Madcap.

by George Gibbs.

CHAPTER I

HERMIA

t.i.tine glanced at the parted curtains and empty bed, then at the clock, and yawned. It was not yet eight o'clock. From the look of things, she was sure that Miss Challoner had arisen and departed for a morning ride before the breaking of the dawn. She peered out of the window and contracted her shoulders expressively. To ride in the cold morning air upon a violent horse when she had been out late! B--r! But then, Mademoiselle was a wonderful person--like no one since the beginning of the world. She made her own laws and t.i.tine was reluctantly obliged to confess that she herself was delighted to obey them.

Another slight shrug of incomprehension--of absolution from such practices--and t.i.tine moved to the linen cabinet and took out some fluffy things of lace and ribbon, then to a closet from which she brought a soft room-gown, a pair of silk stockings and some very small suede slippers.

She had hardly completed these preparations when there was the sound of a door hurriedly closed downstairs, a series of joyous yelps from a dog, a rush of feet on the stairs and the door of the room gave way before the precipitate entrance of a slight, almost boyish, female person, with blue eyes, the rosiest of cheeks and a ma.s.s of yellow hair, most of which had burst from its confines beneath her hat.

To the quiet t.i.tine her mistress created an impression of bringing not only herself into the room, but also the violent horse and the whole of the out-of-doors besides.

"Down, Domino! Down, I say!" to the clamorous puppy. "Now--out with you!" And as he refused to obey she waved her crop threateningly and at a propitious moment banged the door upon his impertinent snub-nose.

"Quick, t.i.tine, my bath and--why, what are you looking at?"

"Your hat, Mademoiselle," in alarm, "It is broken, and your face--"

"It's a perfectly good face. What's the matter with it?"

By this time Miss Challoner had reached the cheval gla.s.s. Her hat was smashed in at one side and several dark stains disfigured her cheek and temple.

"Oh, I'm a _sight_. He chucked me into some bushes, t.i.tine--"

"That terrible horse--Mademoiselle!"

"The same--into some very sticky bushes--but he didn't get away. I got on without help, too. Lordy, but I _did_ take it out of him! Oh, didn't I!"

Her eye lighted gaily as though in challenge at nothing at all as she removed her gloves and tossed her hat and crop on the bed and sprawled into a chair with a sigh, while t.i.tine removed her boots and made tremulous and reproachful inquiries.

"Mademoiselle--will--will kill herself, I am sure."

Hermia Challoner laughed.

"Better die living--than be living dead. Besides, no one ever dies who doesn't care whether he dies or not. I shall die comfortably in bed at the age of eighty-three, I'm sure of it. Now, my bath.

_Vite_, t.i.tine! I have a hunger like that which never was before."

Miss Challoner undressed and entered her bathroom, where she splashed industriously for some minutes, emerging at last radiant and glowing with health and a delight in the mere joy of existence. While t.i.tine brushed her hair, the girl sat before her dressing-table putting lotion on her injured cheeks and temple. Her hair arranged, she sent the maid for her breakfast tray while she finished her toilet in leisurely fashion and went into her morning room. The suede slippers contributed their three inches to her stature, the long lines of the flowing robe added their dignity, and the strands of her hair, each woven carefully into its appointed place, completed the transformation from the touseled, hoydenish boy-girl of half an hour before into the luxurious and somewhat bored young lady of fashion.

But she sank into the chair before her breakfast tray and ate with an appet.i.te which took something form this illusion, while t.i.tine brought her letters and a long box of flowers which were unwrapped and placed in a floor-vase of silver and gla.s.s in an embrasure of the window.

The envelope which accompanied the flowers t.i.tine handed to her mistress, who opened it carelessly between mouthfuls and finally added it to the acc.u.mulated litter of fashionable stationery. Hermia eyed her Dresden chocolate-pot uncheerfully. This breakfast gift had reached her with an ominous regularity on Mondays and Thursdays for a month, and the time had come when something must be done about it.

But she did not permit unpleasant thoughts, if unpleasant they really were, to distract her from the casual delights of retrospection and the pleasures of her repast, which she finished with a thoroughness that spoke more eloquently of the wholesomeness of her appet.i.te even than the real excellence of the cooking. Upon t.i.tine, who brought her the cigarettes and a brazier, she created the impression--as she always did indoors--of a child, greatly overgrown, parading herself with mocking ostentation in the garments of maturity. The cigarette, too, was a part of this parade, and she smoked it daintily, though without apparent enjoyment.

Her meal finished, she was ready to receive feminine visitors. She seldom lacked company, for it is not the fate of a girl of Hermia Challoner's condition to be left long to her own devices. Her father's death, some years before, had fallen heavily upon her, but youth and health had borne her above even that sad event triumphant, and now at three and twenty, with a fortune which loomed large even in a day of large fortunes, she lived alone with a legion of servants in the great house, with no earthly ties but an ineffectual aunt and a Trust Company.

But she did not suffer for lack of advice as to the conduct of her life or of her affairs, and she always took it with the sad devotional air which its givers had learned meant that in the end she would do exactly as she chose. And so the Aunt and the Trust Company, like the scandalized t.i.tine, ended inevitably in silent acquiescence.

Of her acquaintances much might be said, both good and bad. They represented almost every phase of society from the objects of her charities (which were many and often unreasoning) to the daughters of her father's friends who belonged in her own sphere of existence. And if one's character may be judged by that of one's friends, Hermia was of infinite variety. Perhaps the sportive were most often in her company, and it was against these that Mrs. Westfield ineffectually railed, but there was a warmth in her affection for Gertrude Brotherton, who liked quiet people as a rule (and made Hermia the exception to prove it), and an intellectual flavor in her attachment for Angela Reeves, who was interested in social problems, which more than compensated for Miss Challoner's intimacy with those of a gayer sort.

Her notes written, she dressed for the morning, then lay back in her chair with a sharp little sigh and pensively touched the scratches on her face, her expression falling suddenly into lines of discontent. It was a kind of reaction which frequently followed moments of intense activity and, realizing its significance, she yielded to it sulkily, her gaze on the face of the clock which was ticking off purposeless minutes with maddening precision. She glanced over her shoulder in relief as her maid appeared in the doorway.

"Will Mademoiselle see the Countess Tcherny and Mees Ashhurst?" t.i.tine was a great believer in social distinctions.

"Olga! Yes, I was expecting her. Tell them to come right up."

The new arrivals entered the room gaily with the breezy a.s.sertiveness of persons who were a.s.sured of their welcome and very much at home.

Hilda Ashhurst was tall, blonde, aquiline and noisy; the Countess, dainty, dark-eyed and _svelte_, with the flexible voice which spoke of familiarity with many tongues and rebuked the nasal greeting of her more florid companion. Hermia met them with a sigh. Only yesterday Mrs. Westfield had protested again about Hermia's growing intimacy with the Countess, who had quite innocently taken unto herself all of the fashionable vices of polite Europe.

Hilda Ashhurst watched Hermia's expression a moment and then laughed.

"Been catching it--haven't you? Poor Hermia! It's dreadful to be the one chick in a family of ugly ducklings--"

"Or the ugly duckling in a family of virtuous chicks--"

"Not ugly, _ch?rie_," laughed the Countess. "One is never ugly with a million francs a year. Such a fortune would beautify a satyr.

It even makes your own prettiness unimportant."

"It is unimportant--"

"Partly because you make it so. You don't care. You don't think about it, _voil? tout_."

"Why should I think about it? I can't change it."

"Oh, yes, you can. Even a homely woman who is clever can make herself beautiful, a beautiful woman--_Dieu_! There is nothing in the world that a clever, beautiful woman cannot be."

"I'm not clever or--"

"I shall not flatter you, _cara mia_. You are--er--quite handsome enough. If you cared for the artistic you could go through a _salon_ like the _Piper of Hamelin_ with a queue of gentlemen reaching back into the corridors of infinity. Instead of which you wear mannish clothes, do your hair in a Bath-bun, and permit men the privilege of equality. Oh, la, la! A man is no longer useful when one ceases to mystify him."

She strolled to the window, sniffed at Trevvy Morehouse's roses, helped herself to a cigarette and sat down.

Hermia was not inartistic and she resented the imputation. It was only that her art and Olga's differed by the breadth of an ocean.

"For me, when a man becomes mystified he ceases to be useful," laughed Hermia.

"Pouf! my dear," said the Countess with a wave of her cigarette. "I simply do not believe you. A man is never so useful as when he moves in the dark. Women were born to mystify. Some of us do it one way--some in another. If you wear mannish clothes and a Bath-bun, it is because they become you extraordinarily well and because they form a disguise more complete and mystifying than anything else you could a.s.sume."

"A disguise!"

"Exactly. You wish to create the impression that you are indifferent to men--that men, by the same token, are indifferent to you." The Countess Olga smiled. "Your disguise is complete, _mon enfant_--except for one thing-- your femininity--which refuses to be extinguished. You do not hate men. If you did you would not go to so much trouble to look like them. One day you will love very badly--very madly. And then--" the Countess paused and raised her eyebrows and her hands expressively. "You're like me. It's simple enough," she continued. "You have everything you want, including men who amuse but do not inspire. Obviously, you will only be satisfied with something you can't get, my dear."

"Horrors! What a bird of ill-omen you are. And I shall love in vain?"

The Countess snuffed out her cigarette daintily upon the ash tray.