Chapter I

It was the season when our beloved motherland undergoes a quadrennial Cæsarian operation and presents a new president to a pardonably hysterical people.

Installed in the several departments of the national incubator, newly hatched cabinet officers, destitute of the Roman Augur’s sense of humour, met around the “Oracle,” and parted, without the shadow of a smile; brand-new heads of departments gazed solemnly at each other, government clerks cast owlish eyes on brand-new chiefs, gloomily alert for new cues.

The Ambassador to England was named, and sent forth; at parting the President intimated to him that he was a statesman; they shook hands and looked into each other’s eyes; neither relaxed a muscle. The Ambassador to Germany departed; the Ambassador to Russia followed. Other statesmen-patriots expatriated themselves with serious alacrity; a Minister descended on Brazil, another on Spain, another on Belgium; no guilty land escaped.

When His Excellency the United States Ambassador to France presented his credentials to the President of the French Republic, the guard at the Elysée presented arms, a nurse-maid wheeling a baby-carriage stopped to look, and there was a paragraph in the Figaro several days later.

In the Latin Quarter the American students discussed the new Ambassador.

Selby said to Severn: “There’s a new Ambassador, you know; I hear he’s red-headed.”

Severn said to Rowden: “There’s a new Ambassador, you know. I understand his family have red hair.”

Rowden observed to Lambert: “I am told that the new Ambassador’s daughter has red hair.”

That morning the pale April sunshine, slanting through the glass-roofed studio in the rue Notre Dame, awoke Richard Osborne Elliott from refreshing slumbers. That young man, in turn, aroused Foxhall Clifford from a lethargy incident on a nuit blanche and a green table.

“Black can’t turn up every time; red is bound to assist the lowly,” muttered Clifford on his pillow.

At that moment Elliott, reading the Figaro, encountered the paragraph concerning the new Ambassador.

“Red is going to assist us,” he remarked; “they say he has red hair.”

“Who?” yawned Clifford.

An hour later Elliott, swathed in a blue crash bath-robe, sat in the studio sipping his morning coffee and perusing the feuilleton in the Figaro.

His comrade entered a moment later carrying a pair of shoes, and sat down on the floor.

“New Ambassador,” repeated Clifford, lacing his patent leathers; “what do I care for Ambassadors!”

“They’re good to know,” observed Elliott, “they give receptions.”

“Yes,” sneered Clifford, “fourth of July receptions, where everybody waves little flags at everybody else. I’ve seen trained birds do that.”

“Ambassadors,” insisted Elliott, “can get you out of scrapes. If you’re broke they can send you home. You’re not much of a patriot anyway.”

“Yes, I am,” snapped Clifford, “I’m loyal to the spinal marrow, but I draw the line at our diplomats.”

He laced the other shoe, tied it, straightened up and rose, kicking out gently first with one leg then with the other until his trousers fell over each instep with satisfying symmetry.

“Patriot?” he went on, “I am too patriotic to countenance the status quo at our consulate, where the United States Consul sits in his shirt-sleeves and practises at a cuspidor, and where you can’t get a consular certificate without being bullied by an insolent roustabout! So your new Ambassador,” he continued reflectively, “can go to the devil!”

“Now you’re too hasty,” said Elliott; “Ambassadors are not consuls.” He added dreamily, “His Excellency has a daughter—I understand.”

Clifford, loitering before the mirror, unconsciously gave a smarter twist to his tie, and buttoned the snowy waistcoat in silence. When he was ready, gloved, hatted, and faultlessly groomed, he selected a blossom from a pot of fragrant pinks on the window and drew it through the lapel of his morning coat.

“Going to see Jacquette?” asked Elliott, pouring out more coffee.

“No,” replied Clifford. He hummed a bar of a wedding march, strolled to the great glass window, mused a moment, sighed, whistled softly, and sighed again. There was a cock-sparrow out in the garden, hopping around, chirping and trailing his dusty wings through the gravel. A lady sparrow pecked him at intervals. The innocent courtship of the little things stirred Clifford with amorous wistfulness. He flattened his nose against the window glass and watched them, gently humming:

“The fox and the bear,
The squirrel and the hare,
The dickey-bird up in the tree,
The roly-poly rabbits,
So amazing in their habits,
They all have a mate but me,
But me!
They all—
They a—a—a—ll—
Oh, they all have a mate but me!”

Elliott listened scornfully.

“Why,” said Clifford, twisting suddenly around, “should I go to school and paint Italian models—on a day like this?”

“You haven’t been to the atelier in a week,” said Elliott morosely. “Oh, I know what you’re going to say!”

“No, I’m not,” retorted Clifford.

“You are! You’re going to tell me that you’ve seen the most wonderful girl in the Luxembourg, who must be some foreign countess! Don’t I know! Haven’t I heard it a thousand times? And hasn’t the countess always turned up with you at some cheap restaurant?”

Clifford sat down on a camp-stool and pointed his cane toward the floor. Squinting along it at a spot of sunlight on the velvety Eastern rug, he listened in silence to Elliott’s reproaches.

“Have you finished?” he asked.

Elliott girded up his bath-robe and moved off.

“Because,” continued Clifford, “I have a proposition to make.”

“Make it then,” said Elliott, scowling.

“Well, sit down.”

Elliott squatted Turk fashion on a divan, saying bitterly, “Last week you moaned and protested that you had been wasting your time. Now go on with your proposition,—but I’ll not be a party to any new infatuation, let me tell you—”

Clifford began to walk up and down the studio, gloved hands clasped behind his back, head thoughtfully bent as far as his collar permitted. As he walked he twiddled his cane.

“Well?” inquired Elliott sarcastically.

Clifford came up to him and stood a moment in silence. Then he said: “Elliott, suppose we get married to twins?”

“Married!” bawled Elliott in angry astonishment.

“Irretrievably,” continued Clifford gently, “suppose we go into the thing thoroughly. Suppose we become respectable!”

“I am,” broke out Elliott, but the other held up five expostulating gloved fingers.

“In a way—yes, in a way. But do you know what I think? I think no man is absolutely and hopelessly respectable unless he has a wife!—Elliott, a wife—a little wifey—”

“Rubbish!” replied Elliott, rising from the divan. “And let me inform you I don’t want a wife. I’m well enough as I am—if anybody should ask you. Let go of my bath-robe; I’m going to paint.”

“Think,” urged Clifford,—“think of being really and legally married—think of the joyful anguish—no more suppers, no more Bullier, no more tzing! la! la!—”

He removed his silk hat, skipped playfully, and pretended to kick it.

“But,” he continued, with sudden soberness, “a wife—a little wifey—is recompense for all pleasure—”

“Antidote, you mean—”

“No, I don’t! Joy is born from the nuptial blessing. I desire to wed—”

“Who? What?”

“A lovely, spirituelle, delicate vision—unworldly and—er—passably provided for—”

“By you?”

“Partly by me—partly by an adoring father,—a fine silvery-haired old patrician, borne down by the weighty cares of his millions—do you know any of that kind, Elliott?”

“I know some silvery-haired patricians.”

“Tottering under the weight of millions?”

“Yes.”

“With daughters?”

“Never asked ’em.”

“What about the new Ambassador? You said his daughter—”

Elliott laughed:

“Oh, he’s tottering under millions, but his hair is red and I think that hers—”

“You annoy me,” said Clifford, and left the studio. He paused in the garden, sniffed at the lilacs, eyes raised in contemplation of the firmament.

“Nevertheless,” he said to himself, “red hair or silver hair—I’m not bigoted on the silver question. And,” he added with sprightly humour, “it’s 16 to 1 I call on his Excellency before the week is out.”