A Duet

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'How are we to know which IS his best?' Maude asked.

'I should be inclined to choose something with a title which suggests
profundity--"A Pretty Woman," "Love in a Life," "Any Wife to any
Husband"--'

'Oh, what DID she say to him?' cried Maude.

'Well, I was about to say that all these subjects rather suggested
frivolity.'

'Besides, it really is a very absurd title,' remarked Mrs. Beecher,
who was fond of generalising from her six months' experience of
matrimony. '_A_ husband to _A_ wife' would be intelligible, but how
can you know what ANY husband would say to ANY wife? No one can
really foretell what a man will do. They really are such
extraordinary creatures.'

But Mrs. Hunt Mortimer had been married for five years, and felt as
competent to lay down the law about husbands as about entrees.

'When you have had a larger experience of them, dear, you will find
that there is usually a reason, or at least a primitive instinct of
some sort, at the root of their actions. But, seriously, we must
really concentrate our attention upon the poet, for my other
engagement will call me away at four, which only leaves me ten
minutes to reach Maybury.'

Mrs. Beecher and Maude settled down with anxious attention upon their
faces.

'Do please go on!' they cried.

'Here is "The Pied Piper of Hamelin."'

'Now that interests me more than I can tell,' cried Maude, with her
eyes shining with pleasure. 'Do please read us everything there is
about that dear piper.'

'Why so?' asked her two companions.

'Well, the fact is,' said Maude, 'Frank--my husband, you know--came
to a fancy-dress at St. Albans as the Pied Piper. I had no idea that
it came from Browning.'

'How did he dress for it?' asked Mrs. Beecher. 'We are invited to
the Aston's dress ball, and I want something suitable for George.'

'It was a most charming dress. Red and black all over, something
like Mephistopheles, you know, and a peaked hat with a bell at the
top. Then he had a flute, of course, and a thin wire from his waist
with a stuffed rat at the end of it.'

'A rat! How horrid!'

'Well, that was the story, you know. The rats all followed the Pied
Piper, and so this rat followed Frank. He put it in his pocket when
he danced, but once he forgot, and so it got stood upon, and the
sawdust came out all over the floor.'

Mrs. Hunt Mortimer was also invited to the dress ball, and her
thoughts flew away from the book in front of her.

'How did you go, Mrs. Crosse?' she asked.

'I went as "Night."'

'What! you with your brown hair!'

'Well, father said that I was not a very dark night. I was in black,
you know, just my ordinary black silk dinner-dress. Then I had a
silver half-moon over my head, and black veils round my hair, and
stars all over my bodice and skirt, with a long comet right across
the front. Father upset a cup of milk over me at supper, and said
afterwards that it was the milky way.'

'It is simply maddening how men WILL make jokes about the most
important subjects,' said Mrs. Hunt Mortimer. 'But I have no doubt,
dear, that your dress was an exceedingly effective one. Now, for my
own part, I had some idea of going as the "Duchess of Devonshire."'

'Charming!' cried Mrs. Beecher and Maude.

'It is not a very difficult costume, you know. I have some old Point
d'Alencon lace which has been in the family for a century. I make it
the starting-point of my costume. The gown need not be very
elaborate--'

'Silk?' asked Mrs. Beecher.

'Well, I thought that perhaps a white-flowered brocade--'

'Oh yes, with pearl trimming.'

'No, no, dear, with my lace for trimming.'

'Of course. You said so.'

'And then a muslin fichu coming over here.'

'How perfectly sweet!' cried Maude.

'And the waist cut high, and ruffles at the sleeves. And, of course,
a picture hat--you know what I mean--with a curling ostrich feather.'

'Powdered hair, of course?' said Mrs. Beecher.

'Powdered in ringlets.'

'It will suit you admirably--beautifully. You are tall enough to
carry it off, and you have the figure also. How I wish I was equally
certain about my own!'

'What had you thought of, dear?'

'Well, I had some idea about "Ophelia." Do you think that it would
do?'

'Certainly. Had you worked it out at all?'

'Well, my dear,' said Mrs. Beecher, relapsing into her pleasant
confidential manner. 'I had some views, but, of course, I should be
so glad to have your opinion about it. I only saw Hamlet once, and
the lady was dressed in white, with a gauzy light nun's-veiling over
it. I thought that with white pongee silk as an under-dress, and
then some sort of delicate--'

'Crepe de Chine,' Maude suggested.

'But in Ophelia's day such a thing had never been heard of,' said
Mrs. Hunt Mortimer. 'A net of silver thread--'

'Exactly,' cried Mrs. Beecher, 'with some sort of jewelling upon it.
That was just what I had imagined. Of course it should be cut
classically and draped--my dressmaker is such a treasure--and I
should have a gold embroidery upon the white silk.'

'Crewel work,' said Maude.

'Or a plain cross-stitch pattern. Then a tiara of pearls on the
head. Shakespeare--'

At the name of the poet their three consciences pricked
simultaneously. They looked at each other and then at the clock with
dismay.

'We must--we really MUST go on with our reading,' cried Mrs. Hunt
Mortimer. 'How did we get talking about these dresses?'

'It was my fault,' said Mrs. Beecher, looking contrite.

'No, dear, it was mine,' said Maude. 'You remember it all came from
my saying that Frank had gone to the ball as the Pied Piper.'

'I am going to read the very first poem that I open,' said Mrs. Hunt
Mortimer remorselessly. 'I am afraid that it is almost time that I
started, but we may still be able to skim over a few pages. Now
then! There! Setebos! What a funny name!'

'What DOES it mean?' asked Maude.

'We shall find out, no doubt, as we proceed,' said Mrs. Hunt
Mortimer. 'We shall take it line by line and draw the full meaning
from it. The first line is -

'Will sprawl now that the heat of day is best--'

'Who will?' asked Mrs. Beecher.

'I don't know. That's what it says.'

'The next line will explain, no doubt.'

'Flat on his--'

'Dear me, I had no idea that Browning was like this!'

'Do read it, dear.'

'I couldn't possibly think of doing so. With your permission we will
pass on to the next paragraph.'

'But we vowed not to skip.'

'But why read what cannot instruct or elevate us. Let us begin this
next stanza, and hope for something better. The first line is--I
wonder if it really can be as it is written.'

'Do please read it!'

'Setebos and Setebos and Setebos.'

The three students looked sadly at each other. 'This is worse than
anything I could have imagined,' said the reader.

'We mast skip that line.'

'But we are skipping everything.'

'It's a person's name,' said Mrs. Beecher.

'Or three persons.'

'No, only one, I think.'

'But why should he repeat it three times?'

'For emphasis!'

'Perhaps,' said Mrs. Beecher, 'it was Mr. Setebos, and Mrs. Setebos,
and a little Setebos.'

'Now, if you are going to make fun, I won't read. But I think we
were wrong to say that we would take it line by line. It would be
easier sentence by sentence.'

'Quite so.'

'Then we will include the next line, which finishes the sentence. It
is, "thinketh he dwelleth in the cold of the moon."'

'Then it WAS only one Setebos!' cried Maude.

'So it appears. It is easy to understand if one will only put it
into ordinary language. This person Setebos was under the impression
that his life was spent in the moonlight.'

'But what nonsense it is!' cried Mrs. Beecher. Mrs. Hunt Mortimer
looked at her reproachfully. 'It is very easy to call everything
which we do not understand "nonsense,"' said she. 'I have no doubt
that Browning had a profound meaning in this.'

'What was it, then?'

Mrs. Hunt Mortimer looked at the clock.

'I am very sorry to have to go,' said she, 'but really I have no
choice in the matter. Just as we were getting on so nicely--it is
really most vexatious. You'll come to my house next Wednesday, Mrs.
Crosse, won't you? And you also, Mrs. Beecher. Good-bye, and thanks
for SUCH a pleasant afternoon!'

But her skirts had hardly ceased to rustle in the passage before the
Browning Society had been dissolved by a two-thirds' vote of the
total membership.

'What is the use?' cried Mrs. Beecher. 'Two lines have positively
made my head ache, and there are two volumes.'

'We must change our poet.'

'His verbosity!' cried Mrs. Beecher.

'His Setebosity!' cried Maude.

'And dear Mrs. Hunt Mortimer pretending to like him! Shall we
propose Tennyson next week?'

'It would be far better.'

'But Tennyson is quite simple, is he not?'

'Perfectly.'

'Then why should we meet to discuss him if there is nothing to
discuss?'

'You mean that we might as well each read him for herself.'

'I think it would be easier.'

'Why, of course it would.'

And so after one hour of precarious life, Mrs. Hunt Mortimer's Mutual
Improvement Society for the elucidation of Browning came to an
untimely end.

CHAPTER XVII--AN INVESTMENT

'I want your advice, Maude.'

She was looking very sweet and fresh in the morning sunlight. She
wore a flowered, French print blouse--little sprigs of roses on a
white background--and a lace frill round her pretty, white, smooth
throat. The buckle of her brown leather belt just gleamed over the
edge of the table-cloth. In front of her were a litter of
correspondence, a white cup of coffee, and two empty eggshells--for
she was a perfectly healthy young animal with an excellent appetite.

'Well, dear, what is it?'

'I shall take the later train. Then I need not hurry, and can walk
down at my ease.'

'How nice of you!'

'I am not sure that Dinton will think so.'

'Only one little hour of difference--what can it matter?'

'They don't run offices on those lines. An hour means a good deal in
the City of London.'

'Oh, I do hate the City of London! It is the only thing which ever
comes between us.'

'I suppose that it separates a good many loving couples every
morning.'

He had come across and an egg-cup had been upset. Then he had been
scolded, and they sat together laughing upon the sofa. When he had
finished admiring her little, shining, patent-leather, Louis shoes
and the two charming curves of open-work black stocking, she reminded
him that he had asked for her advice.

'Yes, dear, what was it?' She knitted her brows and tried to look as
her father did when he considered a matter of business. But then her
father was not hampered by having a young man's arm round his neck.
It is so hard to be business-like when any one is curling one's hair
round his finger.

'I have some money to invest.'

'O Frank, how clever of you!'

'It is only fifty pounds.'

'Never mind, dear, it is a beginning.'

'That is what I feel. It is the foundation-stone of our fortunes.
And so I want Her Majesty to lay it--mustn't wrinkle your brow
though--that is not allowed.'

'But it is a great responsibility, Frank.'

'Yes, we must not lose it.'

'No, dear, we must not lose it. Suppose we invest it in one of those
modern fifty-guinea pianos. Our dear old Broadwood was an excellent
piano when I was a girl, but it is getting so squeaky in the upper
notes. Perhaps they would allow us something for it.'

He shook his head.

'I know that we want one very badly, dear. And such a musician as
you are should have the best instrument that money can buy. I
promise you that when we have a little to turn round on, you shall
have a beauty. But in the meantime we must not buy anything with
this money--I mean nothing for ourselves--we must invest it. We
cannot tell what might happen. I might fall ill. I might die.'

'O Frank, how horrid you are this morning!'

'Well, we have to be ready for anything. So I want to put this where
we can get it on an emergency, and where in the meantime it will
bring us some interest. Now what shall we buy?'

'Papa always bought a house.'

'But we have not enough.'

'Not a little house?'

'No, not the smallest.'

'A mortgage, then?'

'The sum is too small.'

'Government stock, Frank--if you think it is safe.'

'Oh, it is safe enough. But the interest is so low.'

'How much should we get?'

'Well, I suppose the fifty pounds would bring us in about thirty
shillings a year.'

'Thirty shillings! O Frank!'

'Rather less than more.'

'Fancy a great rich nation like ours taking our fifty pounds and
treating us like that. How MEAN of them! Don't let them have it,
Frank.'

'No, I won't.'

'If they want it, they can make us a fair offer for it.'

'I think we'll try something else.'

'Well, they have only themselves to thank. But you have some plan in
your head, Frank. What is it?'

He brought the morning paper over from the table. Then he folded it
so as to bring the financial columns to the top.

'I saw a fellow in the City yesterday who knows a great deal about
gold-mining. I only had a few minutes' talk, but he strongly advised
me to have some shares in the El Dorado Proprietary Gold Mine.'

'What a nice name! I wonder if they would let us have any?'

'Oh yes, they are to be bought in the open market. It is like this,
Maude. The mine was a very good one, and paid handsome dividends.
Then it had some misfortunes. First, there was no water, and then
there was too much water, and the workings were flooded. So, of
course, the price of the shares fell. Now they are getting the mine
all right again, but the shares are still low. It certainly seems a
very good chance to pick a few of them up.'

'Are they very dear, Frank?'

'I looked them up in the Mining Register before I came home
yesterday. The original price of each share was ten shillings, but
as they have had these misfortunes, one would expect to find them
rather lower.'

'Ten shillings! It does not seem much to pay for a share in a thing
with a name like that.'

'Here it is,' said he, pointing with a pencil to one name in a long
printed list. 'This one, between the Royal Bonanza and the Alabaster
Consols. You see--El Dorado Proprietary! Then after it you have
printed, 4.75--4.875. I don't profess to know much about these
things, but that of course means the price.'

'Yes, dear, it is printed at the top of the column--"Yesterday's
prices."'

'Quito so. Well, we know that the original price of each share was
ten shillings, and of course they must have dropped with a flood in
the mine, so that these figures must mean that the price yesterday
was four shillings and nine-pence, or thereabouts.'

'What a clear head for business you have, dear!'

'I think we can't do wrong in buying at that price. You see, with
our fifty pounds we could buy two hundred of them, and then if they
went up again we could sell, and take our profit.'

'How delightful! But suppose they don't go up.'

'Well, they can't go down. I should not think that a share at four
shillings and ninepence COULD go down very much. There is no room.
But it may go up to any extent.'

'Besides, your friend said that they would go up.'

'Yes, he seemed quite confident about it. Well, what do you think,
Maude? Is it good enough or not?'

'O Frank, I hardly dare advise you. Just imagine if we were to lose
it all. Do you think it would be wiser to get a hundred shares, and
then we could buy twenty-five pounds' worth of Royal Bonanza as well.
It would be impossible for them both to go wrong.'

'The Royal Bonanza shares are dear, and then we have had no
information about it. I think we had better back our own opinion.'

'All right, Frank.'

'Then that is settled. I have a telegraph-form here.'

'Could you not buy them yourself when you are in town?'

'No, you can't buy things yourself. You have to do it through a
broker.'

'I always thought a broker was a horrid man, who came and took your
furniture away.'

'Ah, that's another kind of broker. He comes afterwards. I promised
Harrison that he should have any business which I could put in his
way, so here goes. How is that?' -

'Harrison, 13a Throgmorton Street, E.C.--Buy two hundred El Dorado
Proprietaries.

'CROSSE, Woking.'

'Doesn't it sound rather peremptory, Frank?'

'No, no, that is mere business.'

'I hope he won't be offended.'

'I think I can answer for that.'

'You have not said the price.'

'One cannot say the price because one does not know it. You see, it
is always going up and down. By this time it may be a little higher
or a little lower than yesterday. There cannot be much change, that
is certain. Great Scot, Maude, it is ten-fifteen. Three and a half
minutes for a quarter of a mile. Good-bye, darling! I just love you
in that bodice. O Lord--good-bye!'

'Well, has anything happened?'

'Yes, you have come back. Oh I am so glad to see you, you dear old
boy!'

'Take care of that window, darling!'

'Oh, my goodness, I hope he didn't see. No, it's all right. He was
looking the other way. We have the gold shares all right.'

'Harrison has telegraphed?'

'Yes, here it is.' -

'Crosse, The Lindens, Woking.--Bought two hundred El Dorados at 4.75.

HARRISON.'

'That is capital. I rather expected to see Harrison in the train. I
shouldn't be surprised if he calls on his way from the station. He
has to pass our door, you know, on his way to Maybury.'

'He is sure to call.'

'What are you holding there?'

'It's a paper.'

'What paper?'

'Who is it who talks about woman's curiosity?'

'Let me see it.'

'Well, sir, if you must know, it is the Financial Whisper.'

'Where in the world did you get it?'

'I knew that the Montresors took a financial paper. I remember Mrs.
Montresor saying once how dreadfully dry it was. So when you were
gone I sent Jemima round and borrowed it, and I have read it right
through to see if there was anything about our mine in it--OUR mine,
Frank; does it not sound splendid?'

'Well, is there anything?'

She clapped her hands with delight.

'Yes, there is. "This prosperous mine--" that is what it says. Look
here, it is under the heading of Australian Notes,' she held out the
paper and pointed, but his face fell as he looked.

'O Maude, it's preposterous.'

'What is preposterous?'

'The word is preposterous and not prosperous--"this preposterous
mine."'

'Frank!' She turned her face away.

'Never mind, dear! What's the odds?'

'O Frank, our first investment--our fifty pounds! And to think that
I should have kept the paper as a surprise for you!'

'Well, the print is a little slurred, and it was a very natural
mistake. After all, the paper may be wrong. Oh don't, Maude, please
don't! It's not worth it--all the gold on the earth is not worth it.
There's a sweet girlie! Now, are you better? Oh, damn those open
curtains!'

A tall and brisk young man with a glossy hat was coming through the
garden. An instant later Jemima had ushered him in.

'Hullo, Harrison!'

'How do you do, Crosse? How are you, Mrs. Crosse?'

'How do you do? I'll just order tea if you will excuse me.'

Ordering tea seemed to involve a good deal of splashing water. Maude
came back with a merrier face.

'Is this a good paper, Mr. Harrison?'

'What is it? Financial Whisper! No, the most venal rag in the
city.'

'Oh, I am so glad!'

'Why?'

'Well, you know, we bought some shares to-day, and it calls our mine
a preposterous one.'

'Oh, is that all. Who cares what the Financial Whisper says! It
would call the Bank of England a preposterous institution if it
thought it could bear Consols by doing so. Its opinion is not worth
a halfpenny. By the way, Crosse, it was about those shares that I
called.'

'I thought you might. I have only just got back myself, and I saw by
your wire that you had bought them all right.'

'Yes, I thought I had better let you have your contract at once.
Settling day is on Monday, you know.'

'All right. Thank you. I will let you have a cheque. What--what's
this?'

The contract had been laid face upwards upon the table. Frank
Crosse's face grew whiter and his eyes larger as he stared at it. It
ran in this way -

13a THROGMORTON STREET.

Bought for Francis Crosse, Esq.

(Subject to the Specific Rules and Regulations of the Stock
Exchange.) Pounds
200 El Dorado Proprietaries at 4.75 950 0 0
Stamps and Fees 4 17 6
Commission 7 10 0
962 7 6

For the 7th inst.

'I fancy there is some mistake here, Harrison,' said he, speaking
with a very dry pair of lips.

'A mistake!'

'Yes, this is not at all what I expected.'

'O Frank! Nearly a thousand pounds!' gasped Maude.

Harrison glanced from one of them to the other. He saw that the
matter was serious.

'I am very sorry if there has been any mistake. I tried to obey your
instructions. You wanted two hundred El Dorados, did you not?'

'Yes, at four and ninepence.'

'Four and ninepence! They are four pound fifteen each.'

'But I read that they were only ten shillings originally, and that
they had been falling.'

'Yes, they have been falling for months. But they were as high as
ten pounds once. They are down at four pound fifteen now.'

'Why on earth could the paper not say so?'

'When a fraction is used, it always means a fraction of a pound.'

'Good heavens! And I have to find this sum before Monday.'

'Monday is settling day.'

'I can't do it, Harrison. It is impossible.'

'Then there is the obvious alternative.'

'No, I had rather die. I will never go bankrupt--never!'

Harrison began to laugh, and then turned stonily solemn as he met a
pair of reproachful grey eyes.

'It strikes me that you have not done much at this game, Crosse.'

'Never before--and by Heaven, never again!'

'You take it much too hard. When I spoke of an alternative, I never
dreamed of bankruptcy. All you have to do is to sell your stock to-
morrow morning, and pay the difference.'

'Can I do that?'

'Rather. Why not?'

'What would the difference be?'

Harrison took an evening paper from his pocket. 'We deal in rails
chiefly, and I don't profess to keep in touch with the mining market.
We'll find the quotation here. By Jove!' He whistled between his
teeth.

'Well!' said Frank, and felt his wife's little warm palm fall upon
his hand under the table.

'The difference is in your favour.'

'In my favour?'

'Yes, listen to this. "The mining markets, both the South African
and the Australian, opened dull, but grew more animated as the day
proceeded, prices closing at the best. Out crops upon the Rand mark
a general advance of one-sixteenth to one-eighth. The chief feature
in the Australian section was a sharp advance of five-eighths in El
Dorados, upon a telegram that the workings had been pumped dry."
Crosse, I congratulate you.'

'I can really sell them for more than I gave?'

'I should think so. You have two hundred of them, and a profit of
ten shillings on each.'

'Maude, we'll have the whisky and the soda. Harrison, you must have
a drink. Why, that's a hundred pounds.'

'More than a hundred.'

'Without my paying anything?'

'Not a penny.'

'When does the Exchange open to-morrow?'

'The rattle goes at eleven.'

'Well, be there at eleven, Harrison. Sell them at once.'

'You won't hold on and watch the market?'

'No, no--I won't have an easy moment until they are sold.'

'All right, my boy. You can rely upon me. You will get a cheque for
your balance on Tuesday or Wednesday. Good evening! I am so glad
that it has all ended well.'

'And the joke of it is, Maude,' said her husband, after they had
talked over the whole adventure from the beginning. 'The joke of it
is that we have still to find an investment for our original fifty
pounds. I am inclined to put it into Consols after all.'

'Well,' said Maude, 'perhaps it would be the patriotic thing to do.'

Two days later the poor old Broadwood with the squeaky treble and the
wheezy bass was banished for ever from The Lindens, and there arrived
in its place a ninety-five-guinea cottage grand, all dark walnut and
gilding, with notes in it so deep and rich and resonant that Maude
could sit before it by the hour and find music enough in simply
touching one here and one there, and listening to the soft, sweet,
reverberant tones which came swelling from its depths. Her El Dorado
piano, she called it, and tried to explain to lady visitors how her
husband had been so clever at business that he had earned it in a
single day. As she was never very clear in her own mind how the
thing had occurred, she never succeeded in explaining it to any one
else, but a vague and solemn impression became gradually diffused
abroad that young Mr. Frank Crosse was a very remarkable man, and
that he had done something exceedingly clever in the matter of an
Australian mine.

CHAPTER XVIII--A THUNDERCLOUD

Blue skies and shining sun, but far down on the horizon one dark
cloud gathers and drifts slowly upwards unobserved. Frank Crosse was
aware of its shadow when coming down to breakfast he saw an envelope
with a well-remembered handwriting beside his plate. How he had
loved that writing once, how his heart had warmed and quickened at
the sight of it, how eagerly he had read it--and now a viper coiled
upon the white table-cloth would hardly have given him a greater
shock. Contradictory, incalculable, whimsical life! A year ago how
scornfully he would have laughed, what contemptuous unbelief would
have filled his soul, if he had been told that any letter of hers
could have struck him cold with the vague apprehension of coming
misfortune. He tore off the envelope and threw it into the fire.
But before he could glance at the letter there was the quick patter
of his wife's feet upon the stair, and she burst, full of girlish
health and high spirits, into the little room. She wore a pink
crepon dressing-gown, with cream guipure lace at the neck and wrists.
Pink ribbon outlined her trim waist. The morning sun shone upon her,
and she seemed to him to be the daintiest, sweetest tiling upon
earth. He had thrust his letter into his pocket as she entered.

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