Madcap. George Gibbs

      Chapter I. Hermia II. The Gorilla III. The Ineffectual Aunt IV. Marooned V. Bread and Salt VI. The Rescue VII. "Wake Robin" VIII. Olga Tcherny IX. Out of His Depth X. The Fugitive XI. The Gates of Chance XII. The Fairy Godmother XIII. Vagabondia XIV. The Fabiani Family XV. Danger XVI. Manet Cicatrix XVII. PÂre GuÂgou's Roses XVIII. A Philosopher in a Quandary XIX. Mountebanks XX. The Empty House XXI. Nemasis XXII. Great Pan is Dead XXIII. A Lady in the Dark XXIV. The Wings of the Butterfly XXV. Circe and the Fossil XXVI. Mrs. Berkeley Hammond Entertains XXVII. The Seats of the Mighty XXVIII. The Brass Bell XXIX. Duo

      CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      HERMIA

      Titine glanced at the parted curtains and empty bed, then at the clock, and yawned. It was not yet eight o'clock. From the look of things, she was sure that Miss Challoner had arisen and departed for a morning ride before the breaking of the dawn. She peered out of the window and contracted her shoulders expressively. To ride in the cold morning air upon a violent horse when she had been out late! B—r! But then, Mademoiselle was a wonderful person—like no one since the beginning of the world. She made her own laws and Titine was reluctantly obliged to confess that she herself was delighted to obey them.

      Another slight shrug of incomprehension—of absolution from such practices—and Titine moved to the linen cabinet and took out some fluffy things of lace and ribbon, then to a closet from which she brought a soft room-gown, a pair of silk stockings and some very small suede slippers.

      She had hardly completed these preparations when there was the sound of a door hurriedly closed downstairs, a series of joyous yelps from a dog, a rush of feet on the stairs and the door of the room gave way before the precipitate entrance of a slight, almost boyish, female person, with blue eyes, the rosiest of cheeks and a mass of yellow hair, most of which had burst from its confines beneath her hat.

      To the quiet Titine her mistress created an impression of bringing not only herself into the room, but also the violent horse and the whole of the out-of-doors besides.

      "Down, Domino! Down, I say!" to the clamorous puppy. "Now—out with you!" And as he refused to obey she waved her crop threateningly and at a propitious moment banged the door upon his impertinent snub-nose.

      "Quick, Titine, my bath and—why, what are you looking at?"

      "Your hat, Mademoiselle," in alarm, "It is broken, and your face—"

      "It's a perfectly good face. What's the matter with it?"

      By this time Miss Challoner had reached the cheval glass. Her hat was smashed in at one side and several dark stains disfigured her cheek and temple.

      "Oh, I'm a sight. He chucked me into some bushes, Titine—"

      "That terrible horse—Mademoiselle!"

      "The same—into some very sticky bushes—but he didn't get away. I got on without help, too. Lordy, but I did take it out of him! Oh, didn't I!"

      Her eye lighted gaily as though in challenge at nothing at all as she removed her gloves and tossed her hat and crop on the bed and sprawled into a chair with a sigh, while Titine removed her boots and made tremulous and reproachful inquiries.

      "Mademoiselle—will—will kill herself, I am sure."

      Hermia Challoner laughed.

      "Better die living—than be living dead. Besides, no one ever dies who doesn't care whether he dies or not. I shall die comfortably in bed at the age of eighty-three, I'm sure of it. Now, my bath. Vite, Titine! I have a hunger like that which never was before."

      Miss Challoner undressed and entered her bathroom, where she splashed industriously for some minutes, emerging at last radiant and glowing with health and a delight in the mere joy of existence. While Titine brushed her hair, the girl sat before her dressing-table putting lotion on her injured cheeks and temple. Her hair arranged, she sent the maid for her breakfast tray while she finished her toilet in leisurely fashion and went into her morning room. The suede slippers contributed their three inches to her stature, the long lines of the flowing robe added their dignity, and the strands of her hair, each woven carefully into its appointed place, completed the transformation from the touseled, hoydenish boy-girl of half an hour before into the luxurious and somewhat bored young lady of fashion.

      But she sank into the chair before her breakfast tray and ate with an appetite which took something form this illusion, while Titine brought her letters and a long box of flowers which were unwrapped and placed in a floor-vase of silver and glass in an embrasure of the window. The envelope which accompanied the flowers Titine handed to her mistress, who opened it carelessly between mouthfuls and finally added it to the accumulated litter of fashionable stationery. Hermia eyed her Dresden chocolate-pot uncheerfully. This breakfast gift had reached her with an ominous regularity on Mondays and Thursdays for a month, and the time had come when something must be done about it. But she did not permit unpleasant thoughts, if unpleasant they really were, to distract her from the casual delights of retrospection and the pleasures of her repast, which she finished with a thoroughness that spoke more eloquently of the wholesomeness of her appetite even than the real excellence of the cooking. Upon Titine, who brought her the cigarettes and a brazier, she created the impression—as she always did indoors—of a child, greatly overgrown, parading herself with mocking ostentation in the garments of maturity. The cigarette, too, was a part of this parade, and she smoked it daintily, though without apparent enjoyment.

      Her meal finished, she was ready to receive feminine visitors. She seldom lacked company, for it is not the fate of a girl of Hermia Challoner's condition to be left long to her own devices. Her father's death, some years before, had fallen heavily upon her, but youth and health had borne her above even that sad event triumphant, and now at three and twenty, with a fortune which loomed large even in a day of large fortunes, she lived alone with a legion of servants in the great house, with no earthly ties but an ineffectual aunt and a Trust Company.

      But she did not suffer for lack of advice as to the conduct of her life or of her affairs, and she always took it with the sad devotional air which its givers had learned meant that in the end she would do exactly as she chose. And so the Aunt and the Trust Company, like the scandalized Titine, ended inevitably in silent acquiescence.

      Of her acquaintances much might be said, both good and bad. They represented almost every phase of society from the objects of her charities (which were many and often unreasoning) to the daughters of her father's friends who belonged in her own sphere of existence. And if one's character may be judged by that of one's friends, Hermia was of infinite variety. Perhaps the sportive were most often in her company, and it was against these that Mrs. Westfield ineffectually railed, but there was a warmth in her affection for Gertrude Brotherton, who liked quiet people as a rule (and made