A Transient Guest, and Other Episodes Part 7

"Gentlemen, gag that man--gag him: I will be listened to. There, now, _will_ you be quiet? You make me lose the thread. Where was I? Oh, yes: the Russian seemed to reflect a moment, and looked at his watch. 'I think,' he said, 'it would be better to go straight to the Brevoort House.' (The grand duke, I knew, was stopping there.) 'My prince is to go out this afternoon between two and three, and if you do not see him to-day it may be hard to manage it to-morrow.' 'I am at your orders, Excellency,' I answered; 'business before pleasure.' 'Good, then,' he returned; 'we will take a droschky, or, better even, your railway that is in the air.' 'The elevated, you mean,' I said--'the elevated. Yes, of course.' Inwardly I was well pleased that the suggestion should have come from him, for I am not over-fond of riding in a cab with a hundred and ten thousand dollars' worth of rubies in my pocket and a stranger for sole companion. For he was a stranger--wasn't he?--and, by his own account, not well-to-do. But that Russian had a knack of disarming suspicion. And, besides, how was it possible for me to have any doubts about a man who fought as he had over the percentage? It would have been nonsensical. So I did the rubies up in cotton, put them in a box, and off we went. On the way to the elevated you ought to have seen how the people stared at that coat. All the time he kept up a delightful flow of conversation. He told me any number of interesting things about his country, and when I asked if he had read 'The Journey Due North' he told me that he had, and that when Sala was in Russia his father had entertained him at his country-house a few versts from Moscow. Think of that, now! Altogether, he made himself most agreeable. I asked him on the way if he thought that inasmuch as I was to have the honor of seeing the grand duke it would not be more in accordance with etiquette for me to put on a dress-coat. But he laughed, and said, no, the grand duke would never notice. Then he told me some very curious anecdotes about him--how, for instance, he fainted dead away at the sight of an apple, and yet kept a balloon and an aeronaut, just as Jones there might keep a dogcart and a groom. He told me, among other things, that at Petersburg the grand duke had a pet tiger, which would accept food from no one but him, and on my asking how the tiger got along when the grand duke was away, he said that the grand duke had him stuffed. Oh, he was very entertaining, and spoke English better than you would have imagined. We walked over from Eighth Street to the hotel, and when we reached it he took me straight upstairs to his own room. 'If you will sit a minute,'

he said, 'I will see if his Highness can receive you.' He went away, and I looked about me. The room into which I had been shown was a sitting-room with a bedroom opening from it. There was a writing-table standing against the door which led to the adjoining apartment, and while I was waiting I just glanced at the things with which the table was littered. There were a number of foreign newspapers, but in what language they were printed I could not make out; there was a package of official-looking doc.u.ments tied with a string, a great blue envelope addressed in French to the Prince Michel Zaroguine and post-marked Was.h.i.+ngton, and back of all, in a frame, the photograph of a man."

For some minutes previous Mr. Fairbanks had been speaking quite composedly, though Jones, with the observant eye of his cla.s.s, had noticed that near the ears his cheeks and his forehead as well were wet with perspiration. But now abruptly he grew unaccountably excited, and his speech displayed a feverish animation. His face had lost its scarlet; it had grown very white; and it seemed to the novelist that in some manner which he could not explain to himself it had taken on a not unfamiliar aspect. "H'm!" he reflected, "it's odd. I know I never saw the man before, and I am sure that I do not particularly care ever to see him again. Leigh ought to have more sense than to bring an orang-outang even into such a club as the Smallpox. Besides, what does he mean by boring every one to death? By gad, I believe he has put Leigh to sleep. It's worse than a play." But still he made no effort to move.

In spite of himself, he felt vaguely fascinated, and, though he declined to admit it, a trifle ill at ease.

"I took up the photograph," Mr. Fairbanks continued, "and while I was examining it, the Russian came back. In his hand he held a check-book.

'That's the grand duke himself,' he said. 'He will stop in here presently on his way out. There will be two or three members of the suite with him; and, that you may recognize his Highness at once, take a good look at the picture. When he comes in you must do this way: b.u.t.ton your coat, please; thanks: now stand anywhere you like and make a low bow. Let me see you make one. Bravo! that is splendid. Only--how shall I say?--do not let your arms hang in that fas.h.i.+on. The grand duke might think you had dropped something and were stooping to pick it up.

However, that is a minor matter. It may be that he won't see you at all.

But of all things remember this: under no circ.u.mstances must you speak to him unless he first addresses you, and then you must merely answer his question. In other words, do not, I pray you, try to engage him in conversation.' 'Does he speak English?' I asked. I couldn't help it. I was getting nervous. 'Now let us have the rubies,' he said. I took the box out of my breast-pocket and handed it to him. He opened it, drew the cotton aside, and ran his fingers lovingly over the gems. 'Yes,' he said, 'they will do.' Then he closed the box again, and put it in the drawer of the table at which he had taken a seat. 'If,' he continued, 'his Highness is satisfied, I will draw a draft for you, and Count Beziatnikoff will sign it. The count,' he went on to say, 'is the keeper of the Privy Purse. The draft itself is on the London Rothschilds, but they will cash it at Belmont's.' I did not quite like that arrangement: it did not seem entirely business-like. 'Your Excellency,' I said, 'it is the custom here to have checks for large amounts certified before they are offered in payment.' But I had to explain what certification meant before he understood me. 'That is nothing,' he said, 'that is nothing. If his Highness is pleased, we will go to Belmont's together, or, if you prefer, we will sit here over a Sam Ward and let one of the hotel-clerks go to the bank in our stead.' There seemed to me nothing objectionable in that suggestion; for, after all, I could not exact of any one, however grand-ducal he might be, to go about with a hundred and ten thousand dollars in his waistcoat."

"Or in his trousers either."

"Or in his trousers either, as you very properly put it. Now, _Mr._ Jones--Mr. Leigh, look at me; Colonel Barker--colonel--I am coming to the point. Where's that waiter? Gentlemen, see here; watch that man there--watch Jones. Don't take your eyes off _Mr._ Jones, but listen, all of you, to what I say. Mr. Leigh, you are looking at me: look at your friend, colonel, I insist. _Mr._ Jones, _you_, if you care to, can look at me. Now, gentlemen, now--"

"Have you got a camera concealed about your person?"

"No, I have not, but I have something that came from one. You wait a minute, and I'll show it to you. I'll show it to you all. Where did I leave off?"

"In his waistcoat-pocket."

"Thank you: so I did. Well, gentlemen, we sat there talking as pleasantly as you please. The Russian joked a bit, and said that he wanted a certified check from me,--the check for his commission, you remember,--and presently he got up and said he would see what was delaying his Highness. So I sat awhile, twirling my thumbs. Five minutes pa.s.sed, ten minutes pa.s.sed. I looked at my watch: it was almost half-past two. That draft, I told myself, won't be cashed to-day. I went to the window and looked out. I went to the door: there was no one in the hall but a chambermaid. I went back to my seat, and then, moved by my own uneasiness, I opened the drawer of the table. The box was gone! I took the drawer out. It was one that extended the entire width of the table: the further end of it had been cut off. I looked down and in through the place from which I had taken it. I could see into the next room! I pulled the table to one side, and there, just where the drawer had touched the door against which it had stood, was an oblong opening cut through the woodwork of the door itself. I was down-stairs in an instant. Gentlemen, the grand duke had gone to Philadelphia that very morning. No such person as Prince Zaroguine lodged in the hotel. The clerk came upstairs with me. 'That room,' he said, 'is occupied by a Frenchman, and the adjoining room belongs to a man who registered from Boston. Why, that's his picture there!' he exclaimed, pointing to the picture of the grand duke. 'I did not even know that they were acquainted. But they will be back; they have left their things; they haven't even paid their bills.' I did not wait for their return: if I had I might be waiting still. But I took the photograph, and down to Inspector Byrnes I posted. 'That,' said he, 'that is the picture of one of the 'cutest rogues in the land. He has as many names as the Czar of Russia himself.' And the original of that picture--Gentlemen, here,--Mr. Leigh, here,--colonel, here is the picture itself. I have kept it with me ever since. The original of that picture sits before you. Hold on to him, colonel. Jones, if you move I'll put a bullet through you. Mr. Leigh, do you ring for the police. Hold him, colonel.

Disgorge, you scoundrel, disgorge! I have got you at last!" And then, before the astonished gaze of Alphabet Jones, Colonel Barker faded in a mist, Mr. Fairbanks lost his rotundity, his black coat changed to a blue swallow-tail with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, he grew twenty years younger, and, so far from being violent, he seemed rather apologetic than otherwise.

"It's six o'clock, sir," he said. "Will you order anything before the bar closes?"

Alphabet blinked his eyes. He was lying in a cramped position on the sofa. He was uncomfortable and very hot. He pulled himself together and looked around. Save for the waiter and himself, the room was deserted.

"Is there any baccarat going on upstairs?" he asked.

"No, sir; the gentlemen are just going away."

"Well, well," he mused, "that was vivid. H'm! I'll work it up as an actual occurrence and send it on to the _Interstate_: it will be good for the two hundred and fifty which I meant to make at baccarat.--I say, waiter, get me a Remsen cooler, please."

A MAID OF MODERN ATHENS.

"It was this way," she said, and as she spoke she stooped and flicked a speck of dust from her habit. "It was this way: The existence which I lead in the minds of other people is absolutely of no importance whatever. Now wait: I care a great deal whether school keeps or not, but in caring I try chiefly to be true to myself. I may stumble; I may not.

In any event I seek the best. As for the scandal of which you speak, that is nonsense. There is no criterion. That which is permissible here is inhibited yonder, and what is permissible yonder is inhibited here.

Scandal, indeed!"

There was something about her that stirred the pulse. She was fair; the sort of girl whose photograph is an abomination, and yet in whose face and being a charm resides, a charm intangible and coercive, inciting to better things. A Joan of Arc in a tailor-made gown.

"You remember how it was when we were younger--You--well, there is no use in going into that. You had a mother to think for you; I had no one.

I had to solve problems una.s.sisted. The weightiest of all was marriage, and that, in my quality of heiress, I found perplexing to a degree. But how is it possible, I asked myself, how can a girl pledge her life to a man of whom she knows absolutely nothing? For, practically speaking, what does the average girl know of the man whose name she takes? It may be different in the country, but in town! Listen to me; a girl 'comes out,' as the saying is; she meets a number of men, the majority of whom are more or less agreeable and well-bred--when she is present. But what are they when she is not? At dinners and routs, or when she receives them in her own house, they are at their best; if they are not they stay away. It is not so difficult to be agreeable once in awhile, but to be so always is a question not of mask but of nature. It seems to me that when an intelligent woman admires her brother it is because that brother is really an admirable man. Has she not every opportunity of judging?

But what opportunity is given to the girl whom a man happens to take in and out at dinner, or whom she sees for an hour or two now and then? You must admit that her facilities are slight. That was the way it was with me, and that was the way I fancied it would continue to be, and I determined that it was better to remain spinster forever than to take a man on trust and find that trust misplaced. Suspicious? No, I am not suspicious. When your husband bought this property did you think him suspicious because he had the t.i.tle searched? Very good; then perhaps you will tell me that the marriage contract is less important than the conveyance of real estate? Besides, my doubts on the subject of love would have defied a catalogue. When I read of the follies and transports of which it was reported to be the prime factor, I was puzzled. It seemed to me that I had either a fibre more or a fibre less than other girls, I could not comprehend. No man I had ever met--and certainly I had met many--had ever caused me so much as a fleeting emotion. There were men with whom I found speech agreeable and argument a pleasure, but, had they worn frocks instead of trousers, such enjoyment as I experienced would have been unimpaired. You see, it was purely mental.

And when--there, I remember one man in particular. As Stella said of Swift, he could talk beautifully about a broomstick. He knew the reason of things; he was up in cuneiform inscriptions and at home with meteorites; he was not prosy, and, what is more to the point, he never treated a subject as though it were a matter of life and death. He was not bad-looking, either, and he was the only man of my acquaintance who both understood Kant and got his coats from Poole. That man I liked very much. He was better than a book. I could ask him questions, a thing you can't do even of an encyclopaedia. One fine day the personal p.r.o.noun cropped out. We had been discussing Herbert Spencer's theory of conceivability, and abruptly, with an inappositeness which, now I think of it, would have been admirable on the stage, but which in the drawing-room was certainly misplaced, he asked me to take a walk with him down the aisle of the swellest church in the commonwealth. I mourned his loss, as we say. But wasn't it stupid of him? But what does get into men? Why should they think that, because a girl is liberal with odd evenings, she is pining for the marriage covenant?"

With the whip she held she gave the hem of her habit a sudden lash.

"That episode gave me food for thought. H'm. By-and-by the scene was occupied by a young man who was an authority on orchids, and wrote sonnets for the _Interstate_. My dear, a more guileful little wretch never breathed. When my previous young man disappeared, I felt that I had been hasty. I desired nothing so much as an increase in my store of knowledge, and I determined that if another opportunity occurred I would not be in such a hurry to shut the door on entertaining developments.

Consequently, when my poet turned up, I was as demure as you please. He was a fox, that man. He began with the fixed purpose of irritating me into liking him. The tactics he displayed were unique. He never came when I expected him, and when he did come he was careful to go just when he thought he had scored a point. If any other man happened in, he first eclipsed him and then left him to me. I saw through that game at once.

He understood perfectly that if I preferred the other man I was all the more obliged to him for going, and if I preferred him to the other man I was the sorrier to see him leave. In addition to this, whatever subject I broached, he led it by tangential flights to Love. That Machiavelli _en herbe_ knew that to talk love is to make love. And talk of love he did, no, but in the most impersonal manner. To hear him discant you would have thought his wings were sprouting. Love, as he expressed it, was a sentiment which enn.o.bled every other; a purifying and exalting light. It was the most gracious of despots. It banished the material; it beckoned to the ideal. It turned satiety into a vagabond that had not where to lay its head. It was the reduction of the world, creation, and all the universe to a single being. It was an enchanted upland, inhibited to the herd. It was a chimera to the vulgar, a crown to the refined. 'A perfect lover,' he said, 'must needs be an aristocrat.' And if you will believe me, I actually thought he meant what he said. In spite of myself, I was becoming interested. There were new horizons before me. I seemed to discern something hitherto unseen. My dear, for the moment I felt myself going. I was at the foot of his enchanted upland. I was almost willing to take him for guide. At first I had been merely amused. Once, even, when he quoted the 'Two souls with but a single thought,' I suggested that that must mean but half a thought apiece. The quiet dignity which he then displayed almost fetched me. He had the air of a prelate in whose presence an oaf has trampled on a crucifix. He kept up that sort of thing for two months. To me his sincerity was beyond peradventure. Not once did he speak in a personal way. I was beginning to wonder when he would stop beating about the bush, and I not only wondered, I believe I even wished that he would be a little more enterprising and a trifle less immaterial. Presently I detected a symptom or two which told me that the end of the beginning was in sight. I suppose my manner was more encouraging. In any event, one evening he took my hand and kissed it. From nine-and-ninety men out of a hundred I should have thought nothing of such a thing. In Europe it is an empty homage, a pantomime expressive of thanks. As I say, then, in any other man I should not have given it a second thought, but he had never done it before.

"The next day I lunched with Mrs. Bunker Hill. I mentioned his name; I suppose it was running in my mind. And then, my dear, f.a.n.n.y began. Well, the things she told me about that transcendental young man were of such a nature that when he next called I was not at home. He came again, of course. And again. He sent me a note which I returned unopened. That, I confess, was a foolish thing to do. It showed him that I was annoyed. I might better have left it unanswered. After all, there is nothing so impenetrable as silence. Finally, he got one of his friends to come and reconnoitre. Indeed, he did not desist until I had an opportunity of cutting him dead. I was angry, I admit it. And it was after that little experience that I determined, the next time I felt myself going, I would make sure beforehand where I was going to. H'm. I wonder what his sister thought of him? You see, it was not that I had fallen in love; the word was as unintelligible to me as before, but I had fancied that, through him, I might intercept some inkling of its meaning, and I was put out at having been tricked. _Ach! diese Manner!_"

Beneath descending night the sky was gold-barred and green. In the east the moon glittered like a sickle of tin. The air was warm and freighted with the odors of August. You could hear the crickets hum, and here and there was the spark of a fire-fly gyrating in loops of flame. From across the meadows came the slumbrous tinkle of a bell.

She raised a gloved hand to her brow and looked down at the yellow road.

To one who loved her, the Helen for whom the war of the world was fought was not so fair as she. And presently the hand moved about the brow, and, resting a second's s.p.a.ce on the coil just above the neck, fell again to her side.

"Well," she continued, "you can see how it was. Even before the illusion, disillusionment had come. That winter I went with the Bunker Hills to Monaco. Were it not for the riff-raff, that place would be a paradise in duodecimo. We had a villa, of course. One evening, shortly after our arrival, we went to the Casino. For the fun of the thing I put some money on the _Trente et Quarante_. I did nothing but win. It was tiresome; I would rather have lost; I had to speak to the dealer, and that, as you can fancy, was not to my liking. There was a great crowd.

One little old woman put money wherever I did. She won a lot, too. But one man, whom I could not help noticing, backed red when I was on black, and vice versa. He did it persistently, intentionally, and he lost every time. Finally one of the croupiers told me that my stake was above the maximum, and asked how much I would risk. I was tired of answering his questions, and I turned away. A lackey followed me with a salver covered with gold and notes--the money I had won. I didn't want it; I had not even a pocket to put it in, and the purse which I held in my hand would not have held a fraction of it. It was a nuisance. I turned it over to Bunker, and presently we all went out on the terrace that overhangs the sea. It was a perfect night. In the air was a caress, and from the Mediterranean came a tonic. While I was enjoying it all, a beggar ambled up on a crutch and begged a franc. I took from Bunker the money I had won and gave him thirty thousand. You should have heard Bunker then.

I actually believe that if I had been his wife instead of his guest he would have struck me. I suppose it was an absurd thing to do. But the next time you are in search of a new sensation do something of the same sort. The beggar became transfigured. He looked at the gold and notes, and then at me. I do not think I shall ever forget the expression in his face. Did you ever see a child asleep--a child to whom some wonderful dream has come? It was at once infantile and radiant. And all the while Bunker was abusing me like a pickpocket. The beggar gave me one look, dropped on his knees, caught the hem of my skirt, kissed it, threw away his crutch, and _ran_. I burst out laughing, and Bunker, in spite of his rage, burst out laughing too. f.a.n.n.y called us a pair of idiots, and said that if I was as lavish as that it would be better and wiser, and far more Christian, to keep my money for indigent and deserving Bostonese, than to bestow it as a premium on Monacean vice and effrontery. Just as she was working herself into big words and short sentences, the man whom I had noticed at the tables came along. He had met her before, and now, as he expressed it, he precipitated himself to renew the expression of his homage. f.a.n.n.y, after introducing him to me, began at once on the tale of my misconduct. He had a complexion of the cream-tint order, and a moustache blacker than hate. He was a Florentine, I discovered, a marquis with a name made up of v's, sonorous o's, and n's. We had found a table, and Bunker ordered some ices. The night was really so perfect, and the ice so good, that, like Mme. de Stael over her sherbet in moonlit Venice, I almost wished it were a sin to sit there. The marquis was in very good form and inclined to do the devoted on the slightest provocation.

"'Is mademoiselle,' he asked me, 'is mademoiselle as disdainful of the heart as she is of gold?'

"'Absolutely,' I answered--a remark which may have sounded sn.o.bbish, but still was wholly true.

"'Ah!' he exclaimed, 'there are birds that do not sing untaught.'

"'You are beginning well,' I thought.

"The next day he lunched with us, and came again in the evening. In addition to his marquisate, he had a fluty tenorino voice; what they call a _voix de salon_. He sang all sorts of things for us, and he sang them very well. When the air was lively he looked at f.a.n.n.y, when it was sentimental he looked at me. Thereafter I saw a great deal of him. One day we would make up a party for Nice, on another we would go to San Remo, or else back in the mountains, or to Gra.s.se. Of course, as you know, customs over there are such that he had no opportunity of being alone with me, even for a second; but he had an art of making love in public which must have been the result of long practice. It was both open and discreet. It was not in words; it was in the inflection of the voice and in the paying of the thousand and one little attentions which foreigners perform so well. Now, to me, a tiara might be becoming, but it is an ornament for which I have never felt the vaguest covetousness.

Moreover, I had no intention of marrying an Italian, however fabulous the ancestry of that Italian might be. And, besides, the attentions of which I was the apparent object were, I knew, addressed less to me than to the blue eyes of my check-book. The Florentine n.o.bleman who is disposed to marry a dowerless American is yet to be heard from. This by the way. However, I accepted the attentions with becoming grace, and marked the cunning of his tricks. One evening he did not put in an appearance, but at midnight, I heard, on the road before my window, the tinkle of a guitar. I did not need to peer through the curtains to know from whom it came. First he sang a song of Tosti's, and then the serenade from "Don Pasquale:"

'Com' e gentil, la notte in mezz' Aprile.

Poi quando sar morto, tu piangerai Ma ritornarmi in vita, tu non potrai.'

"Sentimental? Yes, sentimental to the last degree. But on the Riviera, in spring, and at night, one's fancy turns to that sort of thing with astounding ease. I listened with unalloyed pleasure. It was like a Boccaccian echo. And as I listened I wondered whether I should ever learn what love might be. The idea of taking a course of lessons from a man who strummed on a guitar in front of my window never entered my head. The next day f.a.n.n.y came to me in a state of great excitement. The guitarist, it appeared, had, with all proper and due formality, asked leave to place his coronet at my feet. _Ce que j'ai ri!_

"You can hear f.a.n.n.y from here. She accused me of flirting with the man.

'You have no right,' she said, 'to treat him as though he were a college boy at Mt. Desert.' What he had done to make her so vicious I never discovered. It must have been the t.i.tle, a t.i.tle always went to her head. Poor f.a.n.n.y! That evening, when he came, she declined to be present. I had to see him alone. My dear, he was too funny. He had prepared a little speech which he got off very well, only at the end of it he lapsed into English. 'We will loaf,' he said, 'we will be always loafers.' He meant, of course, to a.s.sert that we should love and be always lovers, but the intricacies of our p.r.o.nunciation were too much for him. I could have died, it was so amusing. I managed, however, to keep a straight face. 'Marquis,' I said, 'I am deeply honored, but your invitation is one that I am unable to accept.' A more astounded man you never saw. He really thought that he had but to ask, and it would be given. He declined to take No for an answer. He said he would wait.

Actually, he was so pertinacious that I had to drag f.a.n.n.y up to Paris.

He followed us in the next train. There was no getting rid of him at all. If he sent me one note he sent me a hundred, and notes ten pages each, at the very least. Finally, as you heard, he tried the dramatic.

One afternoon, while I was out shopping, he bribed a waiter at the hotel where we lodged. When I returned, there he was, waiting for me. 'At last,' he cried, 'at last we are face to face. You think I do not love.

Cruel one, behold me! I love as no mortal ever loved before. See, I die at your feet!' And there, before my very eyes, he whipped out a pistol, pulled the trigger, tumbled over and seemed fully disposed to carry out the programme to the end. He had shot himself; there was no doubt about that; but he had shot himself in such an intelligent manner, that, though there was blood enough to frighten a sensitive young person out of her wits, yet of danger there was none at all. Talk to me about comedians! When I discovered the farce which had been enacted with the sole object of stirring my sympathies into affection, I was flabbergasted at the wiles of man.

"It was after that episode that I returned to Beacon Street. It was there that what you are pleased to call the scandal began. f.a.n.n.y, whose desire to marry me off was simply epic, one day caught an Englishman; young, so she said, and good-looking. And that Englishman, she made up her mind, I should ensnare. f.a.n.n.y, as you know, was possessed with an ungratified desire to pay annual visits to swell country houses on the other side. Hence, I suppose, her efforts. Having caught the Englishman, the next step was to serve him up in becoming form. To that end she gave a tentative dinner. I got to it late; in fact, I was the last to arrive.

f.a.n.n.y, I could see, was in a state of feverish excitement. She presented to me one or two men, whose names I did not catch, and a moment later one of them gave me his arm. When we were seated at table, and while he was sticking a chrysanthemum in his b.u.t.ton-hole, I glanced at the card on his plate. It bore for legend Lord Alfred Harrow. It was then I took my first look at him. My dear, he was the ugliest man I have ever seen; he was so ugly that he was positively attractive. His mouth was large enough to sing a duet, but his teeth were whiter than mine."

As she spoke she curled her lips.

"There was no hair on his face, and his features were those of a middle-aged wizard. But about him was the atmosphere of health, of strength, too, and his hands, though bronzed and sinewy, were perfect. I knew he was a thoroughbred at once. 'And how do you like the States?' I asked. He was squeezing some lemon on an oyster, and I noticed that when some white wine was offered him he turned the gla.s.s upside down. 'Very much,' he answered; 'and you?' There was more of that sort of thing, and finally I asked him if, like other Englishmen, he thought that Boston suggested one of his provincial towns. 'There seems to be some mistake,'

he said. 'I was going into the Somerset five minutes ago when Hill coralled me. He told me that his wife was giving a dinner, and that at the last moment one of the bidden had wired to the effect that he was prevented from coming. Whereupon Mrs. Hill had packed him off to the club, with instructions to bring back the first man he met. I happened to be that man.' He took up the card. 'Lord Alfred is, I fancy, the delinquent. My name,' he added, 'is Mr. St.i.tt--Ferris St.i.tt,' he continued, as though apologizing for its inconsequence.