Part 38 (1/2)
”Excuse me, but that is my chair and my paper.”
”Eh?” The poet looked up sweetly. ”Surely, the Club chair and the Club paper--”
”I have but this moment left them.”
”By a singular coincidence, I have but this moment taken possession of them.”
”Give them up, sir.”
”I shall do nothing of the kind, sir.”
At this point Sam was seized with the unlucky inspiration of quoting from Mr. Moggridge's published works:
”Forbid the flood to wet thy feet, Or bind its wrath in chains; But never seek to quench the heat That fires a poet's veins!”
This stanza, delivered with nice attention to its author's drawing-room manner, was too much.
”Sir, you are no gentleman!”
”You seem,” retorted Sam, ”to be an authority on manners as well as on Customs. I won't repeat your charge; but I'll be dashed if you're a poet!”
My Muse is in a very pretty pa.s.s. Gentlest of her sisterhood, she has wandered from the hum of Miss Limpenny's whist-table into the turmoil of Mars. Even as one who, strolling through a smiling champaign, finds suddenly a lion in his path, and to him straightway the topmost bough of the plata.n.u.s is dearer than the mother that bare him--in short, I really cannot say how this history would have ended, had not Fortune at this juncture descended to the Club-room in form and speech like to Admiral Buzza.
The Admiral did not convey his son away in a hollow cloud, or even break the Club telescope in Mr. Moggridge's hand; he made a speech instead, to this effect:
”My sons, attend and cease from strife implacable; neither be as two ravening whelps that, having chanced on a kid in the dells of the mountain, dispute thereover, dragging this way and that with gnas.h.i.+ng jaws. For to youth belong anger and biting words, but to soothe is the gift of old age.”
What the Admiral actually said was--”Hullo! what the devil are you young cubs quarrelling about?”
And now, satisfied that no blood is to be spilt, the Muse hies gladly to a very different scene.
In the drawing-room of ”The Bower” Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys was sitting with a puzzled face and a letter on her lap. She had gone to the front door to learn Sam Buzza's answer, and, having dismissed her messenger, was returning, when the garden-gate creaked, and a blue-jerseyed man, with a gravely humorous face, stood before her.
The new comer had regarded her long and earnestly before asking--
”Be you Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys?”
”I am.”
”Answerin' to name o' Geraldine, an' lawful wife o' party answerin'
to name o' Honorubble Frederic?”
”Certainly!” she smiled.
”H'm. Then this 'ere's for you.” And the blue-jerseyed man handed a letter, and looked at her again, searchingly.
”Is there an answer?”
”No, I reckon.”
She was turning, when the man suddenly laid a finger on her arm.