Scribner's Magazine/Volume 28/Number 6/The Lion's Mouth

by Alice Duer Miller and Henry Wise Miller

A common smile illumined the faces of the bystanders.—Page 686.

 

THE LION'S MOUTH

By Alice Duer and Henry Wise Miller

Illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy

I HAD begun to follow, with an interest that was rapidly approaching mental vertigo, the amazing evolutions of that latest farcical importation—"The Turkish Bath," when I heard a rustle of skirts, a murmur from the man next me that it was of no importance, and felt the heel of a lady's boot planted squarely on my toe. Looking up, I saw that for the second time in a twelvemonth, Mrs. Peter Hexham had excited the enmity of a nature whose unvarying sweetness is a matter of comment to my friends and a source of satisfaction to myself.

Either the lady's memory or her manners were at fault, for she betrayed no recollection of our first and only meeting. Perhaps I had better reason than she to remember the occasion, when, one evening at Cannes, at her instigation, I had held a table spellbound with my censure of an anonymous romance, while the fact of my vis-à-vis being its author was a secret in which the whole company shared—myself excepted. It was she, who, with the ostensible design of leading me to firmer ground, induced me to comment on the moral obliquities of the heroine, though it was not until coffee that Jimmie Giddings was kind enough to inform me that the whole incident of the slippers was notoriously founded on the history of the lady whom I had had the honor of escorting down to dinner.

The fact that I had thus made a fool of myself twice in one evening could bring me to but one conclusion: I had to thank rather her malevolence than her reputed inanity. My uncharitableness may be pardoned to a lady whose faculty for entangling both herself and others in such social contretemps was only equalled by her husband's truculence in extricating her—a characteristic of Mr. Hexham which was to be brought to my attention before the evening was over.

At the end of the act I went out for a cigarette. The thrill of the warning bell, and the sound of an altercation at the other end of the lobby reached me at the same instant, and my feeling was scarcely one of surprise when I immediately recognized the tones of one of the disputants to be those of Hexham. I heard the murmur of men's voices, and the scuffle of feet on the marble flagging, and turned to see Hexham, visible head and shoulders above the rest, striking out. Immediately afterward, a young man plunged headlong into an immense gilt easel plastered with the photographs of the cast of "The Turkish Bath."

Some months since, I had witnessed a similar exhibition of Hexham's choler. The victim on that occasion had been a young attaché, who, before a delighted coffee-room, had perpetrated an imitation of an American lady who found young men on the Continent "so flighty." The culprit had protested that no one in particular had been intended, but in matters where his wife's lack of common-sense was concerned Hexham seldom allowed himself the luxury of a doubt, and he had dealt with the attaché with a carafe. The room, having been thoroughly satisfied by the burlesque, was proportionately in sympathy with the offender.

Now, however, popular opinion seemed all with Hexham. Whatever the offence of the individual whose foot was at that instant protruding from a speaking likeness of the premiere danseuse, in the judgment of the crowd he richly deserved his fate. I inferred that the worst was over. A common smile illumined the faces of the bystanders, and one gentleman pressed a bill into the hand of the attendant guardian of the peace. I turned, throwing away my cigarette, and started again for my seat, catching a glimpse as I did so of Hexham shouldering through the swing-doors of the café, looking, I must say, singularly distinguished in his bullish way, and surrounded by a group of thirsty and admiring adherents.

The theatre was dark, and as I groped my way to my place, I heard Mrs. Hexham's voice addressing me with irritation:

"I do wish you would manage to get back in time not to upset the whole row, Peter."

"Speaking for one member of the row, let me say how far I am from reprehending this habit of your husband. In fact, may I not felicitate myself—" I stopped, for it struck me from a certain excited flurry that passed over her that, having utterly failed to recognize me, she fancied herself addressed by a total stranger. Her share in that ridiculous evening at Cannes rose hot within me, and I determined that I would do nothing to relieve the awkwardness of her position.

"Felicitate myself," I continued blandly, seating myself, and making the inevitable futile effort to insinuate my hat into the rack presumably provided for that purpose, "on being the first to assure you that your husband is no longer in any danger, either from the arm of the law, or that of his late antagonist."

"Oh, has he been fighting again!" Mrs. Hexham burst out. "Sometimes I can stop him," and she rose to her feet. I rose also, to check her evident intention of seeking her husband, and as we stood in earnest conversation, Hexham, entering from the other aisle, exclaimed at her elbow:

"I do wish you could manage not always to make yourself so conspicuous," and he sat down.

I sat down.

"I don't think you need talk about making one's self conspicuous—in the lobby of a theatre, too!" Mrs. Hexham retorted.

Hexham turned to me, and I thought he vaguely remembered Cannes.

"I noticed you saw that cad's behaviour. (Oh, do sit down!)"—this to his wife.

"I never saw a man fall quicker," I responded. heartily. His eyes twinkled retrospectively, and he pulled down his cuffs.

Drawn by Howard Chandler Christy.

Talk to me he did, her efforts notwithstanding.—Page 688.

The situation was unfolding itself to Mrs. Hexham. I watched her with interest. She found herself forced either to denounce me as impertinent—and then I held myself ready to recall our former meeting—or else to introduce me as a legitimate acquaintance, and in that case, how would the enemy be delivered into my hands!

She looked at Hexham. The light of battle still glinted in his eyes. She looked at me, and beheld me, in fancy, sharing the fate of the victim of the lobby. Perhaps a dormant taste for intrigue; perhaps an appearance of gentility on my part to which she was mistaken enough to trust; more probably a natural desire to free herself as quickly as possible from a situation which her lack of mental ballast exaggerated to itself; perhaps a mingling of all three led her finally to lean forward and say:

"Peter, I want to introduce you to Mr.——"

"Shimmelpinneck," I murmured. (I had been quite right: she did not know me from Adam.)

"Shimmelpinneck," she ran on, with a covert glance that impugned my choice of an alias.

She evidently supposed that by now turning her attention to the stage, the incident, as far as I was concerned, might be considered closed. Unfortunately for her, I was at once able and eager to prevent the working of this simple scheme.

I leant forward and managed to elicit from Hexham, without much difficulty, the genesis of his late adventure. He told his story with a good deal of humor, and seeing himself appreciated, warmed all the more to his recital. Before long I was able to introduce the subject of his recent ascent of a hitherto unknown mountain in the neighborhood of Sitka, a feat which had created a passing stir among the members of the Alpine Club. The topic was one in which he could scarcely fail to appear to advantage, and in which I myself was not a little interested.

During all this Mrs. Hexham had been feverishly active. She had made a series of incursions into the conversation, with the object of wrenching it from me; but her husband made it only too evident that he had long since imparted to her as many of his views on these subjects as he thought her capable of understanding. He now wanted to talk to me, and talk to me he did, her efforts notwithstanding.

She at length relapsed into silence, a prey, one could see, to the darkest forebodings. My conduct, indeed, gave her every occasion for anxiety. The least she could think was that, having met her advances half-way, I was now insinuating myself into her husband's confidence, secure in her complicity, and this end once attained, I would turn it to uses on which her imagination shuddered to particularize. Larceny, blackmail, extortion in some form or another were, I am sure, among the lesser of her terrors.

A climax was soon reached at the very instant when she looked for release. We were standing outside under the awning, and Hexham, while he was trying to catch the eye of his footman through the crush, was still conducting me across the crevasse, when suddenly losing patience with the deliberate movements of his man, "We'll finish this at supper," he said, and plunged into the crowd.

Mrs. Hexham turned to me.

"Mr. Shimmelpinneck," she said, "or whatever your real name may be, you have, of course, no thought of accepting my husband's invitation."

"I must own," I returned, courteously, "that I had every intention of so doing, when it should be seconded by yourself."

"Oh, if you wait for that!" said she, with something it would be ungenerous to designate a snort.

At this moment I caught sight of the approaching figure of Hexham, beckoning with his stick.

"Come along, Leila," he shouted, "I've got the brougham at the corner."

Mrs. Hexham had evidently taken a sudden resolution not to trust me.

"Oh, my umbrella!" she exclaimed.

"Your what?" cried Hexham, looking up. (The stars were out.)

"My umbrella," she insisted, piteously, "I must have left it in the theatre."

I allowed the crowd to separate me a moment from my companions, but the manœuvre was vain.

Drawn by Howard Chandler Christy.

Hexham was trying to catch the eye of his footman.—Page 688.

"They're trying to drive my man from his place." Hexham flung at me in explanation. "You will have to go back and get it."

A glance of the purest triumph illuminated his wife's face, and as I turned to obey I heard him grumbling something about why in thunder any one wanted to bring an umbrella on a fine night.

Within the theatre I found a belated usher covering the seats.

"Lost anything, sir?" he said, politely.

"Yes," I answered, "a purely fictitious umbrella."

"A what?" said he.

"An umbrella," said I.

"Is this it?" he asked, diving under a seat, and producing a large black petticoat with a crooked white handle, closely resembling the protection affected by 'bus-drivers. I looked at the object with pleasure, and thought of Mrs. Hexham.

"It is, indeed," I returned, without hesitation. He accepted a quarter (I never got an umbrella so cheap), and I hurried out once more.

The press was still considerable, and I saw with delight that the Hexham brougham had been driven from its coign of vantage and was again laboring in mid-stream.

1 held my prize aloft for Mrs. Hexham's inspection. "The usher found it at your place," I said. She quailed before me, and we three regarded it in silence.

"Well, I must say, that this is the limit!" burst out Hexham, gazing at his unfortunate wife, more in contempt than in anger. "Shimmelpinneck, I feel I ought to apologize to you."

He hesitated to take it from me. At this moment his carriage plunged into the curb; a newsboy darted to open the door.

Hexham seized the umbrella. "Here, boy," he said, "have you a grandmother?" (The boy hung his head, as if loth to commit himself.) "You'll follow in a cab," he added to me.

Mrs. Hexham broke in: "I'm afraid I didn't leave any order for supper, Peter," she said.

Her husband looked at me reassuringly. "It's fortunate my memory is not so poor," he said. "I left the order myself. You must not think my wife lacking in hospitality," he went on to me, and paused.

She, poor woman, had no other course open to her. "I hope Mr. Shimmelpinneck will join us," she said, fixing me with a look that dared me to comply.

I took off my hat and held the carriage-door open. "Since you are so kind as to ask me, Mrs. Hexham," I said.

"Get in, Peter," she exclaimed, quickly. "Yes, Mr. Shimmelpinneck knows the house. All right. Simpson, drive fast."

The horses wheeled, and I saw my prey rapidly disappearing before my eyes.

She should not live to triumph thus! I stepped out among the vehicles, and succeeded in finding a cab. By this time the brougham had disappeared, and I told the man to drive to my club. Here I obtained a social directory, and, by its aid, drew up before Hexham's door not five minutes later than they themselves.

My conduct during the evening may perhaps seem extravagant, but thrice the effort would have been rewarded by the sight of Mrs. Hexham's face, when the butler, throwing open the door, announced:

"Mr. Shimmelpinneck."

She was alone in the drawing-room, but I heard a shout of welcome in the distance, and saw my host, visible through the open windows of the conservatory across the well which separated it from the main house. He signalled gayly to me with a beer-bottle, and throughout the ensuing dialogue continued to exhort us not to stand there chattering, but to come and try his rarebit.

Mrs. Hexham observed me with that mixture of fascination and horror with which traditional pigeons are supposed to regard the relentless serpent.

"O," she exclaimed, "how could you come?"

"An invitation once accepted," I responded, "is sacred. And though my memory did not deserve the trust you reposed in it, the 'Social Register' is happily within the reach of the humblest. You will forgive me if I am a trifle late."

Drawn by Howard Chandler Christy.

"You will forgive me if I am a trifle late."—Page 690.

Drawn by Howard Chandler Christy.

Her husband and I turned on her together—Page 694.

She shuddered and her manner suddenly became abject. "Oh, it isn't merely for myself," she pleaded, "but do you consider the risk you are running. Believe me, my husband is not a man to be trifled with. He would not listen to a word—He'd drop you out of the window the way he did—It's twenty feet to the area——"

"Spare me the illusion that I am the first," I said, "and any risk is worth running."

"Oh, hush, you mustn't," she answered, with perhaps an imaginative glance at the situation as it might have been, "with my husband in the next room. Go, before it is too late. He's taken a fancy to you, and he's asked me so many questions about you, already—and heaven knows what I answered——"

By this time Mr. Hexham's clamor for our presence had reached such a point that we could not disregard it longer. Together we began to move toward the conservatory.

"The worst of it is," she continued, hurriedly, "he asked me about where we first met, and I had to tell him something—I said it was at Uncle Gamaliel's—of a Sunday——"

I had not been quite prepared for this, and for the first time it occurred to me that perhaps she was right in doubting my wisdom in remaining under Hexham's roof.

We paused and looked at each other blankly.

"But, good heavens," said I, "an uncle! Why an uncle? And uncle who? When? Who was there? What was the occasion?"

At this instant Hexham burst out from among the palms. "Leila," he cried, "do you mean to tell me that this is the last bottle of light beer in the house?"

"I don't know, Peter," she faltered, "I'll go and see," and she disappeared, leaving me a prey to Hexham and the mythical uncle.

Hexham led me whither the glimmer of a white tablecloth, covered with the implements for the concoction of a Welsh rarebit, was visible among the palms and india-rubber trees.

"Leila tells me," he said, with an evident desire to make himself agreeable, "that you're a pal of that rascally old uncle of hers. I wish he would come in while you're here. He's very apt to, about this time."

A close observer might have noted that he was alone in this wish. My heart sank, and I bestowed a furtively calculating glance upon that distance which Mrs. Hexham had estimated at twenty feet, as I responded with what ease of manner I could command:

"Oh, yes, indeed. I wonder I've never met you there."

"Well, you couldn't have very well for the last three years, you know," answered Hexham.

I couldn't, couldn't I? How had the old wretch been misconducting himself. It seems I should be more careful in the choice of my hypothetical acquaintances.

"I suppose you knew him before the days of the Sibylla?" said my host.

There was an inarticulate exclamation of dismay behind us. Mrs. Hexham had entered in time to witness the final horrid climax.

"Oh, don't bring up the Sibylla, Peter," said she.

Certainly not, as far as I was concerned. I promised myself, should I survive the night, to discover whether they referred to a lady or a silver-mine.

"I'm glad to meet someone who knew him about that time," continued my host, musing. "You were a good deal at the house, Leila tells me. Was that before or after the Supreme Court gave its verdict?"

I would have given half my fortune to know whether Uncle Gamaliel's conduct had been more compromising before or after the finding of that august body. Mrs, Hexham's alarm was evident, but gave me no clew, and I cast the die, with "Oh, after," I said.

Hexham laid down his fork and observed me with interest.

"You don't say so," he exclaimed.

I nodded my head solemnly. I felt solemn.

"Then you must have been in his confidence at the time," said Peter, awestruck.

If I must, I must, and though I felt that Uncle Gamaliel's confidence was like to cost me dear, I yielded to the inevitable, and admitted that I had been. I knew by the gasp that Mrs. Hexham emitted that I was in deep water.

"Well, I won't ask you to betray him at this late date," Hexham said, "but I've always wanted to know—" He stopped short. "Why, how old are you?" he asked with a change of tone.

I recognized a crisis, but without a guide I yielded to a mistaken impulse, and told the truth.

"Thirty-two," I answered.

Hexham raised his head and regarded me with knitted brows. "In that case in '68," he said, "you must have been two years old."

"Perhaps eighteen months," said I, for with every desire to get off the subject, I could not evade the simple cogency of his reasoning.

And it was this opportunity that was seized by Mrs. Hexham's evil genius to put the finishing touches to its evening's work.

"Not thirty-two, Peter," she began, feebly, "Mr. Shimmelpinneck said forty——"

"He said nothing of the sort," retorted Peter, "and even if he had, was it any more likely to happen to a lad of twelve?" He swung on his heel, took a few steps down the conservatory, and then, a thought apparently striking him, he turned on his wife again. "It occurs to me, Leila," he said, suddenly, "that your manner has been confoundedly queer all this evening."

He glared at her, and I watched her with anxiety under the strain. She must, in imagination, have seen the air darkened with my flying members, for in her extremity she decided to purchase immunity for herself by abandoning her accomplice.

Unfortunately there was no one left for me to betray. I had time to give a thought to the happy millions, whom an unnatural thirst for revenge had not lured to destruction before she began:

"Listen, Peter, listen to me—Let me explain how it began——"

The entrance of the butler cut her short.

"Mr. Gamaliel is down-stairs, sir," he said.

"Uncle Gamaliel!" ejaculated Mrs. Hexham.

"Will you see him?" inquired the butler.

"No!" screamed Mrs. Hexham.

"Show him up," said Hexham, firmly.

One chance remained to me. I glanced at the clock.

"Well, Hexham," I said cheerily, "it's been very pleasant" (I cannot say that I was met half-way) "It's been so pleasant—among many pleasant evenings——"

"Mr. Gamaliel Bates!" announced the butler.

"Ah, good-evening, Peter. Why, how do you do, Shimmelpinneck? Glad to see you."

Glad to see him. I could have kissed him. Oh, to have known half an hour earlier that I had a bowing acquaintance with Uncle Gamaliel—not since '68, but for the last dozen years.

Necessarily the situation dawned more slowly on Mrs. Hexham.

"But do you really know my uncle?" she asked.

"Leila!"

"Know him!"

Her husband and I turned on her together.

"Know him," I repeated, "my dear Mrs. Hexham, there surely hasn't been any doubt in your mind about that?"

"You might have told me that you were bound here when I saw you just now at the club," said Uncle Gamaliel, bringing us out of this chaos of ejaculation, and then, as his eye fell upon the table, he added: "I hope you were not thinking of eating a cold rarebit." He produced a match and applied it to the wick. "With your permission," he said.

Hexham shook himself. "More beer, Leila," he cried. "Shimmelpinneck, cut some more bread," murmuring, as he handed me the knife: "Well, I must say you're a good man to keep a secret."

In my character of paragon of confidants, I returned his look with one of baffling reserve.

But for Mrs. Hexham no such superficial elucidation would suffice. Having procured the beer, she sank into a chair a little apart, where the breeze from the open window seemed to refresh her. Her eyes followed me with a certain childlike wonder, and when I sought her out with a plate of the fresh rarebit, she had a question ready for me. As one who has at last found the key to the situation, she whispered:

"And what is your real name?"

"Shimmelpinneck," said I.