the snow was gone, but it was still cold and unpleasant weather when the ruler of mr. massarene’s fate, accompanied by a score or more intimate acquaintances who had been persuaded to patronize “billy,” arrived in the dusk at vale royal with an enormous amount of luggage and a regiment of body-servants and maids.
“you needn’t have come to meet us. i know my way about here better than you do,” was the ungracious salutation with which the host, who had gone himself to the station, was met by the object of his veneration. she never flattered him now; she had got him well in hand; it was no longer necessary to do violence to her nature; when one likes the use of the spur one does not humor one’s horse with sugar; she thought the spur and the whip salutary for him, and employed them with scant mercy.
she mounted as lightly as a young cat to the box of the four-in-hand break, took the reins, and drove her mesmerized, trembling yet enchanted victim through the dusky lanes and over the muddy roads which were familiar to her, the lights of the lamps flashing, and the chatter and laughter of the other occupants of the break bringing the laboring people out of their cottages, as the lady whom they knew so well flew by them in the twilight.
“seems kind o’ heartless like in lady kenny to go to the great house now the poor lord’s in it no more; him her own cousin and all,” said a young woman to her husband who was only a hedger and ditcher, but a shrewd observer in his way, and who replied, as he looked after the four white-stockinged bays: “lady kenny aren’t one to cry for spilt milk; she knows where her bread is buttered. lord, gal, ’twas she made roxhall sell, and i’ll take my oath as i stands here that most o’ the blunt went in her pocket.”
all the people for forty miles round were of the same opinion, and owed her a grudge for it. roxhall had been[177] a very popular landlord and employer; his tenantry and laboring folks mourned for him, and despised the new man who stood on his hearthstone. quite indifferent, however, to the voces populi she drove safely through the familiar gates and up the mile-long avenue as night descended, and went into the library, looking very handsome with her blue eyes almost black, and her fair face bright and rosy, from the chilly high winds of the bleak april evening.
she pulled off her sealskins and threw them to one of her attendant gentlemen, and then walked forward to the warmth of the great elizabethan fireplace. “well, my dear woman, how do you like it?” she said good-humoredly to margaret massarene, as she drew off her gloves and took a cup of tea before the hearth where a stately fire was burning for its beauty’s sake: the great room was heated by hot water pipes. margaret massarene was in that dual state of trepidation, anxiety, offence, and bewilderment into which the notice of her monitress invariably plunged her. she murmured some inarticulate words, and glanced timidly at the bevy of strangers. but mouse did not take the trouble to introduce her friends to their hostess; some of them were already acquainted with her, but some were not: all with equal and unceremonious readiness ignored her presence, and descended on the teacups and muffins and caviare sandwiches with the unanimity of a flock of rooks settling down on to a field mined with wire worms.
“always had tea in here in gerald’s time,” said one of the men, staring about him to see if there was any alteration made in the room.
“i don’t think you know my daughter,” mrs. massarene summed courage to murmur, with a nervous glance toward katherine, who stood at the other end of the wide chimney-piece, a noble piece of fine oak carving with huge silver dogs of the stuart period, and the roxhall arms in bold bosses above it.
mouse, looking extremely like her brother, flashed her sapphire eyes like a search light over the face and figure of the person in whom she had by instinct divined an antagonist, and desired to find a sister-in-law.
[178]“so glad,” she murmured vaguely, as she put down her cup, and held out her hand with a composite grace all her own, at once charmingly amiable and intolerably insolent.
katherine merely made her a low curtsey, and did not put out her hand in return.
“how’s sherry and bitters?” asked lady kenilworth, marking but ignoring the rudeness. “amusing creature, isn’t he? bored to death, i suppose, in india?”
“it would be difficult, i think, for the most stupid person to be bored in india,” replied katherine briefly. “lord framlingham is not stupid.”
lady kenilworth stared. then she laughed, as it was so very comical to find billy’s daughter such a person as this.
“i saw from that bust of dalou’s that she wouldn’t be facile,” she reflected. “looks as if she thought pumpkins of herself; if she’s cheeky to me it will be the worse for her.”
katherine was very cold, very pale, very still; the men did not get on with her, and soon abandoned the attempt to do so. the ladies, after staring hard, scarcely noticed her or her mother, but chattered amongst themselves like sparrows on a house roof after rain. with swelling heart she felt their gaze fixed on her; two of them put up their eyeglasses. she wore a plain silver-colored woolen gown, but their experienced eye recognized the cut of a famous faiseur, and the natural lines of her form were unusually perfect.
“très bien mise; très simple, mais très bien,” said a parisienne, duchesse de saint-avit, quite audibly, gazing at her as if she were some curious piece of carving like the fireplace.
“elle n’est pas mal du tout,” returned a foreign diplomatist quite audibly also, as though he were in the stalls of a theatre.
“sullen, is she?” thought mouse, toasting one of her pretty feet on the fender. “gives herself airs, does she? that’s old fram’s doing, i expect.”
ignoring her as an unknown quantity, to be seen to at leisure and annihilated if needful, she turned to her host, who was standing awkwardly behind the brilliant throng.[179] “got my telegram about the bird rooms?” she said sharply. she would have spoken more civilly to an hotel-keeper.
the bird rooms were a set of three rooms, bed, dressing, and sitting-room; their walls painted with birds and flowers on a pale-blue ground, their silk hangings and furniture of corresponding color and design; and many birds in chelsea and battersea, majolica, terra de pipa, and other china and pottery, on the tables and cabinets. she did not care a straw about the birds; but they were the warmest, cosiest rooms in the house facing full south, and were detached from observation in a manner which was agreeable and convenient; and she had sent a brief dispatch that morning to command their reservation for herself. country houses are always selected with regard to their conveniences for innocent and unobserved intercourse.
the bird rooms were duly assigned to her, and mr. massarene himself had walked through them that morning to make sure that they were thoroughly warmed, that the writing-table was properly furnished, and that the rarest flowers had been gathered for the vases on the table; he with eagerness assured her that her word had been law.
“i hope you haven’t altered anything there?” she said, taking up her gloves. “it’s very absurd, you know, to put turkish screens and lamps in an old tudor room like this. they’ve smartened the place up,” she said to her friends, looking about her. “that open work cedar wood screen wasn’t across that door in gerald’s time, nor those great bronze lamps hanging over there. where’d you get them, billy? they look like santa sophia.”
but she did not listen to billy’s reply. she was looking at the mulberry-colored velvet curtains which replaced in the windows the somewhat shabby and frayed hangings of her cousin’s reign.
“i wish i had come here last year,” she said to her discomfited host. “you should have touched nothing. a place like this doesn’t want bond street emptied into it. i don’t know what gerald would say. he’d be dreadfully angry.”
[180]mr. massarene thought that lord roxhall had parted with his right to be angry; but he dared not say so. he murmured that he was sorry; whatever there might be that was not suitable should be removed.
“can’t you see how wrong it all is?” asked his tyrant impatiently.
he regretfully confessed his utter inability to see it; was grieved they were incorrect; they should be moved to-morrow.
“lady kenilworth is a purist,” said his daughter in clear cold tones. “new people who come into old houses are of necessity eclectic.”
her father frowned. he did not know what eclectic meant, but he supposed it meant something vulgar. his guest stared: if billy’s daughter were cheeky like this it would be necessary, she thought, to take her down a peg or two. but she was forced to confess to herself that the daughter of the house did not look like a person whom it would be easy to take down, either one peg or many.
“would you like to go to your rooms, ma’am?” murmured her hostess, when the tea had been drunk and the chatter had ceased for a minute and the sound of the first dinner-gong boomed through the house.
“my dear woman,” replied mouse, “i know the place better than you do! but, really, if i shall find pekin mandarins on oak banisters, and minton plaques on tudor panels, i shall not have strength to go up the staircase!”
“what do she mean?” murmured margaret massarene.
“she means to be insolent,” replied her daughter, and the reply was not in a very low tone. but lady kenilworth was or pretended to be out of hearing, going out of the library with two of her special friends and calling on others to come with her and see what the vandals had done: the gong was booming loudly.
william massarene was inexpressibly mortified; the more keenly so because if he had listened to prince khris two years before he would not have had bond street and the rue de rivoli emptied into a beautiful, hoary, sombre, old tudor house.
mouse felt no qualms whatever at seeing the new people in the old house. she had been unable to understand[181] why roxhall would not himself come with her. but some people were so whimsical and faddish and sentimental. they spoiled their own lives and bothered those of others. she thought it was good fun to see william massarene in the old tudor dining-hall and his wife in the beautiful oval italian drawing-room. roxhall would not have seen the fun of it, but men are so slow to catch a joke.
“they are so deliciously ridiculous and incongruous!” she said to one of her companions.
she had brought a “rattling good lot” with her; smart women and cheery men who could ride to hounds all day and play bac’ all night, or run twenty miles to see an otter-worry and be as “fresh as paint” next morning; people with blue blood in their veins, and good old names, and much personal beauty and strength, and much natural health and intelligence; but who by choice led a kind of life beside which that of an ape is intellectual and that of an amœba is useful; people who were very good-natured and horribly cruel, who could no more live without excitement than without cigarettes, who were never still unless their doctor gave them morphia, who went to iceland for a fortnight and to africa for a month; who never dined in their own homes except when they gave a dinner-party, who could not endure solitude for ten minutes, who went anywhere to be amused, who read nothing except telegrams, and who had only two cares in life—money and their livers.
they came down to vale royal to be amused, to eat well, to chatter amongst themselves as if they were on a desert island, to carry on their flirtations, their meetings, their intrigues, and to arrange the pastimes of their days and nights precisely as they pleased without the slightest reference to those who entertained them.
“what would you like to do to-morrow?” their host had ventured to say to one of them, and the guest had replied, “oh, pray don’t bother; we’re going somewhere, but i forget where.”
they had brought a roulette-wheel with them, and cards and counters; for their leader knew by experience that the evenings without such resources were apt to be dull at vale royal. william massarene, indeed, had provided[182] forms of entertainment such as were unattainable by the limited means of the roxhall family. he had caused admirable musicians, good singers, even a choice little troupe of foreign comedians, to be brought down for this famous week in which the azure eyes of his divinity smiled upon him under his own roof-tree. but there was one diversion which she considered superior in its attractions to anything which tenors and sopranos, viols and violins, or even palais royal players, could give her, and that diversion she took without asking the permission of anybody. there was a with-drawing-room at vale royal which was always known as the italian room because some venetian artist, of no great fame but of much graceful talent, had painted ceiling and walls, as was proven by old entries in account books of the years 1640-50, contained in the muniment-room of the roxhalls. on the third night after their arrival, when they were all in this italian room, after a short performance by the parisian comedians, a long table of ebony and ivory was unceremoniously cleared of the various objects of art which had been placed on it, and the roulette-wheel was enthroned there instead by the hands of lady kenilworth herself, and the little ball was set off on its momentous gyrations.
she was looking more than ever like a lovely flower, with a turquoise collar round her throat, and real forget-me-nots fastened by diamonds in her hair. for some minutes william massarene, who had slept through the french comedy, and was still drowsy, did not become sensible of what was taking place in his drawing-room. but when the shouts and laughter of the merry gamblers reached his ear and he realized with difficulty what was taking place, a heavy frown, such as kerosene city had learned to dread, stole on his brows, and a startled horror opened wide his eyes.
play! play under his roof!
all his protestant and puritan soul awoke. a large portion of his earliest gains had been made by the miners and navvies and cowboys who had gathered to stake their dollars in the back den of his shop in kerosene city; and later on he had made millions by his ownership of private hells in larger towns of the united states; and the very[183] thought of gambling was odious to him because he felt that these were portions of his past on which no light must ever shine. he felt that he owed it to the conscience which he had acquired with his london clothes and his english horses to prohibit all kinds of play, however innocent, in his own drawing-rooms. he crossed the room and, nervously approaching the leader of the band, ventured to murmur close to her ivory shoulder: “you never said you meant to play, lady kenilworth. i can’t have any play—i can’t indeed—in my house.”
his tone was timid and imploring. he was frightened at his own temerity, and grew grey with terror as he spoke. she turned her head and transfixed him with the imperious challenge of her glance.
“what are you talking about, my good man?” she said in her clearest and unkindest tone. “it is not your house when i’m in it.”
“but i can’t allow play,” he murmured, with a gasp. “it’s against my principles.”
“don’t talk rot, billy!” she cried with impatience. “who cares about your principles? keep them for the hustings.”
then she turned the ivory shoulder on him again, and, amidst the vociferous laughter of the circle of players, william massarene, feeling that he had made a fool of himself, hastily and humbly retreated.
the merriment pealed in louder ecstasy up to the beautiful painted ceiling, as she cried after the retreating figure: “you go to bed, billy—go to bed! or we sha’n’t let you dine with us to-morrow night!”
“you’re rather rough on the poor beast, lady kenny,” said one of the players who was next her.
“billy’s like a cairo donkey—he must feel the goad and be gagged,” replied mouse, sweeping her counters together with a rapacious grace like a hawk’s circling flight.
then the little ball ran about in its momentous gyrations, and the counters changed hands, and the game went on all the giddier, all the merrier, because “billy thought it improper.”
katherine rose from her seat by the pianoforte and[184] came to her father’s side. indignation shone in her lustrous eyes, while a flash of pain, of shame, and of anger burned on her cheeks.
“father, oh, father!” she said in a low, intense murmur, “send them away! they insult you every hour, every moment! why do you endure it? turn them all out to-morrow morning!”
“mind your own business! do i want any lessons from you, damn you?” said massarene, in a sullen whisper, more infuriated by her perspicuity than by the facts on which her appeal to him was based.
his daughter shrank a little, like a high-spirited animal unjustly beaten—not from fear, but from wounded pride and mute disgust. she went back to the pianoforte and opened the book of “lohengrin.”
he threw himself heavily into an armchair, and took up an album of caran d’ache drawings and bent over it, not seeing a line of the sketches, and not being able to read a line of the jests appended to them. all he saw was that lovely figure down there at the roulette-table, with the forget-me-nots in her glittering hair and at her snowy bosom, and the turquoise collar round her throat.
“billy!”
no one had ever called him billy since the time when he had been a cow-boy, getting up in the dark in bitter winter mornings to pitchfork the dung out of the stalls, and chop the great swedes and mangolds, and break the ice in the drinking-trough. never in all her life had his wife ever dared to call him billy. he knew the name made him ridiculous; he knew that he was the object of all that ringing laughter; he knew that he was made absurd, contemptible, odious; but he would not allow his daughter, nor would he allow any other person, to say so. he was hypnotized by that fair patrician who threw the mud in his face; the mud smelt as sweet to him as roses. it was only her pretty, airy, nonchalant way—the way she had de par la grâce de dieu which became her so well, which was part and parcel of her, which was a mark of grace, like her delicate nostrils and her arched instep.
[185]when she had tired of her roulette, it irritated her extremely to see the large gorgeous form of mrs. massarene dozing on a couch and waking up with difficulty from dreams, no doubt, of cowslip meadows and patient cows whisking their tails over the dew; and the erect figure of her daughter sitting beside the grand piano and turning over the leaves of musical scores.
“why don’t you send your women to bed, billy?” she said to him very crossly. “it fidgets one to see them eternally sitting there like the horse guards in their saddles at whitehall. politeness? oh, is it meant for politeness? well, i will give them a dispensation, then. do tell them to go to bed; i am sure good creatures like those have lots of prayers to say before they go to by-bye!”
“why don’t you and your mother go to your rooms? we are all of us very late people,” she said, directly, as she passed katherine massarene.
“you are my parents’ guest, lady kenilworth; i endeavor not to forget it,” was the reply.
“what does she mean by that?” her guest wondered; she thought she meant some covert rebuke. she did not at all like the steady contemptuous gaze of this young woman’s tranquil eyes.
“oh, my dear, how dreadfully old-fashioned and formal you are!” she cried, with an impatient little laugh; and the daughter of the house thought her familiarity more odious than her rudeness. she perceived the impression she made on the young woman whom she meant to marry ronald.
“you see, i feel quite at home here,” she added by way of explanation. “of course, you know it was my cousin’s house.”
“i wonder you like to come to it,” said katherine as she paused. “it must be painful to see it in the hands of strangers, and those strangers common people.”
“how droll you are!” cried mouse, with another little laugh. “i am sure we shall be great friends when we come to know each other well.”
katherine was silent; and mouse, slightly disconcerted, bade her a brief good-night, and took her own way to the[186] bird rooms. for once in her life she had met a person whom she did not understand.
“ronald shall marry her, but i shall always hate her,” she thought, as she went to the bird rooms. “however, everybody always hates their sisters-in-law, whoever they may be.”
the young woman seemed intolerably insolent to her: so cold, so grave, so visibly disapproving herself; it was quite insupportable to have billy’s daughter giving herself grand airs like a tragedian at the français. but for her intention to make ronald marry the massarene fortune she would have expressed her surprise and offence in unequivocal terms.
“really, these new people are too absurd,” she thought, as her maid disrobed her whilst the chimes of the clock tower rung in the fourth hour of the morning. “too infinitely absurd. they must know that we don’t come to their houses to see them; and yet they will stay in their drawing-rooms like so many figures of tussaud. it is really too obtuse and ridiculous.”
she was, however, too sleepy to reflect longer on their stolid obstinacy, or to decide how she should on the morrow best teach them their place.
