XI Henry Hooghtyling, While Continuing to Vin- dicate His Right to Be Classed with the Ultra-Modernists, Gets Rid of Some Phi- Common, or Conversational, Variety of It. 311 XIII A Lucky Chapter, in Which Two Strays, not only from Manhattan Maskings, Cha- rades, and Amateur Theatricals but from Some Recent More Fundamental Revels of Their Own, Sit upon the Brow of a Moun- tain, Wondering About the World Beneath and Counseling How Best to Bear a Noble STRAYED REVELLERS CHAPTER I A PREAMBLE-IN THE COURSE OF WHICH A MODERN YOUNG LADY ARRIVES, MAKES A CONQUEST, AND STARTS TO CLIMB A MOUNTAIN CLOTILDE-Clotilde Smith Westbrook: it needed neither a member of the Vibrationist Cult, nor anyone with more than a faint interest in Nomatism, to discover that there might be a great deal in her name as considered in combination with the person to whom it applied. Clotilde's name suited her. That may have been because she had grown up to fit it, as several little groups of serious thinkers would maintain, or because similar circumstances had determined both herself and her name, thus making them harmonious, or, possibly, and as more to the liking of skeptical Materialists, it was an accident. Clotilde herself had passed through at least three theories to arrive, with crashing suddenness, at the accident one. At any rate, there were certain suggestions of French esprit, a certain determined, almost obtrusive, commonness, and a basic high-breeding common both to Clotilde and her name. It was a name, too, that might have suggested to discerning Nomatists that its bearer would create some stir in her comings and goings. If it did, so much the better for the discerning Nomatists. It is certain that the rumor of her impending arrival in Woodbridge spread through the community with a swiftness that implied importance. The rumor stirred up, in the words of the cleverest Woodbridgian gossip, "a good deal of agog-iness, especially among the under-married males." "I love Clotilde-I suppose she'll sweep grandly up to the Inn in a ten-thousand-dollar roadster and begin to start sensations at the rate of seven a day-well, Woodbridge has been rather slow of recent date," added this same dispenser of the cleverest brand of Woodbridge gossip, and rested on her honors, secure in the faith that she would have time for several more bon mots in the stage-wait between Clotilde's heralding and her appearance. But Clotilde side-tracked this threatened cleverness by appearing that same afternoon, so unostentatiously as to suggest an incognito, on the lowly old horse-drawn stage that connects Woodbridge with West Beacon, the railroad, and other troubles of the outside world. She did not get out at the Inn; while the several other passengers unloaded, she kept her place on the back seat of the old surrey, with her head bowed a little, and her eyes looking out from just below the brim of her wide blue summer hat: looking out, indeed, as if she would have done more than bow her head to escape recognition if such concealment hadn't been beneath her dignity. "Was you wanting to go somewheres, Miss?" asked the anomalously youthful and sprightly driver of the old and rheumatic rig, returning from a whirl of making change, giving directions, sorting out baggage. Clotilde nodded. "I want to go up to Henry Hooghtyling's." |