The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes Part 73

"Oh, didn't you know my poor father was made a Baronet, after we entertained Royalty?"

"No; how strange your lives should have been going on all the time!" The pop of a cork at her elbow startled her. Then she lifted her frothing gla.s.s. "Sir--to you!"

He clinked his against it. "To the lady of my dreams."

"Still?" She sipped the wine: her eyes sparkled.

"Yes; I've still a long opinion of myself."

She put out her hand quickly and pressed his an instant.

"Thank you!" he said huskily. "That was why I said I was sorry to know that to the world you were still a governess. Of course I was glad, too."

"I don't understand. I always said you were more Irish than I."

"I was glad you had kept yourself unspotted from the stage-world."

"Good G.o.d! You call that unspotted! What are men made of?"

"You were in a bad atmosphere. Your lips caught phrases."

"Nonsense. I'm a crow, not a parrot; a thoroughly sooty bird."

"It was your whiteness that attracted--your morning freshness. You don't know what vulgarity is."

"You don't know what _I_ am."

"I know you to your delicious finger-tips. And that's why I am sorry you told me so much. I wanted to ask Nelly O'Neill to marry me. Now she'll think I'm only asking Eileen O'Keeffe, the daughter of the Irish gentleman."

Her eyes filled with tears. "No, they both believe you capable of any folly. Besides, somebody would find out Nelly all the same." And a smile made a rainbow across her tears.

The arrival of the soup relaxed the tension of emotion. In mid-plate she suddenly put down her spoon and laughed softly.

"What is it?" he said, not without alarm at her transitions.

"Why, it would be one of those stock theatrical marriages, into which we entrap t.i.tles! Fascinated by a Serio-Comic, poor silly young man. She played her cards well, that Nelly. Ha! ha! ha! Who would dream of Plato's dialogues? And you talk of incredible!"

"I am content to be called silly." He tried to take her hand.

"Well, don't be it in public. You will rank with Lord Tippleton who married Bessie Bilhook, and made a Lady of her--the only ladyhood she's ever known."

"No, I can't rank with him," he smiled back. "I'm only a Baronet."

"It sounds the same. Lady Maper!" she murmured. "But, oh, how funny!

There'd be two Lady Mapers."

"My mother would be the Dowager Lady--"

"That's funnier still."

He ate in silence. Eileen mused on the picture of the Dowager, her forefinger to heaven.

"The Royalty--how did that go off?" she said, as he carved the chicken.

"With fireworks. For the reception father built a new house and furnished it with old furniture. Royalty stopped an hour and a quarter. Oh, she was wonderful. I mean my mother. Copied your phrases--see what an impression you made."

"And what have you been doing since you came into the t.i.tle?"

"Looking for you."

"Nonsense!" She dropped her fork. "But you knew I had people in Ireland."

"I never knew exactly where."

"But what put you on the track of the music-halls?"

"Nothing. I never dreamed of looking for you there. I just went." Master Harold Lee Carter's phrase flashed back to her memory, "All the chaps go."

"But what about the Black Hole--I mean the works?"

"They go on," he said. "I just get the profits."

"And how about your Socialism?"

"You taught me the fallacy of it."

"I? Well, that's the cream of the joke."

"Yes. Don't laugh at me, please. When you came into my life, or rather when you went out of it--yes, I am Irish--I saw that money and station are the mere veneer of life: the central reality is--Love."

Again her eyes filled with tears, but she remained silent.

"And I saw that I, the master, was really poorer than the majority of my serfs, with their wives and bairns."

"You are a good fellow," she murmured. "I--I meant to say," she corrected herself, "what have you done with your clothes?"

"My clothes!" he echoed vaguely, looking down at his spotless s.h.i.+rt-front.

"Your factory clothes! Wouldn't it be fun to wear them at supper here? Do you think they could turn you out? I don't see how, legally. Do test the question. Yes, do. Please do." And she laid her hand on his black sleeve.

"I won't marry you if you don't."

"I did think you were serious to-night, Eileen," he said, disappointed.

"How could you think that, if you read the programme, as you say? 'Nelly O'Neill, Serio-Comic.' _Allons, ne faites cette tete mine de hibou_.

Admit the world is entirely ridiculous and give me some more champagne."

Her eyes glittered strangely.

A clock struck twelve.