Chapter II

Miss Margaret Donohoe--popularly known in the regiment as “Peggy,” and, as it will be remembered, betrothed to Private Dancey Juxon, V. C.--Miss Margaret Donohoe was not summoned to the bedside of her hitherto-reputed father in time to hear from his own lips the secret of her birth. She was trimming an old hat with new crape for mourning exigencies, the day after the Sergeant had been consigned with the usual military honors to the Catholic division of the cemetery, when heavy footsteps sounded in the flagged passage of the Married Quarters, and the Colonel and the Senior Major, both visibly disturbed, walked into Donohoe’s clean sanded kitchen, and, in as few words as possible, broke the news.

“It’s a terrible shock to you, my poor girl--as it has been to me!” said the Major, very white about the gills. “And to--to another I needn’t name!” He was thinking of his Emmie, and how piteously she had sobbed last night and hung about his neck, with her pretty hair all coming down over his mess waistcoat, as she begged him not to send her away from him, because it wasn’t her fault that she had turned out to be Donohoe’s daughter and not his own; and how at that moment she was breaking the news to Garthside--that Junior Captain and Victoria Cross hero to whom, it will be remembered, she was engaged. Poor Emmie, poor darling Emmie!--or Peggy, as she ought now to be called! Major Rufford felt that he never would be able to do it. “But--I’ll try and do my duty to you as your father should, and--I must look to you to--to do as much by me!” he concluded lamely.

“Oh, Major!” cried Peggy--Peggy with the hard, bright, black eyes, the red lips, the tip-tilted nose, the Milesian upper lip, and the coarse but plenteous mane of dark brown hair liberally “banged” in front and arranged behind in massive rope coils, secured by hairpins of imitation tortoiseshell as long as the farrier’s pincers. “Oh, Major! can you ax it? Sure I’ll thrate you as dacent as ever I did him that’s gone, an’ the Colonel hears me say it!...”

She checked the inclination to weep for one who was, all said and done, no relation, and put her crackling six-penny-three-farthings black-bordered handkerchief back in her pocket with an air of resolution. A flood of new ideas inundated her brain. All that she had ever dreamed of in the way of the unattainable lay hence-forth within her reach, and everything that had hitherto appeared most desirable and possible was from this bewildering hour rendered impossible. Her eyes fell on Private Dancey Juxon, V. C., who had been sitting on the kitchen table when the tall shadow of Sir Alured fell upon the sanded floor, and who had remained, from that moment until this, petrified in an attitude of military respect, against the whitewashed wall; and she realized that Dancey--Dancey, the Adonis of the rank and file, the hero once desired above all others, wrested at the expense of the most costly and variegated hats and the most dazzling toilettes from the clutches of how many other women!--Dancey must now be numbered among the impossibles. If a cold dash of regret mingled with the inward exultation of Miss Peggy, it was excusable.

“Sure, the dear knows! ’Tis like a tale out av the _Pinny Romancir_,” she said, “an’ troth it’s no wondher av my breath was tuk away wid the surprise. To think of that bould craythur, Donohoe’s wife!----”

“Do you mean your mother, my girl?” began the Colonel, but Peggy gave Sir Alured a look that put him in his place.

“I mane the woman that changed me in me cradle, bad cess to her for a thrickster!” said Peggy, “an’ put her own sojer’s brat in the place av me--me that belonged to the Quality by rights. Not that I’m not pityin’ Miss Emmeline--now that she’s Peggy Donohoe, a poor craythur sprung from nothin’.” The Major turned a groan into a cough, and the Colonel hauled at the ends of his huge white moustache, but the tide of Peggy’s brogue was not to be stemmed. “It’ll be a change for her, it will so, afther livin’ on the fat av the land--an orphan’s pinsion to find her in stirabout, an’ never a chick nor a child in the woide wurruld but her ould Aunt Biddy Kinsella!”

“Who--haw!--is Biddy Kinsella?” broke in the Colonel.

“Av’ she’s alive--an’ a bag av dhry bones she must be av she is,” says Peggy--“it’s at Carricknaclee, in Aher, you may find her. She used to live wid her niece--manin’ Mrs. Donohoe--an’ she wint back to Ireland whin me mother died--manin’ Mrs. Donohoe agin--a matter av eight years ago. An’ ’tis natural Donohoe’s daughter would call her to mind at a time like this. Maybe the young woman would go to live wid her,” continued Miss Peggy calmly. “An’ that brings to me own mind, Major--I mane Papa--whin do ye want me to come home?”

“Home! Oh, Lord!” said the poor Major, before he could stop himself.

“Dee-d cool!” growled Sir Alured, under the huge moustache, squeezing the Major’s arm with his great, gaunt, brown hand. “But she’s got the right--got the right, Rufford, you know, don’t you know. Ha--hum!”

“You shall hear from me soon--very soon, Peggy,” said the Major brokenly. “Good-bye for now, my girl.” He took her coarse red hand, so unlike his Emmie’s, and kissed her equally red cheek; and as he did so the petrified Juxon recovered the temporarily suspended powers of speech and motion, stepped forward, and saluted.

“Beg pardon, gentlemen,” he began, “and pre-’aps I oughtn’t to take the freedom; but ’avin’ over’eard....”

“Saw you, Juxon! Knew you were there! Thought you had a right to hear, you know, don’t you know!” said Sir Alured.

But a shrill feminine note of indignation pierced the Colonel’s bass, as Miss Peggy cried, “Right! I’d be glad you’d tell me what right you have, Misther Dancey Juxon, to be afther pokin’ the nose av you into business that doesn’t consarn you, let alone the privit affairs av an officer’s daughther. Away wid you, an’ larn your place! your room’s more welcome than your company; an’ if it’s a wife you’re lookin’ afther, maybe when wan av thim that’s av your own station stands up before the priest wid you, I’ll be making you a little prisint toward the housekeepin’, av the young woman’s dacent an’ respictable!”

And the bewildered Juxon found himself outside the black-painted door--marked III. in large white numerals--in the character of a lover dismissed.

“Well, I’m blowed!” he said, and said no more, but clinked away in search of the Lethean streams of the canteen.

“Rufford,” said Sir Alured solemnly, as the Chief and the second in command exchanged the atmosphere of coals and potato peels prevailing in the Married Quarters for the open air of the barrack square, “I’m confoundedly afraid she’s a Tartar! Sharp as a needle, sir, and knowing as a pet fox, if you ask me!”

And the Major said in reply, “These things are supposed to be hereditary. I wonder where she gets it from!” Then he broke out, “I can’t believe it, Colonel! I couldn’t, if fifty dying men had taken an oath to it. That my poor Clara’s girl! It’s impossible! If an angel were to come down from Headquarters Above, with despatches confirming the report, I couldn’t credit it!”

“And dee-d if I should blame you,” the Chief responded. “Breed’s bound to show, somewhere, and there’s not a drop of good blood in the girl’s veins, I’ll swear!”

“There’s an Irish strain in my family, too,” said poor Rufford despondently, “and my Emmie has brown hair and eyes; and her nose, bless it! is a little tilted at the end.”

“_A nay retroussy._ So it is, by George! But there are noses and noses, y’know,” said Sir Alured. “And Emmie’s a Rufford, from the crown of her head to the ends of her toes; and we’ll prove it, we’ll prove it, sir! Donohoe hasn’t a leg to stand on”--which was true--“and as to that Mullingar heifer”--thus the Chief designated Peggy--“she’ll be sorry one day for throwing Juxon over, mark my words. Send for that old aunt of Donohoe’s dead wife--the bag of bones Peggy talked of--and pump her for all she’s worth. Turn her inside out!--it’s the only advice I can give you, for my head’s in as dee-d a muddle as yours. And remember, whatever happens, my Lady is staunch to Emmie! Game woman, my Lady. Doesn’t care a dee what society says, as long as---- God bless me, Rufford! I’m talkin’ as though Emmie wasn’t your daughter. But the whole thing’s infernally confusin’, you know, don’t you know!”

An opinion in which the regiment concurred. An excited beehive would have furnished but a poor comparison to the barracks upon the morrow, when Peggy’s great news, imparted in ostentatious secrecy to Mrs. Quartermaster Casey and a few other non-commissioned officers’ ladies, had percolated through them. Visitors thronged the Donohoes’ quarters; Peggy was the heroine of the hour. Press reporters from the town hung about the barracks on the chance of seeing either of the heroines of what was termed in the local paper “An Extraordinary Romance in Real Life,” and the officers’ wives called in a body to condole with Emmie Rufford, who, as we have heard, had broken off her engagement with Captain Gerry Garthside.

“I shall not break my heart over things,” she had said, with an attempt at being everyday and common-sensible that was plucky, if not convincing, “and I hope you won’t dwell too much upon the collapse of our house of cards. I hope--I pray you’ll build more solidly, with--with somebody else. Don’t, Gerry! Oh, don’t! It’s not fair to make my duty harder to do than----”

Then Emmie had broken down, wept wildly, been kissed, consoled, and assured of her lover’s undying love and eternal fidelity. Part? Never! Lose such a pearl of a wife! Not for all the Donohoes past, present, or to come! I believe, in spite of Emmie’s woe and Captain Gerry Garthside’s agitation, the young people secretly enjoyed the scene dramatic; and when Lady Alured came rustling in, about the time when Gerry’s eloquence attained its utmost pitch of fervor, and hugged and cried over the hero and heroine of the little drama, that dear woman was not the least happy of the three.

And later on, after returning to quarters, Captain Garthside found a letter on his doormat. The contents of the soiled envelope, directed in a sprawling hand, ran as follows:

“DOOR NO. 3, GROUND FLOOR, BLOCK Q.

“Miss E. Rufford presents comps And wold be Glad to see Cap Garthside
& if Yu will call at 2 remane
“Your Oblidged
“E. RUFFOR”

Of course the Captain knew Peggy Donohoe; had danced with her at non-commissioned officers’ balls; given her gloves and chocolates, and sipped the roses of her cheek in common with many another passing admirer. “And who’d be the worse of a kiss,” as Peggy would have said, “from a dacent girl?” “Dacent” she undoubtedly was, if not from pure innate virtue, perhaps from the consciousness that a depreciation in marketable value attaches to goods that have been soiled by handling. Had it been otherwise, the state of Major Rufford had been less gracious, thought Captain Gerry Garthside.

And he looked at Emmie’s photograph standing in a silver frame upon his mantelshelf, and remembered the piteous smile with which she had told him that everything must now be over between them, and mentally renewed his vows of fealty before he went round to “look up Peggy.”

The rooms occupied by the late Sergeant Donohoe were three--a kitchen and two bedchambers. One of these latter, Peggy, with the assistance of Mrs. Quartermaster Casey, a dozen yards of cheap Liberty muslin, a gross of Japanese fans, one or two pieces of Oriental drapery, and a few articles of furniture of the tottery bamboo kind, had converted for the time being into a boudoir. Only for the time being, she said to herself, because when she got her rights she would enjoy all the splendors now usurped by the real Peggy Donohoe--Miss Emmie, as she called the usurper when she forgot, which was not often. She would dress for dinner every evening, and attend balls and theaters in low-necked, long-trained frocks, chaperoned by Lady Alured, adorned with the late Mrs. Rufford’s diamond stars, and attended by Captain Gerry Garthside, V. C. For not one, but all the possessions held and prerogatives hitherto enjoyed by the false Miss Rufford would naturally devolve to the real one, once formally recognized and received by her papa and the regiment; the “ould duds” and bits of sticks once pertaining to the supposed Margaret Donohoe being transferred to the veritable Peggy, together with all rights in Private Dancey Juxon, V. C. The topsy-turvy, comic-operatic whimsicality of her own idea did not appeal to Peggy’s sense of humor. She was very much in earnest as she waited for her visitor, seated in state upon one of her own ornamental chairs, her red hands--hands which could not be transferred to the real Peggy Donohoe with the other things--folded in her lap.

“She’s here, Captain,” Mrs. Quartermaster Casey--retained as chaperon until Lady Alured should awaken to a sense of her duties--had said, opening the door.

“Oh, Captain,” said Peggy, rising coyly, “is it yourself?”

And, owning the soft impeachment as he squeezed the red hand (Gerry Garthside’s manners to the plainest woman were fatally caressing), the Captain inquired how he could serve her.

“Sure,” said Peggy, making play with her fine eyes, “you’ll maybe thinking me forward, Captain, for makin’ the first sign. But me papa--the Major--will be takin’ up a great dale of me toime by-an’-by, and wid Mrs. Casey sittin’ in the kitchen widin call, we’re givin’ no handle to the tongue of scandal, as the sayin’ is----”

“My dear Miss Peggy!--” the Captain was beginning, when Peggy took him up short.

“I’ll trouble you,” she said, “to remimber that I’m not takin’ any more Peggy from anywan, high or low, an’ I’d be glad it was ginerally known. ‘Miss Emmeline,’ or ‘Emmie’ for short, you’re free to use, or any pet name ye may pick.” She cast a languishing glance upon Captain Gerry. “I’m not likely to quarrel wid it”--she moved nearer--“or wid you. Och, thin! but ’tis quare how things have turned round wid me! Peggy Donohoe a week ago, an’ walkin’ out wid Dancey Juxon--an’ now--the Major’s daughter, an’ your promised bride, Captain jewel! Sure ’tis like a dhrame, it is!”

And Peggy rested her rather large head upon the shoulder of the astonished Captain, who hastily withdrew the support.

“Look here, Peggy, my girl!” he said hastily. “What’s this notion you’ve got into your noddle? You don’t think....”

“I think that you’re a gintleman, Captain,” said Peggy, with a tender smile, “and would never go back on the promise you gev to the Major’s daughter. An’ now that I’m her, an’ she’s me, you’ll do your duty by me, as Dancey Juxon will do his to Donohoe’s poor unfortunate girl. You may thrust him. We’ve had it out betune us, an’ he’s with her now.”

“With--her--now?” repeated the bewildered Captain.

“I sent him to the Major’s--I mane papa’s--quarters ten minnits ago, wid a flea in his ear!” said Peggy, folding her red hands about the elbow of her captive, and rubbing her cheek against his shoulder strap. “‘I dar’ you,’ sez I, ‘to hang about here,’ sez I, ‘makin’ sheep’s eyes at a daughter av the Quality, whin that poor crayture you gev your promise to is cryin’ her two eyes out for the gliff av a glimpse av your red head. Away wid you,’ sez I, ‘an’ prove yourself a man av your word, Dancey Juxon, or maybe Peggy Donohoe’ll be takin’ the law av you wan av these fine days!’”

“My good girl,” said Gerry Garthside, almost pleadingly, “you can’t really believe what you say you’ve told Juxon--that he is obliged to marry Miss Rufford, or the lady who has borne that name until now, because he happens to have given a promise of marriage to Peggy Donohoe, and Miss Rufford and Peggy have changed places?”

“I mane that!” Peggy’s black eyes snapped out sparks of fire; as she tossed her head, a loosened coil of black hair tumbled upon her shoulder. Her fine bust heaved, her cheeks burned scarlet--she had never looked finer in her life. “Do I not mane just that? Think! Isn’t her father mine? Isn’t her home my home?--the dhress she wears upon her back mine?--the ring she has upon the finger av her mine? Ah, musha, an’ the man that put it there!” Her grasp on Captain Gerry’s arm tightened, her eyes sought his and held his; her warm, fragrant breath came and went about his face like a personal caress. “Sure, dear, you’ll not regret ut,” said Peggy, “for I loved you iver since I clapped my two eyes on you--I take the Blessed Saints to witness! An’ Dancey Juxon’ll be dacent to Donohoe’s daughter, an’ you an’ me will be afther lendin’ the young couple a hand, lettin’ her have the washin’ maybe, or the waitin’ at our table--or by-an’-by”--she lowered her black lashes--“she might come as nurse to the children. So, darlin’....”

The sentence was never finished, for the alarmed Captain broke from the toils and fled. The Mess story goes that he double-locked his outer door, barricaded the inner one with a chest of drawers and a portable tin shower bath, and spent the rest of the day in reconnoitering from behind the window curtains in anticipation of a descent of the enemy. But in reality he bent his steps toward the North Quadrangle, where the Major’s quarters were, and over the familiar blue crockery window boxes full of daffodils, he caught a glimpse of Emmie’s sweet face, not pale or bearing marks of secretly shed tears as when he last kissed it, but bright-eyed, flushed, and dimpling with laughter as she nodded and waved her hand to a departing visitor, who, absorbed in the charming vision, glimpsed above the daffodils, collided with and cannoned off the Captain.

“Hullo! You, Juxon?”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Private Juxon, rigidly at the salute. “I ’ope I ’aven’t ’urt you!” He grinned happily.

“Have you come into a fortune, or inherited a title? You look pretty chirpy!” said the Captain.

“Not a bad ’it of ’is by ’arf,” said Private Juxon critically to Private Juxon, “about the comin’ into a title. ‘For,’ says she, ‘_the greatest gentleman in the land couldn’t ’ave done more--and though I can’t accept your offer, I shall always look up to you and respect you as the most chivalrousest and honorablest man I ever met_!’ Wot price me, after that?”

For, as may be guessed, Private Juxon had proposed, and been rejected. Standing very stiff and red and upright on the passage door mat, he had confessed his sense of responsibility and explained his views.

“The general run of feelin’ in the regiment bein’ the same, Miss, as her own, that I’m bound as a man to keep my promise to Peggy Donohoe, whether she’s you or you are ’er. I’ve took the freedom of callin’ to say as wot I’m ready,” said Juxon. “An’ the weddin’ was to come off in June; but you’ve only got to name an earlier day, Miss, an’ I’ll ’ave the banns put up, you not bein’ a Catholic, like Peggy--which I ought to call ’er Miss Rufford now, as owing to ’er station, Miss. But if you think I’ll ever come short in duty an’ respect to the Major’s daughter, because she’s turned out to be only the Sergeant’s, you’re wrong, Miss, you’re wrong--upon my bloo----upon my ’tarnal soul!”

And then it was that Emmie Rufford conferred upon Private Juxon the title of nobility, which made him a proud man--and unconditionally refused his offer, making him a happy one.

She is now married to Captain Gerry Garthside, who yet fulfilled his engagement to the Senior Major’s daughter in leading her to the altar. For within a week the bubble had burst, topsy-turvydom reigned no more, the barracks ceased to seethe like one of its own mess cauldrons, and Peggy Donohoe was compelled to relinquish the privilege of calling Major Rufford “Papa.” For old Aunt Biddy Kinsella had been discovered in the smokiest corner of her grandson’s cottage at Carricknaclee, in Aher, by a smart young solicitor’s clerk; and her sworn deposition, duly marked with her cross and attested by her parish priest, dispersed the clouds of doubt from the Major’s horizon, relieved Sir Alured’s moustache from an unusual strain, and proved the deceased Mrs. Donohoe to have been the victim of a delusion.

“For ’twas at Buttevant Barracks where the regiment was stationed nineteen years ago, an’ me stayin’ on a visit wid me niece, that I saw her--Maggie Donohoe--rest her unaisy soul, the misfortnit craythur!--I saw her change the children’s clothes wid the two eyes I have in my head,” said Aunt Biddy Kinsella, “barrin’ that only wan av thim was at the keyhole. ‘Och, murdher!’ sez I, lettin’ a screech an’ flyin’ in on her--for I had the use av me legs in thim days--‘what have you done, woman, asthore?’ ‘Made a lady av little Peggy,’ says she, wid the fingers av her hooked like claws ready to fly at me, ‘an’ I dar’ you to bethray me.’ ‘Bethray!’ sez I. ‘It’s bethrayed her to the divil, you mane--that she’ll be brought up a black Prodesdan’, and not a dacent Catholic, as a Donohoe should be by rights.’ ‘Holy Virgin, forgive me! Sure, I never thought av that!’ sez herself, and all thrimblin’ we undhressed the children an’ changed the clothes again. An’ a day or so afther the Major’s baby was waned an’ wint back to uts mother. But Maggie Donohoe was niver the same in her mind afther that day. Sit an’ brood she would, an’ hour by hour; an’ creep out av her own bed an’ into mine night afther night, and wake me wid her cowld hand upon me mouth an’ the whisper in me ear to know had she given little Peggy’s sowl to the divil or changed the childhren back afther all! An’ as years wint on she kem to a quieter mind, but on her dyin’ bed the ould fear and thrimblin’ got hould av her ag’in, an’ she tould Donohoe--not what she’d done at all, at all!--but what she wanst had the intintion av doin’, but that her heart failed her; an’ so made a fool av the man that owned her, as many another woman has done before!”

Thus Aunt Biddy Kinsella, who, having spoken, may be dismissed to her smoky corner under the turf thatch, where a greasy parcel reached her in the middle of the following June, containing, not an olive branch, but a concrete slab of wedding cake, with the joint compliments of Mr. and Mrs. Dancey Juxon. For “the general run of feelin’ in the regiment” was in favor of Private Juxon’s renewing his matrimonial engagements to Peggy Donohoe, now that she had been proved, past all doubt, to be herself. And by the last advices received from headquarters it appears that Mrs. Lance-Corporal Juxon is acting at this moment as nurse to the Garthside baby.

PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS

I have called this story “Ponsonby and the Pantheress,” because Ponsonby’s nocturnal visitor undoubtedly belonged to the genus _Carnaria_, species _F. pardus_, the _Pardalis_ of the ancients. The whole thing hinges on Ponsonby’s getting a ticket of invitation to a mighty dinner given by one of the great City Livery Companies. Had he refused the invitation, and stayed at home with Mrs. Ponsonby, it would have been better for him--and for her. He would not to-day have been a silent, atrabilious man, who goes upon his way in loneliness--that mated loneliness which is of all desolate conditions on this earth the most desolate--with a vampire gnawing underneath his waistcoat. She would not have been a much-wronged, cruelly neglected woman--or the other type of sufferer, the woman who has been found out; and for ever robbed of that which women hold dearest in life--the power to create illusions.

It was a great dinner at that City Hall--a feast both succulent and juicy, and upon a scale so prodigious as to put it utterly beyond the power of a single-stomached man to do justice thereto. Many of the guests had thoughtfully provided themselves with several of these necessary organs, but Ponsonby--who had recently sold out of the Army, and invested his commission money in business, and settled down with Mrs. Ponsonby in a neat little house in Sloane Street--was still young, and fairly slim.

The baked meats and confectionery were excellent, and “the drinks”--as Betsey Prig might have observed--“was good.” It was revealed to Ponsonby that he had absorbed a considerable quantity only by the swollen condition of his latchkey when he tried to fit it into the door of the little house in Sloane Street. But after a short struggle the door opened, and Ponsonby paused a moment on the doorstep to take some observations on the weather. It was just one o’clock as he looked at his watch in the moonlight. Ponsonby was reminded of Indian moons by the lucent brightness of the broad silver orb that floated so majestically on the calm bosom of the dark overhead. She was getting near her wane, but only notifying it by an exaggerated handsomeness, like a professional Society beauty. Ponsonby thought of that simile--all by himself--and was proud of it, as he had always been a man more celebrated for his moustache than his intellect. He tied a knot in his mental pocket handkerchief to remember it by, and, facing round to go into the house, was a little disconcerted to find the hall door gaping to receive him.

Then he went in, barred and bolted very carefully, and set the spring burglar alarum--for once. Ponsonby was unusually careful and deliberate in his movements on this particular night. Then he sat down on the hall bench and took off his boots. Then he switched off the electric hall light. Then he pondered whether he should or should not have just one brandy and soda before going to bed--because he had come home so clear and calm and cool-headed from that City dinner. Ay or No--and the Ayes had it. He went into the dining-room. It had been furnished for the Ponsonbys on the best authority; in oak, with Brummagem-Benares brass pots and tea trays. The window curtains, and the drapery which hung before a deepish recess in the wall to the left of the door as you entered, were plush, of that artistic shade of olive-green which is so shabby when it is new that you can’t tell when it gets old. The recess had originally been intended for a book case; but young married people just starting in life never have any books--they are too much bound up in each other--and so it had been covered up. You can put things behind a covering of this sort which you do not care to expose to the gaze of the casual guest--a row of old slippers, or a pile of superannuated Army Lists, or a collection of summonses--or the Family Skeleton.

Ponsonby switched on the light, and opened the liquor case with his watch-chain key, and got a tumbler and soda siphon from the buffet, and lighted a cigar. Then he sat down in an armchair, unbuttoned his white waistcoat, loosened his collar, and prepared to be lonelily convivial. He thought of his girl-like bride asleep upstairs, with her cheek upon her hand, and her gold-brown hair swamping the pillow. It says much for the state of Ponsonby’s affections, that while he knew the uses of the monthly half pint of peroxide which was an unfailing item on the chemist’s bill, he could still be poetical about that tinge of gold. But newly married men seldom look into the roots of anything. He lifted his glass and drank her health. “To Mamie!” he said, as the frisky gas bubbles snapped at his nose. And then he glanced over the edge of the tumbler at the curtained recess behind the door. And the short hairs of his head rose up and began to promenade. And his teeth clicked against the glass he held. For a bolt of ice had shot through either ear orifice straight to his brain. In other words--Something had laughed--an ugly laugh--behind that drawn curtain.

In another moment it was put aside. A woman came out of the recess that had concealed her, and stood before him.

Not to mince matters, she belonged to the class we are content to call unfortunate. From her tawdry bonnet to the mud-befouled hem of her low-necked silk dress--a preposterous garment, grease-stained and ragged, and partly hidden by an opera cloak of sullied whiteness--the nature of her profession was written on her from head to foot. She was not without beauty, or the archæological traces of what had been it; but as she grinned at the astonished man, showing two rows of strong square teeth, yellowed with liquor and cigarette smoking, and the gathered muscles of her cheeks pushed up her underlids, narrowing her fierce, greedy eyes to mere slits, and the hood of her soiled mantle fell back from her coarsely dyed hair, she was a thing unlovely. She seemed to snuff the air with her broad nostrils, as scenting prey; she worked her fingers in their dirty white gloves, as though they were armed with talons that longed to tear and rend; and, as she did so, Ponsonby was irresistibly reminded of a panther.

Ponsonby had shot panthers in India, and had once been slightly mauled by a female specimen. It was an odd coincidence that the old scars on his left shoulder and thigh should have begun to burn and throb and shoot unpleasantly as the yellow-white fangs of the intruder gleamed upon him, framed in by her grinning, painted lips.

But Ponsonby recovered himself after a moment, and asked her, without ceremony, how the devil she came there? He was not a particularly bright man, but he knew, even as he asked. She had been crouching in the shadow under the portico--some of the Sloane Street houses have porticoes--when his cab drove up. She had watched him get out. Then, when he had been standing with his foolish back to the open door, gaping at the moon, the Pantheress had skulked in, with the noiseless, cushioned step that distinguishes her race. And now he had to get rid of her.

Which was not as easy a task as one might think.

He began by telling her that he was a married man.

“Knew that,” said the Pantheress. “Saw you take off your boots in the hall. Saw you drink her health.” She mimicked him. “To Mamie!” And laughed again--that unspeakably jarring laugh.

Ponsonby grew irate. He took his courage in both hands and went into the hall, where he softly undid the door fastenings. Then he came back, and offered to show his visitor out.

She was in the act of pocketing a silver race cup, won by Ponsonby at a Pony Hurdle Handicap on the Bombay course in 1890, when Ponsonby came back. He caught her wrist and bade her drop it. She gave it up sullenly. Then, with a sudden accession of feminine meekness, she said she would go--if he would stand her a drink.

It seemed a cheap bargain. The unwitting Ponsonby got out another glass from the buffet cupboard, and mixed her a brandy and soda, not too weak. She drew a chair--his wife’s chair--to the table, and sat down, throwing her dingy cloak from her whitewashed shoulders. She put her hand to her head, and drew thence a long steel pin with a blue glass head, and took her gaudy bonnet off and threw it on the table. She did not hurry over the consumption of the liquid, and Ponsonby began to grow impatient. When he hinted this, she asked for a cigar.

He gave her one, and a light. And she drained the last drop in the tumbler, and stuck the burning weed between her teeth, with a coarse masquerade of masculinity. Ponsonby heaved a sigh of relief.

“Now, my girl, come along--time’s up!” He started for the door.

The Pantheress got up, and leaned against the mantelshelf, smoking. She intimated that she had changed her mind--and would remain. Ponsonby lost his temper, and threatened ejection by main force.

“Put me out? You daren’t!” rejoined the Pantheress. She added some adjectives reflecting upon Ponsonby and the honor of his family--but with those we have nothing to do.

Ponsonby’s under jaw came out, and his forehead lowered. He strode toward the Pantheress; her sex was not going to plead for that delicate piece of femininity, it was evident.

“I daren’t, eh?”

“You daren’t. Because I’d tear, and scratch, and scream, I would--till the police came--till your wife woke up and came downstairs to see what the row was about. Nice for you, then! Easy for you to explain--with _two_ glasses on the table!”

Ponsonby broke into a cool perspiration. He spake in his soul and cursed himself for a fool--of all fools the one most thoroughly impregnated with foolery. For he saw that he had been trapped. The Pantheress rocked upon her hips and laughed, shaking out a coarse aroma of patchouli from her shabby garments.

“You had me in and stood me drinks. I can swear to that. My swell toff, I think you’d better knock under!”

Ponsonby had to arrive at that conclusion, thinking of his wedded happiness and the golden-brown hair scattered on the pillow upstairs. He was awed to the pitch of making overtures--of asking the Pantheress how much she would take to go?

The Pantheress sprang high. Twenty pounds.

Ponsonby had not as much in the house. With great difficulty, and much exercise of eloquence, he got her to bate five. It was necessary that she should be brought to forego another five, for all the ready cash he could muster did not amount to much more than ten. How to attain this desirable end? Ponsonby had a dramatic inspiration.

He had read many novels and seen many plays. In most of these the main plot turned upon the ultimate victory of Human Virtue and Truth over Vice and Disintegrity. In these books or dramas Vice was generally personified by an adventuress--a brazen, defiant person, who had made up her mind to ruin somebody or another; and Virtue, by an innocent girl or pure young wife, who pleaded until the hardened heart was melted, the fierce eyes moistened by an unaccustomed tear--until, in short, the naughty woman abandoned her unhallowed purpose and left the nice one mistress of the field. The theory is an admirable one in a book or in a play, but in real life it does not hold good. Ponsonby has since learned this; but at that time he was youngish and inexperienced.

He would weave a net, with those golden-brown tresses upstairs, in which to catch the Pantheress. He begged her to listen, and told his story quite prettily. He explained how, three years before, his regiment having newly returned from India, he had met at a certain South Coast resort, separated by a mile or two of arid common from a great dockyard town, a lovely girl. She was a friendless orphan, the daughter of a clergyman, had been a governess, had broken down in health, and, with the last remnant of her little savings, taken a humble lodging near the sea, in order to benefit by the ozone. How she had found, during her innocent strolls on the beach, not only that health of which she had been in search, but a husband. And, finally, how every fiber of her soul, being naturally bound up in that husband, and her present state of health delicate, the infliction of such a blow as the Pantheress contemplated striking might not only strike at the roots of love, but of life.

With which peroration counsel concluded, not wholly dissatisfied with himself. He wiped his brow, and sent a hopeful glance at the Pantheress. Her features had not softened, nor was her eye dimmed. Her lips twitched, certainly, but the convulsive movement was merely the herald of a yawn.

“You’re a good one to jaw!” she said, when he had finished. “Come, I’ll not be hard on you. How much have you got?”

He named the amount.

“Hand out!” the Pantheress bade him.

He would give her half the sum then and there, Ponsonby said, with a gleam of strategic cunning, and the other half when she was fairly outside the hall-door--not before.

The Pantheress nodded, and clutched the first installment from his hand greedily, and caught her dirty bonnet from the table and threw it on her head. “No larks!” she said warningly--“come on!” and moved to the room door, where she paused. “Ain’t you got manners enough to open it for a lady?” she remarked in an aggrieved tone. Ponsonby, hastily restoring the tell-tale second glass to the sideboard, sprang forward and grasped the handle--and dropped it as though it had been red-hot, for he had caught the sound of footsteps--light, regular, measured footsteps--descending the stairs. He could not utter a word. He turned a white face and glaring eyes upon the Pantheress. And the steps came nearer. As the dining-room door opened, he fell back, helplessly, behind it. The wall seemed to open and swallow him--thick, suffocating folds fell before his face; he had backed into the curtained recess whence the Pantheress had emerged thirty fateful minutes previously. Through a three-cornered rent in the stuff, just the height of his eye from the ground, and through which that beast of prey had probably watched him, he looked--and saw his wife!

She wore a loose white wrapping gown; her hair--the hair--hung in waves about her shoulders. Barring the bedroom candle she carried, and losing sight of her prosaic nineteenth-century surroundings, she resembled one of Burne Jones’s angels. But her calm expression changed, and her voice was tuned to a key of unangelic indignation, as her glance lighted on the painted, brazen Defiance, erect and bristling, before her.

“You ... a woman, what do you want? How did you?--how dared you come here?”

The Pantheress was about, in answer, to launch the first of an elaborate flight of insults, couched in the easy vernacular of Leicester Square, when she stopped short. Her thick lips rolled back from her gleaming fangs in a triumphant grin. She bent forward, with her hands upon her thighs, and made a close inspection of the face of Ponsonby’s wife.

“_What! Luce?_”...

The other recoiled, with a slight cry. And Ponsonby, in his retirement, was conscious of a deadly qualm--for Mrs. Ponsonby’s Christian name was Lucy! When he opened his shut eyes and peeped through the rent again, it was only to receive a fresh shock--for Mrs. Ponsonby and the Pantheress were sitting, one on either side of the table, chatting like old friends.

“Luck was poor,” the Pantheress was saying, “and me low down in my spirits. So when I found the door of a swell house like this open, ‘I’ll pop in,’ says I to myself, ‘and look about for a snack of something and a drop to drink, and then make off if I can, clear, or else go to quod--like a lady.’ And I did pop in--and I did look about--and the first thing that turns up is--you! On a smooth lay, ain’t you? Always a daring one, you were. A clergyman’s daughter, and an orphan! We’ve most of us been clergymen’s daughters and orphans in our time, but not a girl of us ever looked it more than you. And you’re married! Ha! ha! With a swell church service, and singin’, and a Continental tour to give the orphan a little change of scenery. She’d seen so little in her time, the poor dear! Lord! I shall die of it!”

The woman rocked with silent laughter. It seemed to the man behind the curtain that her eyes, across his wife’s shoulder, glared full into his--that her coarse jeers were leveled at him. He could not have uttered a sound, or stirred a finger, for the dear life. A kind of catalepsy had possessed him. But he saw them drink together, and heard them talk ... turning over with conversational pitchforks the unspeakable horrors of the dunghill whence his white butterfly had taken wing.... Ponsonby had never been an imaginative man, but that midnight conference wrought his sensibilities to such a pitch that, leaning against the wall in the corner of the curtained recess, he quietly fainted.

* * * * *

He came back to consciousness in darkness through which struggled no gleam of light. He did not know where he was until he staggered out from behind the stifling draperies and switched on the light with shaking hands. Then he found himself in his own dining-room. There were no glasses on the table--the spring bar of the liquor stand was in its place, the brandy decanter was, as he remembered to have left it, half full. He found his candle on the sideboard and lighted it, and went into the hall. The hall-door was barred and bolted.

“Thank God, I _have_ been dreaming!” said Ponsonby, and went upstairs.

There she lay--a breathing picture of reposeful innocence--fast asleep. Ponsonby stooped and kissed the hair that flooded her pillow and invaded his own, and silently swore by all his deities that he would never go to another City dinner as long as he lived. Before he crept into bed he knelt down--a thing he had not done since he was a boy--and said awkwardly, “O God, I’m glad it was a dream! Thank you!”

He slept the sleep of the weary, and rose, not a giant, it is true, but very much refreshed. He dandered down to the breakfast table in a leisurely way, humming a tune. As he shook out his newspaper, the absurdity and improbability of his recent vision struck him for the first time; he laughed until he ached. Then he dropped his newspaper, and stooped to pick it up. Something bright that lay upon the carpet under the table attracted his notice. The man put forth his hand and took it, and his ruddy morning face underwent a strange and ghastly alteration. For the thing was a long steel bonnet pin, with a vulgar blue glass head! Men have died suddenly of pin pricks before now.

But Ponsonby’s tortures are lingering. He is alive still, and she is still Mrs. Ponsonby. He has never spoken--the Secret of the Blue Glass Pin is hidden from the woman who walks Life’s path with him. But sometimes she is haunted by a dreadful Doubt, and at all times he is bestridden by an overwhelming Certainty.

A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY

IN THREE PARTS