“if you get into a bad set, i tell you frankly i shall never help you out of it. a bad set is a bog; a hopeless bog; you flounder on in it till you sink. can’t you understand? if you are going to be taken up by this kind of people, don’t ask me to do any more for you. that’s all. i don’t want to be unkind, but it must be one thing or another. i cannot come here if i am likely to meet persons whom i won’t know. anybody would say the same.”
she spoke with severity, as to a chidden child, as she lighted a cigarette and put it between her roseleaf lips. she was in the boudoir of harrenden house, and margaret massarene listened in humble and dejected silence to the rebuke. the bone of contention was represented by two visiting cards, on which were printed respectively lady mary altringham and lady linlithgow: the bearers of those names had just been turned away from the gate below by order of the fair consor, and the mistress of harrenden house, being a primitive person, to whom a want of hospitality appeared a crime, was swallowing her tears under difficulty.
“but surely these ladies are high and all that, ma’am?” she pleaded piteously in her ignorance.
“they were born if you mean that,” replied mouse with great impatience. “lady mary was a fitz-frederick and the linlithgow was a knotts-buller. but they are nowhere. they have put themselves out of court. no one worth thinking of knows them. they can do you no good, and they can do you a great deal of harm.”
mrs. massarene puckered up in her fingers the fine cambric of her handkerchief.
“but i know lady mary, ma’am!”
“drop her, then.”
“what have she done, ma’am?”
“oh, lots of things; gone wrong stupidly, turned the[89] county against her; her boy’s tutor, and a young artist who went down to paint the ballroom, and all that kind of silly public sort of thing; people don’t speak to her even in the hunting-field. she can’t show herself at court. the girls were presented by their grandmother. she is completely tarée—completely!”
the portrait was somewhat heavily loaded with colors, but she knew that her hearer would not be impressed by semi-tones or monochrome, and she really could not have lady mary coming and going at harrenden house.
“as for the other woman,” she added, “there is nothing actually against her, but she is bad form. they are as poor as job and riddled with debts; they have even been glad to let their eldest daughter marry the banker of their own county borough!”
to her humble companion, to whom not so very long before a banker’s clerk had seemed a functionary to be addressed as sir, and viewed with deep respect, this social error did not carry a deep dye of iniquity. but she abandoned lady linlithgow; for the other culprit she ventured to plead.
“lady mary was so very kind to my child,” she murmured timidly. “when kathleen was at school, before we came over, lady mary’s own daughters——”
“what has that to do with it? i tell you her daughters go out with their grandmother. you know nothing of all these things. you must do as you are told. you remember your blunder about my aunt courcy?”
this reminiscence was a whip of nettles which always lay ready to her monitress’s hand, and the monitress used it with great effect. but such a blunder still seemed natural to her; mrs. cecil courcy was a commoner, and these ladies who had just been turned from her gates were titled people. why was the one at the apex of fashion, and the others “nowhere,” as her monitress expressed it.
she hinted timidly at this singular discrepancy, so unintelligible to the socially untutored mind.
“how is it possible to make you understand?” said mouse, lighting a second cigarette before the first was half consumed, after the wasteful manner of female smokers. “rank by itself is nothing at all; at least,[90] well, yes, of course, it is something; but when people have got on the wrong side of the post, they are of no use socially to anybody. it isn’t what you do; it is how you do it. you know there is an old adage: ‘some mustn’t look in at a church door, and others may steal all the church plate.’ it is always so in this world. lady mary’s muffed her life, as the boys say. i dare say there are worse women; but there isn’t one so stupid in all the three kingdoms. who goes driving all alone with a tutor? who makes a pet of a little two-sous belgian fresco painter? who gets herself talked about with the attorney of her own town? nobody who has a grain of sense. these are things which put a woman out of society at once and for ever. i must beg you to try and understand one most essential fact. there are people extremely well-born who are shady, and there are others come from heaven knows where who are chic. it is due to tact more than anything else. tact is, after all, the master of the ceremonies of life. it isn’t burke or debrett who can tell you who to know, and who to avoid. there is no court circular published which can show you where the ice won’t bear you, and where it will, whom you may only know out of england and whom you may safely know in it. there are no hard and fast rules about the thing. if you haven’t been born to that kind of knowledge you must grope about till you pick it up. i am very much afraid you will never pick it up. you will never know a princess without her gilt coach-and-six; you will never recognize an empress in a waterproof and goloshes; and you will never grasp the fact that supreme, inexorable, and omnipotent fashion may be a little pale shabby creature like my aunt courcy, who pinches and screws about a groschen, but who can make or mar people in society just as she pleases.”
margaret massarene winced. she had seen mrs. cecil courcy that very day in the park driving with the queen of denmark, who was on a visit to marlborough house. all these niceties of shade confused her utterly. “society’s just like aspinall’s enamels,” she thought in her bewilderment; and if you wanted a plain yellow, you were confused by a score of gradations varying from[91] palest lemon to deepest orange: there were no plain yellows any more.
“but i’ve always been told that if one’s pile’s big, real big, one can always go anywhere?” she ventured to say, unconscious of the cynical character of her remark.
“you can go to court here, if that’s your ideal. you do go,” replied her teacher with a slighting accent of contempt which sounded like high treason to the mind of the ulster loyalist; “but it don’t follow you can get in elsewhere. it just depends on lots of chances. some people never get into the world at all; merely because they don’t spend their money cleverly at the onset.”
“perhaps they spare at the spigot and pour out at the bung-hole, my lady,” said mrs. massarene in homely metaphor. “there’s a-many has that fault, i have it myself. it’s all i can do still to hold myself from saving the candle-ends.”
“good heavens! do you really mean it?”
“i do, indeed, ma’am,” said the mistress of harrenden house. “when i see them beautiful wax-lights, just burned an inch or two, and going to be taken away by them wasteful servants——”
her companion laughed, infinitely diverted.
“but it’s all electric light here!”
“not in the bedrooms. i wouldn’t have the uncanny thing in the bedrooms. you see, my lady,” she added timidly in confidential whispers, “william should have led me up to all this grandeur gradual. but he didn’t. he always said, ‘we’ll scrape on this side and dash on the other.’ so till we come over to be gentlefolks, i had to cook and sweep, and pinch and spare, and toil and moil, and i can’t get out of the habit. on the child he always spent; but on naught else not a cent till we came to europe.”
“ah, by the way, this daughter,” said mouse, suddenly roused to the perception that there was an unknown factor in the lives of these humble people. “where is she? i have never seen her. she is out, i think?”
over the pallid, puffy, sorrowful face of the poor harassed aspirant to smart society there came a momentary brightness.
[92]“yes, ma’am; she’s what you call ‘out’; i presented her myself,” said mrs. massarene with pride.
“but where is she now?”
“kathleen—katherine—is in india, my lady.”
“good gracious! why?”
“well, she’s great friends with the marquis of framlingham’s daughters,” said mrs. massarene, feeling sure this time she was safe.
“what! sherry and bitters?” cried lady kenilworth. sherry and bitters was the nickname which his caustic but ever courteous wit had earned for lord framlingham in that london world which he had left for an indian presidency. she was vexed with herself for not having thought sooner of asking for this daughter and taking her under her own wing.
mrs. massarene was bewildered by the exclamation; but she was sure of her ground this time, and was not alarmed. “lord and lady framlingham, ma’am,” she repeated with zest. “it’s cruel hard on me to lose her for so long, but as they’re such grand folks one couldn’t in reason object.”
“grand folks?” repeated her visitor with amusement. “poor dear souls! how amused they be. they’d have been sold up if they hadn’t gone out; she hated going, said she’d rather live on a crust in england, but he jumped at the appointment; he’d a whole yelling pack of jews on him; it’s quieted them of course; and he’s let saxe-durham for the term. you’d better tell your husband not to lend him any money, for he never pays, he can’t pay; he’s sure to get your daughter to ask.”
“lord’s sakes, my lady!” murmured margaret massarene: life became altogether inexplicable to her; if a gentleman who was a marquis, and governor of a province twice as big as france, they said, were not everything he ought to be, where could excellence and solvency be looked for? o vertu où vas-tu te nicher? she would have said had she ever heard of the line.
“but they are very—very—good people, are they not, ma’am?” she asked pathetically.
“oh, dear, yes; she is much too ugly to be anything else, and he’s a very good fellow though he does make[93] himself hated with his sharp tongue. he’s like that monarch, you know, who never did a wise thing and never said a silly one. he’s awfully clever, but he can’t keep his head above water. but why on earth did you let your daughter go for so long? they’ll get marrying her to one of their boys; they’ve no end of them.”
she was not pleased that the young woman was staying with lord framlingham; he was a very clever and sarcastic person who might supply his guest with inconvenient and premature knowledge of english society in general and of cocky and herself in particular.
mrs. massarene smoothed down her beautiful gown with a nervous worried gesture.
“oh, ma’am, katherine’s very discreet, and by her letters all she seems to be thinking about is the white temples and the black men.”
“there are no black men in india, and you’d have done much better to keep her at home,” said her visitor sharply. “what is she like?”
she intended this young woman for her brother ronald, whatever she might be like.
maternal pride made mrs. massarene’s inexpressive and commonplace face for once eloquent and not ordinary: its troubled and dreary expression of chronic bewilderment lighted and changed; her wide mouth smiled, her colorless eyes grew almost bright.
“if you’ll honor me, ma’am, by stepping this way,” she said with alacrity as she rose.
“horses step—people don’t,” said lady kenilworth, unkindly, as she accompanied the person whose instructress and tormentor she was, into a smaller room in which, set as it were upon an altar, a white marble bust stood on a plinth of jasper with a fence of hothouse flowers around it; hanging on the wall behind it was a portrait. lady kenilworth looked critically at both bust and portrait. she was surprised to find them what they were.
“a classic face, and clever,” she said to the anxious mother. “are they at all like? the bust’s dalou’s, isn’t it? and the portrait——”
“they are both the image of her, ma’am,” said mrs.[94] massarene, with great triumph in the effect which they produced. “but the marble pleases me best.”
lady kenilworth was still looking at them critically through her double eye-glass. she was thinking that the original of that straight and somewhat severe profile was perhaps as well in india until prince khris and she had tired of the massarene vein. on the other hand, unless the girl came home, she could not be married to hurstmanceaux.
“your daughter isn’t facile, is she?” she asked abruptly.
“what, ma’am?” asked the mother, gazing with tears in her eyes, delicious tears, at the bust which would have passed as an athene or a clio.
“well, not easy to deal with—not easy to make believe things; likes her own way, don’t she?”
“well, ma’am,” said mrs. massarene doubtfully, “sweet-tempered she is, and forgetful of self to a fault, and i wouldn’t lay blame to her as obstinate. but if you mean as how she can be firm, well, she can; and if you mean as how she can have opinions, well, she have.”
lady kenilworth laughed, but she was vexed.
“that’s what i do mean. nobody has that straight profile for nothing; where did she get it?”
“lord, ma’am, however should i know,” said the mother meekly. “she don’t take after either of us, that’s a fact. the children pick up their own looks in heaven, i think, for often nobody can account for ’em on earth. look at your own little dears; what black eyes they all have, and you and my lord so fair. i met them in the park this morning, my lady. would you let them come and see me some day?”
lady kenilworth, to her own extreme amazement and annoyance, felt herself color as the straightforward gaze of this common woman looked in sincerity and in ignorance at her.
“the children shall certainly come to see you if you wish,” she said. “but they are naughty little people. they will bother you horribly. and pray, my dear woman, don’t say ‘my lady,’ you set all my nerves on edge.”
[95]mrs. massarene humbly excused herself. “it comes natural,” she said with a sigh; “i was dairymaid at the hall. william can’t bear me to say i was, but i don’t see as it matters.”
“william is right,” said lady kenilworth with a glance at the bust, “and i am sure your daughter will say so too.”
mrs. massarene shook her head. “kathleen is quite the other way, ma’am. she says we can’t be quality, and why should we pretend to; she angers her father terrible; to tell you the truth, she angers him so terrible that it was for that reason i gave in about this long visit to india.”
“she is not of her time then,” said lady kenilworth. “i am afraid she gets those ideas from framlingham. he is a downright radical.”
“i don’t know where she gets them,” said mrs. massarene drearily. “william always said the only comfort about a girl was that a girl couldn’t spite you in politics as a boy might; but if her ideas aren’t politics, and the worst sort of politics, i don’t know what is, and when you’ve kept a daughter ten years and more at school where nobody else goes as isn’t titled, it’s a cross as one doesn’t look for to have her turned out a republican.”
lady kenilworth laughed with genuine mirth, which showed all her pretty teeth, white, and even and pointed like a puppy’s.
“is she a republican? well, that is a popular creed enough now. i am not sure it wouldn’t get you on better than being on our side. the radicals do such a lot for their people, and do it seriously without a grimace. we always”—“put our tongue in our cheek while we do it,” she was about to add, when a sense of the imprudence of her confession arrested her utterance of it. “i do wonder, you know, that you belong to us,” she hastened to add with that air of candor which so often stood her in good stead; “you would have found hawarden easier of access than hatfield.”
margaret massarene stared.
“but william’s principles, ma’am,” she murmured, “church and state and property; william says them three stand or fall together.”
“and he will hold them all up on his shoulders like a[96] caryatide,” said lady kenilworth, with her most winning smile.
mrs. massarene smiled too, blankly, because she did not understand, but gratefully, because she felt that a compliment was intended.
“i can’t think, though, that it is wise of him to allow this visit. i think it is exceedingly ill-advised to let her be away from you so long,” said her visitor, still gazing through her eye-glass at dalou’s bust, and reflecting as she gazed: “the young woman must be odious, but she is good-looking and ronnie shall marry her. you don’t know my brother?” she said, apparently abruptly, but in her own mind following out her thoughts.
“meaning lord hurstmanceaux? no, ma’am, we haven’t that honor.”
“we call it hur’sceaux, please.”
“oh, indeed! as you say o’borne for otterbourne, and kers’ham for kersterholme. might i ask why those names are cut about so, ma’am?”
“usage! why do we say gore for gower, and sellenger for st. leger?”
“rebecca gower was postmistress at kilrathy when i was a girl,” said mrs. massarene reflectively. “but lord! if anybody had clipped her down to gore their letters would have all gone in the swill-tub!”
“you see, we have not the privilege of acquaintance with the postmistress of kilrathy! well, i must try and bring my brother to see you. but he is like your daughter; he is not facile. like all those reactionary sort of people, he thinks nobody good enough to know. i never can induce him to make a new acquaintance. but perhaps if he sees this dalou——” with a pretty smile she left the unfinished sentence to sink into the mind of katherine massarene’s mother. that simple and candid personage answered the unspoken thought.
“we’ve had a-many asking for kathleen’s hand, ma’am,” she said very stupidly. “but neither she or william are easy to please in that way. he looks so high as naught but kings would satisfy him, and she—well, i don’t know what she wants, i’m sure, and i don’t think she knows herself.”
[97]“perhaps she’s in love with framlingham!” cried her companion with a disagreeable little laugh, for she was provoked at her unplayed cards being discerned by a person of such limited intelligence.
“a married man, ma’am!” cried mrs. massarene, with a countenance so pallid from horror that lady kenilworth laughed as heartily as if she were hearing yvette guilbert sing.
“oh, my good woman, how much you have got to learn!” she cried gaily.
mrs. massarene patted her gown a little irritably, but she dared not resent; though it seemed to her that, after all her william had done for this lovely young lady, it was hard to be called by her a good woman.
“i’ll never learn to break the holy commandments, ma’am,” she said in a tone of offence.
“oh, you dear droll creature!” cried her visitor, more and more amused.
“but let us go over your lists,” she said sharply, realizing that she was wasting valuable time on this goose. “they will want no end of weeding. i will not meet anybody who is not in my own set. you’ll get the right people if you don’t mix them with the wrong.”
with her little gold pencil as a stiletto she set to work mercilessly on her work of expurgation and execution.
mrs. massarene looked on helpless but agitated; a sense of wrath was stirring in her mild bosom, but she dared not show it.
“to be called a good woman!” she thought. “just as i’d speak to the match-seller at the corner of a street!”
the lists thus weeded with such pitiless surgery produced very brilliant gatherings at harrenden house, and the falconer of clodion saw nearly all that was fairest and noblest pass up the grand staircase which he guarded.
margaret massarene, standing till she was ready to drop at the entrance of her reception-rooms, felt her head swim under her tiara as she heard the great names announced by winters.
the massarene pile had been touched by the magic wand which could transform it into fashion. to go to harrenden house became the amusement of the great and[98] the ambition of all lesser folks. not to go to harrenden house became soon a confession that you were nobody yourself. “tenez la dragée haute!” said their guide, philosopher, and friend; and she made them very exclusive indeed, and would let no one snub them or laugh at them except herself.
“on my soul, she do give worth for her money!” thought william massarene; and he was pleased to feel that he had not been fooled even when he had bought a barren scotch estate and compromised his credit in the city by putting a consumptive little sot on the board of a bank.
“why don’t you bespeak the massarene young woman for me, mouse?” said brancepeth in the boudoir of stanhope street, when he heard of the bust of dalou and the portrait of orchardson.
“how exactly like a man!” said his friend, blue fire flashing from her eyes. “a little while ago you were mad about the countess lynar!”
“it’s uncommon like a man to get a pot of money when he can!” said brancepeth with amusement. “if you did your duty by me, you’d bespeak me those loaves and fishes; you do what you like with the bloomin’ cad.”
“i would sooner see you dead than married!”
“i be bound you would,” muttered the young man. “lord, that’s the sort of thing women call love!”
“men’s love is so disinterested, we know!” said mouse with withering contempt.
“you want the young woman for ronnie,” continued brancepeth. “that’s your little game. but he won’t take your tip.”
“why not?”
“’cos he’s the cussedest crank in all judee! let ronnie please himself and get me the massarene dollars. i’ll give you half i get; and i sha’n’t know whether she’s a snub nose or a straight one.”
mouse colored with anger. there are things when however necessary it may be to do them, cannot be spoken of without offence.
“how odiously coarse you grow,” she observed with severity.
“oh, bother! you call a spade a spade fast enough[99] sometimes. how you do make me think of my old granny luce!”
“in what do i resemble your old granny luce?”
brancepeth was mute. to repeat what his maternal grandmother had said would not pour oil on troubled waters. what the very free-spoken and sharp-tongued old lady luce had said was this, when brancepeth was still in the sixth form at eton:
“you’re such a pretty boy, harry, the women-folks will be after you like wasps after treacle; take my advice, whatever you do steer clear of the married ones. a married woman always has such a lot of trumps up her sleeve. she sticks like a burr: you can pay off a wench, but you can’t pay off her; and if her fancy-man tries to get away she calls in her husband and there’s the devil and all to pay. don’t you forget that, harry.”
but he had forgotten it.
“i think i’ll go up and see the little beggars,” he said, to make a diversion; and he slipped away before she could stop him and went up, four stairs at a time, to the nurseries. there he was extremely popular and much beloved, especially by jack; and there he was perfectly happy, being a young man of simple tastes, limited intelligence, and affectionate disposition.
he was in the midst of an uproarious game of romps there one day, when cocky looked in from the doorway with an odd little smile.
“what a good paterfamilias you’ll be, harry, when your time comes!” he said, with a look which made poor harry color to the roots of his hair.
the head nurse intervened by calling to order noisy, laughing little jack.
“don’t you see your dear papa at the door, lord kersholm?” said that discreet woman.
this day there was no cocky in the doorway; but the blindman’s buff was early in its merry course interrupted by a message from lady kenilworth requesting his presence downstairs.
“oh, lord, what a pity!” said brancepeth, as he pulled the handkerchief off his eyes, swung jack up above his head, and then kissed him a dozen times.
[100]“i wasn’t doing any harm,” he said sulkily, as he reëntered the presence of jack’s mother.
“yes, you were,” she said coldly. “i cannot allow you to be upstairs with the children so long and so constantly. their women must think it very odd; they will talk. no other of my husband’s friends enters the nurseries. you must have something to do at the barracks, or the clubs, or the stables, or somewhere. go and do it.”
brancepeth hung his head. he understood what his punishment would be if he dreamed of marrying the massarene heiress or any other person whatsoever. not to see the children any more except as any other of “cocky’s friends” saw them! he was tender-hearted and weak in will; she cowed him and ruled him with a rod of iron. “lord, how right my grandmother luce was!” thought the poor fellow as he went down stanhope street meekly, feeling in remembrance the touch of jack’s soft, fresh, rosy lips.
