“poor papa is deaded,” said jack to boo on his return to town; in the tenderness of his heart he was beginning to forget the dead man’s pinches and to pity his retirement from the world.
“i know; and i do hate black so,” said boo twitching wrathfully at her frock.
“i’m ’fraid he must be so dull in heaven,” said jack seriously. “i don’t think they let them race, or bet, or do anything amusin’ there.”
he wasn’t sure, but he thought he had heard so.
“i ought to have gone down as well as you, instead of gerry,” said boo, who had been exceedingly aggrieved at being left in town like baby.
“oh, no,” said jack with much dignity, “you’re not in the succession; you’re a female.”
“a female? me? how dare you?” cried boo in a red fury of wrath, and gave him a resounding box on the ear. the head of her house perceived that he was not a hero to his relatives, and, ignorant of the french proverb, turned to the servants.
“i’m duke, james,” he said to his friend the hall-boy.
“so i’ve heard, your grace.”
“we’ll play marbles all day long, james.”
“all right, sir.”
“why aren’t you a duke, james?”
the hall-boy grinned.
“m. le duc ne doit pas causer avec les domestiques,” said the french governess, and took hold of him by his right ear and propelled him upstairs.
“pourquoi nong pas?” asked jack.
“parcequ’ils sont vos inférieurs,” replied the french lady.
jack did like the reply, it sounded harsh, he did not believe it was true; james beat him at marbles, and could[266] make popguns and cut out boats, and had talents and virtues innumerable.
jack loved the hall-boy, and had once got into dreadful disgrace by taking his place and answering the door, to let his friend go round the corner.
as he was being driven upstairs by the governess he heard the voice of brancepeth arguing with a footman; the young man was insisting that they should let him in, and the servants were apologizing, her grace’s orders had been positive. jack, with a leap like a chamois’s, rushed downstairs and leaped into his friend’s arms.
“well, your grace,” said brancepeth, as he kissed the child, “how is my lord duke, eh?”
brancepeth had not been allowed to go down to staghurst, even for the funeral; he had been desired to allege military duties as an obstacle, and had done so, though he thought it brutally uncivil to poor cocky.
jack laughed; his rosy face was bright above his black jersey; but he tried to look serious, as he had been told that he ought to do.
“mammy says we must not laugh,” he said sorrowfully. “come in here.”
he pulled his favorite by the hand into the library.
“he’s deaded you know,” he whispered solemnly.
brancepeth nodded; he sat down on a low chair, took jack on his knee and kissed him.
“he won’t pinch my calves any more,” said jack with a sense of relief.
“he won’t do anything any more, poor devil,” said his friend, who sincerely mourned him.
jack was silent, trying to realize the position and failing. “cuckoopint’s mine now, ain’t he?” he said suddenly.
cuckoopint was cocky’s cob.
“everything’s yours, you lucky little beggar,” said brancepeth. “but don’t flatter yourself they’ll let you do as you like. ronnie and the bishop between ’em will keep you uncommon tight.”
jack did not attend to this foreboding: his mind was full of cuckoopint.
“were you with him when he died, jack?” asked[267] brancepeth, who felt a morbid interest in cocky’s end. jack nodded.
“yes; he said ‘damn’; they told me to go on the bed and kiss him, but he wouldn’t; he said ‘damn.’”
“poor devil!” sighed brancepeth with a twinge in his conscience like neuralgia.
“well, you’ve a long minority,” he added as he kissed the child again. “things’ll pull round and get straight in all these years, but i’m afraid you’ll run amuck when you’re your own master, you naughty little beggar. i don’t know though, i think you’ve got grit in you.”
jack meditated profoundly. then he whispered in his elder’s ears, “if i’m all that grandpa’ was mayn’t i live without mammy somewhere? take cuckoopint and boo and live with ’oo?”
brancepeth shook his head with a sigh. “no, jack, you’ll never live with me. at least——” he paused as a certain possibility crossed his mind. “as for your mother,” he added, “well, you’ll see as much of her as she wishes, wherever you live. you won’t see more.”
jack’s face puckered up ready for a good cry; his position did not seem to him changed in any of its essentials.
“and cuckoopint?” he said piteously.
“they’ll sell cuckoopint probably,” said brancepeth. “but i’ll try and buy him and keep for you; you’re not big enough to ride him yet.”
jack threw his arms about his friend’s throat.
“i do love ’oo, harry. oh, i do love ’oo!”
brancepeth pressed the boy to him fondly; he knew the caress was chiefly for the sake of cuckoopint. still it was sweet to him.
“and that poor devil died with a bad word in his mouth,” he thought; and something as like remorse as any modern person can feel stirred in him.
the widowed duchess could not see her parisian creditor at her own house. it would be known that he came there, and would look very odd at such a time, and might awaken her brother’s suspicions. she ordered him to meet her at the house of a famous court dressmaker, a woman who had been often useful to her in more agreeable[268] appointments and more interesting embarrassments. she went out alone on foot, ostensibly to church, deeply veiled of course, at ten o’clock on the sunday morning which followed her husband’s funeral. the court dressmaker lived in a private house in green street, and she had not far to go. there, in a perfectly safe seclusion, she awaited the arrival of her creditor.
she was in a pretty room on the first floor. it had rose blinds and heavy curtains, and had been furnished in subdued and artistic style by a famous firm of decorators; she knew the room well, and it had always been at her disposition. her heart had throbbed more agreeably, but never so nervously, there, as it did this sunday morning whilst the church bells jangled and boomed in her ears, and the warm steam of a calorifère heating a foggy atmosphere, made her feel sick and faint. in a few moments the jeweler was announced—a slender, frail, fair man of some sixty-five years old, who saluted her gracefully, and in return had a haughty stare which revealed to him forcibly that he was a tradesman and she was a gentlewoman. beaumont, who was accustomed to different treatment, said to himself that she wanted a lesson. nothing costs us so dear in this world as our pride, and if we cannot afford to purchase the privilege of its indulgence the world will make us smart for claiming so great a luxury.
the deep black of her attire, so trying to most of her sex, only made fairer her skin, made brighter her hair and her eyes, and lent a richer rose to her lips; she looked extremely well, though she looked cross and anxious as she saw the jeweler enter.
“good morning, beaumont!” she said sharply. “have you brought the jewels?”
he smiled: the question seemed to him of an extraordinary naïveté for a lady who knew the world so well.
“i do not carry jewels in my pocket, madame,” he replied. “i am here to speak of yours.”
“didn’t you get my letter?”
“yes, madame; am i not here by your appointment?”
“but i ordered you to bring the diamonds?” she asked with that brusque authority which was part of her being.
[269]“i came to speak of the transaction, madame,” he repeated and smiled.
the cool audacity of her manner and commands diverted him. he perceived that she had no intention of paying him. “the cocotte has never been born,” he thought, “who could hold a candle to a great lady for impudence.”
if she had asked him to sit down he still would have refrained from troubling her; but she said no syllable that was civil; she continued to look at her creditor with haughty impatience.
“be quick about what you have to say then,” she remarked; “i can only stay a few moments here; i am going to church.”
a creditor, if deftly treated as a buddha of power and sanctity, may be disarmed, for, although a creditor, he is human. but if he be “cheeked” and treated as of no importance he is naturally moved to use his thunderbolt and assert his godhead. beaumont sat down without invitation or permission, and she, to show her disgust at such familiarity, rose and remained standing.
“madame,” he said very politely, “have you forgotten the paper which you signed?”
she was silent, darting azure lightning on him from her eyes. she did not distinctly remember what she had signed. she had not very clearly understood it at the time of signing; it had been all done in such a hurry, and the cab had been waiting for her in the rain, and she had wanted to get back to the bristol unseen and dress for a dinner at the english embassy, and the time to do so had been very short. certainly she remembered writing her name; but the words above her name she did not recall; it was more than four years ago.
beaumont saw that she had forgotten.
“i warned you of the importance of what you signed,” he said politely. “if you desire now to read it over——”
“is that what i signed?” she said eagerly; she thought it would not be difficult to get it away from him; he looked very weak and small, and must, she thought, be seventy if he were a day.
beaumont smiled.
“it is a copy.”
[270]her face clouded; she took it with an impatient gesture and read its clauses. the lines were few, but they clearly stated that she was the sole and lawful owner of the diamond and transferred it to the keeping of the jeweler until such time as he should be repaid in full, capital and interest.
“well, madame?” said beaumont, having waited for five long minutes, during which she stood looking out of the window, her foot irritably beating on the carpet.
“what is there to say?” she replied bluntly, her brain was less clear than usual. “i can’t pay you, if that’s what you want.”
beaumont raised his eyebrows.
“i conclude i have the honor of being your grace’s first creditor, or you would have learned by painful experience that it is not well to be impolite to creditors. the situation is changed since you signed that little memorandum. i was content to wait whilst the good duke of otterbourne was living: but he is dead, and i am indisposed to wait, and if you cannot pay me i must see who will.”
“you beast!” muttered mouse between her pearl like teeth.
“i do not think i am a beast,” said beaumont meekly. “at least, not more so than most men. i took you at your word, madame, and it appears that your word was—was not entirely to be depended upon. it appears that the jewel is an heirloom; it goes to your little boy under settlement in trust. so i am informed by those competent to know.”
she stood with her profile turned toward him, and continued to look out of the window at the house opposite.
“if it is my son’s you can’t claim it,” she said sullenly. “you knew well enough at the time it wasn’t mine. you only pretended to believe that it was. you did an illegal thing when you lent me the money; and you know you can’t go into any court about it. my husband was alive then; my signature was not worth a farthing, you know that!”
beaumont gazed at her in admiration for her boldness, in compassion for her temerity and want of worldly wisdom.
[271]“i have done business sometimes, madame, in paris,” he said softly, “with persons of your sex who are not considered, there, pure enough to sit beside you in the tribune at chantilly, or at the institute, or at the chambers. but amongst those horizontales i never knew one quite of your force. je vous en fais mes compliments.”
angry blood flew into the fair cheeks of his debtor; her blue eyes flashed like stormy summer skies; her hand clenched till her rings cut into the skin.
“you dare to insult me because my lord is dead!”
cocky in memory really appeared to her, at this moment, as a very tower of strength.
beaumont made a little gesture of smiling protestation.
“oh, madame, if your lord were living he would not make much difference to me in this matter, or to any action of your creditors. but he would certainly have apprehended the situation more quickly than you do.”
“you are an insolent!”
she would have reached to touch the button of the electric bell, but beaumont interposed.
“do not make a scandal, duchesse; i shall not, if you do not press me too far. i am not your enemy. i never expose women if i can help it. nature made them dishonest; jewels and money are to them what cherries and apples are to schoolboys. that is why they are so much better shut up in harems. however, i came for strict business; let us limit ourselves to it. you say i cannot go into a tribunal. you have relied upon that fact. but it is a rotten staff to lean on; it is not a fact. i both can and will go into any number of tribunals about this matter. they may nonsuit me. i may, perhaps, lose both the diamond and the money; but i have plenty of money and no children, and it will amuse me, madame, to see you cross-examined. it will not amuse you.”
she stared fixedly at the windows of the opposite house, and observed, as people do observe extraneous matters in moments of horrible agitation, that the lace curtains to them were very soiled. her heart heaved under the crape fichû of her bodice, and he saw that it was only by great effort that she controlled herself from some bodily assault upon him.
[272]“what a godsend for the illustrated press such a trial would be!” he continued, in quiet, amused tones. “but it would be disagreeable to you, because those papers disfigure so the pretty people whom they pretend to represent.”
“you would never dare to go to law!” she interrupted in a hoarse, fierce voice. “you would not dare! you would be punished yourself!”
“i should be punished, possibly, by losing the money. they would nonsuit me, but i think they would make you pay my costs. but as i have said, i do not mind losing the money; i have a good deal and no children, and i am old——”
“well, then, why make this hideous fuss?”
beaumont smiled.
“why not make you, madame, a free gift of the money and the interest? allez donc! you ought to be too proud to dream of taking a present from a tradesman. if i were a young man i might—on conditions—but i am old, and a beautiful woman is not much more to me than an ugly one, alas! besides, you have been very rude, duchesse. no one should be so rude as that who does not stand on a solid bank balance.”
she turned her head over her shoulder and flashed a scathing glance upon him.
“how much longer are you going to prose on in this way? i want to go out.”
beaumont shook his head. “you will not learn wisdom? you are wrong, madame. twist a tiger’s tail, laugh at an anarchist, and put nitro-glycerine in your dressing-bag, but never, ah, never be rude to anyone who has you in his power.”
“in your power? i? in yours? you are mad.”
“oh, no; i am entirely sane. saner than you, madame; for you do not seem to understand that you have done a very ugly thing, a vulgar thing even; what is called in english, i believe, a first-class misdemeanor, for you obtained a very large sum by false representation.”
she changed color; she was intelligent and she did see her conduct in the light in which twelve london jurymen would be likely to see it, and also in the shape in which[273] the radical press would be certain to present it to their public.
beaumont relented a little. a man may be too old to fully appreciate beauty, but he is always kinder to a pretty woman than to a plain one. moreover he had no real inclination to figure in the law courts himself, though to punish her he was prepared to take her into them.
“is it possible, madame,” he said with hesitation, “that all the great people you belong to cannot arrange this small matter for you without forcing me to go to extremes? the magnificent english aristocracy.”
“the magnificent english aristocracy,” she repeated with unspeakable scorn, “who are coal-owners, corn-factors, horse-dealers, game-vendors, shop-owners, tradesmen, every man-jack of them, are most of them bankrupt tradesmen, my good beaumont! they are obliged to ally themselves with tradesmen who aren’t bankrupt—like you—to keep their heads above water. the great families with whom i am allied, as you expressed it, couldn’t, i believe, amongst them all raise a thousand guineas in solid coin.”
“but you came to me for twelve thousand,” thought beaumont; aloud he merely said, “but monsieur your brother? surely he——”
a shiver ran over her from head to foot. she would rather, she thought, face the middlesex jury than tell this tale to ronald.
“my brother has all the copy-book virtues,” she answered sharply. “he would sell his shirt to pay you if you told him this story, but if he hasn’t got a shirt?”
“you speak figuratively, i presume?”
“figuratively? i mean what i say. well, of course he’s got shirts to his back; but that is pretty well all he has got. and he is guardian to the boy, to all the children.”
“i understand.”
he saw in what a position hurstmanceaux would be placed between his duty to his wards and his sentiment for his sister if the knowledge of what had been done with the roc’s egg came before him. “but if he be a poor man it would be no use to worry him,” thought beaumont, who was keenly practical, and who, in this matter, merely[274] wanted to get his money back, and to be safely out of what he knew was not a very creditable position for himself, since the family would naturally argue that he should not have taken lady kenilworth’s unsupported word in a matter of so much importance.
“everyone knows the high character of lord hurstmanceaux,” he said, to gain time for his own reflections. mouse repressed a rude exclamation; she was so utterly sick of ronnie’s character. a brother who had known how to do all the things that cocky had used to do, and would have put her up to doing them, would have been so much more useful at the moment. she felt that she had not drunk at the fountain of knowledge during her husband’s lifetime as she ought to have done. for a person who was not hampered by scruples she was most blamably ignorant about the ins and outs and hooks and crooks of left-handed financing.
beaumont waited in polite silence. he was not a hard or harsh man and he was not insensible to the purity of her profile as she stood sideways against the window; he saw that she was genuinely alarmed and genuinely powerless; the folded crape which went crossways over her bosom heaved with her deep drawn hurried breathing.
“have you no friend?” he said at last very softly and with a world of meaning in the tone.
she changed countenance; she could not pretend to misunderstand his meaning.
“friends have more sympathy than relatives,” he added in the same meditative manner. “it is true, madame, that your dilemma is not in itself interesting; it resembles too much actions which receive unlovely names when in a lower class than yours, still a beautiful woman can always persuade the weaker sense to be blind to her errors; at least until those errors have been proclaimed in print, so that all who run may read them.”
he took a natural and not a very malignant vengeance in his words, but to her he seemed a very mephistopheles torturing her with every refined devilry.
and she was insulted and she could not resent! she could not ring for her servants and have this man turned into the street.
[275]the twelve thousand pounds had melted like morning mist. she could scarcely remember what they had gone for; but the bitter insult remained, would remain, she thought, with her for ever.
he rose and stood before her. “well?” he said gently.
“you have a right to your money, i suppose,” she said sullenly between her set teeth. “i have no notion on earth how to get you a farthing, but if you will wait a month and not speak to my brother in the interval, i will—i will see what i can do.”
beaumont bowed.
“i will wait six months and i will speak to no one. but if at the end of six months i do not receive all, i shall speak, with pain, madame, but inevitably not to your brother but to the world.”
“i understand,” she said haughtily. “you will do your worst. well, never enter my presence again, that is all; and leave it now this moment.”
beaumont smiled with admiration and regret combined.
“you are very unwise, madame. if you had not been rude to me i would have accorded you a year. mais on chasse de race.”
she knew that it was unwise to be so insolent, but she could not have made herself polite to him to save her life. he punished her for having tricked him and flouted her. he was a very rich man and she had offended him.
she saw her mistake, but she would not have resisted repeating it if he had come back into the room. women always bring temper into business, and that is why they fail in it so frequently, for those who do not bring temper bring sentiment, and the one is as ruinous as the other.
she had a rapid imagination; she saw before her the crowded court, the witness-box where prevarication was of no use, all her dearest friends with their lorgnons lifted, the bench of the scribbling reporters, the correspondents of the illustrated papers making their sketches furtively and staring at her as she had stared at people in causes célèbres; she saw it all, even the portraits of herself which would appear in those woodcuts of artistic journals which would make helen’s self hideous and athene’s self grotesque.
[276]she saw it all—all the huge headings in the posters and papers, all the staring eyes, all the commiserating censure, all the discreet veiled enjoyment of her acquaintances, all the rancid acrid virulence of the rejoicing radical press.
she imagined that beaumont would not get his money easily because she knew something about the risks run by those who lend on an imperfect title, as to minors or to women; but she had seen in his regard that he would not mind losing any amount of money if he had his revenge on her in putting her into court.
actually, beaumont was by no means a revengeful, nor even a hard man, and a very little diplomacy would have made him favorable to her.
she hated him more intensely than she had ever hated anyone. for in the first place he had done her a favor, and in the second place she had done him a wrong—a mixture which naturally produces the strongest hatred. she knew that, despite his courtesy, she had nothing more to hope from him; that he would have his money back again, or he would make the transaction public.
public sympathy would be entirely with him against herself. even that, however, seemed to her less horrible than the fact that ronald would know what she had done. at the bottom of her heart she was not very brave; she could hector and bully, and command, and she had that share in the physical courage of her race which took her unflinching over a bullfinch in the shires. but she had not the moral courage which would allow that punishment was just and bear it calmly. it was probable that ronald and her brothers-in-law would never let the matter come to a trial, that they would get the money between them together somehow, though they were all as poor as job; but to have the matter brought before these prejudiced persons seemed to her worse than the law court itself. ronald she dreaded, the ormes she detested, and her sisters’ husbands she thought the most odious prigs in the world; to come before a family council of this sort would be more unsupportable than the law court itself, which would at least contain an element of excitement, and in which her personal appearance would be sure to rouse some feeling in her favor. to that personal[277] fascination her brother and her brothers-in-law were at all times insensible.
“some women have men belonging to them who are of some use,” she thought bitterly, “but all the men i have anything to do with are paupers and prigs. what is a family made for if it is not to pull one through awkward places, and follow one with a second horse?”
she hated her family fiercely. it seemed to her that it was all their fault that she had been placed in such a dreadful dilemma. if there was one thing more sure than another, she knew that it was the dead certainty that everybody in her world were as poor as rats, unless they were men of business who did not properly belong to that world at all. it was wonderful how soon you come to the end of a man’s resources! no one knew that better than herself. as for the bigwigs who look so swell and imposing to the classes which know nothing about them, she was but too well aware of the carking cares, the burdened lands, the desperate devices which sustained their magnificent appearances as the rotten timbers of a doomed ship may support a gilded figure-head.
“by the time jack’s thirty years old the whole rotten thing will be gone like a smashed egg,” she thought, with a certain pleasure in reflecting that all the wearisome and impertinent precautions which jack’s guardians took to shelter his interests would be of no avail for him in the long run against the rapidly rising tide of english socialism.
