the château of les mouettes was lent for the coming winter season to the prince and princess woffram of karstein by its owners, who, both naturally generous, and made more generous still by happiness and a sense of gratitude, were unceasing and inexhaustible in the wideness of their goodwill. it was always well to oblige persons who are led away by their feelings, thought the recipient of their bounties. such people do not inquire too minutely or measure too exactly. it is of such as these that is made that succulent oyster which the wise man or woman opens with his or her knife, and sucks the juices thereof.
mouse had fully persuaded herself that she had done an admirable action. she had made two people happy; if their happiness were idiotic, and to her incomprehensible, it was none the less to them what their hearts desired: no one can account for the tastes of others.
she really admired herself and quite succeeded in forgetting whatever there might have been a little questionable or a little disagreeable to explain about her visit to prince khris on his deathbed. the documents had all been quite genuine; if she had embroidered a little on the plain facts of how she had obtained them, that mattered to nobody. neither vanderlin nor olga ever doubted her narrative, and their gratitude toward her found incessant expression. if prince woffram doubted it he never said so. he had accepted its results, and his lips were sealed.
she was standing on the sea-wall of the mouettes on a bright and balmy morning, looking herself as radiant as the morning, with a great bunch of tea-roses at her breast, and a gold-headed cane in her hand, when daddy gwyllian, who was staying at cannes, came to her from the garden side of the sea-terrace.
he was looking brimful of news and of amazement; a white cashmere neckerchief was wound about his throat;[576] he was wearing a fur coat and little bunch of fresias at the buttonhole of it; he was visibly agitated.
“my dear princess!” he said, pressing her hands and quite forgetting that he disliked her. “what you must suffer! how i sympathize! who could ever have thought it! a man of such sense! perhaps if you had not left england it would not have happened!”
“what on earth is the matter, daddy?” asked mouse, astonished and curious. “have you come to bring me bad news?”
“you ask me!” cried daddy in amaze; then dropping his voice to a sepulchral moan, he added, “is it possible—possible—that you have not heard of your brother’s fatal act?”
over her face a cold and angry shadow passed.
“has he killed himself?” she asked. “i don’t think he’d ever do anything half so agreeable to others.”
daddy gwyllian drew a long breath.
“i am really grieved to be the bearer of such tidings,” he said, with the very keenest relish in telling them. “but ronnie—stay—you know that the massarene woman gave all that immense fortune away to the poor?”
“yes,” said mouse impatiently. “i saw all that rubbish in the papers long ago. what has that to do with hurstmanceaux?”
“he has married her!” ejaculated daddy. “now!—now!—when she hasn’t got a penny! oh, lord!”
“what!” she cried in turn, as she rose impetuously and stared at him.
“my dear lady! you may well be incredulous. it does seem impossible that any man in his senses—— but he married her yesterday, down at bournemouth.”
“you foolish old gossip!” she cried, with a concentrated fury, which almost stifled her voice. “can you think of nothing better than to frighten one with such preposterous inventions? my brother would never even look at that creature.”
“i may be an old gossip, princess,” said daddy, with high offence and some dignity, “but i do not consciously say what is not true. will you do me the honor to read this?”
[577]he fumbled beneath his fur coat, his paletôt, and his morning coat, and brought out a telegram, which he handed to her. it was dated from bournemouth, and addressed to daddy himself.
“you often counselled me to marry the daughter of mr. massarene. i am happy to inform you that i have done so this morning. the ceremony was private: alberic orme officiated.”
it was signed—“hurstmanceaux.”
she read the lines in a single glance.
“you advised him? you advised him to disgrace us like this!” she cried with a furious gesture, crushing the dispatch in her hand, whilst her azure eyes poured their lightning upon him.
“i advised him to do so when the young woman was rich. you sent her down to bedlowes yourself on purpose to bring it about. perhaps, if you had not shown your hand so openly, he might have done it when it would have been a desirable thing to do. but i am a foolish old gossip, and i will leave you to digest—er—this extremely unpleasant fact. i have the honor to wish you good morning.”
he took himself off, very huffed, stiff, and alienated; he had repossessed himself of his telegram.
mouse stood still, convulsed with an inward fury, for which there was no possible outward expression. she was stunned.
he had done it on purpose, she was convinced! on purpose to outrage her!
“wherever i meet them first,” she said between her teeth: “if it be at a drawing-room—i will cut them both dead!”
“what is the matter, sourisette?” asked one of her women friends who was staying with her and approached as daddy withdrew.
“you may well ask me. my brother has married the lowest of low women!”
“how very dreadful for you!” said the lady with sympathy. “but are you quite sure? because when i came[578] away from england last week they said he was going to marry miss massarene, the daughter of your good old friend billy.”
mouse shuddered within herself. she could not hear the name of william massarene without a spasm of unbearable remembrance, and she felt that her attitude of hostility was difficult to explain.
“he has married her. that is just the horror of it!” she said between her teeth. “you know what they all were, the lowest of the low. as acquaintances while they had their money, they were all very well: but as a connection—it is too frightful! i will never speak to her—never, never, not if i meet her at osborne or windsor.”
a servant at that moment brought her telegrams from carrie wisbeach, and various other members of her family, all repeating the news and reflecting her own views with regard to it.
such a mésalliance! if the money had been there it would have been a most admirable alliance, a most suitable arrangement, a most excellent choice; but when the money was all gone back to the poor from whom it had been extracted originally, the union was positively monstrous. if he had married a pauper out of the county workhouse, it would have been less insult to them; so they all agreed.
there is a kind of cynical frankness about “good society,” with regard to its love of money, which is, perhaps, the only candid thing about it. it sticks like a swarm of bees where money is, and it vanishes like locusts before the north wind where it is not.
all the family and all the connections of hurstmanceaux viewed his marriage as she viewed it. if he had blown his brains out they would have been less shocked, for they would have been able to say that he had had an accident with a revolver or a repeating-rifle. but it was impossible for them to explain away this act of insanity; and though he would probably live down in the country, as people should do who are ashamed of themselves, still, some time or other they would have to meet him, and they felt uncomfortably certain that the head of their house would compel from them respect and deference toward his wife.
[579]even those few friends who were sincerely attached to him felt, like daddy gwyllian, that they could not venture to apologize for a man who had shown such culpable indifference to his own interests and the world’s opinion.
“what has disturbed you, my heart’s dearest?” said prince woffram as he came on to the terrace on his return from a golfing match; he had met daddy gwyllian a mile from the entrance gate, who had driven past him merely touching his hat.
“what has disturbed you?” he continued. “did that pleasant little old gentleman come to bring you any ill news?”
her answer was to throw the telegrams into his hands; from them he gleaned some idea of what had passed.
“your brother marries? well, what does that matter?”
“what?” she echoed, her eyes shining and flashing with fury. “if he had married a woman off the pavement of the haymarket he could not have disgraced us more utterly! and for alberic orme to countenance such a disgrace! what an infamy!”
the young man raised his eyebrows and played with the tea-roses of the balustrade. the placidity of his temper opposed itself to the violence of hers like a marble breakwater to the fretting fury of a venetian lagoon in december.
“she will have my eldest son with her to poison his mind against me!” she added, tears of genuine rage and grief overflowing her lovely eyes. “have they not even taken away my only daughter from my guardianship?”
the young man was silent; he was not grieved that his friend boo had been removed to england.
“he has married her merely to pass this insult on me!” she said with tears which burnt her eyes like fire.
“that is scarcely probable, my beloved,” said prince woffram gently; “the lady is not noble, it is true; but then you have great license in these matters in great britain. your heralds’ office is practically a box of puppets.”
“i cannot see,” he repeated, “why you should be thus[580] affected. the lady was much admired in london; she had great musical talent. i remember my cousins——”
“great musical talent!” echoed mouse bitterly. “whilst she had her money, of course, they gave her every talent under heaven!”
she heard in memory the harsh, rude voice of massarene saying of her own songs:
“she says yours is bad amatoor music, my lady!”
oh, how she hated the creature! and to think she was now mistress of faldon!
katherine massarene mistress of faldon! it seemed to her an outrage too intolerable to be borne!
she had never cared to go to faldon since the time of her marriage to cocky; she had always railed against it as the dullest, wildest, and most out-of-the-way place upon earth. she would have perished of ennui if she had been forced to pass a week there between its ancient woods and its solitary seas; but for all that it was the cradle of her race, the home of her childhood, the house of her mother. to think of “billy’s daughter” as reigning there was an utterly unendurable insult! and the bust by dalou and the portrait by orchardson were no doubt gone there already, and were impudently taking their place in the gallery where the women of her race were portrayed and where her own portrait as a child, painted by millais, hung in the light of the setting sun!
“i cannot see what it matters,” repeated prince woffram, turning a telescope placed on the balustrade above the tea-roses on to a distant passing yacht.
he had become a very philosophic young man since his marriage.
the quiet common sense of the words fell like mild rain on the raging fires of her fierce indignation. perhaps he was right and it did not matter. perhaps he was more right than he knew and it was even advantageous.
if katherine massarene had not talked before of what she had found in her father’s papers she certainly would not talk now. shameful as ronnie’s conduct was, he would not allow his wife to expose his sister. it was a frightful mésalliance, but it had its serviceable side. a padlock was on the lips of “billy’s daughter.”
[581]“i will never speak to her if i meet her at osborne or windsor,” she repeated suddenly.
prince woffram looked round from the telescope and the tea-roses.
“my angel,” he said very gently, “that would be to argue yourself unused to royal circles, and it would bring down on you many—many—oh! many questions.”
“you would have me make advances to this beggared wretch—this scum of the earth!”
“no, no,” said prince woffram soothingly. “i would not suggest to you to make advances. to make advances is to put oneself in the wrong. i would suggest to you to await events; and, in the not very probable coincidence which you imagine, i would beg you to remember that a great sovereign’s invitation confers a credential which none can dispute.”
since he had trampled on his conscience, as he had put away his sword, wuffie had substituted for them much practical common sense, and in very bland sentences said things which smote edgeways. his wife at times wondered how much he guessed, how far he was blinded, and now and then felt a spasm of fear that this cherub-faced boy, with his artless, meaningless smile, might, in some things, prove her master.
it is dangerous to teach a man, and a very young man, to sell his soul. nature will substitute something else for it, something which you will not like when you learn to know it well.
she felt that he had fully determined on two things: one, that he would be well paid; the other, that he would not be compromised. so when she went into the house she tore up the various infuriated telegrams she had written in answer to her correspondents, and wrote instead some prettily-worded intimations that, as she had counseled her brother to make this marriage when the lady was rich, she could not blame him for making it now the same lady was poor, and could only hope that the result would be as fortunate as she sincerely desired for them both, though circumstances had arisen which unhappily estranged her from hurstmanceaux. this way of looking at the matter was at once so angelic, and so nice and[582] temperate, that it suggested an idea, which gradually filtered down through her intimate correspondents and permeated society, the impression, vague but general, that william massarene’s daughter had jockeyed her out of some portion of william massarene’s fortune. no one could explain how, but everyone thought so. daddy gwyllian did indeed stoutly declare that the impression was preposterous and untenable, and that if hurstmanceaux had broken all relations with his sister he had doubtless very sound reasons for doing so. but daddy was waxing old and society was getting tired of him. when people live too long they outstay the welcome of the world.
with may harrenden house was again open. the falconer of clodion leaned and laughed in silent mirth as the throngs of society passed up the staircase under his gaze. the massarenes were like malbrouck, morts et enterrés, and an australian wool-stapler reigned in their stead, worshipped where they had worshipped, and was guarded by their lares and pénates. across the threshold, where william massarene had been carried lifeless, the great world he had loved flocked, as the water-fowl on the ponds of the green park flock with equal avidity to be fed, no matter what hand it may be which scatters the bread.
up that well-known staircase, under the eyes of the nude falconer, there came a beautiful and very fair woman, who had often been up those stairs before; a fair and slim and ever blandly-smiling youth was by her side, who had been told, as children are told in the nursery, to shut his eyes and open his mouth, and who had done so. he had been rewarded, for a great many good things had dropped into his mouth. england had become for him what it is for so many other german princelings, the canaan overflowing with milk and honey where he could enjoy himself at other people’s expense, and lead the first flight on other people’s horses. she looked about her as she passed on through the reception-rooms: nothing was changed,[583] nothing of any importance, and she herself not very much. there were still the same florid pietro di cortona high overhead in the effulgence of the electric lamps, still the same too dark and dubious mantegna hanging above a pyramid of calla lilies and damask roses. there were only no longer in the alcove where they had been enshrined the bust by dalou and the portrait by orchardson: they were at faldon! insupportable as this idea was to her, the outrage had its silver side; it meant silence, entire, absolute, on the part of her brother’s wife.
“billy—you brute!—i have been stronger than you!” she thought as she passed the place where the gold vase of leo the tenth still filled the humble office of a samovàr. life had once more become easy and agreeable to her. death had been discriminating and fortune on the whole not unkind.
“the poor massarenes were such dear good friends of mine, but you have so much more taste than they had,” she said to the australian wool-stapler.
and he, a big burly heavy man, who owned many millions of sheep on many thousands of pastures, and had as much taste as one of his wooly wethers, was flattered, and thrust out his big paunch, and thought to himself, under the sorcery of her smile, why should he not succeed wherever william massarene had succeeded?
why not indeed?
