On the Lightship Part 24

"Oh, Mr. Hopworthy, were you actually there?"

"Please tell us your opinion----"

Evidently Jack's aunt's acquaintance was being drawn out, encouraged to display himself, made a b.u.t.t of, in point of fact! This came from taking Maude Penfield into her confidence. There was always a streak of something not exactly nice in Maude. As Clara, with her mind's eye, saw the broad Hopworthian mouth in active operation, she felt--the feminine instinct in such matters is unerring--that Butler Penfield cherished every phrase for future retaliation at the club, and Lena Livingston, who never laughed, was laughing. After all, if foreigners are often dull, at least they have no overmastering sense of humor.

"My Order of the Bull was given me at twenty-six," the Envoy was relating, and though the story was a long one, Clara listened to it all with swimming eyes.

"Diplomacy is full of intrigue as an egg of meat," it ended, and once more Mr. Walker looked up hopefully.

Again the hostess forced herself to turn with semblance of attention to her right. But Mr. Hopworthy did not appear to notice the concession. He did not appear to notice anything. He was haranguing, actually haranguing, oblivious that all within the hearing of his resonant voice regarded him with open mockery. Jack in the distance, too far away to apprehend the truth, exhibited his customary unconcern, for Jack's ideals were satisfied if at his table people only ate enough and talked. And perhaps it was as well Jack did not comprehend.

"To ill.u.s.trate," the orator was saying--fancy a man who says "to ill.u.s.trate." "This wine is, as we may say, dyophysitic"--here Mr.

Hopworthy held up his gla.s.s and looked about him whimsically--"possessed of dual potentialities containing germs of absolute antipathies--" Even Jack, could he have heard, must have resented the suggestion of germs in his champagne.

"Perhaps you would rather have some Burgundy with your duck," suggested Mrs. Fessenden with heroic fort.i.tude, and Mr. Hopworthy checked his train of thought at once.

"Aye, Madam," he rejoined, "there you revive an ancient controversy."

"I am sure I did not mean to," Clara said regretfully, and Mr. Hopworthy smiled his most open smile.

"A controversy," drawled Lena Livingston, "how very odd!"

"It was indeed," a.s.sented Mr. Hopworthy, and went on: "Once, as you know, the poets of Reims and Beaune waged war in verse over the respective claims of the blond wine and the brunette, and so bitter grew the fight that several provinces sprang to arms, and Louis the Fourteenth was forced to go to war to keep the peace."

It was pure malice in Maude to show so marked an interest in a statement so absurd, and it was fiendish in the rest to encourage Mr. Hopworthy.

Even the most insistent talker comes in time to silence if n.o.body listens.

"Oh, M. Hop--Hop--Hopgood," cried the Countess, "if you are a savant, perhaps you know my Axel!"

"And have you taken out a patent for your axel?" asked the diplomat, whose mind reverted to mechanics.

The Countess favored him with one glance through her lorgnettes--a present from the exiled King of Crete--and straightway took her bag and baggage to the hostile camp. For, of course, the young Count Axel was known to Mr. Hopworthy, or at least he so declared.

"Please tell me how you won your Order of the Bull," said Clara to the diplomat, her one remaining hope.

"I think I mentioned that just now," he answered, and conversation perished.

And thus the dinner wore away, a grim succession of demolished triumphs.

When after an aeon or two Clara gave the signal for retreat, she sought her own reflection in the gla.s.s to make sure her hair was still its normal brown.

"Clara," said Mrs. Penfield, when the ladies were alone, "you might at least have warned us whom we were to meet."

Mrs. Fessenden drew herself erect. Her breath came fast, her eyes were bright, and she had nearly reached the limit of forbearance toward Maude.

"Mrs. Penfield--" she began with dignity, but Maude broke in.

"I must have been a baby not to have recognized the name."

Clara hesitated, checking the word upon her lips, for with her former friend, to be inelegant was to be sincere.

"I do not understand," she subst.i.tuted prudently.

"To think, my dear, of you being the first of us to capture Horace Hopworthy and keeping it from me!" cried Maude.

"I am sure I mentioned that we hoped to have him," murmured Mrs.

Fessenden.

"So sweet of you to give us such a surprise, it was most delightful,"

Lena Livingston drawled.

"Your house is always such a Joppa for successful genius," declared Mrs.

Ballington, "or is it Mecca? I've forgotten which. How did you come to know he was in town?"

"Jack's relatives in Boston always send us the most charming people with letters," answered Clara. "Shall we take coffee on the balcony? The men are laughing so in the smoking-room we can't talk here with any comfort."

Later--an hour later--when the last carriage-door had slammed, Jack lit a cigarette and said:

"That Hoppy fellow seemed to make a hit."

Clara yawned.

"Yes, he was rather a fortunate discovery," she said, "but, Jack, we really ought to take a literary magazine."

THE MAN WITHOUT A PENSION

He was a dapper little man with a gray pointed beard, and he wore knickerbockers and russet hunting gaiters, nearly new. A jaunty Alpine hat was perched upon his head, and as he pursued his cautious way along the canon's edge it would be hard to fancy anyone less in touch with his surroundings. He seemed uncertain of the trail, mistrustful of himself, or unaccustomed to mountain atmosphere, for within the last hundred yards of the camp he paused in every dozen steps to listen or to recover breath.

There was no sound anywhere except the moan of pine trees, and no motion but the perpetual trembling in the aspen undergrowth. The greater trees nearly met above the canon; the lesser clung along its brink, leaning far out to catch the sun and send broken lights and colors to the water far below. Contrasting with the unchanging twilight and boundless solitude of the forest, the meadow where the tents were pitched seemed to blaze with light, and the three small shelters took on the importance of a settlement, whose visible inhabitants consisted of a pair of mountain magpies possessed of an idle spirit of investigation.

The little man coughed a dry inadequate cough to herald his approach, while his foot dislodged a pebble which, rattling down the canon, sent the magpies to a tree top in affected terror. From under the shelter of his hand he cast a glance about the camp which mastered its small array of unimportant details; two tents, wide open to the air, disclosed elementary sleeping quarters for half a score of men, coa.r.s.e blankets covering heaps of twigs and pine needles, the bare necessities of a bivouac. The third tent was closed.

Evidently perplexed, the visitor stood still. Had anyone been watching him, say from behind the ragged canvas of the closed tent, he must have seemed a nervous, apprehensive little man. There came a sound which might have been a derisive chuckle and might have been a magpie in the trees. The visitor controlled a start and clenched his hands as though summoning courage. Then loudly as one who gives a challenge, he shouted, "Is there anybody here?"

The voice was resonant for so small a body, and the echoes caught the last word eagerly, and sent it back, clear from the canon, faint from where the snow peaks cut the blue, deep from the hollow of the timber.

"Here! Here!" as though a scattered army answered to a roll call.

Immediately there followed another and louder "Here!" distinctly not an echo, and a gruff ungracious laugh.

The mult.i.tude of answers must have bewildered the stranger, for he looked everywhere about him, almost stupidly, except toward the only possible hiding place. It needed a second derisive laugh to guide him to the tent whose half-closed flap concealed the only custodian of the camp, a man so tall that in his little shelter he gave the impression of a large animal inadequately caged or in a trap. His black hair fell below the ears; his jaws were hidden by a heavy beard cut square, through some freak of fancy, like the carved beards of human-headed a.s.syrian beasts.

"Ahem! I beg your pardon," began the little man after another cough.

"What do you want?" returned the other without looking up. He bent above a tin pan of dough, kneading the pliant stuff almost fiercely, with red knotted knuckles and sinewy forearms.

"My name," replied the visitor, "is Sands--Professor Sands of Charbridge University."