he, then.”
Enever had no chance to reply. His wife sailed up to him and sailed him away.
Mrs. Metuchen had evaporated. Jones and Mr. Mermex were alone.
The latter coughed. “You are a literary man, I believe?”
“Oh, no. I write little things for the magazines. There is nothing literary in that.”
To this Mr. Mermex assented, but absently. It was evident that he was sparring for wind. “At least, you are a friend of these people, a friend also of my daughter; and here I have few. Will you give me a moment?”
“The plot thickens,” Jones reflected. “He is going to use me for a sewer.”
“Now,” Mr. Mermex continued, “when you met my daughter last summer, did it occur to you to ask her where she had been?”
“But, my dear sir, a man of sense never asks a lady where she has been. He asks where she is going.”
“No doubt. Even otherwise Marie would not have told. Explanations are not her weakness. But that is a detail. She had just left Sioux Falls.”
“Ah!” In the rug which Jones had been studying abruptly understanding dawned. An entire panorama unrolled—the cat, the bag, the key to the whole situation. “Was that what you told Usher?” he asked.
Mr. Mermex nodded.
“But permit me, why, of all other moments, did you choose the one which you took?”
“Why, indeed! I had to take what I could get. I only reached here an hour ago.”
“Of course. Then, too, postage is dear and telegraphing expensive; yet I can’t help thinking, since the matter appears to have weighed on your conscience, that a little extravagance—”
The father coughed again. “There is the point. Marie wrote me that she was to marry Usher. I wrote her to go ahead. On the train this morning I met the beast from whom I thought she was free. He told me that he had never been served, that the divorce was invalid, that he intended to rip it up—all of which I had to tell Usher, and when I did, you saw what occurred. He reasoned, I suppose, that if Number One got at him he would be in for damages, and heavy ones, too. Don’t you think so?”
“Really, the processes of Usher’s reasoning exceed my powers of imagination. If your supposition be correct, certainly his commercial instinct is beautifully developed. But personally I regard it as a great mistake to neglect pleasure for business.”
“Now,” said Mr. Mermex, “there is a reporter out there. What shall I say to him? There is no use keeping him waiting.”
“None at all. Particularly as in all probability he enjoys it. Tell him the reverse. Tell him it is a great mistake to neglect business for pleasure.”
“Quite so.”
The doorbell rang again.
“There is another of them, I suppose, and that reminds me, you will stop, won’t you, and have lunch with us?”
“No, thanks very much; but you might say to your daughter, with my compliments, that divorce is the mother-in-law of invention, and that I wish her again many happy returns.”
“You are very thoughtful of others,” a lady in lilac called from the adjoining room, “yet in the circumstances a trifle cynical, too.”
Jones picked up his hat. “I dare say, but then, you see, it is in thoughtfulness of others that cynicism begins.”
“Yes, indeed,” said a voice from the doorway, “let us think of ourselves. There,” Usher continued, as he entered where they stood, “I have been off reconnoitering. The divorce is all right. The forces centripetal and centrifugal couldn’t touch it. Marie, where are you?”
From the adjoining room the bride strolled—a festival of beauty in the festival of life.
With a look cannibalistic in its longing to eat her, Usher added, “My dear, we have lost the boat.”
The girl’s moist lips, parting in a smile, disclosed the point of her tongue. “Then can’t we,” she inquired, with an air of innocence which was simply seraphic, “can’t we manage to find a train?”
“Any port in a honeymoon,” Usher answered. “Let’s be off at once.”
“My blessing on you both,” cried Mr. Mermex.
“ ’Twas ever thus,” said Jones. “Woman proposes and a poor devil accepts. For such is the noose matrimonial.”
A Drama in a Dining-Room
In the multiple brilliancies of the dining-room I found myself at the left of the Duchess Sally. Ever since her girlhood I had known her. At Narragansett Pier, in the good old nights before the Casino was dreamed of, I had sat with her on verandas that were vibrant with osculations. That was some time ago. Her subsequent transatlantic triumphs and spectacular marriage to the Duc de Malakoff are now ancient and familiar history—so ancient even that I am dispensed from noting that Sally is no chicken. But though her youth had gone, her heart is young. Hence, no doubt, in disregard of every canon of precedence, my place beside her. But then, as I have intimated, she never was ceremonious.
Across the glittering service, beyond the gold branches of the lusters, sat Monsieur de Malakoff. Between him and Sally there were, including myself, fourteen other people. Over the bisque I had taken them in. Barring a nuncio and an aunt of Sally—Mrs. Nicholas Manhattan—I knew none of them. Barring two others, the rest of the party interested me but mediocrally. Of these two one was a vision in white, a delicious apparition that suggested the pays des songes, a face infinitely delicate and of exceeding beauty. The other was a young man who looked as the musketeer Aramis might in modern dress. His features were chiseled. On his lip was a mustache that seemingly had been drawn with a crayon. His hair was black, slightly curled; his eyes were chocolate, and their lashes long as a girl’s. I should have thought him too good-looking for a man had it not been for his chin, which was resolute, and the expression of his mouth, which was as firm and as chill as steel. Next to him was the vision. They were talking inaudibly together.
The
