Part 9 (2/2)
There is no doubt that Dulphemia Ra.s.selyer-Brown was a girl of remarkable character and intellect. So is any girl who has beautiful golden hair parted in thick bands on her forehead, and deep blue eyes soft as an Italian sky.
Even the oldest and most serious men in town admitted that in talking to her they were aware of a grasp, a reach, a depth that surprised them. Thus old Judge Longerstill, who talked to her at dinner for an hour on the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission, felt sure from the way in which she looked up in his face at intervals and said, ”How interesting!” that she had the mind of a lawyer. And Mr. Brace, the consulting engineer, who showed her on the table-cloth at dessert with three forks and a spoon the method in which the overflow of the spillway of the Gatun Dam is regulated, felt a.s.sured, from the way she leaned her face on her hand sideways and said, ”How extraordinary!” that she had the brain of an engineer. Similarly foreign visitors to the social circles of the city were delighted with her. Viscount FitzThistle, who explained to Dulphemia for half an hour the intricacies of the Irish situation, was captivated at the quick grasp she showed by asking him at the end, without a second's hesitation, ”And which are the Nationalists?”
This kind of thing represents female intellect in its best form. Every man that is really a man is willing to recognize it at once. As to the young men, of course they flocked to the Ra.s.selyer-Brown residence in shoals. There were batches of them every Sunday afternoon at five o'clock, encased in long black frock-coats, sitting very rigidly in upright chairs, trying to drink tea with one hand. One might see athletic young college men of the football team trying hard to talk about Italian music; and Italian tenors from the Grand Opera doing their best to talk about college football. There were young men in business talking about art, and young men in art talking about religion, and young clergymen talking about business. Because, of course, the Ra.s.selyer-Brown residence was the kind of cultivated home where people of education and taste are at liberty to talk about things they don't know, and to utter freely ideas that they haven't got. It was only now and again, when one of the professors from the college across the avenue came booming into the room, that the whole conversation was pulverized into dust under the hammer of accurate knowledge.
The whole process was what was called, by those who understood such things, a salon. Many people said that Mrs. Ra.s.selyer-Brown's afternoons at home were exactly like the delightful salons of the eighteenth century: and whether the gatherings were or were not salons of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt that Mr. Ra.s.selyer-Brown, under whose care certain favoured guests dropped quietly into the back alcove of the dining-room, did his best to put the gathering on a par with the best saloons of the twentieth.
Now it so happened that there had come a singularly slack moment in the social life of the City. The Grand Opera had sung itself into a huge deficit and closed. There remained nothing of it except the efforts of a committee of ladies to raise enough money to enable Signor Puffi to leave town, and the generous attempt of another committee to gather funds in order to keep Signor Pasti in the City. Beyond this, opera was dead, though the fact that the deficit was nearly twice as large as it had been the year before showed that public interest in music was increasing. It was indeed a singularly trying time of the year. It was too early to go to Europe; and too late to go to Bermuda. It was too warm to go south, and yet still too cold to go north. In fact, one was almost compelled to stay at home-which was dreadful.
As a result Mrs. Ra.s.selyer-Brown and her three hundred friends moved backwards and forwards on Plutoria Avenue, seeking novelty in vain. They washed in waves of silk from tango teas to bridge afternoons. They poured in liquid avalanches of colour into crowded receptions, and they sat in glittering rows and listened to lectures on the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the female s.e.x. But for the moment all was weariness.
Now it happened, whether by accident or design, that just at this moment of general ennui Mrs. Ra.s.selyer-Brown and her three hundred friends first heard of the presence in the city of Mr. Yahi-Bahi, the celebrated Oriental mystic. He was so celebrated that n.o.body even thought of asking who he was or where he came from. They merely told one another, and repeated it, that he was the celebrated Yahi-Bahi. They added for those who needed the knowledge that the name was p.r.o.nounced Yahhy-Bahhy, and that the doctrine taught by Mr. Yahi-Bahi was Boohooism. This latter, if anyone inquired further, was explained to be a form of Shoodooism, only rather more intense. In fact, it was esoteric-on receipt of which information everybody remarked at once how infinitely superior the Oriental peoples are to ourselves.
Now as Mrs. Ra.s.selyer-Brown was always a leader in everything that was done in the best circles on Plutoria Avenue, she was naturally among the first to visit Mr. Yahi-Bahi.
”My dear,” she said, in describing afterwards her experience to her bosom friend, Miss Snagg, ”it was most interesting. We drove away down to the queerest part of the City, and went to the strangest little house imaginable, up the narrowest stairs one ever saw-quite Eastern, in fact, just like a scene out of the Koran.”
”How fascinating!” said Miss Snagg. But as a matter of fact, if Mr. Yahi-Bahi's house had been inhabited, as it might have been, by a streetcar conductor or a railway brakesman, Mrs. Ra.s.selyer-Brown wouldn't have thought it in any way peculiar or fascinating.
”It was all hung with curtains inside,” she went on, ”with figures of snakes and Indian G.o.ds, perfectly weird.”
”And did you see Mr. Yahi-Bahi?” asked Miss Snagg.
”Oh no, my dear. I only saw his a.s.sistant Mr. Ram Spudd; such a queer little round man, a Bengalee, I believe. He put his back against a curtain and spread out his arms sideways and wouldn't let me pa.s.s. He said that Mr. Yahi-Bahi was in meditation and mustn't be disturbed.”
”How delightful!” echoed Miss Snagg.
But in reality Mr. Yahi-Bahi was sitting behind the curtain eating a ten-cent can of pork and beans.
”What I like most about eastern people,” went on Mrs. Ra.s.selyer-Brown, ”is their wonderful delicacy of feeling. After I had explained about my invitation to Mr. Yahi-Bahi to come and speak to us on Boohooism, and was going away, I took a dollar bill out of my purse and laid it on the table. You should have seen the way Mr. Ram Spudd took it. He made the deepest salaam and said, 'Isis guard you, beautiful lady.' Such perfect courtesy, and yet with the air of scorning the money. As I pa.s.sed out I couldn't help slipping another dollar into his hand, and he took it as if utterly unaware of it, and muttered, 'Osiris keep you, O flower of women!' And as I got into the motor I gave him another dollar and he said, 'Osis and Osiris both prolong your existence, O lily of the ricefield,' and after he had said it he stood beside the door of the motor and waited without moving till I left. He had such a strange, rapt look, as if he were still expecting something!”
”How exquisite!” murmured Miss Snagg. It was her business in life to murmur such things as this for Mrs. Ra.s.selyer-Brown. On the whole, reckoning Grand Opera tickets and dinners, she did very well out of it.
”Is it not?” said Mrs. Ra.s.selyer-Brown. ”So different from our men. I felt so ashamed of my chauffeur, our new man, you know; he seemed such a contrast beside Ram Spudd. The rude way in which the opened the door, and the rude way in which he climbed on to his own seat, and the rudeness with which he turned on the power-I felt positively ashamed. And he so managed it-I am sure he did it on purpose-that the car splashed a lot of mud over Mr. Spudd as it started.”
Yet, oddly enough, the opinion of other people on this new chauffeur, that of Miss Dulphemia Ra.s.selyer-Brown herself, for example, to whose service he was specially attached, was very different.
The great recommendation of him in the eyes of Miss Dulphemia and her friends, and the thing that gave him a touch of mystery was-and what higher qualification can a chauffeur want?-that he didn't look like a chauffeur at all.
”My dear Dulphie,” whispered Miss Philippa Furlong, the rector's sister (who was at that moment Dulphemia's second self), as they sat behind the new chauffeur, ”don't tell me that he is a chauffeur, because he isn't. He can chauffe, of course, but that's nothing.”
For the new chauffeur had a bronzed face, hard as metal, and a stern eye; and when he put on a chauffeur's overcoat some how it seemed to turn into a military greatcoat; and even when he put on the round cloth cap of his profession it was converted straightway into a military shako. And by Miss Dulphemia and her friends it was presently reported-or was invented?-that he had served in the Philippines; which explained at once the scar upon his forehead, which must have been received at Iloilo, or Huila-Huila, or some other suitable place.
But what affected Miss Dulphemia Brown herself was the splendid rudeness of the chauffeur's manner. It was so different from that of the young men of the salon. Thus, when Mr. Sikleigh Snoop handed her into the car at any time he would dance about saying, ”Allow me,” and ”Permit me,” and would dive forward to arrange the robes. But the Philippine chauffeur merely swung the door open and said to Dulphemia, ”Get in,” and then slammed it.
This, of course, sent a thrill up the spine and through the imagination of Miss Dulphemia Ra.s.selyer-Brown, because it showed that the chauffeur was a gentleman in disguise. She thought it very probable that he was a British n.o.bleman, a younger son, very wild, of a ducal family; and she had her own theories as to why he had entered the service of the Ra.s.selyer-Browns. To be quite candid about it, she expected that the Philippine chauffeur meant to elope with her, and every time he drove her from a dinner or a dance she sat back luxuriously, wis.h.i.+ng and expecting the elopement to begin.
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