He arrived at Boston, presented his letter of introduction, and was very well received by old Mrs. Vanhomry.
They got on admirably. «You are still a bachelor?» she asked.
«I cannot,» he replied, «bring myself to regard the modern girl as a true mate. Those clipped locks, that flat masculine figure, that hardness, that ultra-sophistication! Where are the curves, the innocence, the warm-heartedness of yesteryear? But why am I telling you all this — ?»
«You would have liked our dear Ethel. Such a big, healthy, affectionate, old-fashioned girl! You must meet her, and her fiancé. Perhaps you will come to the wedding?»
«Nothing could be more delightful. Unfortunately, I have to return to New York almost immediately.»
On his return, Paul called at once on Olga, but found that her flat was locked up. She had left no address; you may depend he sought her everywhere.
He saw in the papers an account of the wedding of Miss Vanhomry to a Mr. Colefax. It appeared that the happy pair were on their way to the Ritz-Carlton.
«I really must go and sit in the lobby,» said he, «and console myself with a peep at the disadvantages attached to that forty thousand a year.»
Very well, he sat in the lobby. Before very long, he saw the enormous form of what was evidently the happy bride crossing from the elevator.
«Upon my word!» he thought. «There is a great deal to be said for the simple life after all. One at least preserves one's individuality.»
He peered about for the husband. At last he saw a sensitive face in the neighbourhood of the bride's hips. «That must be the husband,» he said. «Very charming! Very charming indeed. But surely I have seen him before.»
In order to make sure, he edged closer, and was amazed to find that this husband was none other than his own Olga, in male attire.
He at once applied for a private interview. «My dear Olga, this is a very pretty trick you have played on me. And what can your bride — soi-disant — think of it all?»
«You must regard the matter rationally, my dear Paul.»
«I am so afraid there may be a scandal. You have no idea what spiteful tongues might make of it.»
«You underestimate the innocence of my wife, whose dolls, as I suspected, were very ordinary dolls. And you must admit, Paul, that if either of us is to be in this position, I at least offer less grounds for jealousy. You had better be my secretary.»
Paul submitted with a good grace, and for a long time enjoyed his occupation very tolerably. Fortunately, Henry Vanhomry remained in Europe.
On one occasion there was a dinner party at the Colefax home, and a few of the male guests, with Paul the friendly secretary, and dapper little Mr. Colefax, remained smoking together long after the gigantic bride had retired to bed. The conversation turned on women, a subject which the so-called Mr. Colefax enjoyed more than his secretary. They talked of attractions.
«My wife,» said this charming imposter, «is disarmingly simple; why try to disguise it? Nevertheless, she has an amazing personality buried, as it were, beneath her naiveté. I am convinced it is there, I sense it, and yet I could hardly find an example to describe. How do you account for that?»
«It is very simple, my dear Colefax,» said a very eminent doctor. «Your wife, if I may say so, owes her adorable simplicity, as she does her admirably robust physique, to a little glandular maladjustment, which (always supposing you should desire what professionally we should regard as an improvement) could easily be put right. Who knows what she is like underneath?»
«It would certainly be interesting to find out,» said her false husband, intrigued.
«She might be slim, vivacious, a positive butterfly,» continued the doctor.
«It would be like carving out ambergris from a whale,» observed a well-known adventurer who was present.
«Or opening a neolithic barrow,» added a famous archaeologist.
«Or undressing an Eskimo girl at Christmas,» put in a notorious Don Juan.
«You might find more than you bargain for,» observed Paul, overcome by an inexplicable foreboding.
He spoke too late. Everyone was desperately keen on the experiment.
«You must bring your dear wife to a little home that I have in Paris,» said the doctor, «where I have every facility for the treatment.»
«We shall come at once. You, Paul, had better remain behind, to deal with everything we shall have to leave unsettled.»
Paul, therefore, was left. Ethel and her spouse went on the next boat to Paris, accompanied by the doctor, and, as a matter of fact, by the adventurer, the archaeologist, and the Don Juan as well.
My Dear Paul,
You will be amazed at the result of our experiment, and possibly a little disconcerted, though you were always a connoisseur of poetic justice. Under the treatment Ethel has lost no less than a hundred pounds. The removal of this prodigious quantity of blubber has left her exposed as a lean, agile, witty, and very handsome man. «How absurd that I should have been called Ethel so long!» he observed to me when first he was apprised of this transformation. In order to put him at his ease, I replied at once, «No more absurd than that I should have been called your husband. »After all, the cat was, so to speak, out of the bag, and there was nothing else to do.
He took it extremely well, saying with a smile, «We must make the punishment fit the crime.» On my part, I was not long in promising never to deceive him again.
We are remaining on this side to avoid gossip, for the situation has a ludicrous side which we might find painful. But not nearly so ludicrous or painful, my dear Paul, as it might have proved, in all the circumstances, had you had your original wish.
Once more,
Olga
SEASON OF MISTS
I was ready for anything when I came to the town of T————. It was already late in the year. Dead leaves crawled like crabs over the asphalt of the deserted esplanade. Winds raced along the corridors of the larger hotels, barging into the wrong rooms.
It is at such a place, and at such a season, that one finds the desperate grass widow, or young things whose natural credulity snaps starvingly at the grossest counterfeit. The illusion of teeming possibilities had gone with the licentious carnival of summer, the masks of coarse sunburn, and he who may be sitting alone among the sand dunes. Ravenous dreams pace the unvisited sitting-rooms of villas, or stalk between rising waves and falling leaves.
The concealed smile in my smile, and the concealed meaning in my words, would have made me seem a sort of scheme-riddled Machiavelli in the ephemeral mating dance of July. I should have been condemned as heavy going, would-be clever, even unpleasant or dangerous. Now, on the other hand, my slightly involved personality would be as welcome, as a jig-saw puzzle in hands already fidgety with boredom. Nevertheless, I had gone so far as to purchase a ready-made sports jacket, and had my black mustache had any objective existence I should have taken the precaution of shaving it off.
I still had a little money. I was not after profit, but pleasure. I desired to intoxicate myself on a real emotion, and I wondered in which of the still occupied villas, in what sort of absurd drawing-room, treading softly in fear of what husband or what aunt, I should perform what drunken antics my chosen potion would inspire in me.
Meticulous in my observance of protective mimicry, I could not of course omit the snorter or quick one before dinner on my first evening in the hotel. I entered the bar in jaunty style, my mouth already writhing with a classy catch-phrase, like the eye socket of a provincial actor (but all actors are provincial) in travail with his waggish monocle.