The Arcadia Mixture Again
One day, some weeks after we left Scrymgeour's house-boat, I was
alone in my rooms, very busy smoking, when William John entered with
a telegram. It was from Scrymgeour, and said, You have got me into
a dreadful mess. Come down here first train.
Wondering what mess I could have got Scrymgeour into, I good-naturedly
obeyed his summons, and soon I was smoking placidly on the deck of the
house-boat, while Sc
ymgeour, sullen and nervous, tramped back and
forward. I saw quickly that the only tobacco had something to do with
his troubles, for he began by announcing that one evening soon after
we left him he found that we had smoked all his Arcadia. He would have
dispatched the boy to London for it, but the boy had been all day in the
village buying a loaf, and would not be back for hours. Cookham cigars
Scrymgeour could not smoke; cigarettes he only endured if made from the
Arcadia.
At Cookham he could only get tobacco that made him uncomfortable. Having
recently begun to use a new pouch, he searched his pockets in vain for
odd shreds of the Mixture to which he had so contemptibly become a
slave. In a very bad temper he took to his dingy, vowing for a little
while that he would violently break the chains that bound him to one
tobacco, and afterward, when he was restored to his senses that he would
jilt the Arcadia gradually. He had pulled some distance down the river,
without regarding the Cliveden Woods, when he all but ran into a blaze
of Chinese lanterns. It was a house-boat called--let us change its name
to the _Heathen Chinee_. Staying his dingy with a jerk, Scrymgeour
looked up, when a wonderful sight met his eyes. On the open window of an
apparently empty saloon stood a round tin of tobacco, marked Arcadia
Mixture.
Scrymgeour sat gaping. The only sound to be heard, except a soft splash
of water under the house-boat, came from the kitchen, where a servant
was breaking crockery for supper. The romantic figure in the dingy
stretched out his hand and then drew it back, remembering that there was
a law against this sort of thing. He thought to himself, If I were to
wait until the owner returns, no doubt a man who smokes the Arcadia
would feel for me. Then his fatal horror of explanations whispered to
him, The owner may be a stupid, garrulous fellow who will detain you
here half the night explaining your situation. Scrymgeour, I want to
impress upon the reader, was, like myself, the sort of a man who, if
asked whether he did not think In Memoriam Mr. Browning's greatest
poem, would say Yes, as the easiest way of ending the conversation.
Obviously he would save himself trouble by simply annexing the tin.
He seized it and rowed off.
Smokers, who know how tobacco develops the finer feelings, hardly
require to be told what happened next. Suddenly Scrymgeour remembered
that he was probably leaving the owner of the _Heathen Chinee_
without any Arcadia Mixture. He at once filled his pouch, and, pulling
softly back to the house-boat, replaced the tin on the window, his bosom
swelling with the pride of those who give presents. At the same moment a
hand gripped him by the neck, and a girl, somewhere on deck, screamed.
Scrymgeour's captor, who was no other than the owner of the _Heathen
Chinee_, dragged him fiercely into the house-boat and stormed at him
for five minutes. My friend shuddered as he thought of the explanations
to come when he was allowed to speak, and gradually he realized that he
had been mistaken for someone else--apparently for some young blade who
had been carrying on a clandestine flirtation with the old gentleman's
daughter. It will take an hour, thought Scrymgeour, to convince him that
I am not that person, and another hour to explain why I am really here.
Then the weak creature had an idea: Might not the simplest plan be to
say that his surmises are correct, promise to give his daughter up, and
row away as quickly as possible? He began to wonder if the girl was
pretty; but saw it would hardly do to say that he reserved his defence
until he could see her.
I admit, he said, at last, that I admire your daughter; but she
spurned my advances, and we parted yesterday forever.
Yesterday!
Or was it the day before?
Why, sir, I have caught you red-handed!
This is an accident, Scrymgeour explained, and I promise never to
speak to her again. Then he added, as an after-thought, however
painful that may be to me.
Before Scrymgeour returned to his dingy he had been told that he would
be drowned if he came near that house-boat again. As he sculled away he
had a glimpse of the flirting daughter, whom he described to me briefly
as being of such engaging appearance that six yards was a trying
distance to be away from her.
Here, thought Scrymgeour that night over a pipe of the Mixture, the
affair ends; though I dare say the young lady will call me terrible
names when she hears that I have personated her lover. I must take care
to avoid the father now, for he will feel that I have been following
him. Perhaps I should have made a clean breast of it; but I do loathe
explanations.
Two days afterward Scrymgeour passed the father and daughter on the
river. The lady said Thank you to him with her eyes, and, still more
remarkable, the old gentleman bowed.
Scrymgeour thought it over. She is grateful to me, he concluded, for
drawing away suspicion from the other man, but what can have made the
father so amiable? Suppose she has not told him that I am an impostor,
he should still look upon me as a villain; and if she has told him, he
should be still more furious. It is curious, but no affair of mine.
Three times within the next few days he encountered the lady on the
tow-path or elsewhere with a young gentleman of empty countenance, who,
he saw must be the real Lothario. Once they passed him when he was in
the shadow of a tree, and the lady was making pretty faces with a
cigarette in her mouth. The house-boat _Heathen Chinee_ lay but a
short distance off, and Scrymgeour could see the owner gazing after his
daughter placidly, a pipe between his lips.
He must be approving of her conduct now, was my friend's natural
conclusion. Then one forenoon Scrymgeour travelled to town in the same
compartment as the old gentleman, who was exceedingly frank, and made
sly remarks about romantic young people who met by stealth when there
was no reason why they should not meet openly. What does he mean?
Scrymgeour asked himself, uneasily. He saw terribly elaborate
explanations gathering and shrank from them.
Then Scrymgeour was one day out in a punt, when he encountered the old
gentleman in a canoe. The old man said, purple with passion, that he
was on his way to pay Mr. Scrymgeour a business visit. Oh, yes, he
continued, I know who you are; if I had not discovered you were a man
of means I would not have let the thing go on, and now I insist on an
explanation.
Explanations!
They made for Scrymgeour's house-boat, with almost no words on the young
man's part; but the father blurted out several things--as that his
daughter knew where he was going when he left the _Heathen Chinee_,
and that he had an hour before seen Scrymgeour making love to another
girl.
Don't deny it! cried the indignant father; I recognized you by your
velvet coat and broad hat.
Then Scrymgeour began to see more clearly. The girl had encouraged
the deception, and had been allowed to meet her lover because he was
supposed to be no adventurer but the wealthy Mr. Scrymgeour. She must
have told the fellow to get a coat and hat like his to help the plot.
At the time the artist only saw all this in a jumble.
Scrymgeour had bravely resolved to explain everything now; but his
bewilderment may be conceived when, on entering his saloon with the
lady's father, the first thing they saw was the lady herself. The old
gentleman gasped, and his daughter looked at Scrymgeour imploringly.
Now, said the father fiercely, explain.
The lady's tears became her vastly. Hardly knowing what he did,
Scrymgeour put his arm around her.
Well, go on, I said, when at this point Scrymgeour stopped.
There is no more to tell, he replied; you see the girl allowed me
to--well, protect her--and--and the old gentleman thinks we are
engaged.
I don't wonder. What does the lady say?
She says that she ran along the bank and got into my house-boat by the
plank, meaning to see me before her father arrived and to entreat me to
run away.
With her?
No, without her.
But what does she say about explaining matters to her father?
She says she dare not, and as for me, I could not. That was why I
telegraphed to you.
You want me to be intercessor? No, Scrymgeour; your only honorable
course is marriage.
But you must help me. It is all your fault, teaching me to like the
Arcadia Mixture.
I thought this so impudent of Scrymgeour that I bade him good-night at
once. All the men on the stair are still confident that he would have
married her, had the lady not cut the knot by eloping with Scrymgeour's
double.