The Lunatic at Large | Page 7

and with the reddest and most undecided of lips she felt a vague desire to kiss something. At the end of the dance she managed by a series of little manoeuvres to find herself standing close to his elbow. She sighed twice, but he still seemed absorbed in his thoughts. Then with a heroic effort she summed up her courage, and said in a low and rather shaky voice, "You--you--you are unha--appy."
Mr Beveridge turned and looked down on her with great interest. Her eyes met his for a moment and straightway sought the floor. Thus she saw nothing of a smile that came and went like the shadow of a puff of smoke. He took his hands out of his pockets, folded his arms, and, with an air of the deepest dejection, sighed heavily. She took courage and looked up again, and then, as he only gazed into space in the most romantically melancholy fashion and made no answer, she asked again very timidly, "Wh--what is the matter?"
Without saying a word Mr Beveridge bent courteously and offered her his right arm. She took it with the most delicious trepidation, glancing round hurriedly to see whether the Countess noticed her. Another dance was just beginning, and in the general movement her mysterious acquaintance led her without observation to a seat in the window of a corridor. There he pressed her hand gently, stroked his long moustaches for a minute, and then said, with an air of reflection: "There are three ways of making a woman like one. I am slightly out of practice. Would you be kind enough to suggest a method of procedure?"
Such a beginning was so wholly unexpected that Lady Alicia could only give a little gasp of consternation. Her companion, after pausing an instant for a reply, went on in the same tone, "I am aware that I have begun well. I attracted your attention, I elicited your sympathy, and I pressed your hand; but for the life of me I can't remember what I generally do next."
Poor Lady Alicia, who had come with a bucketful of sympathy ready to be gulped down by this unfortunate gentleman, was only able to stammer, "I--I really don't know, Mr----"
"Hamilton," said Mr Beveridge, unblushingly. "At least that name belongs to me as much as anything can be said to in a world where my creditors claim my money and Dr Congleton my person."
"You are confined and poor, you mean?" asked Lady Alicia, beginning to see her way again.
"Poor and confined, to put them in their proper order, for if I had the wherewithal to purchase a balloon I should certainly cease to be confined."
His admirer found it hard to reply adequately to this, and Mr Beveridge continued, "To return to the delicate subject from which we strayed, what would you like me to do,--put my arm round your waist, relate my troubles, or turn my back on you?"
"Are--are those the three ways you spoke of--to make women like you, I mean?" Lady Alicia ventured to ask, though she was beginning to wish the sofa was larger.
"They are examples of the three classical methods: cuddling, humbugging, and piquing. Which do you prefer?"
"Tell me about your--your troubles," she answered, gaining courage a little.
"You belong to the sex which makes no mention of figs and spades," he rejoined; "but I understand you to mean that you prefer humbugging."
He drew a long face, sighed twice, and looking tenderly into Lady Alicia's blue eyes, began in a gentle, reminiscent voice, "My boyhood was troubled and unhappy: no kind words, no caresses. I was beaten by a cruel stepfather, ignored and insulted for my physical deformities by a heartless stepmother."
He stopped to sigh again, and Lady Alicia, with a boldness that surprised herself, and a perspicacity that would have surprised her friends, asked, "How could they--I mean, were they both step?"
"Several steps," he replied; "in fact, quite a long journey."
With this explanation Lady Alicia was forced to remain satisfied; but as he had paused a second time, and seemed to be immersed in the study of his shoes, she inquired again, "You spoke of physical infirmities; do you mean----?"
"Deformities," he corrected; "up to the age of fourteen years I could only walk sideways, and my hair parted in the middle."
He spoke so seriously that these unusual maladies seemed to her the most touching misfortunes she had ever heard of. She murmured gently, "Yes?"
"As the years advanced," Mr Beveridge continued, "and I became more nearly the same weight as my stepfather, my life grew happier. It was decided to send me to college, so I was provided with an insufficient cheque, a complete set of plated forks, and three bath-towels, and despatched to the University of Oxford. At least I think that was the name of the corporation