“mouse,” said her husband to lady kenilworth, one morning at homburg, “do you see that large pale woman over there, with a face like a crumpled whitey-brown paper bag?”
lady kenilworth looked.
“yes,” she said, impatiently. “yes. well?—what?—why?”
“well, she rolls—she absolutely rolls—wallows—biggest pile ever made out west.”
his wife looked again with a little more attention at the large figure of a lady, superbly clothed, who sat alone under a tree, and had that desolate air of “not being in it” which betrays the unelect.
“nobody discovered her? nobody taken her up?” she asked, still looking through her eye-glass.
“well, old khris a little; but khris can’t get anybody on now. he does ’em more harm than good. he’s dead broke.”
his wife smiled.
“they must be new, indeed, if they don’t know that. would they be rich enough to buy vale royal of gerald?”
“lord, yes; rich enough to buy a hundred gerrys and vales royal. i know it for a fact from men in the city: they are astonishing—biggest income in the united states, after vanderbilt and pullman.”
“american, then?”
“no; made their ‘stiff’ there, and come home to spend it.”
“name?”
[6]“massarene. cotton to her if you can. there’s money to be made.”
“hush! somebody will hear.”
her lord chuckled.
“does anybody know these dear souls and their kind for any other reason than the flimsy? she’s looking your way. you’ll have to introduce yourself, for she don’t know anybody here. make boo fall down and break her nose in front of her.”
boo was a four-year-old angel with lovely black eyes and bright yellow hair, the second child of the kenilworth family. accompanied by one of her nurses, she was playing near them, with a big rosy bladder tied to a string.
“i don’t think the matter so difficult that boo’s nose need be sacrificed. at what hotel is this person staying?”
“at ours.”
“oh! then the thing’s very easy.”
she nodded and dismissed him. she was on fairly good terms with her husband, and would make common cause with him when it suited her; but she could not stand much of his society. she took another prolonged stare through her eye-glass at the large pale woman, so splendidly attired, sitting in solitude under the tree, then rose and walked away in her graceful and nonchalant fashion, with her knot of young men around her. she was followed by the dreary envious gaze of the lonely lady whose countenance had been likened to a large whitey-brown paper bag.
“if one could but get to know her all the rest would come easy,” thought that solitary and unhappy outsider, looking longingly after that pliant and perfect figure with its incomparable air of youth, of sovereignty, and of indifference. what was the use of having an income second only to vanderbilt’s and pullman’s?
there are things which cannot be purchased. manner is chief amongst them.
margaret massarene was very lonely indeed, as she sat under the big tree watching the gay, many-colored, animated crowd amongst which there was not a creature with[7] whom she had even a bowing acquaintance. her lord and master, of whom she stood in much awe, was away on business in frankfort; her daughter, her only living child, was in india; she was here because it was the proper place for an aspirant to society to be in at that season; but of all this multitude of royal people, titled people, pretty people, idle people, who thronged the alleys and crowded the hotels, she did not know a single creature. she envied her own maid who had many acquaintances with other maids and couriers and smart german sergeants and corporals of cavalry.
on the previous day she had made also a fatal mistake. as she had crossed the hall of her own hotel, she had seen a fair small woman, insignificantly dressed, in a deer-stalker’s hat and a gray ulster, who was arguing with the cashier about an item in her bill which she refused to pay: so many kreutzer for ice; ice was always given gratis, she averred; and she occupied the whole window of the cashier’s bureau as she spoke, having laid down an umbrella, a packet of newspapers, and a mackintosh on the shelf. indignant at being made to wait by such a shabby little person, mrs. massarene pushed her aside. “folks as has to count pence shouldn’t come to grand hotels,” she muttered, with more reason than politeness, elbowing away the shabby fair woman.
the shabby fair woman turned round and stared, then laughed: the cashier and the clerk were confounded, and lost their presence of mind. to the shabby fair woman a man in plain clothes, obviously her servant, approached, and bowing low said, “if you please, madam, his imperial majesty is at the door.” and the lady who quarreled with a clerk for half a kreutzer went out of the hall, and mounted besides a gentleman who was driving himself; one of those gentlemen to whom all the world doff their hats, yet who, by a singular contradiction, are always guarded by policemen.
the massarene courier, who was always hovering near his mistress in the vain effort to preserve her from wrongdoing, took her aside.
“it’s mrs. cecil courcy, madam,” he murmured. “there’s nobody so chic as mrs. cecil courcy. she’s[8] hand and glove with all them royalties. pinching and screwing—oh yes, that she do—but then you see, madam, she can do it.”
“you won’t tell your master, gregson?” said mrs. massarene in an agony of penitence.
gregson winced at the word “master,” but he answered sincerely, “no, madam; i won’t tell mr. massarene. but if you think that because they’re high they’re large, you’re very much mistaken. lord, ma’am, they’ll pocket the marrons glacés at the table d’hôte and take the matches away from their bedrooms, but then, you see, ma’am, them as are swagger can do them things. mrs. cecil courcy might steal the spoons if she’d a mind to do it!”
mrs. massarene gasped. a great name covering a multitude of small thefts appalled her simple mind.
“you can’t mean it, gregson?” she said with breathless amaze.
“indeed, madam, i do,” said the courier, “and that’s why, madam, i won’t ever go into service with gentlefolks. they’ve got such a lot to keep up, and so precious little to do it with, that they’re obliged to pinch and to screw and get three sixpences out of a shilling, as i tell you, madam.”
mrs. massarene was sad and silent. it was painful to hear one’s own courier say that he would never take service with “gentlefolk.” one never likes to see oneself as others see us.
the poignant horror of that moment as she had seen the imperial wheels flash and rotate through the flying dust was still fresh in her mind, and should have prevented her from ever trusting to her own judgment or forming that judgment from mere appearances. she could still hear the echo of the mocking voice of that prince whom kenilworth had described as “dead broke” saying to her, as he had said more than once in england: “not often do you make a mistake; ah no, not often, my very dear madam, not often; but when you do make one—eh bien, vous la faites belle!”
mrs. massarene sighed heavily as she sat alone under her tree, her large hands folded on her lap; the lessons of society seemed to her of an overwhelming difficulty and[9] intricacy. how could she possibly have guessed that the great mrs. cecil courcy, who gave tea and bread-and-butter to kings and sang duets with their consorts, was a little shabby, pale-faced being in a deer-stalker’s hat and a worn gray ulster who had disputed in propriâ personâ at the cashier’s office the charge of half a kreutzer on her bill for some iced water?
as she was thinking these melancholy thoughts and meditating on the isolation of her greatness, a big rose-colored bladder struck her a sharp blow on the cheek; and at her involuntary cry of pain and surprise a little child’s voice said pleadingly, “oh! begs ’oo pardon—vewy muss!”
the rosebud face of lady kenilworth’s little daughter was at her knee, and its prettiness and penitence touched to the quick her warm maternal heart.
“my little dear, ’tis nothing at all,” she said, stooping to kiss the child under its white lace coalscuttle bonnet. boo submitted to the caress, though she longed to rub the place kissed by the stranger.
“it didn’t hurt ’oo, did it?” she asked solicitously, and then she added in a whisper, “has ’oo dot any sweeties?”
for she saw that the lady was kind, and thought her pretty, and in her four-year-old mind decided to utilize the situation. as it chanced, mrs. massarene, being fond of “sweeties” herself, had some caramels in a gold bonbon-box, and she pressed them, box and all, into the little hands in their tiny tan gloves.
boo’s beautiful sleepy black eyes grew wide-awake with pleasure.
“dat’s a real dold box,” she said, with the fine instincts proper to one who will have her womanhood in the twentieth century. and slipping it in her little bosom she ran off with it to regain her nurse.
her mother was walking past at the moment with the king of greece on one side of her, and the duc d’orléans on the other; wise little boo kept aloof with her prize. but she knew not, or forgot, that her mother’s eyes were as the optic organs of the fly which can see all round at once, and possess twelve thousand facets.
[10]ten minutes later, when the king had gone to drink his glasses of water and prince gamelle had gone to breakfast, lady kenilworth, leading her sulky and unwilling boo by the hand, approached the tree where the lone lady sat. “you have been too kind to my naughty little girl,” she said with her sweetest smile. “she must not keep this bonbonnière; the contents are more than enough for a careless little trot who knocks people about with her balloon.”
mrs. massarene, agitated almost out of speech and sense at the sight of this radiant apparition which spoke with such condescension to her, stammered thanks, excuses, protestations in an unintelligible hotchpot of confused phrases; and let the gold box fall neglected to the ground.
“the dear pretty baby,” she said entreatingly. “oh, pray, ma’am, oh, pray, my lady, do let her have it, such a trifle as it is!”
“no, indeed i cannot,” said lady kenilworth firmly, but still with her most winning smile, and she added with that graceful abruptness natural to her, “do tell me, i am not quite sure, but wasn’t it you who snubbed phyllis courcy so delightfully at the hotel bureau yesterday morning?”
mrs. massarene’s pallid face became purple.
“oh, my lady,” she said faintly, “i shall never get over it, such a mistake as i made! when mr. massarene comes to hear of it he’ll be ready to kill me——”
“it was quite delightful,” said lady kenilworth with decision. “nobody ever dares pull her up for her cheese-paring ways. we were all enchanted. she is a detestable cat, and if she hadn’t that mezzo-soprano voice she wouldn’t be petted and cossetted at balmoral and berlin and bernsdorff as she is. she is my aunt by marriage, but i hate her.”
“dear me, my lady,” murmured mrs. massarene, doubtful if her ears could hear aright. “i was ready to sink into my shoes,” she added, “when i saw her drive away with the emperor.”
lady kenilworth laughed, a genuine laugh which meant a great number of things, unexplained to her auditor. then she nodded; a little pleasant familiar nod of farewell.
[11]“we shall meet again. we are at the same hotel. thanks so much for your kindness to my naughty pet.”
and with the enchanting smile she used when she wanted to turn people’s heads she nodded again, and went on her way, dragging the reluctant boo away from the tree and the golden box.
when she consigned her little daughter to the nurse, boo’s big black eyes looked up at her in eloquent reproach. the big black eyes said what the baby lips did not dare to say: “i did what you told me; i hit the lady very cleverly as if it was accident, and then you wouldn’t let me have the pretty box, and you called me naughty!”
later, in the nursery, boo poured out her sorrows to her brother jack, who exactly resembled herself with his yellow hair, his big dark eyes, and his rosebud of a mouth.
“she telled me to hit the old ’ooman, and then she said i was naughty ’cos i did it, and she tooked away my dold box!”
“never mind, boo. mammy always lets one in for it. what’d you tell her of the box for? don’t never tell mammy nothin’,” said jack in the superior wisdom of the masculine sex and ten months greater age.
boo sobbed afresh.
“i didn’t tell her. she seed it through my frock.”
jack kissed her.
“let’s find old woman, boo, if we can get out all by ’selves, and we’ll ask her for the box.”
boo’s face cleared.
“and we’ll tell her mammy telled me to hit her!”
jack’s cherub face grew grave.
“n-n-no. we won’t do that, boo. mammy’s a bad ’un to split on.”
jack had once overheard this said on the staircase by lord kenilworth, and his own experiences had convinced him of the truth of it. “mammy can be cruel nasty,” he added, with great solemnity of aspect and many painful personal recollections.
mrs. massarene had remained under the tree digesting the water she had drunk, and the memory of the blunder she had made with regard to mrs. courcy. she ought to[12] have known that there is nothing more perilous than to judge by appearances, for this is a fact to be learned in kitchens as well as palaces. but she had not known it, and by not knowing it had offended a person who went en intime to balmoral, and berlin, and bernsdorff!
half an hour later, when she slowly and sorrowfully walked back through the gardens of her hotel, to go in to luncheon, two bright cherubic apparitions came toward her over the grass.
walking demurely hand-in-hand, looking the pictures of innocent infancy, jack and boo, having had their twelve o’clock dinner, dedicated their united genius to the finding and besieging of the old fat woman.
“how’s ’oo do?” said boo very affably, whilst her brother, leaving her the initiative, pulled his sky-blue tam o’ shanter cap off his golden curls with his best possible manner.
their victim was enchanted by their overtures, and forgot that she was hungry, as these radiant little gainsborough figures blocked her path. they were welcome to her as children, but as living portions of the peerage they were divinities.
“what’s your name, my pretty dears?” she said, much flattered and embarrassed. “you’re lord kersterholme, aren’t you, sir?”
“i’m kers’ham, ’ess. but i’m jack,” said the boy with the big black eyes and the yellow locks, cut short over his forehead and falling long on his shoulders.
“and your dear little sister, she’s lady beatrix orme?” said mrs. massarene, who had read their names and dates of birth a score of times in her ‘burke.’
“she’s boo,” said jack.
boo herself stood with her little nose and chin in the air, and her mouth pursed contemptuously. she was ready to discharge herself of scathing ironies on the personal appearance of the questioner, but she resisted the impulse because to indulge it might endanger the restoration of the gold box.
“i am sure you are very fond of your pretty mamma, my dears?” said mrs. massarene, wondering why they thus honored her by standing in her path.
[13]boo shut up her rosy mouth and her big eyes till they were three straight lines of cruel scorn, and was silent.
jack hesitated.
“we’re very fond of harry,” he said, by way of compromise, and as in allusion to a substitute.
“who is harry?” asked mr. massarene, surprised.
the children were puzzled. who was harry?
they were used to seeing him perpetually, to playing with him, to teasing him, to getting everything they wanted out of him; but, as to who he was, of that they had never thought.
“he’s in the guards,” said jack at last. “the guards that have the white tails on their heads, you know, and ride down portland place of a morning.”
“he belongs to mammy,” said boo, by way of additional identification; she was a lovely little fresh dewdrop of childhood only just four years old, but she had a sparkle of malice and meaning in her tone and her eyes, of which her brother was innocent.
“oh, indeed,” murmured mrs. massarene, more and more embarrassed; for ought she knew, it might be the habit for ladies in the great world to have an officer of the guards attached to their service.
jack looked critically at the strange lady. “don’t ’oo know people?” he asked; this poor old fat woman seemed to him very forlorn and friendless.
“i don’t know many people as yet, my lord,” murmured their victim humbly.
“is ’oo a cook or a nurse?” said jack, with his head on one side, surveying her with puzzled compassion.
“my dear little sir!” cried mrs. massarene, horrified. “why, gracious me! i’m a lady.”
jack burst out laughing. “oh, no, ’oo isn’t,” he said decidedly. “ladies don’t say they’s ladies.”
boo twitched his hand to remind him of the ultimate object of their mission.
mrs. massarene had never more cruelly felt how utterly she was “nobody” at her first drawing-room, than she felt it now under the merciless eyes of these chicks.
boo pulled jack’s sleeve. “she won’t give us nothin’ else if ’oo tease her,” she whispered in his rosy ear.
[14]jack shook her off. “p’r’aps we’re rude,” he said remorsefully to his victim. “we’s sorry if we’ve vexed ’oo.”
“and does ’oo want the little box mammy gived back to ’oo?” said boo desperately, perceiving that her brother would never attack this main question.
over the plain broad flat face of the poor plebian there passed a gleam of intelligence, and a shadow of disappointment. it was only for sake of the golden box that these little angels had smilingly blocked her road!
she brought out the bonbonnière at once from her pocket. “pray take it and keep it, my little lady,” she said to boo, who required no second bidding; and after a moment’s hesitation mrs. massarene took out of her purse a new napoleon. “would you please, my lord,” she murmured, pushing the bright coin into jack’s fingers.
jack colored. he was tempted to take the money; he had spent his last money two days before, and the napoleon would buy a little cannon for which his heart pined; a real cannon which would load with real little shells. but something indefinite in his mind shrank from taking a stranger’s money. he put his hands behind his back. “thanks, very much,” he said resolutely, “but please, no; i’d rather not.”
she pressed it on him warmly, but he was obstinate. “no, thanks,” he said twice. “’oo’s very kind,” he added courteously. “but i don’t know ’oo, and i’d rather not.” and he adhered to his refusal. he could not have put his sentiment into words, but he had a temper which his sister had not.
“’oo’s very kind,” he said again, to soften his refusal.
“’oo’s very kind,” repeated boo sarcastically, with a little grin and a mocking curtsey, “and jack’s a great big goose. ta-ta!”
she pulled her brother away, being afraid of the arrival of governess, nurse, or somebody who might yet again snatch the gold box away from her.
“why didn’t ’oo take the money, jack?” she said, as they ran hand-in-hand down the path.
“i don’t know,” said jack truthfully. “somethin’ inside me told me not.”
[15]their forsaken admirer looked after them wistfully. “fine feathers don’t make a fine bird o’ me,” she thought sorrowfully. “even those babies see i ain’t a lady. i always told william as how it wouldn’t be no use. i dare say in time they’ll come to us for sake of what they’ll get, but they won’t never think us aught except the rinsins of the biler.”
lord kenilworth had been looking idly out of a window of the hotel across the evergreens after his breakfast of brandy and seltzer and had seen the little scene in the garden and chuckled as he saw.
“shrewd little beggars, gettin’ things out of the fat old woman,” he thought with approval. “how like they look to their mother; and what a blessing it is there’s never any doubts as to the maternity of anybody!”
he, although not a student of ‘burke’ like mrs. massarene, had opened that majestic volume once on a rainy day in the library of a country house, and had looked at his own family record in it, and had seen, underneath his own title and his father’s, the names of four little children:—
sons:
(1) john cecil victor, lord kersterholme.
(2) gerald george.
(3) francis lionel desmond edward.
daughter:
beatrix cicely.
“dear little duckies!” he had murmured, biting a cigarette. “sweet little babes! precious little poppets! damn ’em the whole blooming lot!”
but he had been quite alone when he had said this: for a man who drank so much as he did he was always remarkably discreet. what he drank did not make him garrulous; it made him suspicious and mute. no one had ever known him allow a word to escape his lips which he would, being sober, have regretted to have said. how many abstemious persons amongst us can boast as much?
