on the morrow, at the appointed hour, the real otterbourne jewels were consigned to the representatives of the otterbourne bankers, and hurstmanceaux, like all kind-hearted persons, now that he had got his own way, felt sorry he had been obliged to enforce it, especially as he heard that his sister was unwell, and could see no one. “poor little sourisette,” he thought remorsefully. “perhaps i am too hard on her. she had a beast of a husband. she is more to be pitied than blamed.”
always ready to forgive, he called in stanhope street more than once, but she refused to see him. the children told him she was unwell and invisible.
boo came flying down the staircase between the palms and pointsettias in all the glee which to be the bearer of an unpleasant message naturally afforded her.
“mammy says she won’t see you ever any more, uncle ronald,” said this miniature woman, with much contemptuous dignity. “she would like, if you please, that you shouldn’t speak to her even in the street.”
boo felt very important, standing in the middle of the hall, in her crape frock, with her black silk legs, and her golden cascade of hair on her shoulders, as she delivered herself of this message, and pursed up her lips like two red geranium buds.
“tell your mother that her desires shall be obeyed,” said hurstmanceaux, and he turned and went out, followed by the saucy echoes of boo’s triumphant laugh.
she never liked her uncle ronald; she was very pleased to see such a big, tall, grown-up man go away in discomfiture.
“you should have said it kinder, boo,” murmured jack, from above on the staircase.
“why?” said boo, with her chin in the air. “he don’t ever give us anything, at least, hardly ever.”
“oh, yes, he does,” said jack, with remonstrance.[323] “and she’s cruel nasty. she’s took away the punch, and sent away harry.” he did not much like his uncle ronald, but he was sorry for him now that he, too, was dismissed.
hurstmanceaux was sad at heart as he walked down great stanhope street into the park; he was full of compunction for having, as he imagined, wronged his sister about the jewels, and he was deeply wounded by the unforgiving ingratitude of her feeling toward himself. he had made many sacrifices to her in the past, and although a generous temper does not count its gifts, he could not but feel that he received poor reward for a devotion to her interests which had impoverished him to a degree he could ill support. the day was bright and breezy, the flowers blazed with color, the season was at its height, everyone and everything around him was gay, but he himself felt that cheerless depression of spirit which is born in us of the ingratitude of those we cherish.
katherine massarene passed him, driving herself a pair of roan ponies. she thought how weary and grave he looked, so unlike the man who had laughed and talked with her as they had gone together over the snowy pastures and the frozen ditches of the hunting country more than two years before.
“it’s really flying in the face of providence, ronnie, not to marry the massarene heiress,” said daddy gwyllian, that evening, in the stalls at covent garden, letting fall his lorgnon, after a prolonged examination of the massarene box.
“i never knew that providence kept a bureau de marriage,” replied hurstmanceaux, “and i do not see what right you have to speak of that lady as if she were a filly without a bidder at tattersall’s.”
“without a bidder! lord, no! she refuses ’em, they say, fifty a week. but you know, ronnie, you do fetch women uncommonly; look what scores of ’em have been in love with you.”
“if they have, i am sure it has benefited them very little, and myself not at all,” replied hurstmanceaux, very ungraciously.
“she keeps a circular printed—a stamped form of refusal,”[324] said daddy gwyllian with glee. “sends ’em out in batches. have a mind to propose to her myself, just for the fun of getting a circular.”
“your wit is as admirable as your invention is original,” said hurstmanceaux, with much impatience, glancing, despite himself, at the box on the grand tier, where the classic profile and white shoulders of katherine massarene were visible beside the large, gorgeous, and much-jeweled person of her mother.
margaret massarene disliked the opera-house. what she called the “noise” always reminded her of the braying of bands and the rattling of shots on a day of political excitement in kerosene city. but she was not displeased to sit in that blaze of light with her di’monds on her ample bosom, and feel that she was as great a lady as any other there; and she was proud and pleased to see the number of high and mighty gentlemen who came to make their bow in her box, and with whom katherine “talked music” in the most recondite and artistic fashion.
“that’s the duchess’s brother down there,” she whispered, as she turned her lorgnon on hurstmanceaux.
“it is,” replied katherine.
“why don’t he come up here like the rest?” she asked. “he’s the best looking of them all.”
“he has never left his card on you,” answered her daughter. “it would be very bad manners indeed if he came here.”
“and why hain’t he left his card? i’m sure we’ve done enough for his sister.”
“he probably does not feel that any gratitude is obligatory on him. he probably does not approve of her accepting favors from strangers.”
“then he’s born a century out of his time,” said mrs. massarene, with the acuteness which occasionally flashed up in her. “in these days, my dear, everybody takes all they can lay their hands on——”
“hush!” said katherine, as jean de reszké came on to the stage.
margaret massarene would have preferred a companion who would have worn big pearls, and had some color in her gown, and who would have talked all through “the[325] music,” and would have made a sign with a flower or a fan to that handsome man down there to come up with daddy gwyllian and chat with them.
“why didn’t my lord come up with ye?” she asked, as daddy did appear.
“his lordship’s music mad, ma’am,” replied daddy, who delighted in adopting her style; “never misses a season at bayreuth, or a première of saint-saëns’s.”
“he’s never left a card, and ’tis rude,” said mrs. massarene. “we know all his sisters and brothers-in-law.”
“it is rude, madam,” assented daddy, “but men don’t go often where they’re liable to meet their own families.”
“that’s a heathen sentiment,” said mrs. massarene severely.
“only human nature,” said daddy cheerfully. “human nature is much the same, dear lady, whether heathen, chinee, or christian.”
“ye don’t know much about the chinese, sir,” said mrs. massarene. “they’re that wrapped up in their families that they’re always agoin’ to their graves; not like the folks here, who poke a dead person into the earth and give orders to a florist, and then thinks of ’em never no more. the chinese pray to their dead; ’tis very touching, though it may be an offence to deity.”
“i imagine, ma’am, their sensibilities are not blunted by death-duties,” said daddy rather crossly; he disliked being corrected, and he disliked being taken au pied de la lettre: it is highly inconvenient to anyone who has the reputation of a humorist.
