing in the world." Aloud I stated: "Why, yes, I happened to notice you forgot your book yesterday, so I dropped in—or, to be more accurate, climbed up,—to return it."

  She reached for it. Our hands touched, with the usual result to my pulses. Also, there were the customary manual tinglings.

  "You are very kind," was her observation, "for I am wondering which one of the two he will marry."

  "Forman tells me he has no notion, himself."

  "Oh, then you know Justus Miles Forman! How nice! I think his stories are just splendid, especially the way his heroes talk to photographs and handkerchiefs and dead flowers—"

  Afterward she opened the book, and turned over its pages expectantly, and flushed a proper shade of pink, and said nothing.

  And then, and not till then, my heart consented to resume its normal functions. And then, also, "These iron spikes—" said its owner.

  "Yes?" she queried, innocently.

  "—so humpy," I complained.

  "Are they?" said she. "Why, then, how silly of you to continue to sit on them!"

  The result of this comment was that we were both late for luncheon.

  4

  By a peculiar coincidence, at twelve o'clock the following day, I happened to be sitting on the same wall at the same spot. Peter said at luncheon it was a queer thing that some people never could manage to be on time for their meals.

  I fancy we can all form a tolerably accurate idea of what took place during the next day or so.

  It is scarcely necessary to retail our conversations. We gossiped of simple things. We talked very little; and, when we did talk, the most ambitiously preambled sentences were apt to result in nothing more prodigious than a wave of the hand, and a pause, and, not infrequently, a heightened complexion. Altogether, then, it was not oppressively wise or witty talk, but it was eminently satisfactory to its makers.

  As when, on the third morning, I wished to sit by Margaret on the bench, and she declined to invite me to descend from the wall.

  "On the whole," said she, "I prefer you where you are; like all picturesque ruins, you are most admirable at a little distance."

  "Ruins!"—and, indeed, I was not yet twenty-six,—"I am a comparatively young man."

  As a concession, "In consideration of your past, you are tolerably well preserved."

  "—and I am not a new brand of marmalade, either."

  "No, for that comes in glass jars; whereas, Mr. Townsend, I have heard, is more apt to figure in family ones."

  "A pun, Miss Beechinor, is the base coinage of conversation tendered only by the mentally dishonest."

  "—Besides, one can never have enough of marmalade."

  "I trust they give you a sufficiency of it in the nursery?"

  "Dear me, you have no idea how admirably that paternal tone sits upon you! You would make a
n excellent father, Mr. Townsend. You really ought to adopt someone. I wish you would adopt me, Mr. Townsend."

  I said I had other plans for her. Discreetly, she forbore to ask what they were.

  5

  "Avis—"

  "You must not call me that."

  "Why not? It's your name, isn't it"

  "Yes,—to my friends."

  "Aren't we friends—Avis?"

  "We! We have not known each other long enough, Mr. Townsend."

  "Oh, what's the difference? We are going to be friends, aren't we—Avis?"

  "Why—why, I am sure I don't know."

  "Gracious gravy, what an admirable colour you have, Avis! Well,—I know. And I can inform you, quite confidentially, Avis, that we are not going to be—. friends. We are going to be—"

  "We are going to be late for luncheon," said she, in haste. "Good-morning, Mr. Townsend."

  6

  Yet, the very next day, paradoxically enough, she told me:

  "I shall always think of you as a very, very dear friend. But it is quite impossible we should ever be anything else."

  "And why, Avis?"

  "Because—"

  "That"—after an interval—"strikes me as rather a poor reason. So, suppose we say this June?"

  Another interval.

  "Well, Avis?"

  "Dear me, aren't those roses pretty? I wish you would get me one, Mr. Townsend."

  "Avis, we are not discussing roses."

  "Well, they are pretty."

  "Avis!"—reproachfully.

  Still another interval.

  "I—I hardly know."

  "Avis!"—with disappointment.

  "I—I believe—"

  "Avis!"—very tenderly.