Amusement Only Part 24

He moved a step forward. Hubert grasped the back of a chair.

"You touch me! By George! I'll smash you!"

The big man hesitated. Hubert seemed to have gained a sudden access of energy. He continued to address his companions in a strain which was distinctly not pacific. "You couple of cowardly curs! You get me into a room, you lock the door, you come at me, the pair of you, with a revolver and a knife, when you know that I haven't got so much as a toothpick in my pocket! Why, you miserable brutes, I'll smash you both!"

Hubert brandished the chair about his head. The big man still hesitated. The shorter gentleman addressed this inquiry to his friend, "Shall I shoot him? Shall I put six shots into his carca.s.s--shall I?"

Hubert did not wait to hear the other's answer. He turned to the door.

"Cecil! Cecil! break down the door. The brutes will murder me! Break down the door!"

These words, uttered with the full force of Hubert's lungs, seemed to create, as was not unnatural, some sensation without. Several voices were heard speaking together. There was a loud knocking at the door.

Someone said, evidently not Cecil, "Open the door immediately! I am the manager of the hotel! Open at once!"

The a.s.sociates looked at each other. The clamour without seemed to mean business. Hubert had slipped from their control. If they were not careful their friendly little interview might be disagreeably interrupted. The shorter man shrugged his shoulders right up to his ears.

"What is the use? You had better open the door. What is the use of playing a losing game too far?" Then, to Hubert, "With you, my friend, I will settle some other time."

"And I," chimed in the big man, playing the part of echo for once.

"I don't care that," Hubert snapped his fingers in the air, "for either, or both of you, you curs!"

The comrades still hesitated--they probably resented the alteration in the young gentleman's demeanour. But the clamour at the door continued. The big man, doubtless perceiving that the position was becoming desperate, took the key out of his pocket. He unlocked the door. As he did so, his companion's weapons disappeared into the hidden recess of his apparel. The moment the door was opened Hubert advanced.

"Cecil! so it is you. Now, gentlemen, you will be able to see if I lied. These gentlemen, Cecil, are friends of yours, not of mine. _I_ have never seen them before to-night. You appear to have offended them. They have been endeavouring to visit your offence on me. I cannot congratulate you on your acquaintance. That little scoundrel there, who appears to be an Italian bravo, has a knife in one pocket, and a revolver in the other. He would have murdered me if you had delayed your appearance on the scene."

"Bah!" Again the little man's shoulders went up to his ears. "It was but a little game."

"And was this a little game?"

Hubert s.n.a.t.c.hed up the paper, the unsigned promise of marriage, from the table on which it was lying; he held it out in front of him. The big man, in his turn, s.n.a.t.c.hed it from his grasp. He tore it into minute shreds. While Hubert still was staring, a lady advanced. It was Angel.

"So, all the time you were amusing yourself at my expense. You are a charming person. Where are my thirty pounds?"

Hubert was not at all embarra.s.sed. He twirled his moustache.

"Cecil, this lady appears to be a friend of yours. Where are her thirty pounds?"

Cecil stepped up to him. "What confounded tricks have you been up to?"

Hubert's air of injured innocence was, in its way, superb.

"Cecil, this is too much; too much! In mistake for you I have been insulted, all but murdered, and all"--he turned to the a.s.sembled company--"and all, upon my word of honour, because I was so unfortunate as to have been born a twin."

A VISION OF THE NIGHT.

CHAPTER I.

ASLEEP.

"Charlie, do you believe in dreams?"

It was in the great hall of the Pouhon spring at Spa. The band was playing. The motley crowd which gathers in the season at Spa to drink, or not to drink, the waters, were talking, smoking, drinking coffee, something stronger, looking at the papers, or listening to the music.

Among the crowd were Gerald Lovell and his friend Charles Warren. At the particular moment in which Mr. Lovell put his question, Mr. Warren was puffing rings of cigarette smoke into the air.

"Ask me," he said, with distinct irreverence, "another."

"A queer thing happened to me last night."

"If you have any malicious intention of inflicting on me a dream, young man, there'll be a row. I have an aunt who dreams. She's a dreaming sort. She's always dreaming. And she tells her dreams--such dreams! Ye Goths! At the mere mention of the word 'dreams' the nightmare figure of my aunt rises to my mind's eye. So beware."

"But I'm not sure that this was a dream. Anyhow, just listen."

"If I must!" said Mr. Warren. And he sighed.

"I dreamt that a woman kissed me!"

"If I could only dream such a thing. Some men have all the luck."

"The queer thing was, that it was so real. I dreamt that a woman came into my room. She came to my bedside. She stood looking down upon me as I slept. Suddenly she stooped and kissed me. That same instant I awoke. I felt her kiss still tingling on my lips. I could have sworn that someone had just kissed me. I sat up in bed and called out to know if anyone was there. I got up and lit the gas and searched the room. There was nothing and no one."

"It was a dream!"

"If it was, it was the most vivid dream I remember to have heard of; certainly the most vivid dream I ever dreamt. I saw the woman so distinctly, and her face, as she stooped over me, with laughter in her eyes. To begin with, it was the most beautiful face I ever saw, and hers were the most beautiful eyes. The whole thing had impressed me so intensely that I took my sketch-book and made a drawing of her then and there. I have my sketch-book in my pocket--here is the drawing."

Mr. Lovell handed his open sketch-book to his friend. It was open at a page on which was a drawing of a woman's face. When Mr. Warren's eyes fell on this drawing, he sat up in his chair with a show of sudden interest.

"Gerald! I say! You'll excuse my saying so, but I didn't think you were capable of anything so good as this. Do you know that this is the best drawing of yours I have ever seen, young man?"

"I believe it is."

"It looks to me--I don't want to flatter you; goodness knows you've conceit enough already!--but it looks to me as though it were a genuine bit of inspiration."

"Joking apart, it seems to me almost as if it were an inspiration."

"I wish an inspiration of the same kind would come to me. I'd be considerably grateful--even for a nightmare. Do you know what I should do with this? I should use it for a picture."

"I thought of doing something of the kind myself."

"Just a study of a woman's face. And you might call it--the t.i.tle would be apposite--'A Vision of the Night!'"

"A good idea. I will."

And Mr. Lovell did. When he returned to his Chelsea studio, he chose a moderate-sized canvas, and he began to paint on it a woman's face--just a woman's face, and nothing more. She was looking a little downwards, as a woman might look who was about to stoop to kiss someone lying asleep in bed--say a sleeping child--and she glanced from the canvas with laughing eyes. Mr. Warren came in to look at it several times while it was progressing. When it was finished, he regarded it for some moments in silent contemplation.

"I call that," he declared, sententiously, with what he supposed, perhaps erroneously, to be a Yankee tw.a.n.g, "a gen-u-ine work of art. I do. _The_ thing. Young man, if you forward that, with your compliments, or without 'em, to the President, Fellows, and a.s.sociates of the Royal Academy, I'll bet you five to one it's hung!"