Of a sudden I understood a number of things—things that had puzzled. This was the meaning of Stella’s queer dinner the night before, and the ensuing theatre-party, for instance; this was the explanation of those impossible men, vaguely heralded as “very influential in politics,” and of the unaccountable women, painfully condensed in every lurid shade of satin, and so liberally adorned with gems as to make them almost valuable. Stella, incapable by nature of two consecutive ideas, was determined to manipulate the unseen wires, and to be, as she probably phrased it, the power behind the throne. …
“Eh, it would be laughable,” I thought, “were not her earnestness so pathetic! For here is Columbine mimicking Semiramis.”
Yet it was true that Peter Blagden had made tremendous strides in his profession, of late. For a moment, I wondered—? Then I looked at this butterfly young person opposite, and I frowned. “I don’t like it,” I said, decisively. “It is a bit cold-blooded. It isn’t worthy of you, Stella.”
“It is my career,” she flouted me, with shrugging shoulders. “It is the one career the world—our Lichfield world—has left me. And I am doing it for Peter.”
The absurd look that I objected to—on principle, you understand—returned at this point in the conversation. I arose, resolutely, for I was really unable to put up with her nonsense.
“You are in love with your husband,” I grumbled, “and I cannot countenance such eccentricities. These things are simply not done—”
She touched my hand. “Old crosspatch, and to think how near I came to marrying you.”
“I do think of it—sometimes. So you had better stop pawing at me. It isn’t safe.”
I wish I could describe her smile. I wish I knew just what it was that Stella wanted me to say or do as we stood for a moment silent, in this pleasant, half-lit room where brass things blinked in the firelight.
“Old crosspatch!” she repeated. …
“Stella,” said I, with dignity, “I wish it distinctly understood that I am not a funny old judge with a wart on his nose.”
Whereupon I went away.
XIV
He Participates in a Brave Jest
I
Stella drove on fine afternoons, under the protection of a trim and preternaturally grave tiger. The next afternoon, by a Lichfieldian transition, was irreproachable. I was to remember, afterward, wondering in a vague fashion, as the equipage passed, if the boy’s lot was not rather enviable. There might well be less attractive methods of earning the daily bread and butter than to whirl through life behind Stella. One would rarely see her face, of course, but there would be such compensations as an unfailing sense of her presence, and the faint odour of her hair at times and, always, blown scraps of her laughter or shreds of her talk, and, almost always, the piping of the sweet voice that was stilled so rarely.
Perhaps the conscienceless tiger listened when she was “seeing the proper people were treated properly”? Yes, one would. Perhaps he ground his teeth? Well, one would, I suspected. And perhaps—?
There was a nod of recognition from Stella; and I lifted my hat as they bowled by toward the Reservoir. I went down Regis Avenue, mildly resentful that she had not offered me a lift.
II
A vagrant puff of wind was abroad in the Boulevard that afternoon. It paused for a while to amuse itself with a stray bit of paper. Presently the wind grew tired of this plaything and tossed between the eyes of a sorrel horse. Prince lurched and bolted; and Rex, always a vicious brute, followed his mate. One fancies the vagabond wind must have laughed over that which ensued.
After a moment it returned and lifted a bit of paper from the roadway, with a new respect, perhaps, and the two of them frolicked away over close-shaven turf. It was a merry game they played there in the spring sunlight. The paper fluttered a little, whirled over and over, and scuttled off through the grass; with a gust of mirth, the wind was after it, now gained upon it, now lost ground in eddying about a tree, and now made up the disadvantage in the open, and at last chuckled over its playmate pinned to the earth and flapping in sharp, indignant remonstrances. Then da capo.
It was a merry game that lasted till the angry sunset had flashed its final palpitant lance through the treetrunks farther down the roadway. There were gaping people in this place, and broken wheels and shafts, and a policeman with a smoking pistol, and two dead horses, and a horrible looking dead boy in yellow-topped boots. Somebody had charitably covered his face with a handkerchief; and men were lifting a limp, white heap from among the splintered rubbish.
Then wind and paper played half-heartedly in the twilight until the night had grown too chilly for further sport. There was no more murder to be done; and so the vagabond wind was puffed out into nothingness, and the bit of paper was left alone, and at about this season the big stars—the incurious stars—peeped out of heaven, one by one.
III
It was Stella’s sister, the Marquise d’Arlanges, who sent for me that night. Across the street a hand-organ ground out its jingling tune as Lizzie’s note told me what the playful wind had brought about. It was a despairing, hopeless and insistent air that shrilled and piped across the way. It seemed very appropriate.
The doctors feared—Ah, well, telegrams had failed to reach Peter in Washington. Peter Blagden was not in Washington, he had not been in Washington. He could not be found. And did I think—?
No, I thought none of the things that Stella’s sister suggested. Of a sudden I knew. I stood silent for a little and heard that damned, clutching tune cough and choke and end; I heard the renewed babblement of children; and I heard
