The Man and the Moment

The Man and the Moment, by
Elinor Glyn

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Title: The Man and the Moment
Author: Elinor Glyn
Release Date: November 11, 2005 [EBook #17048]
Language: English
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[Illustration: "It all looked very intimate and lover-like" [Page 149]]

THE MAN AND THE MOMENT
BY
ELINOR GLYN
1914
AUTHOR OF "GUINEVERE'S LOVER," "HALCYONE," "THE
REASON WHY," ETC.
[Illustration]
Illustrated by R.F. James
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1914
Copyright, 1914, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
* * * * *
Copyright, 1914, by The Red Book Corporation

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
"It all looked very intimate and lover-like" Frontispiece
"He bounded forward to meet her" 48
"His solitary table was near theirs in the restaurant" 64
"'He is often in some scrape--something must have culminated
to-night'" 224

THE MAN AND THE MOMENT
CHAPTER I
Michael Arranstoun folded a letter which he had been reading for the
seventh time, with a vicious intentness, and then jumping up from the
big leather chair in which he had been buried, he said aloud, "Damn!"
When a young, rich and good-looking man says that particular word
aloud with a fearful grind of the teeth, one may know that he is in the
very devil of a temper!
Michael Arranstoun was!
And, to be sure, he had ample reason, as you, my friend, who may
happen to have begun this tale, will presently see.
It is really most irritating to be suddenly confronted with the
consequences of one's follies at any age, but at twenty-four, when
otherwise the whole life is smiling for one, it seems quite too hard.
The frightful language this well-endowed young gentleman now
indulged in, half aloud and half in thought, would be quite impossible
to put on paper! It contained what almost amounted to curses for a
certain lady whose appearance, could she have been seen at this
moment, suggested that of a pious little saint.
"How the h---- can I keep from marrying her!" Mr. Arranstoun said
more than aloud this time, and then kicking an innocent footstool
across the room, he called his bulldog, put on his cap and stamped out
on to the old stone balcony which opened from this apartment, and was
soon stalking down the staircase and across the lawn to a little door in
the great fortified wall, which led into the park.
He had hardly left the room when, from the wide arched doorway of his
bed-chamber beyond, there entered Mr. Johnson, his superior valet,
carrying some riding-boots and a silk shirt over his arm. You could see
through the open door that it was a very big and comfortable bedroom,

which had evidently been adapted to its present use from some much
more stately beginning. A large, vaulted chamber it was, with three
narrow windows looking on to the grim courtyard beneath.
Michael Arranstoun had selected this particular suite for himself when
his father died ten years before, and his mother was left to spoil him,
until she, too, departed from this world when he was sixteen.
What a splendid inheritance he had come into! This old border castle
up in the north--and not a mortgage on the entire property! While, from
his mother, a number of solid golden sovereigns flowed into his coffers
every year--obtained by trade! That was a little disgusting for the
Arranstouns--but extremely useful.
It might have been from this same strain that the fortunate young man
had also inherited that common sense which made him fairly
level-headed, and not given as a rule to any over-mad taste.
The Arranstouns had been at Arranstoun since the time of those
tiresome Picts and Scots--and for generations they had raided their
neighbors' castles and lands, and carried off their cattle and wives and
daughters and what not! They had seized anything they fancied, and
were a strong, ruthless, brutal race, not much vitiated by civilization.
These instincts of seizing what they wanted had gone on in them
throughout eleven hundred years and more, and were there until this
day, when Michael, the sole representative of this branch of the family,
said "Damn!" and kicked a footstool across the room into the grate.
Mr. Johnson was quite aware of the peculiarity of the family. Indeed,
he was not surprised when Alexander Armstrong