V WARNER—WHAT ELSE BUT A WAG?

“ ... Just as I was telling Timmie the other night, when a man’s serious—and only then—his trouble begins! Well, I must be tripping along; promised to help Sheila give Lady Trotworthy tea—the dear old soul’s mind isn’t so light on its feet any more, you know. Bye-bye, Hawley. Bye, Plunkett.” Warner threw his coat over his shoulder and departed.

Hawley moved his feet still an inch higher on one of the Club’s red leather chairs. “Awful’ good fellow, Warner,” he vouchsafed, as intelligibly as his cigar would let him.

“Fine,” agreed Plunkett (respectfully speaking, Mr. Knollys Verplanck) from the depths of another red leather chair.

“Er—awfully funny, and all that, you know. Keeps things goin’. I don’t know what Sheila’d do if it wasn’t for Warner, since she has that old English Someone to stop. Nice old lady, y’know, but—well, her mind is a bit heavy on its feet, just as Warner said. Don’t know what he’d say if he knew there was another coming to-morrow—another Englishwoman I mean, but nothing like Lady Trot; Sheila says this one’s young and tremendously good-looking. Well, I’m glad—for Warner. He deserves some kind of reward after a week of Lady Trot. Deuced good of him to help Sheila; he’s so—so funny, don’ che know.”

“Very funny,” agreed Verplanck again.

“But—but I say, Plunkett”—uneasily the substantial tan boots drew themselves down from comfort, and Hawley’s big, solid body bent confidentially toward his friend—“I wouldn’t have any of these other chaps hear me, you know, not for worlds; but I’ve often wondered—d’ye think Warner’s anything besides funny, Plunkett? D’ye think—well, what else but a wag is he, eh? I dunno.”

“Well, I don’t,” said Verplanck, frankly; and he stared out across the crowded Avenue, with an expression that paid Warner no little compliment—by its regret. “I tell you candidly, Deverence, I’ve known Jim Warner now for nearly twelve years, and I’ve never yet heard him say anything but a joke. By George, the other night at Treadham’s, when that girl’s dress was on fire, I could have killed Warner! There the girl was, in flames, and Warner, with his eyes right on her, sitting still on the other side of the room, telling a funny story! Why half the people in the room didn’t know she was on fire, even. I tell you, it made me mad—so mad, I’ve scarcely been civil to Jim since.”

“D’you say anything to him about it?” Hawley’s cigar had gone out. His big, good-humored face looked almost earnest.

“I told him—I couldn’t help telling him—I thought he might have made some pretence at least, at aiding the girl, as long as he saw——”

“And what d’ he say?”

“He said ‘my dear boy, there were five of you aiding her already. I never deliberately make myself inconspicuous!’ Yes, sir, that was just exactly what he said!”

Hawley swore; plentifully. “And d’ye know,” he added, plaintive through his disgust, “Sheila told me that was the funniest story she ever heard in her life; told me about it after we got home, and by Gad, it was funny! Began with——”

“Oh, of course!” Knollys shook his shoulders impatiently. “His stories always are funny. He’s always funny. He can’t help being funny. But great Heavens, Hawley, he can help being nothing else! It does seem to me that a fellow ought to have something come to him besides a laugh. He’s got an almighty fine face.”

“Right!” Genuine affection beamed from Hawley’s dog-eyes. “I—don’t you suppose it’s rather because he—there’s never been any woman, I mean?” The big “society man” lapsed into sudden shyness. “I think all that—that sort of thing, y’know, makes a tremendous difference, old chap.”

The other man met his eyes squarely. “So do I,” he said; and it was as though their hands had gripped for the moment. “Yes, I daresay you’re right: Warner’s never had much to do with women—now I think of it, I’ve never seen him with one, except Ellen and Sheila, and then only at parties, or when there’s some guest to help entertain, like now at your house. Odd, too, for Warner’s just the sort that ought to succeed with a woman——”

“Yes”—Hawley nodded—“devilish good-lookin’, plenty of money, and er—what d’ye call it? Debonair, y’know; um-m, that’s it, debonair. Asked Sheila what it meant, and she said the sort of person who could tell you his own tragedy as though it were some one’s else. Poor little Sheila! I’ll bet she’s having her own troubles this afternoon—a tea-party and Lady Trot all together—whew! S’pose I’d better run along and help ’em out, what?” He drained his glass regretfully. “Come up for a bit, Plunkett?”

“Thanks”—Knollys too was reaching for his hat—“I’ve to do ‘notions’ for Ellen: beeswax and binding-tape, and er—ah, yes! Elastic, you know! Pale blue, a yard and—and how much, Hawley?” Mr. Verplanck’s aristocratic nose wrinkled thoughtfully. “Blessed if I know.”

Hawley roared. “Come on up, when you’ve found out,” he called, as they left each other at the foot of the Club steps. “Warner’s sure to have some ripping story for us; so—er—so deuced funny, y’know, Warner!”

In Sheila’s charming octagon room, an impatient little group of people crowded about some one seated cross-legged on a quaint Chinese stool. “Come, Sheila, do make him! He’s such a lazy beggar——”

“And he’s had his eternal three cups of tea; there’s not a particle of excuse——”

“Warner, you Sphinx, unravel! We’re waiting, these fifteen minutes; why are you invited, d’ye suppose, if not to tell stories? You’re no good at all en tête-à-tête, you know.”

“My dear Mr. Warner (it was a delightfully ugly old lady in a marvelous tea-gown, who spoke to him), I’m afraid you really must gratify them. Such noise—and my poor neuralgia—really!”

The person on the tabouret raised his careless attractive face to her, smiling. “You win, Lady Trot! What shall it be, Sheila? Broad farce, or screaming tragedy? Nothing so appallingly funny, you know, as a really tremendous tragedy.”

“Then tell us one,” commanded Sheila—a veritable bit of her own Dresden china, as she glanced at him over the tea-cups. She was genuinely fond of Warner, the little society lady; his sense of the dramatic, something told her, made them subtly kin. “Tell us the most awful—and the funniest—tragedy you can think of, Jim, an original one, you know.” And Sheila pushed her chair back from the teatable, and curled down into it, in a luxury of anticipation.

“All right”—Warner’s drawl came a bit slower than usual; he was sitting forward, gazing steadily at the fire—“I’ll tell you one. It—I’m quite sure it’s original, that it’s never been told before. Because,” he laughed contagiously, looking around at all of them, “it was my tragedy, you see!”

“Yours—ha! ha!” Every one was laughing with him, as they drew their chairs into a closer circle. “A tragedy that happened to Jim! That’s a good one. Go on, Jim; it starts rippingly!”

Warner balanced a plate of frivolous pink cakes on one of his crossed knees; his eyes, as he regarded them, were full of negligent amusement. “She—that’s the way all tragedies begin, of course—was a bachelor girl, and lived in a flat. Nothing very original about that, but then she was the sort of girl who made the commonplace very nice. She even made me very nice—for a time: at least so people told me. And out of sheer gratitude, I suppose, I—silly ass!—fell in love with her.”

“Haw! Haw!” It was Hawley’s large roar that interrupted. He had just come in, and was standing near the door. “Warner in love!—that’s the best yet! Nothing that chap won’t tell, for the sake of a story. Funny old Warner!”

“Fact.” Warner grinned back at him. “Well, naturally, when I realized the shocking state I was in, I set about to pry into the lady’s emotions. But malheureusement, I found she hadn’t any. That is, not for me. There were other men—oh, a disgusting lot of other men!—with whom she was shy, coquette, difficult—all the encouraging things, you know; but with me she remained always that frightful neutrality, one’s Platonic friend. So, things went; I mean, stood still. I went to the flat, and she came out to dine; and, ah, yes; a pretty touch I had almost forgotten—she always wore a tiny carved jade elephant hung on a fine gold chain about her neck. Lends a neat flavor of the artistic, that elephant, what?” He smiled at the little group whimsically. “Um-m; one night at the Savoy——”

“Ah! It was in London then?” The ugly old lady’s beautiful bright eyes betrayed what she thought of London. “You didn’t tell us that.”

“Of course—in London, five years ago last November. As I said, we were having supper at the Savoy, and she told me she called the elephant Jim. I thought it a crude joke, myself; but I let it pass.... I let it pass. He did me no end of good turns after all, that elephant: every time I was on the verge of insanity—blurting the thing, I mean, of course, and so losing her for a pal or anything—I seemed to catch that old beast’s green eye fixed on me—with the leeriest grin you ever saw. And I swore I’d never be as clumsy as he, no matter if our names were the same.

“Well, to get on to the tragedy”—Warner’s laugh rang out so delightfully clear that every one had to join in it; even Sheila, whose adorable butterfly face had been rather serious in its attention. “One dull afternoon I had dropped in to tea, as I did a shocking lot of rainy evenings, and found her in a blue frock—um-m—a delicious frock really—but blue and in a mood to match. After she’d made us each three very bad cups of tea—and she generally made very creditable tea, too, for a girl—I said: ‘Come, let’s have it! which of them is it—who’s bothering you?’

“For a minute she looked as though she’d like to box my ears—you know the kind of look, when you’ve just displayed a little perspicacity in some one’s else affairs; then ‘it’s the one who isn’t bothering me,’ she said, toying with the little elephant and looking at it in a peculiar sort of fashion. ‘The one who hasn’t the perception to bother me—or doesn’t want to,’ she added, in a rather lower voice.

“‘But who——?’ I began.

“‘Never mind’—— you know how girls are, the minute one begins to be useful; nothing women hate so much as usefulness. A practical man has absolutely no chance with ’em. ‘I’m absurd even to mention it to you. I hate rainy days—they always make one so absurd. Come, let’s try those new songs——’

“‘Not until you’ve told me——’

“‘What? I don’t intend to tell you anything,’ she declared—so firmly that I knew she would end by telling me everything.

“‘Oh, yes, you do,’ I said—with that disgusting urbanity which has made all my friends abhor me, more or less—‘yes, you do. First of all, what’s his name?’

“‘J—Jack,’ she stammered. The reason people hate that urbanity is because it’s a sort of subtle hypnotic.

“‘And he—ah, doesn’t bother you enough? Isn’t sufficiently courageous in his attitude of approach, I mean?’

“‘Oh!’ she threw up her hands with a little gesture of abandon. ‘He’s sufficiently courageous, I suppose; but he doesn’t see. Oh, I don’t know why I tell you all this, but it’s gone on so long now—our being just such good pals and all that—it—it’s getting on my nerves frightfully. And then this beastly wet afternoon’—— she laughed a bit hysterically. ‘Yes, yes; I’ll tell you. You see (she was twisting the jade elephant almost off its chain) this man I’ve known for ages—a year at least—and we’ve done everything together; I’ve always kept my best jokes for him, and my craziest hopes and plans, and—yes, I’m afraid my worst moods, too. He’s never seemed to mind somehow, no matter how disagreeable I’ve been, and—well, just lately I’ve found that—that I can’t go on being pals, that’s all. I daren’t even hint to him—I might lose everything, you see; and yet—oh, don’t you see, if he did care—and was perhaps in exactly my position—I’ve worn the mask so faithfully. If he did care——! Oh, Jim (but she was looking at the clumsy little elephant), isn’t it funny? Isn’t it funny, funny, funny!’

“And ’twas funny, now, wasn’t it? Nothing so frightfully funny as a real tragedy. Now I—I was just clown enough to snatch at one little ravelled end of her story, and try to match it up with a ragged corner of mine—that, you see, was where the delicious joke of it came in. Of course, I couldn’t be sure, but—something said slyly, ‘Why it’s you she means, can’t you see? It’s you, you blessed idiot, and everything’s coming out all shipshape.’

“Just the same, one can’t believe oneself just offhand like that—it seems so reckless; so I suggested, carelessly, you know, that she bring this tongue-tied impossibility to tea with me next day. In that way, I told her, I could see exactly how things stood (and I meant it more literally than she knew, by a good deal!); we’d tea at some Galleries—good place, I pointed out, for me to watch this Jack person, without his knowing it, and then (by this time my ridiculous tongue was fairly tripping itself up with expectation) she and I would have another talk, and decide her next move.

“‘Capital!’ she pronounced—a bit nervously, I thought at the time. ‘If only I can get hold of Jack for to-morrow——’

“‘Oh, well, if to-morrow turns out impossible, any day next week will be all right,’ I said cheerfully—the burning question being, of course, whether she would find it possible, any day, to produce this ‘Jack’—whom by the way I was beginning to care for quite foolishly—as one cares for oneself, don’t you know! ‘Say you meet him at the New, at four; have an hour for the pictures—which means anything you want to say to him, while I stroll quietly about after you—unobserved. Then we go to tea à trois, and—the game’s complete. At tea——’ I endeavored to look at her quite impersonally—‘I shall try to make you understand just what I think. It’s understood?’

“‘Yes.’ She drew a long breath. ‘Yes, I suppose it might as well be to-morrow as any other day. We can’t go on as we’ve been doing, that’s certain.’

“‘No,’ I said—my voice as leading man was quite good in this part, really! ‘No,’ I said, ‘we can’t. We must er—come to some new arrangement to-morrow.’

“But will you believe me, when I said good-bye to her, that detestable elephant actually leered at me; and for some unaccountable reason I was suddenly furious at his being named Jim. A senseless liberty, I thought it. However, when I was outdoors again, and walking home through Regent’s Park, I began to think less and less about the elephant; more and more about her peculiar nervousness and agitation. The way she’d answered me at first—‘it’s the one who isn’t bothering me—who hasn’t the perception to bother me, or doesn’t want to’—and all the time looking at that little jade elephant, whose name was Jim! Not such a bad elephant after all, I decided.

“Then the way she hesitated when I asked his name: ‘J-Jack’ why of course! She was always the frankest, most absurdly truthful creature; and she had started to say—ah! It was almost too exquisite, even the hint of it. And—‘it’s gone on so long now—our being just good pals’ came back to me on leaping little bounds of recollection; and then ‘oh, don’t you see, if he did care—and was perhaps in exactly my position’—Hm! There was certainly no one else of whom she could possibly have thought that; no one else who had been shown her ‘worst moods’ as well as her ‘craziest hopes and plans!’ My children (Warner passed his plate of pink cakes to each one of them, with an elaborate bow, while his wonderful smiling eyes mocked their gravity), I assure you, that was one of the most remarkable twenty-four hours I have ever spent—from the time I left her, till the time I saw her again next afternoon. Those of you who have known the emotion will remember its alternative phases—of leaving one entirely strangled, and again curiously hollow. I underwent them both, with breathless rapidity, all night and the next day; and they left me rather weak-kneed and stuttery, when I arrived at the Galleries at precisely half past four.

“I strolled about, and watched the Americans, at the same time keeping a weather eye out for her—and Jack! Awfully amusing, you know, waiting round for one’s fate to make up its mind! I never spent such a funny half hour in my life!

“Then I saw her. And she was alone. And, you know, to this day, for the life of me, I can’t remember what I thought—much less what I said or did, when I saw her—alone—at five o’clock! I do remember she had on another blue gown, some sort of tailored thing, with little lines in it; and those lines danced themselves up and down and round that room, till somehow they caught up those tiresome weighted feet of mine, and drew me over to her.

“‘Jack not here?’ I asked—oh, with an enormous carelessness. My voice, once out, sounded so odd, I just asked again to make sure.

“‘Jack not here?’ ‘No—no; that is, not yet. I can’t understand,’ she went on hurriedly, ‘I wrote him a line—rather an absurd line, I’m afraid—and told him if for any reason he couldn’t be here, to send me a wire. And he didn’t send the wire, and I haven’t seen anything of him—up till now.’

“Up till now! I was grinning like a fool, trying to remember all I had planned to say, and failing utterly to say anything—until she took the reins and suggested rather faintly that we might as well have tea.

“So we had it; and I gulped mine, and said quite the most brilliant things I’ve ever said in my life—naturally, since I hadn’t an idea what I was talking about; and watched her eat her muffin (which she did with the most frantic deliberation), wishing to goodness she’d finish, so that—well, one certainly could not propose, with the person eating a muffin!

“At last she did finish, and—I was cold from my head to my feet—I knew it was The Time! She had given me undivided attention all during tea, gave it me still. Her eyes had never once wandered after some one who might be expected.

“‘Dear old girl’—I had leaned forward to where I could watch her eyes a bit better; when suddenly I saw in them something—something I had never seen before, something I have never seen since, in a woman’s eyes. It knocked the breath all out of me—you see (Warner’s laugh was the lightest thing in the world) I thought it was for me, that look. Great joke!—for in another second she’d jumped up, run round the other side of the table behind me, and held out both hands to—Jack! Some wretched duffer I’d never heard of, he turned out to be; knew her in Paris or somewhere, where she’d spent a lot of time. Seems that since he’d come to England people had rather scared him off, by tales of me! Perf’ly ridiculous, I told him; she told him, too. Absolutely extraordinary! Why I—I was just old Jim, you know—like the elephant; good old friend—er pal’s the word rather; good old pal, and all that, but—well, so that’s the end (Warner stood up and faced them all, more debonair than ever), for they lived happily ever after.”

“Yes, but—but how did this er—eccentric young person who preferred some one else to you, effect the er—the explanation, I mean to say?” came from Lady Trot’s dim corner of the room. “Such extremely quick adjustment, you make it, dear Mr. Warner!”

“’nTwas,” said Warner blithely. “When I saw him, and he saw her, and she waited to see what he’d say when he saw her, why I just said it for him, d’ye see? ‘You’ve come to get congratulated, now haven’t you?’ I accused him. And he half murdered my hand, and said that that was about it.”

“And then——?” It was Sheila, the little society lady, who questioned very softly. But she did not look at Warner.

“Oh, then, having said my piece, I went away and left him to say his. And do you know”—Warner’s drawl was one of exceeding gentleness—“I’ve always cared for—Jack; like one cares for oneself, you know, the person who should have been oneself. And I’m sure she likes him; better than the elephant. Such a clumsy, conceited beast, an elephant.”

He turned to have a laugh with Hawley, who—with singular interest—was still standing by the door; when just then, in came Knollys Verplanck, laden with parcels, and a little air of excitement as well. “I’ve brought you your guest, Sheila,” he announced, over the heads of some superfluous people. “Her husband deserted her at the door, to attend to some luggage, so I offered myself as escort. Their boat got in a bit ahead of time, you see.”

With a little rush, Sheila had come forward. “Joan, you angel, you wretch, for not sending me a wireless—oh, where are these lights! Turn them on, do, Jim—and then I want you to meet Mrs. Herrington. She’s—oh!” And every one else in the room drew in their breath involuntarily also; for the lady with whom Warner was shaking hands, was dressed in a blue tailored gown. And on a fine gold chain about her neck she wore a tiny carved jade elephant.

“And is its name still Jim?” asked Warner, gently.

“Awfully funny, Warner,” said Knollys to Hawley, mechanically.

“Awfully funny,” agreed Hawley—a bit uncertainly.