Antic Hay

his man more furiously than before and shook him, shook him. “And then that vile insult about the vermouth advertisement,” he cried out. That had rankled. Those flaring, vulgar posters! “You thought you could mock me and spit at me with impunity, did you? I’ve stood it so long, you thought I’d always stand it? Was that it? But you’re mistaken.” He lifted his fist. Mr. Mercaptan cowered away, raising his arm to protect his head. “Vile bug of a coward,” said Lypiatt, “why don’t you defend yourself like a man? You can only be dangerous with words. Very witty and spiteful and cutting about those vermouth posters, wasn’t it? But you wouldn’t dare to fight me if I challenged you.” “Well, as a matter of _fact_,” said Mr. Mercaptan, peering up from under his defences, “I didn’t invent _that_ particular piece of criticism. I borrowed the _apéritif_.” He laughed feebly, more canary than bull. “You borrowed it, did you?” Lypiatt contemptuously repeated. “And who from, may I ask?” Not that it interested him in the least to know. “Well, if you really _want_ to know,” said Mr. Mercaptan, “it was from our friend Myra Viveash.” Lypiatt stood for a moment without speaking, then putting his menacing hand in his pocket, he turned away. “Oh!” he said noncommittally, and was silent again. Relieved, Mr. Mercaptan sat up in his chair; with the palm of his right hand he smoothed his dishevelled head. Airily, outside in the sunshine, Rosie walked down Sloane Street, looking at the numbers on the doors of the houses. A hundred and ninety-nine, two hundred, two hundred and one—she was getting near now. Perhaps all the people who passed, strolling so easily and elegantly and disengagedly along, perhaps they all of them carried behind their eyes a secret, as delightful and amusing as hers. Rosie liked to think so; it made life more exciting. How nonchalantly distinguished, Rosie reflected, she herself must look. Would any one who saw her now, sauntering along like this, would any one guess that, ten houses farther down the street, a young poet, or at least very nearly a young poet, was waiting, on the second floor, eagerly for her arrival? Of course they wouldn’t and couldn’t guess! That was the fun and the enormous excitement of the whole thing. Formidable in her light-hearted detachment, formidable in the passion which at will she could give rein to and check again, the great lady swam beautifully along through the sunlight to satisfy her caprice. Like Diana, she stooped over the shepherd boy. Eagerly the starving young poet waited, waited in his garret. Two hundred and twelve, two hundred and thirteen. Rosie looked at the entrance and was reminded that the garret couldn’t after all be very sordid, nor the young poet absolutely starving. She stepped in and, standing in the hall, looked at the board with the names. Ground floor: Mrs. Budge. First floor: F. de M. Rowbotham. Second floor: P. Mercaptan. P. Mercaptan.... But it was a charming name, a romantic name, a real young poet’s name! Mercaptan—she felt more than ever pleased with her selection. The fastidious lady could not have had a happier caprice. Mercaptan ... Mercaptan.... She wondered what the P. stood for. Peter, Philip, Patrick, Pendennis even? She could hardly have guessed that Mr. Mercaptan’s father, the eminent bacteriologist, had insisted, thirty-four years ago, on calling his first-born ‘Pasteur.’ A little tremulous, under her outward elegant calm, Rosie mounted the stairs. Twenty-five steps to the first floor—one flight of thirteen, which was rather disagreeably ominous, and one of twelve. Then two flights of eleven, and she was on the second landing, facing a front door, a bell-push like a round eye, a brass name-plate. For a great lady thoroughly accustomed to this sort of thing, she felt her heart beating rather unpleasantly fast. It was those stairs, no doubt. She halted a moment, took two deep breaths, then pushed the bell. The door was opened by an aged servant of the most forbiddingly respectable appearance. “Mr. Mercaptan at home?” The person at the door burst at once into a long, rambling, angry complaint, but precisely about what Rosie could not for certain make out. Mr. Mercaptan had left orders, she gathered, that he wasn’t to be disturbed. But some one had come and disturbed him, “fairly shoved his way in, so rude and inconsiderate,” all the same. And now he’d been once disturbed, she didn’t see why he shouldn’t be disturbed again. But she didn’t know what things were coming to if people fairly shoved their way in like that. Bolshevism, she called it. Rosie murmured her sympathies, and was admitted into a dark hall. Still querulously denouncing the Bolsheviks who came shoving in, the person led the way down a corridor and, throwing open a door, announced, in a tone of grievance: “A lady to see you, Master Paster”—for Mrs. Goldie was an old family retainer, and one of the few who knew the Secret of Mr. Mercaptan’s Christian name, one of the fewer still who were privileged to employ it. Then, as soon as Rosie had stepped across the threshold, she cut off her retreat with a bang and went off, muttering all the time, towards her kitchen. It certainly wasn’t a garret. Half a glance, the first whiff of pot-pourri, the feel of the carpet beneath her feet, had been enough to prove that. But it was not the room which occupied Rosie’s attention, it was its occupants. One of them, thin, sharp-featured and, in Rosie’s very young eyes, quite old, was standing with an elbow on the mantelpiece. The other, sleeker and more genial in appearance, was sitting in front of a writing-desk near the window. And neither of them—Rosie glanced desperately from one to the other, hoping vainly that she might have overlooked a blond beard—neither of them was Toto. The sleek man at the writing-desk got up, advanced to meet her. “An unexpected pleasure,” he said, in a voice that alternately boomed and fluted. “_Too_ delightful! But to what do I owe——? _Who_, may I ask——?” He had held out his hand; automatically Rosie proffered hers. The sleek man shook it with cordiality, almost with tenderness. “I ... I think I must have made a mistake,” she said. “Mr. Mercaptan...?” The sleek man smiled. “I am Mr. Mercaptan.” “You live on the second floor?” “I never laid claims to being a mathematician,” said the sleek man, smiling as though to applaud himself, “but I have always calculated that ...” he hesitated ... “_enfin, que ma demeure se trouve, en effet_, on the second floor. Lypiatt will bear me out, I’m sure.” He turned to the thin man, who had not moved from the fireplace, but had stood all the time motionlessly, his elbow on the mantelpiece, looking gloomily at the ground. Lypiatt looked up. “I must be going,” he said abruptly. And he walked towards the door. Like vermouth posters, like vermouth posters!—so that was Myra’s piece of mockery! All his anger had sunk like a quenched flame. He was altogether quenched, put out with unhappiness. Politely Mr. Mercaptan hurried across the room and opened the door for him. “_Good_-bye, then,” he said airily. Lypiatt did not speak, but walked out into the hall. The front door banged behind him. “Well, _well_,” said Mr. Mercaptan, coming back across the room to where Rosie was still irresolutely standing. “Talk about the _furor poeticus_! But _do_ sit down, I beg you. On Crébillon.” He indicated the vast white satin sofa. “I call it Crébillon,” he explained, “because the soul of that great writer undoubtedly tenants it, _undoubtedly_. You know his book, of course? You know _Le Sopha_?” Sinking into Crébillon’s soft lap, Rosie had to admit that she didn’t know _Le Sopha_. She had begun to recover her self-possession. If this wasn’t _the_ young poet, it was certainly _a_ young poet. And a very peculiar one, too. As a great lady she laughingly accepted the odd situation. “Not know _Le Sopha_?” exclaimed Mr. Mercaptan. “Oh! but, my dear and mysterious young lady, let me lend you a copy of it at once. _No_ education can be called _complete_ without a knowledge of that divine book.” He darted to the bookshelf and came back with a small volume bound in white vellum. “The hero’s soul,” he explained, handing her the volume, “passes, by the laws of metempsychosis, into a sofa. He is doomed to remain a sofa until such time as two persons consummate upon his bosom their reciprocal and equal loves. The book is the record of the poor sofa’s hopes and disappointments.” “Dear me!” said Rosie, looking at the title-page. “But now,” said Mr. Mercaptan, sitting down beside her on the edge of Crébillon, “won’t you please explain? To what happy quiproquo do I owe this sudden and altogether delightful invasion of my privacy?” “Well,” said Rosie, and hesitated. It was really rather difficult to explain. “I was to meet a friend of mine.” “Quite so,” said Mr. Mercaptan encouragingly. “Who sent me a telegram,” Rosie went on. “He sent you a telegram!” Mr. Mercaptan echoed. “Changing the—the place we had fixed and telling me to meet him at this address.” “Here?” Rose nodded. “On the s—second floor,” she made it more precise. “But _I_ live on the second floor,” said Mr. Mercaptan. “You don’t mean to say your friend is also called Mercaptan and lives here too?” Rosie smiled. “I don’t know what he’s called,” she said with a cool ironical carelessness that was genuinely _grande dame_. “You don’t know his name?” Mr. Mercaptan gave a roar and a squeal of delighted laughter. “But that’s _too_ good,” he said. “S—second floor, he wrote in the telegram.” Rosie was now perfectly at her ease. “When I saw your name, I thought it was his name. I must say,” she added, looking sideways at Mr. Mercaptan and at once dropping the magnolia petals of her eyelids, “it seemed to me a very charming name.” “You overwhelm me,” said Mr. Mercaptan, smiling all over his cheerful, snouty face. “As for _your_ name—I am too discreet a _galantuomo_ to ask. And, in any case, what _does_ it matter? A rose by any other name....” “But, as a matter of fact,” she said, raising and lowering once again her smooth, white lids, “my name does happen to be Rose; or, at any rate, Rosie.” “So you are sweet by right!” exclaimed Mr. Mercaptan, with a pretty gallantry which he was the first to appreciate. “Let’s order tea on the strength of it.” He jumped up and rang the bell. “How I congratulate myself on this astonishing piece of good fortune!” Rosie said nothing. This Mr. Mercaptan, she thought, seemed to be even more a man of the great artistic world than Toto. “What puzzles me,” he went on, “is why your anonymous friend should have chosen my address out of all the millions of others. He must know me, or, at any rate, know about me.” “I should imagine,” said Rosie, “that you have a lot of friends.” Mr. Mercaptan laughed—the whole orchestra, from bassoon to piccolo. “_Des amis, des amies_—with and without the mute ‘e,’” he declared. The aged and forbidding servant appeared at the door. “Tea for two, Mrs. Goldie.” Mrs. Goldie looked round the room suspiciously. “The other gentleman’s gone, has he?” she asked. And having assured herself of his absence, she renewed her complaint. “Shoving in like that,” she said. “Bolshevism, that’s what I——” “All right, all right, Mrs. Goldie. Let’s have our tea as quickly as possible.” Mr. Mercaptan held up his hand, authoritatively, with the gesture of a policeman controlling the traffic. “Very well, Master Paster.” Mrs. Goldie spoke with resignation and departed. “But tell me,” Mr. Mercaptan went on, “if it _isn’t_ indiscreet—what does your friend look like?” “W—