

This eBook was produced by Carolyn Derkatch.



MADCAP


by
George Gibbs


[Illustration: "'You must flirt, Mr. Markham-and make pretty
speeches-'"]


CONTENTS

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.      Pre Gugou'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

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