A Court of Inquiry Part 11

We could hardly tell the Judge we fully agreed with his feeling about to-morrow's proposed festivities, neither could we discuss his wife's tastes with him. He and we talked of other things until Camellia came back, having made her engagement with Mr. Harry Hodgson, and so having sealed our fate for the succeeding evening.

The Skeptic and the Philosopher spent much of the following day--it was a legal holiday--with the Judge in his private den up on the third floor. This, as Camellia showed us once when the men were away, was a big, bare room--this was her characterization--princ.i.p.ally fireplace, easy-chairs, books and windows. I liked it better than any other place in the house, for it was unenc.u.mbered with useless furniture of any sort, and the view from its windows was much finer than that from below stairs.

"But we're not invited up here, you observe," was Camellia's comment. "I don't come into it once a month. The Judge spends his evenings here--when I don't actually force him to go out with me--and I spend mine down in the pleasanter quarters. I have the Lis...o...b..s and the Latimers in very often, but he never comes down if he can avoid it. They understand he's eccentric, and we let it go at that."

She spoke with the air of being a most kindly and forbearing wife.

I followed her downstairs, pondering over points of view.

Eccentric--because he preferred wide fires and elbow-room and outlook to Camellia's crowded and over-decorated rooms below, and his books to Mrs. Lis...o...b..'s music and Mr. Harry Hodgson's "readings."

I felt that I knew Mrs. Lis...o...b.. and Mr. Hodgson and the rest quite without having seen them.

I found, the next evening, that my imagination had not gone far astray.

Camellia's friends were certainly quite as "gay" as she had pictured them, and gorgeously dressed. I felt, as I attempted to maintain my part among them, like a country mouse suddenly precipitated into the society of a company of town-bred squirrels.

Mrs. Lis...o...b.. sang for us. I could not make out what it was she sang, being unfamiliar with the music and unable to understand the words. She possessed a voice of some beauty, but was evidently determined to be cla.s.sed among the sopranos who are able to soar highest, and when she took certain notes I experienced a peculiar and most disagreeable sensation in the back of my neck.

"I wonder if we couldn't bring in a stepladder for her," murmured the Skeptic in my ear. "It gives me a pang to see a woman, alone and una.s.sisted, attempt to reach something several feet above her head!"

Mr. Hodgson recited for us with great fervour. He fought a battle on the drawing-room floor, fought and bled and died, all in a harrowing tenor voice. He was slender and pale, and it seemed a pity that he should have to suffer so much with so many stalwart men at hand. From the first moment, when he drew his sword and leaped into the fray, our sympathies were with him, although he personified a doughty man of battles, and led ten thousand l.u.s.ty followers. There were moments when one could not quite forget the swinging coat-tails of his evening attire, but on the whole he was an interesting study, and I was much diverted.

"Dear little fellow!"--it was the Skeptic again. "How came they to let him go to war--and he so young and tender?"

I exchanged observations with Mr. Hodgson after his final reading; I can hardly say that I conversed with him, for our patchwork interview could not deserve that name. At the same time I noted with interest the Philosopher's expression as he and Mrs. Lis...o...b.. turned over a pile of music. If I had not known him so well I should have been deceived by that grave and interested air of his--a slight frown of concentrated attention between his well-marked eyebrows--into thinking him deeply impressed by the lady's dicta and by her somewhat dashing manner as she delivered them. But, familiar of old with the quizzical expression which at times could be discovered to underlie the exterior of charmed absorption, I understood that the Philosopher was quietly and skilfully cla.s.sifying a new, if not a rare, specimen.

When the guests had lingeringly departed I saw, as I went to my room, three male forms leaping up the second flight of stairs toward the Judge's den.

"Don't you envy them the chance to soothe their nerves with a pipe beside the fire up there?" I asked Hepatica as, with hair down and trailing, loose garments, she came into my room through the door which we had discovered could be opened between our quarters.

"Indeed I do. They went up those stairs like three dogs loosed from the leash, didn't they? Can one blame them?"

"One cannot."

Hepatica gazed at me. I stared back. But we were under our host's roof.

"Mrs. Lis...o...b.. really has quite a voice," said Hepatica, examining the details of the tiny travelling workbag I always carry with me.

"So she has."

"It was a wonderful dinner, wasn't it?"

"It was, indeed. Would you mind having quite specially simple things to eat for a day or two after we go back?"

"I've been planning them," admitted Hepatica.

"Mr. Hodgson's readings were--entirely new to me; were they to you? I had never heard of the authors."

"Few people can have heard of them, I think. Several were original."

"Indeed!"

"Would you mind taking off your society manner?" requested Hepatica, a trifle fractiously. "I'm a little tired of seeing you wear it so incessantly."

"I shall be delighted," I agreed.

I sprang up and she met me half-way, and seizing me about the neck buried her face in my shoulder. I felt her shaking with smothered laughter, and had great difficulty in keeping my own emotions under control.

We went home on Sunday afternoon, the Skeptic pleading the necessity of his being up at an early hour next morning. By unanimous consent we went to the evening service of a church where one goes to hear that which is worth hearing, and invariably hears it. The music there is also worth a long journey, though it is not at all of an elaborate sort.

"There, I feel better after that," declared the Skeptic heartily, as we came out. "It seems to take the taste of last evening out of my mouth."

n.o.body said anything directly about our late visit until we had reached home. Then the Skeptic fired up his diminutive gas grate--which is much better than none at all--and turned off the electrics. We sat before the cheery little glow, luxuriating in a sense of relaxation.

"It seems ungracious, somehow to discuss people, when one has just left their hospitality," suggested Hepatica, as the Skeptic showed signs of letting loose the dogs of war.

"Not between ourselves, dear," affirmed the Skeptic. "We four const.i.tute a private Court of Inquiry into the Condition of Our Friends. When I think of the Judge----"

"He has his own way, after all, when it comes to refusing to join in the sort of thing that pleases Camellia," said I.

"Of course he does. He's too much of a man not to have it. But living upstairs while my wife lives downstairs isn't precisely my ideal of married happiness."

The Philosopher shoved his hands far down into his pockets and laid his head back, gazing up at the ceiling. "What puzzles me," he mused, "is the attraction such a woman has, at the start, for such a man."

"Camellia was a most attractive girl," said I.

"You mean her clothes were most attractive," amended the Skeptic. "They even befuddled me for a few brief hours, as I remember--till I discovered that not all is gold that----"

"You didn't discover that yourself," the Philosopher reminded him. "We had to do it for you. You don't mind our recalling his temporary paralysis of intellect?" he questioned Hepatica suddenly. "It was all your fault, anyhow, for retiring to the background and allowing the fireworks to have full play."

Hepatica smiled. The Skeptic put out his hand and got hold of hers and drew it over to his knee, where he retained it. "She knows I never swerved a point off my allegiance to her," he declared with confidence.

"Do you suppose," suggested Hepatica, "if the Judge and Camellia were to lose all their money and had to come down to living in a little home like this, it would help things any?"

The Skeptic shook his head. The Philosopher shook his, thoughtfully.

"It's too late," said the latter. "Her ideals are a fixed quant.i.ty now, to be reckoned with. So are his. Under any conditions there would be absolute diversity of tastes."

"I don't think there's any ideal more hopelessly fixed than the fine clothes ideal." The Skeptic looked at his wife.

"I like nice clothes," said she, smiling at him.

"So you do," he rejoined; "thank heaven! A woman who doesn't is abnormal. But when we walk down certain streets together you can see something besides the shop-windows."

"I look away so I won't want the things," confessed Hepatica.

The Skeptic laughed, and the Philosopher and I joined him.

"I pa.s.sed Mrs. Hepatica the other day when she didn't see me," said the Philosopher to me. "She was staring fixedly in at a shop-window. I stole up behind her to see what held such an attraction for her.--It often lets a great light in on a friend's character, if you can see the particular object in a shop-window which fixes his longing attention.

When I had discovered what she was looking at I stole away again, chuckling to myself."