Love in a Cloud: A Comedy in Filigree

I

THE MISCHIEF OF A MAID

"No, my dear May, I positively will not hear another word about 'Love in a Cloud.' I am tired to death of the very sound of its stupid name."

"Oh, Mrs. Harbinger," May Calthorpe responded, eagerly defensive, "it isn't a stupid name."

Mrs. Harbinger settled herself back into the pile of gay cushions in the corner of the sofa, and went on without heeding the interruption: —

"I have heard nothing but 'Love in a Cloud,' 'Love in a Cloud,' until it gives me a feeling of nausea. Nobody talks of anything else."

May nodded her head triumphantly, a bright sparkle in her brown eyes.

"That only shows what a perfectly lovely book it is," she declared.

Mrs. Harbinger laughed, and bent forward to arrange a ribbon at May's throat.

"I don't care if it is the loveliest book ever written," she responded; "I won't have it stuffed down my throat morning, noon, and night. Why, if you'll believe it, my husband, who never reads novels, not only read it, but actually kept awake over it, and after that feat he'll talk of it for months."

Pretty May Calthorpe leaned forward with more animation than the mere discussion of an anonymous novel seemed to call for, and caught one of her hostess's hands in both her own.

"Oh, did Mr. Harbinger like it?" she asked. "I am so interested to know what he thinks of it."

"You never will know from me, my dear," was the cool response. "I've forbidden him to speak of it. I tell you that I am bored to death with the old thing."

May started up suddenly from the sofa where she had been sitting beside Mrs. Harbinger. With rather an offended air she crossed to the fireplace, and began to arrange her hat before the mirror over the mantel. Mrs. Harbinger, smiling to herself, gave her attention to setting in order the cups on the tea-table before her. The sun of the April afternoon came in through the window, and from the polished floor of the drawing-room was reflected in bright patches on the ceiling; the brightness seemed to gather about the young, girlish face which looked out from the glass, with red lips and willful brown hair in tendrils over the white forehead. Yet as she faced her reflection, May pouted and put on the look of one aggrieved.

"I am sorry I mentioned the book if you are so dreadfully against it," she observed stiffly. "I was only going to tell you a secret about the author."

Mrs. Harbinger laughed lightly, flashing a comical grimace at her visitor's back.

"There you go again, like everybody else! Do you suppose, May, that there is anybody I know who hasn't told me a secret about the author? Why, I'm in the confidence of at least six persons who cannot deny that they wrote it."

May whirled around swiftly, leaving her reflection so suddenly that it, offended, as quickly turned its back on her.

"Who are they?" she demanded.

"Well," the other answered quizzically, "Mrs. Croydon, for one."

"Mrs. Croydon! Why, nobody could dream that she wrote it!"

"But they do. It must have been written by some one that is inside the social ring; and there is a good deal in the style that is like her other books. I do wish," she went on, with a note of vexation in her voice, "that Graham would ever forget to mix up my two tea-services. He is a perfect genius for forgetting anything he ought to remember."

She walked, as she spoke, to the bell, and as she passed May the girl sprang impulsively toward her, catching both her hands.

"Oh, Mrs. Harbinger!" she cried breathlessly. "I must tell you something before anybody comes."

"Good gracious, May, what is it now? You are as impulsive as a pair of bellows that could blow themselves."

The butler came ponderously in, in reply to her ring as she spoke, and the two women for the moment suspended all sign of emotion.

"Graham," Mrs. Harbinger said, with the air of one long suffering and well-nigh at the end of her patience, "you have mixed the teacups again. Take out the tray, and bring in the cups with the broad gold band."

Graham took up the tray and departed, his back radiating protest until the portière dropped behind him. When he was gone Mrs. Harbinger drew May down to a seat on the sofa, and looked at her steadily.

"You evidently have really something to tell," she said; "and I have an idea that it's mischief. Out with it."

May drew back with heightened color.

"Oh, I don't dare to tell you!" she exclaimed.

"Is it so bad as that?"

"Oh, it isn't bad, only – Oh, I don't know what in the world you will think!"

"No matter what I think. I shan't tell you, my dear. No woman ever does that."

May regarded her with a mixture of curiosity and wistfulness in her look.

"You are talking that way just to give me courage," she said.

"Well, then," the other returned, laughing, "take courage, and tell me. What have you been doing?"

"Only writing letters."

"Only! Good gracious, May! writing letters may be worse than firing dynamite bombs. Women's letters are apt to be double-back-action infernal-machines; and girls' letters are a hundred times worse. Whom did you write to?"

"To the author of 'Love in a Cloud.'"

"To the author of 'Love in a Cloud'? How did you know him?"

Miss Calthorpe cast down her eyes, swallowed as if she were choking, and then murmured faintly: "I don't know him."

"What? Don't know him?" her friend demanded explosively.

"Only the name he puts on his book: Christopher Calumus."

"Which of course isn't his name at all. How in the world came you to write to him?"

The air of Mrs. Harbinger became each moment more judicially moral, while that of May was correspondingly humble and deprecatory. In the interval during which the forgetful Graham returned with the teacups they sat silent. The culprit was twisting nervously a fold of her frock, creasing it in a manner which would have broken the heart of the tailor who made it. The judge regarded her with a look which was half impatient, but full, too, of disapproving sternness.

"How could you write to a man you don't know," insisted Mrs. Harbinger, – "a man of whom you don't even know the name? How could you do such a thing?"

"Why, you see," stammered May, "I thought – that is – Well, I read the book, and – Oh, you know, Mrs. Harbinger, the book is so perfectly lovely, and I was just wild over it, and I – I – "

"You thought that being wild over it wasn't enough," interpolated the hostess in a pause; "but you must make a fool of yourself over it."

"Why, the book was so evidently written by a gentleman, and a man that had fine feelings," the other responded, apparently plucking up courage, "that I – You see, I wanted to know some things that the book didn't tell, and I – "

"You wrote to ask!" her friend concluded, jumping up, and standing before her companion. "Oh, for sheer infernal mischief commend me to one of you demure girls that look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouths! If your father had known enough to have you educated at home instead of abroad, you'd have more sense."

"Oh, a girl abroad never would dare to do such a thing," May put in naïvely.

"But you thought that in America a girl might do what she pleases. Why, do you mean to tell me that you didn't understand perfectly well that you had no business to write to a man that you don't know? I don't believe any such nonsense."

May blushed very much, and hung her head.

"But I wanted so much to know him," she murmured almost inaudibly.

Mrs. Harbinger regarded her a moment with the expression of a mother who has reached that stage of exasperation which is next halting-place before castigation. Then she turned and walked vehemently up the drawing-room and back, a quick sprint which seemed to have very little effect in cooling her indignation.

"How long has this nonsense been going on?" she demanded, with a new sternness in her voice.

"For – for six weeks," answered May tearfully. Then she lifted her swimming eyes in pitiful appeal, and proffered a plea for mercy. "Of course I didn't use my own name."

"Five or six weeks!" cried Mrs. Harbinger, throwing up her hands.

"But at first we didn't write more than once or twice a week."

The other stared as if May were exploding a succession of torpedoes under her very nose.

"But – but," she stammered, apparently fairly out of breath with amazement, "how often do you write now?"

May sprang up in her turn. She faced her mentor with the truly virtuous indignation of a girl who has been proved to be in the wrong.

"I shan't tell you another word!" she declared.

Mrs. Harbinger seized her by the shoulders, and fairly pounced upon her in the swoop of her words.

"How often do you write now?" she repeated. "Tell me before I shake you!"

The brief defiance of May vanished like the flare of a match in a wind-storm.

"Every day," she answered in a voice hardly audible.

"Every day!" echoed the other in a tone of horror.

Her look expressed that utter consternation which is beyond any recognition of sin, but is aroused only by the most flagrant breach of social propriety. Again the culprit put in what was evidently a prayer for pity, couched in a form suggested by instinctive feminine cunning.

"Oh, Mrs. Harbinger, if you only knew what beautiful letters he writes!"

"What do I care for his beautiful letters? What did you want to drag me into this mess for? Now I shall have to do something."

"Oh, no, no, Mrs. Harbinger!" cried May, clasping her hands. "Don't do anything. You won't have to do anything. I had to tell you when he is coming here."

Mrs. Harbinger stared at the girl with the mien of one who is convinced that somebody's wits are hopelessly gone, and is uncertain whether they are those of herself or of her friend.

"Coming here?" she repeated helplessly. "When?"

"This afternoon. I am really going to meet him!" May ran on, flashing instantly from depression into smiles and animation. "Oh, I am so excited!"

Mrs. Harbinger seized the girl again by the shoulder, and this time with an indignation evidently personal as well as moral.

"Have you dared to ask a strange man to meet you at my house, May Calthorpe?"

The other cringed, and writhed her shoulder out of the clutch of her hostess.

"Of course not," she responded, taking in her turn with instant readiness the tone of just resentment. "He wrote me that he would be here."

The other regarded May in silence a moment, apparently studying her in the light of these new revelations of character. Then she turned and walked thoughtfully to a chair, leaving May to sit down again on the sofa by which they had been standing. Mrs. Harbinger was evidently going over in her mind the list of possible authors who might be at her afternoon tea that day.

"Then 'Love in a Cloud' was written by some one we know," she observed reflectively. "When did you write to him last?"

"When I was here yesterday, waiting for you to go to the matinée."

"Do you expect to recognize this unknown paragon?" asked Mrs. Harbinger with an air perhaps a thought too dispassionate.

A charming blush came over May's face, but she answered with perfect readiness: —

"He asked me to give him a sign."

"What kind of a sign?"

"He said he would wear any flower I named if I would – "

"Would wear one, too, you minx! That's why you have a red carnation at your throat, is it? Oh, you ought to be shut up on bread and water for a month!"

May showed signs of relapsing again into tears.

"I declare, I think you are just as horrid as you can be," she protested. "I wish I hadn't told you a word. I'm sure there was no need that I should. I – "

The lordly form of Graham the butler appeared at the drawing-room door.

"Mrs. Croydon," he announced.

II

THE MADNESS OF A MAN

While Mrs. Harbinger was receiving from May Calthorpe the disjointed confession of that young woman's rashness, her husband, Tom Harbinger, was having a rather confused interview with a client in his down-town office. The client was a middle-aged man, with bushy, sandy hair, and an expression of invincible simplicity not unmixed with obstinacy. Tom was evidently puzzled how to take his client or what to do with him. He had, as they talked, the air of being uncertain whether Mr. Barnstable was in earnest, and of not knowing how far to treat him seriously.

"But why do you come to me?" he asked at length, looking at his client as one regards a prize rebus. "Of course 'Love in a Cloud,' like any other book, has a publisher. Why don't you go there to find out who wrote it?"

The other shook his head wearily. He was a chunky man, seeming to be made largely of oleaginous material, and appearing to be always over-worn with the effort of doing anything with muscles and determination hopelessly flabby despite his continual persistence.

"I've been to them," he returned; "but they won't tell."

"Then why not let the matter pass? It seems to me – "

The other set his square jaw the more firmly amid its abundant folds of flabby flesh.

"Let it pass?" he interrupted with heavy excitement. "If something isn't done to stop the infernal impudence of these literary scribblers there will be no peace in life. There is nothing sacred! They ought to be punished, and I'll follow this rascal if it costs me every dollar I'm worth. I came to you because I thought you'd sympathize with me."

Mr. Harbinger moved uneasily in his chair like a worm on a hook.

"Why, really, Barnstable," he said, "I feel as you do about the impudence of writers nowadays, and I'd like to help you if I could; but – "

The other broke in with a solemn doggedness which might well discourage any hope of his being turned from his purpose by argument.

"I mean to bring suit for libel, and that's the whole of it."

"Perhaps then," the lawyer responded with ill concealed irritation, "you will be good enough to tell me whom the suit is to be against."

"Who should it be against? The author of 'Love in a Cloud,' of course."

"But we don't know who the author of that cursed book is."

"I know we don't know; but, damme, we must find out. Get detectives; use decoy advertisements; do anything you like. I'll pay for it."

Mr. Harbinger shrugged his shoulders, and regarded his client with an expression of entire hopelessness.

"But I'm not in the detective business."

The other gave no evidence of being in the least affected by the statement.

"Of course a lawyer expects to find out whatever is necessary in conducting his clients' business," he remarked, with the air of having disposed of that point. "There must be a hundred ways of finding out who wrote the book. An author ought not to be harder to catch than a horse-thief, and they get those every day. When you've caught him, you just have him punished to the extent of the law."

Harbinger rose from his chair and began to walk up and down with his hands in his pockets. The other watched him in silence, and for some moments nothing was said. At length the lawyer stopped before his client, and evidently collected himself for a final effort.

"But consider," he said, "what your case is."

"My case is a good case if there is any justice in the country. The man that wrote that book has insulted my wife. He has told her story in his confounded novel, and everybody is laughing over her divorce. It is infamous, Harbinger, infamous!"

He so glowed and smouldered with inner wrath that the folds of his fat neck seemed to soften and to be in danger of melting together. His little eyes glowed, and his bushy hair bristled with indignation. He doubled his fist, and shook it at Harbinger as if he saw before him the novelist who had intruded upon his private affairs, and he meant to settle scores with him on the spot.

"But nobody knew that you had a wife," Harbinger said. "You came here from Chicago without one, and we all thought that you were a bachelor."

"I haven't a wife; that's just the trouble. She left me four years ago; but I don't see that that makes any difference. I'm fond of her just the same; and I won't have her put into an anonymous book."

Harbinger sat down again, and drew his chair closer to that in which the other seethed, molten with impotent wrath.

"Just because there's a divorced woman in 'Love in a Cloud,'" he said, "you propose to bring a suit for libel against the author. If you will pardon me, it strikes me as uncommon nonsense."

Barnstable boiled up as a caldron of mush breaks into thick, spluttering bubbles.

"Oh, it strikes you as uncommon nonsense, does it? Damme, if it was your wife you'd look at it differently. Isn't it your business to do what your clients want done?"

"Oh, yes; but it's also my business to tell them when what they want is folly."

"Then it's folly for a man to resent an insult to his wife, is it? The divorce court didn't make a Pawnee Indian of me. My temper may be incompatible, but, damme, Harbinger, I'm human."

Harbinger began a laugh, but choked the bright little bantling as soon as it saw the light. He leaned forward, and laid his hand on the other's knee.

"I understand your feelings, Barnstable," he said, "and I honor you for them; but do consider a little. In the first place, there is no probability that you could make a jury believe that the novelist meant you and your wife at all. Think how many divorce suits there are, and how well that story would fit half of them. What you would do would be to drag to light all the old story, and give your wife the unpleasantness of having everything talked over again. You would injure yourself, and you could hardly fail to give very serious pain to her."

Barnstable stared at him with eyes which were full of confusion and of helplessness.

"I don't want to hurt her," he stammered.

"What do you want to do?"

The client cast down his eyes, and into his sallow cheeks came a dull flush.

"I wanted to protect her," he answered slowly; "and I wanted – I wanted to prove to her that – that I'd do what I could for her, if we were divorced."

The face of the other man softened; he took the limp hand of his companion and shook it warmly.

"There are better ways of doing it than dragging her name before the court," he said. "I tell you fairly that the suit you propose would be ridiculous. It would make you both a laughing-stock, and in the end come to nothing."

The square jaw was still firmly set, but the small eyes were more wistful than ever.

"But I must do something," Barnstable said. "I can't stand it not to do anything."

Harbinger rose with the air of a man who considers the interview ended.

"There is nothing that you can do now," he replied. "Just be quiet, and wait. Things will come round all right if you have patience; but don't be foolish. A lawyer learns pretty early in his professional life that there are a good many things that must be left to right themselves."

Barnstable rose in turn. He seemed to be trying hard to adjust his mind to a new view of the situation, but it was evident enough that his brain was not of the sort to yield readily to fresh ideas of any kind. He examined his hat carefully, passing his thumb and forefinger round the rim as if to assure himself that it was all there; then he cleared his throat, and regarded the lawyer wistfully.

"But I must do something," he repeated, with an air half apologetic. "I can't just let the thing go, can I?"

"You can't do anything but let it go," was the answer. "Some time you will be glad that you did let it be. Take my word for it."

Barnstable shook his head mournfully.

"Then you take away my chance," he began, "of doing something – "

He paused in evident confusion.

"Of doing something?" repeated Harbinger.

"Why, something, you know, to please – "

"Oh, to please your wife? Well, just wait. Something will turn up sooner or later. Speaking of wives, I promised Mrs. Harbinger to come home to a tea or some sort of a powwow. What time is it?"

"Yes, a small tea," Barnstable repeated with a queer look. "Pardon me, but is it too intrusive in me to ask if I may go home with you?"

Harbinger regarded him in undisguised amazement; and quivers of embarrassment spread over Barnstable's wavelike folds of throat and chin.

"Of course it seems to you very strange," the client went on huskily; "and I suppose it is etiquettsionally all wrong. Do you think your wife would mind much?"

"Mrs. Harbinger," the lawyer responded, his voice much cooler than before, "will not object to anybody I bring home."

The acquaintance of the two men was no more than that which comes from casual meetings at the same club. The club was, however, a good one, and membership was at least a guarantee of a man's respectability.

"I happen to know," Barnstable proceeded, getting so embarrassed that there was reason to fear that in another moment his tongue would cleave to the roof of his mouth and his husky voice become extinct altogether, "that a person that I want very much to see will be there; and I will take it as very kind – if you think it don't matter, – that is, if your wife – "

"Oh, Mrs. Harbinger won't mind. Come along. Wait till I get my hat and my bag. A lawyer's green bag is in Boston as much a part of his dress as his coat is."

The lawyer stuffed some papers into his green bag, rolled down the top of his desk, and took up his hat. The visitor had in the meantime been picking from his coat imaginary specks of lint and smoothing his unsmoothable hair.

"I hope I look all right," Barnstable said nervously. "I – I dressed before I came here. I thought perhaps you would be willing – "

"Oh, ho," interrupted Harbinger. "Then this whole thing is a ruse, is it? You never really meant to bring a suit for libel?"

The face of the other hardened again.

"Yes, I did," was his answer; "and I'm by no means sure that I've given it up yet."

III

THE BABBLE OF A TEA

The entrance of Mrs. Croydon into Mrs. Harbinger's drawing-room was accompanied by a rustling of stuffs, a fluttering of ribbons, and a nodding of plumes most wonderful to ear and eye. The lady was of a complexion so striking that the redness of her cheeks first impressed the beholder, even amid all the surrounding luxuriance of her toilet. Her eyes were large and round, and of a very light blue, offering to friend or foe the opportunity of comparing them to turquoise or blue china, and so prominent as to exercise on the sensitive stranger the fascination of a deformity from which it seems impossible to keep the glance. Mrs. Croydon was rather short, rather broad, extremely consequential, and evidently making always a supreme effort not to be overpowered by her overwhelming clothes. She came in now like a yacht decorated for a naval parade, and moving before a slow breeze.

Mrs. Harbinger advanced a step to meet her guest, greeting the new-comer in words somewhat warmer than the tone in which they were spoken.

"How do you do, Mrs. Croydon. Delighted to see you."

"How d' y' do?" responded the flutterer, an arch air of youthfulness struggling vainly with the unwilling confession of her face that she was no longer on the sunny side of forty. "How d' y' do, Miss Calthorpe? Delighted to find you here. You can tell me all about your cousin Alice's engagement."

Miss Calthorpe regarded the new-comer with a look certainly devoid of enthusiasm, and replied in a tone not without a suggestion of frostiness: —

"On the contrary I did not know that she was engaged."

"Oh, she is; to Count Shimbowski."

"Count Shimbowski and Alice Endicott?" put in Mrs. Harbinger. "Is that the latest? Sit down, Mrs. Croydon. Really, it doesn't seem to me that it is likely that such a thing could be true, and the relatives not be notified."

She reseated herself as she spoke, and busied herself with the tea-equipage. May rather threw herself down than resumed her seat.

"Certainly it can't be true," the latter protested. "The idea of Alice's being engaged and we not know it!"

"But it's true; I have it direct," insisted Mrs. Croydon; "Miss Wentstile told Mr. Bradish, and he told me."

May sniffed rather inelegantly.