A new-comer joined the circle of attentive listeners gathered round the easiest of all the easy-chairs in the smoking-room of the Younger Sons’ Club. The surrounded chair contained Hambridge Ost, a small, drab, livery man, with long hair and drooping eyelids, who, as cousin to Lord Pomphrey, enjoyed the immense but fleeting popularity of the moment. Everyone panted to hear the details of the latest Society elopement before the newspapers should disseminate them abroad. And Hambridge was not unwilling to oblige. “The first inkling of the general trend of affairs, dear fellow,” said Hambridge, joining his long, pale finger-tips before him, and smiling at the new-comer across the barrier thus formed, “was conveyed to me by an agitated ring at the telephone in my rooms. Bucknell, my man, hello’ed. To Bucknell’s astonishment the ring-up came from 000, Werkeley Square, the town mansion of my cousin, Lord Pomphrey, which he knew to be in holland covers and the care of an ex-housekeeper. And Lady Pomphrey was the ringer. When I hello’ed her, saying, ‘Are you there, Annabella? So glad, but how unexpected; thought you were all enjoying your otium cum down at Cluckham-Pomphrey’—my cousin’s country-seat in Slowshire, dear fellow—such a verbal flood of disjointed sentences came hustling over the wire, so to speak, that I felt convinced, even in the act of rubbing my ear, which tickled confoundedly, that something was quite absolutely wrong somewhere. Pomphrey—dear fellow!—was my first thought; 96then the Dowager—the ideal of a fine old Tory noblewoman of ninety-eight, who may drop, so to put it, any moment, dear creature, relieving her family of the charge of paying her income and leaving the Dower House vacant for Lord Rustleton, my cousin’s heir and his—ahem!—bride. Knowing that Rustleton was to lead the Hon. Celine Twissing to the altar of St. George’s, Hanover Square, early in the Winter season, it occurred to me, so to put it, that the demise of the Dowager could not have occurred at a more auspicious moment. Thank you, dear fellow, I will smoke one of your particular Partagas, since you’re so good.”
Four men struck vestas simultaneously as Hambridge relieved the nicotian delicacy of its gold-and-scarlet cummerbund. Another man supplied him with an ash-tray. Yet another pushed a footstool under his pampered patent-leathers. Exhaling a thin blue cloud, the Oracle continued:
“Amidst my distracted relative’s fragmentary utterances I gleaned the name of Rustleton. Hereditary weak heart—circulation as limited as that of a newspaper which on strictly moral grounds declines to report Divorce Cases—and a disproportionate secretion of bile, so to put it, distinguishes him, dear fellow, from, shall I say, mortals less favored by birth and of lower rank. A vision of a hatchment over the door of 000, Werkeley Square—of the entire population of the county assisting at his obsequies, dear fellow—volted through my brain. I seized my hat, and rushed from my chambers in Ryder Street. An electric hansom had fortunately pulled up in front of ’em. I jumped in. ‘Where to?’ asked the chauffeur. ‘To a broken-hearted mother,’ said I, ‘000, Werkeley Square, and drive like the dooce!’”
Hambridge cleared his throat with some pomp, and crossed his little legs comfortably. Then he went on:
97“Like the Belgian sportsman, who, in missin’ a sittin’ hare, shot his father-in-law in the stomach, mine was an effort not altogether wasted. All the blinds of the house were down, and the hysterical shrieks of Lady Pomphrey echoin’ through practically a desert of rolled-up carpets and swathed furniture, had collected a small but representative crowd about the area-railings. I leaped out of the motor-cab, threw the chauffeur the legal fare, and bein’ admitted to the house by an hysterical caretaker, ascended to my cousin’s boudoir, the sobs and shrieks of the distracted mother growing louder as I went. Dear fellows, when Lady Pomphrey saw me, heard me saying, ‘Annabella, I must entreat you as a near relative to calm yourself sufficiently to tell me the worst without delay, or to direct me to the nearest person who can supply authentic information,’ the floodgates of her sorrow were opened to such an extent that—possessing a constitution naturally susceptible to damp—I have had a deuce of a cold ever since.
“Lord Rustleton—always a nervous faddist, though the dearest of fellows—Rustleton had suddenly broken off his engagement to the Hon. Celine Twissing, only child and heiress of Lord Twissing of Hopsacks, the colossal financier figurehead, as I call him, of the Brewing Trade. Naturally, the young man’s mother was crushed by the blow. The marriage was to have been solemnized at the opening of the Winter Season—the trousseau was nearly ready, and the cake—a mammoth pile of elaborate indigestion—was bein’ built up in tiers at Guzzards’. The presents (includin’ a diamond and sapphire bangle from a Royal source) had come in in shoals. Nothing could be more confoundedly inopportune than Rustleton’s decision. For all her muscularity—and she is an unpleasantly muscular young woman—you’d marry her yourself to-morrow did you get the chance, dear fellow. Vous n’êtes pas dégo?té.
98“But Rustleton’s a difficult man—always was. His personal appearance ain’t prepossessin’, but he is Somebody, and looks it; d’ye foller me? You feel at once that a long line of ancestors, more or less distinguished, must have handed down the bilious tendency from father to son. Originally—which goes to prove that first impressions are the stronger—Lady Pomphrey tells me he could not stand Celine Twissing, wouldn’t have her for nuts, or at any price; but after the disaster to the steam yacht Fifi—run down by a collier at her moorings in Southampton Water, you recollect, when by pure force of muscle Miss Twissing snatched Lord Rustleton from a watery grave, so to put it—he seemed to cave in, as it were, and the engagement was formally announced. I thought his eye unsteady and his laugh hollow, when, with the rest of the family, I proffered my insignificant congratulations. On that occasion, dear fellow, he gave me two fingers instead of one, which amounts to a grip with him, and whispered to the effect that there was no use in cryin’ over spilled milk—a familiar saw which has sprung to my own lips at the most inopportune moments.
“Celine was undoubtedly in love. Her being in love, so to put it, added immensely to Rustleton’s discomfort. For the New Girl is, as well as a muscular being, a strenuous creature, omnivorous in her appetite for mental exercise, and from the latest theories in physics to the morality of the newest Slavonic novelist Rustleton was expected to range with her hour by hour. Her mass of knowledge oppressed him, her inexhaustible fund of argument exhausted him, her fiery enthusiasm reduced him to a condition of clammy limpness which was—I may say it openly—painful to witness. A backward Lower boy and an impatient Head Master might have presented such a spectacle. Thank you, I will take a Vermouth, since you are so kind. But the boy, in 99getting away for the holidays, had the advantage of Rustleton, poor fellow!”
Hambridge waited till the Vermouth came, and, sipping the tonic fluid, continued:
“These details, I need not say, were not culled from Lady Pomphrey, but extracted from Rustleton, who had rushed up to town and gone to earth at his Club, to the consternation of the few waiters who were not taking holidays at the seaside. Little by little I became master of the facts of the case, which was one of disparity from the outset. From the muscular as from the intellectual point Celine Twissing had always overshadowed her fiancé. But Celine’s intimate knowledge of the mode of conduct necessary—I quote herself—to sane living and clear thinking positively appalled him. Rustleton began the day with hot Vichy water, dry toast, weak tea, and a tepid immersion. She, Miss Twissing, commenced with Indian clubs, a three-quarter-mile sprint in sweaters, coffee, eggs, cold game-pie, ham, jam, muffins, and marmalade. Did she challenge the man, to whom she was soon to pledge lifelong obedience at the altar, to a single at lawn-tennis, she quite innocently served him twisters that he could only follow with his eye, and volleyed balls that infallibly hit it. At croquet she was a scientist, winning the game by the time Lord Rustleton had got through three hoops, and coming back to stand by his side and goad him to silent frenzy by criticism of his method. She is a red-hot motorist, and insisted upon taking Rustleton, wrapped in fur coats, and protected by goggles, as passenger in the back seat of her sixty-horse-power ‘Gohard’ when she competed in the Crooklands Circular Track One Thousand Mile Platinum Cup Race, for private owners only, professional drivers barred; and upon my honor, I believe she would have pulled up the winner and heroine of the hour had not the racing diet of bananas, meat jujubes, and egg-nog 100created such a revolt in Rustleton’s system, poor fellow, that at the sixth hour of the ordeal he was borne, almost insensible, and bathed in cold perspiration, from the tonneau to a neighboring hotel.
“To anxiety, in combination with exploding tires, I attribute the fact of Miss Twissing’s finishing as Number Four. Dear fellow, since you are so good as to insist, I will put that cushion behind the small of my back. Lumbago, in damp weather, is my particular bane. Thankee!”
Hambridge drew forth a spotlessly white handkerchief, flourished it, and trumpeted.
“Now we come to the crux, dear fellows. The Admirable Twissing, as many call her, not content with bein’ an acknowledged expert in salmon fishin’ and a darin’ rider to hounds, set her heart on Rustleton’s being practically the same. With a light trout-rod and a tin of worms he has occasionally amoosed himself on locally-preserved waters; mounted on an easy-goin’ cob, he is, so to put it, fairly at home. Scotch and Norwegian rivers now, shall I say, claimed him as their sacrifice; highly-mettled hunters—the Hopsacks stables are famous—took five-barred gates and quickset hedges with him; occasionally even bolted with him, regardless of his personal predilections. In the same spirit his betrothed bride compelled him to fence with her; instructed him, at severe physical expense to himself, in the rules of jiu-jitsu. The final straw was laid upon the camel’s back when she insisted on his putting on the gloves with her, and standing up for half an hour every morning to be scientifically pummeled.”
The listeners’ mouths screwed themselves into the shape of long-expressive whistles. Glances of profound meaning were exchanged. One man said, with a gulp of sympathy, “Poor beggar!”
“And so the worm turned,” said Hambridge Ost, 101running his forefinger round inside the edge of his collar. “Smarting from upper-cuts administered by the woman who was ............