April's Lady Part 14

Instinctively she glances at one of the long mirrors that line the walls from floor to ceiling. Involuntarily her hands rush to her head. She gives a little touch to her gown. And now is sitting in a lounging-chair, a little pale still perhaps, but in all other respects the very picture of unconsciousness. It is--it must be----

It isn't, however.

Mr. Browne, opening the door in his own delightfully breezy fas.h.i.+on that generally plays old Harry with the hinges and blows the ornaments off the nearest tables, advances towards her with arms outspread, and the liveliest admiration writ upon his features, which, to say the truth, are of goodly proportions.

"Oh! Thou wonder of the world!" cries he in accents ecstatic. He has been reading "Cleopatra" (that most charming of books) a.s.siduously for the past few days, during which time he has made himself an emphatic nuisance to his friends: perpetual quotations, however apt or salutary, proving as a rule a bore.

"That will do, d.i.c.ky! We _all_ know about that," says Miss Kavanagh, who is a little unnerved, a little impatient perhaps. Mr. Browne, however, is above being snubbed by anyone. He continues on his way rejoicing.

"Thou living flame!" cries he, making what he fondly supposes to be a stage att.i.tude. "Thou thing of beauty. Though _fleshpot of Egypt_!"

He has at last surpa.s.sed himself! He stands silent waiting for the plaudits of the crowd. The crowd, however, is unappreciative.

"Nonsense!" says Miss Kavanagh shortly. "I wonder you aren't tired of _making_ people tired. Your eternal quotations would destroy the patience of an anchorite. And as for that last sentence of yours, you know very well it isn't in Rider Haggard's book. He'd have been ashamed of it."

"_Would_ he? Bet you he wouldn't! And if it isn't in his book, all I can say is it ought to have been. Mere oversight leaving it out. He _will_ be sorry if I drop him a line about it. Shouldn't wonder if it produced a new edition. But for my part, I believe it _is_ in the book.

Fleshpots, Egypt, you know; hardly possible to separate 'em now from the public mind."

"Well; he could separate them any way. There isn't a single word about them in the book from start to finish."

"No? D'ye say so?" Here Mr. Browne grows lost in thought.

"Fleshpots--pots--hot pots; hot _potting_! Hah!" He draws himself together with all the manner of one who has gone down deep into a thing, and comes up from it full of knowledge. "I've 'mixed those babies up,'"

says he mildly. "But still I can hardly believe that that last valuable addition to Mr. Haggard's work is all my own."

"Distinctly your own," with a suggestion of scorn, completely thrown away upon the receiver of it.

"D'ye say so! By Jove! And very neat too! Didn't think I had it in me.

After all to write a book is an easy matter; here am I, who never thought about it, was able to form an entire sentence full of the most exquisite wit and humor without so much as knowing I was doing it. Tell you what, Joyce, I'll send it to the author with a card and my compliments you know. Horrid thing to be _mean_ about anything, and if I can help him out with a 999th edition or so, I'll be doing him a good turn. Eh?"

"I suppose you think you are amusing," says Miss Kavanagh, regarding him with a critical eye.

"My good child, I _know_ that expression," says Mr. Browne, amiably. "I know it by heart. It means that you think I'm a fool. It's politer now-a-days to look things than to say them, but wait awhile and you'll _see_. Come; I'll bet you a s.h.i.+lling to a sovereign that he'll be delighted with my suggestion, and put it into his next edition without delay. No charge! Given away! The lot for a penny-three-farthings. In fact, I make it a present to him. n.o.ble, eh? Give it to him for _nothing_!"

"About its price," says Miss Kavanagh thoughtfully.

"Think you so? You are dull to-night, Jocelyne. Flashes of wit pa.s.s you by without warming you. Yet I tell you this idea that has flowed from my brain is a priceless one. Never mind the door--he's not coming yet.

Attend to me."

"_Who's_ not coming?" demands she, the more angrily in that she is growing miserably aware of the brilliant color that is slowly but surely bedecking her cheeks.

"Never mind! It's a mere detail; attend to _me_ and I entreat you," says Mr. Browne, who is now quite in his element, having made sure of the fact that she is expecting somebody. It doesn't matter in the least who to Mr. Browne, expectation is the thing wherein to catch the embarra.s.sment of Miss Kavanagh, and forthwith he sets himself gaily to the teazing of her.

"Attend to _what_?" says she with a little frown.

"If you had studied your Bible, Jocelyne, with that care that I should have expected from you, you would have remembered that forty odd years the Israelites hankered after those very fleshpots of Egypt to which I have been alluding. Now I appeal to you, as a sensible girl, would anybody hanker after anything for forty odd years (_very_ odd years as it happens), unless it was to their advantage to get it; unless, indeed, the object pursued was _priceless_!"

"You ask too much of _this_ sensible girl," says Miss Kavanagh, with a carefully manufactured yawn. "Really, dear d.i.c.ky, you must forgive me if I say I haven't gone into it as yet, and that I don't suppose I shall ever _see_ the necessity for going into it."

"But, my good child, you must see that those respectable people, the Israelites, wouldn't have pursued a mere shadow for forty years."

"That's just what I _don't_ see. There are such a number of fools everywhere, in every age, that one couldn't tell."

"This is evasion," says Mr. Browne sternly. "To bring you face to face with facts must be my very unpleasant if distinct duty. Joyce, do you dare to doubt for one moment that I speak aught but the truth? Will you deny that Cleopatra, that old serpent of the----"

"Ha--ha--ha," laughs Joyce ironically. "I wish she could hear you. Your life wouldn't be worth a moment's purchase."

"Mere slip. Serpent of _old_ Nile. Doesn't matter in the least," says Mr. Browne airily, "because she couldn't hear me as it happens. My dear girl, follow out the argument. Cleopatra, metaphorically speaking, was a fleshpot, because the world hankered after her. And--you're another."

"Really, d.i.c.ky, I must protest against your talking slang to me."

"Where does the slang come in? You're another fleshpot. I meant to say--or convey--because _we_ all hanker after you."

"Do you?" with rising wrath. "May I ask what hankering means?"

"You had better not," says Mr. Browne mysteriously. "It was one of the rites of Ancient Kem!"

"Now there is _one_ thing, d.i.c.ky," says Miss Kavanagh, her wrath boiling over. "I won't be called names. I won't be called a _fleshpot_. You'll draw the line there if you please."

"My dear girl, why not? Those delectable pots must have been _bric-a-brac_ of the most _recherche_ description. Of a most delicate shape, no doubt. Of a pattern, tint, formation, general get up--not to be hoped for in these prosaic days."

"Nonsense," indignantly. She is fairly roused now, and Mr. Browne regarding her with a proud eye, tells himself he is about to have his reward at last. "You know very well that the term 'fleshpots' referred to what was _in_ the pots, not to the pots themselves."

"That's all you know about it. That's where your fatal ignorance comes in, my poor Joyce," says he, with immense compa.s.sion. "Search your Bible from cover to cover, and I defy you to find a single mention of the contents of those valuable bits of _bric-a-brac_. Of flesh_pots_--heavy emphasis on the _pots_--and ten fingers down at once if you please--we read continually as being hankered after by the Israelites, who then, as now, were evidently avid collectors."

"You've been having champagne, d.i.c.ky," says Miss Kavanagh, regarding him with a judicial eye.

"So have you. But I can't see what that excellent beverage has got to do with the ancient Jews. Keep to the point. Did you ever hear that they expressed a longing for the _flesh_ of Egypt? No. So far so good. The pots themselves were the objects of their admiration. During that remarkable run of theirs through the howling wilderness they, one and all, to a _man_, betrayed the true aesthetic tendency. They raved incessantly for the girl--I beg pardon--the _land_ they had left behind them. The land that contained those priceless jars."

"I wonder how you can be so silly," says Miss Kavanagh disdainfully.

Will he _never_ go away! If he stays, and if--the other--comes----

"Silly! my good child. _How_ silly! Why everything goes to prove the probability of my statement. The taste for articles of _vertu_--for antiquities--for fossils of all descriptions that characterized them then, has lived to the present day. _Then_ they worried after old china, and who shall deny that now they have an overwhelming affection for old clo'."

"Well; your folly doesn't concern me," says Miss Kavanagh, gathering up her skirts with an evident intention of shaking off the dust of his presence from her feet and quitting him.

"I am sorry that you should consider it folly," says Mr. Browne sorrowfully. "I should not have said so much about it perhaps but that I wanted to prove to you that in calling _you_ a fleshpot I only meant to----"

"I won't be called that," interrupts Miss Kavanagh angrily. "It's _horrid_! It makes me feel quite _fat_! Now, once for all, d.i.c.ky, I forbid it. I won't have it."

"I don't see how you are to get out of it," says Mr. Browne, shaking his head and hands in wild deprecation. "Fleshpots were desirable articles--you're another--ergo--you're a fleshpot. See the argument?"

"No I don't," indignantly. "I see only you--and--I wish I _didn't_."

"Very rude; _very_!" says Mr. Browne, regretfully. "Yet I entreat thee not to leave me without one other word. Follow up the argument--_do_.

Give me an answer to it."

"Not one," walking to the door.