Little Miss Grouch Part 8

The Wondrous Vision had dismissed her slave, giving him rendezvous for the next morning,--he had pleaded in vain for that evening,--and he was composing himself to a thoughtful promenade, and to the building of air-castles of which the other occupant was Little Miss Grouch, when he became aware of a prospective head-on collision. He side-stepped. The approaching individual did the same. He sheered off to port. The other followed. In desperation he made a plunge to starboard and was checked at the rail by the pursuer.

"I wish to speak to you," announced a cold and lofty voice.

The Tyro emerged from his glorious abstraction, to find himself confronted by a middle-aged lady with violent pretensions to youth, mainly artificial. Some pract.i.tioners of the toilet-table paint in the manner of Sargent; others follow the school of Cecilia Beaux; but this lady's color-scheme was unmistakably that of Turner in his most expansive mood of sunset, burning ships, and volcanic eruptions.

By way of compensation, she wore an air of curdled virtue, and carried her nose at such an angle that one expected to see her at any moment set the handle of her lorgnette on the tip thereof, and oblige the company with a few unparalleled feats of balancing.

Surprise held the Tyro's tongue in leash for the moment. Then he came to. Here was another unexpected lady evidently relying upon that tricky memory of his. Very well: this time it should not betray him!

"How do you do?" he said, seizing her hand and shaking it warmly. "I'm so glad to see you again."

She withdrew the captured member indignantly. "Again? Where have you ever seen me before?" she demanded.

"Just what I was trying to think," murmured the Tyro. "Where _have_ I seen you?"

The colorful lady lifted her gla.s.ses and her nose at one and the same moment. "I am Mrs. Denyse," she informed him. "Mrs. Charlton Denyse. You may know the name."

"I may," admitted the Tyro, unfavorably impressed by the manner in which she was lorgnetting him, "but I don't at the moment recall it."

Exasperation flashed in Mrs. Denyse's cold eyes. She had spent much time and trouble and no small amount of money advertising that name socially in New York, and to find it unknown was a reflection upon the intelligence of her investment. "Where on earth do you come from, then?"

she inquired acidly.

"Oh, all over the place," he answered with a vague gesture. "Mainly the West."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SURPRISE HELD THE TYRO'S TONGUE IN LEASH]

"So one would suppose. It doesn't matter. I wish you to read this." She thrust a folded newspaper page into his hand, adding: "It is only fair to you to say that I speak with the authority permissible to kinship."

"Kinship? Do you mean that you're related to me?"

"Certainly not! Be good enough to look at the paper and you will understand."

The Tyro was good enough to look, but, he reflected with regret, he wasn't clever enough to understand.

The first column was given up to a particularly atrocious murder in Harlem. The second was mainly political conjecture. In the center of the page was a totally faceless "Portrait of Cecily Wayne, Spoiled Darling of New York and Newport, whose engagement to Remsen Van Dam has Just Been Announced." Beyond, there was a dispatch about the collapse of the newest airship, and, on the far border, an interview with the owner of the paper, in which he personally declared war on most of Central America and half of Europe because a bandit who had once worked on a ranch of his had been quite properly tried and hanged for several cold-blooded killings.

"You will gain nothing by delay," said the lady impatiently.

"I give it up," confessed the Tyro, returning the paper. "You'll have to tell me."

"Even the most impenetrable stupidity could not overlook the announcement of Remsen Van Dam's engagement."

"Oh, yes; I saw that. But as I don't know Mr. Van Dam personally, it didn't interest me."

"Still, possibly you're not so extremely Western as not to know who he is. He's the sole surviving representative of one of the oldest houses in New York."

"Barns, not houses," corrected the other gently. "His father was the Van Dam coachman. He made his pile in some sort of liniment, and helped himself to the Van Dam name when it died out."

For Mrs. Denyse to redden visibly was manifestly impossible. But her plump cheeks swelled. "How dare you rake up that wretched scandal!" she demanded.

"Scandal? Not at all," replied the Tyro mildly. "You see, I happen to know. My grandmother was a Miss Van Dam."

"It must have been of some other family," said the lady haughtily. "I beg to inform you that Remsen Van Dam is my cousin."

"Really! I'm awfully sorry. Still--you know,--I dare say he's all right.

His father--the real name was Doody--was an excellent coachman. I've often heard Grandma Van say so."

Mrs. Denyse after a time recovered speech by a powerful effort, and her first use of it was to make some observations upon the jealousy of poor relations.

"But this is profitless," she said. "You will now appreciate the desirability of guarding your conduct."

"In what respect?"

Mrs. Denyse pointed majestically to the pictorial blur in the paper.

"Perhaps you don't recognize that," she said.

"I don't. n.o.body could."

"That's true; they couldn't," she granted reluctantly. "But there's the name beneath, Cecily Wayne. I suppose you can read."

"I can. Who is Cecily Wayne?"

"Of all the impudence!" cried the enraged lady. "As you've been making yourself and her conspicuous all the afternoon--"

"Oh!" exclaimed the Tyro, a great light breaking in upon him. "So that's Cecily Wayne. It's a pretty name."

"It's a name that half of the most eligible men in New York have tried their best to change," said the other with emphasis. "Remsen Van Dam is not the only one, I a.s.sure you."

"Then the apostle of St. Vitus on the dock was Remsen Van Dam! Well, that's all right. She isn't engaged to him. The paper's wrong."

"Pray, how can you know that?"

"A little bird--No; they don't have little birds at sea, do they? A well-informed fish told me."

"Then I tell you the opposite. Now I trust that you will appreciate that your attentions to Miss Wayne are offensive."

"They don't seem to have offended her."

"Where did you know her? Who are you, anyway?" snapped his inquisitress, her temper quite gone.

The Tyro leaned forward and fixed his gaze midway of the lady's adequate corsage.

"If you want to know," said he, "you're carrying my favor above your heart, or near it, this minute. Look on the under side of your necktie."

The indignant one turned the scarf and read with a baleful eye: "Smitholder: Pat. April 10, 1912." "What does Smitholder mean?" she demanded.

"A holder for neckwear, the merits of which modesty forbids me to descant upon, invented by its namesake, Smith."