CHAPTER IIILORD CHERITON LOOKS IN
THREE days later there was delivered in Hill Street a letter bearing the west-country postmark. It was written in narrow, upright characters, which seemed to bear a shade of defiance in them. The envelope was inscribed with some formality to the Right Honorable the Countess of Crewkerne, yet its shape was unfashionable, the paper was of inferior quality, and was innocent of any sort of adornment.
When this document was borne upon the silver dish by Mr. Marchbanks to the chamber of his aged mistress, and delivered to her in the sanctity of her four-poster, there was a slight flicker of the eyelids of that elderly diplomatist. It was as though with theflairthat always distinguished him, he had come to divine that a great event was in the air.
The conduct of his mistress added weight to this theory. No sooner did she observe this commonplace missive to be nestling among those more ornate communications emanating, as Mr. Marchbanks knew perfectly well, from dukes and marquises and earls, and the ladies of dukes and marquises and earls, than she swooped down upon it for all the world as some old eagle might have done with outstretched talon. She read as follows:—
The Revd Aloysius Perry has the honor to present his compliments to the Countess of Crewkerne, and begs to say in response to her request that he is forwarding to-morrow (Tuesday) per passenger train, his second daughter Araminta, who in his humble judgment is the most attractive of those with which it has pleased Providence to endow him.
The Revd Aloysius Perry has the honor to present his compliments to the Countess of Crewkerne, and begs to say in response to her request that he is forwarding to-morrow (Tuesday) per passenger train, his second daughter Araminta, who in his humble judgment is the most attractive of those with which it has pleased Providence to endow him.
The old lady, propped up in her four-poster, honored this communication with two readings and with a knitted brow. She was a very sharp-witted old woman, as we are constantly having to remark, and she could not quite make up her mind whether the unconventional flavor that clung to the letter of the man that had been married by her sister Polly was the fruit of conscious irony or ofbona-fiderusticity.
“Humph,” said she, her invariable exclamation when in doubt about anything. “An underbred person, I am afraid.”
She flung the cause of her uncertainty across the counterpane to her gentlewoman with a contemptuous gesture.
“It is an experiment,” said she. “I dare say it is not wise for a woman of my age to add to her responsibilities. We shall see. At any rate, Burden, you are getting tiresome, and Ponto is getting fat.”
“I feel sure she will be a sweet girl,” Miss Burden ventured to say.
“Why do you think so?”
“Girlhood is so delightful,” said Miss Burden. “All young things are so adorable.”
“Burden,” said the old lady, ruthlessly, “you are a fool.”
Miss Burden blushed faintly, as she always did when her birthright was applied to her scornfully. Yet it was a trial she had had daily to endure for many years past. She had been called a fool so often that she had come to believe that she was one. And that is the kind of belief that renders the human lot very hard. The faint tinge of shame that dyed the cheek of the poor, sensitive, downtrodden dependent was the sign manual of something that lay too deep for tears.
“It is a dangerous experiment,” said the old lady. “At my age I ought to know better than to try experiments. I hope the creature will be decently bred.”
“Surely, dear Lady Crewkerne,” said Miss Burden, “a girl of poor dear Lady Augusta’s can hardly fail to be that.”
“The father is quite a common man; a person of no particular family. And, unfortunately, girls take after their fathers.”
“I feel sure the husband of dear Lady Augusta is a gentleman.”
“Burden,” said the old lady, ruthlessly, “you are a born fool. Ring the bell. It is time I had my massage.”
During the course of the morning Caroline Crewkerne’soldest friend looked in to pass the time of day with her. He stayed to luncheon.
Cheriton was one of those men whose mission in life it is to appear on all occasions and in every season as one apart from the vulgar herd. There can be no doubt that he succeeded in this laudable ambition. His corsets were not to everybody’s taste, and there were also those who did not care greatly for the color of his wig and the way in which he wore it. Its hue was as the raven’s, abundant in texture and arranged low on the forehead in the form of a fringe. But Caroline Crewkerne’s judgment of her old gossip was the correct one. Whatever Cheriton was or whatever he was not, emphatically he was not a fool. Had he been in any sort oppressed by that not unamiable form of human weakness the redoubtable Caroline would have been very quick to expose it. In a matter of that kind no one could have had a keener or more uncompromising instinct. They knew each other so well, they had crossed swords so often, each derived so much zest from the display of the other’s dexterity, that while interpreting one another with a frankness that less robust persons might have found almost brutal, it had respect for a mutual basis.
To Cheriton’s credit let it be written, he was an admirer of women. If they were pretty his admiration was apt to increase. If a character of quite singular merit had its vulnerable point—and I do not positively assert that it had—it was perhaps to be found in his dealings with the most attractive membersof what has always been allowed to be a most attractive institution.
To the whole of that sex, however, it was his wont to be extraordinarily polite, charming, supple, and attentive. No one could call Miss Burden supremely attractive. She had so many things against her, including the immediate loss of her place had she developed any special powers in this direction. But she had long been Lord Cheriton’s devoted slave and adherent. It was merely the result of his way with the whole of womankind. Young or old, fair or ugly, it made no difference. An air of deferential pleasantness, of candid homage so lightly touched with sarcasm that it passed for whimsicality, was extended towards all who bore the name of woman, whether it was Caroline Crewkerne herself, her penniless dependent, or the old flower-seller at the top of the Haymarket. His grace of demeanor and his slightly ironicalbonhomiewere at the service of each of them equally.
It is not too much to say that Miss Burden adored Lord Cheriton. Not openly, of course, not in the broad light of day; but there can be little doubt that had the occasion ever arisen she would gladly have yielded her life for this handsome, deferential, finely preserved nobleman of five-and-sixty. Nor is it a matter to be wondered at. Although she was a well-read woman with an excellent taste of her own, he made out her circulating-library lists for her; he invariably had a bunch of violets to offer her, or any other simple flower that was in season; he took a genuineinterest in the condition of her health; and further there was every reason to suspect that in his heart of hearts he shared her intense dislike of Ponto, who had very rudimentary ideas indeed of the deference due to light-gray trousers.
“Cheriton,” said the old lady, as soon as they were seated at luncheon, “did you know that George Betterton was in London?”
The pair of old gossips looked one another in the face with an air of demure innocence.
“And she at Biarritz,” said Cheriton, musically.
The old lady bent across the table with the gesture of a sibyl.
“Mark my words,” said she. “Therégimeis at an end.”
“I never prophesy in these cases,” said Cheriton. “She is a very able woman, which of course is not surprising, and George is the incarnation of sheer stupidity, which is not surprising either. All the same, Caroline, I don’t say you are not right.”
“Of course I am right,” said Caroline Crewkerne, robustly. “And I put it to you, Cheriton, what will be the next move upon thetapis?”
“George will marry,” said Cheriton, tentatively.
“Precisely,” said the old woman, nodding her head in sage approval.
“Have you selected a duchess for him?”
“Why do you ask?” said the old lady, with an air of diplomacy which amused Cheriton, because it was so unnecessary.
“I ask merely for information. If I were a sportingtipster, Priscilla L’Estrange would be my selection.”
“No,” said Caroline Crewkerne, with immense decision, “a man never marries a woman as stupid as himself. Nature’s an old fool, but she knows better than that.”
Cheriton pondered this philosophical statement with a sagacious smile. Caroline’s air, however, was so pontifical that it was not for his sex to dissent from it.
“Well, there is a great amount of stupidity in the world,” said he, “and it seems to be increasing. By the way, was George sober?”
“He was holding himself very erectly, and he was walking very slowly.”
“Then I am afraid he wasn’t. But it must be the most tedious thing out to spend one’s life in losing one’s money at cards and in criticising the Militia.”
“Yes,” said the old lady. “I share your opinion that it is time George began to pay attention to more permanent things.”
“The Militia is always with us.”
“I meant spiritual things, Cheriton,” said Caroline Crewkerne, whose day-of-judgment demeanor nearly choked his lordship.
“George Betterton,” said he, “has the spirituality of a wheelbarrow. It will give me great pleasure to be present when the subject is mentioned.”
“He is coming to my Wednesday,” said the old lady. “I shall speak to him then. That reminds me that Mary Ann Farquhar says this new Lancashirebishop eats his cheese in the old-fashioned manner and he is now in London. If I knew his address I would send him a card.”
“The Carlton Hotel,” said Cheriton, “is the headquarters of the Church in London.”
“Burden,” said the old lady, “make a note of that.”
With an ostentation that Caroline Crewkerne considered wholly unnecessary, Cheriton inscribed this important contribution to sociology on the tablets of the gentlewoman. “What new game is the old heathen going to play, I wonder?” was the question that passed through his mind as he did so.
“What was Gobo doing in the parish?” inquired Cheriton. “Come to worry the War Office as usual?”
“No,” said the old lady, “he seemed more serious than usual, but that may have been drink. As I am showing Ponto at the dog show on Tuesday week, George has consented to award the prizes. I have chosen a silver collar with his name inscribed suitably. I don’t know anything more becoming than a silver collar for a dog of Ponto’s type.”
“I am afraid it’s a job; and don’t forget, my dear Caroline, the last one you perpetrated did no good to the country.”
“What do you mean, Cheriton?” said the old lady, with her bristles going up like a badger. “Have the goodness to explain your meaning.”
“That boy from Eton—yourprotégé—whom you sent out to South Africa to command a brigade, made a dooce of a hash of it, they tell me.”
“That is a lie, Cheriton, and you know it,” said the old lady, whose voice quivered so much with passion that it frightened Miss Burden considerably. “Poor dear Arthur once told me himself that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton.”
“It is your thoughtlessness, my dear Caroline, in taking for gospel the senile speeches of an old fogy who lived far longer than he ought to have done, that has so nearly cost us a continent. The playing-fields of Eton forsooth!”
“Cheriton,” said the old lady, “I despise you.”
The light of battle was in her eye. It is hardly correct to speak of their crossing swords. The weapons they used were cudgels, in the use of which they were very expert.
Miss Burden was not a little shocked and affrighted. But she had witnessed so many exhibitions of a similar character between these combatants, who fully enjoyed a rough and tumble whenever they met, that I am by no means sure that the gentlewoman’s fear was not in the nature of a pleasant emotion. It seems to be right and proper that a gentlewoman shall derive a legitimate pride from being shocked and affrighted. At least it used to be so in that bright and glad heyday of decorum before some person unknown invented a hockey stick to beat out the brains of female sensibility.
It was not until they were drinking coffee in the seclusion of her ladyship’s boudoir that peace was restored between the combatants. They had bothappeared to advantage, for they had had long practice in all kinds of verbal warfare. Cheriton’s phrases, by long association with the great world, were as direct as possible. He called a spade a spade, but his manner of so doing was extremely charming. Miss Burden thought his most incisive speeches were full of melody. As for Caroline Crewkerne, she was the sharpest-tongued old woman in London. And the least scrupulous, said the very considerable body who had been flayed by it.
Peace restored, the old lady made an abrupt suggestion.
“Cheriton,” said she, “it has occurred to me that it is time you settled down. You ought to marry.”
“Cherchez la femme,” said Cheriton, with a lightness of tone that ill became him.
“If you will place the matter in my hands,” said Caroline Crewkerne, “I shall be happy to do what I can for you.”
“I am overwhelmed.”
“Don’t be a coxcomb, Cheriton,” said Caroline, sharply. “Let us take a broad view of the subject and let us place it on a matter-of-fact basis. I repeat, in my opinion you ought to marry.”
“Pourquoi?”
“In the first place,” said the old woman, ruthlessly, “you are not quite what you were. Five-and-sixty is—well, five-and-sixty. It is no use disguising the fact that young and attractive women are a little inclined to smile at you.”
Cheriton writhed. Rather pitifully he raised ahollow guffaw. It was perhaps the worst thing he could have done in the circumstances; but the poor butterfly, when the pin is through its middle, is prone to augment its own tortures by twisting its body and flapping its wings. Caroline Crewkerne smiled grimly.
“The fact is, Cheriton,” said she, “you have grown already a littlepasséfor therôleof Phœbus Apollo. Understand the phrase is not mine. It was whispered in my ear by an insolent girl who looks upon you in the light of a grandfather.”
Cheriton mopped his perspiring features with a yellow silk handkerchief. He conducted this operation very delicately because his cheeks were flushed with a carmine that was apt to run all over the place.
“I have heard a complaint of your mustache,” said his old friend. “In my opinion it requires careful treatment. At present it does not harmonize with your general scheme of color. When did you dye it last?”
“The same day on which you last dyed your hair, my dear Caroline,” said Cheriton, rather laboriously. “As they both belong to the same period, I thought it right to——”
“Don’t explain at length,” said Caroline. “I dye my hair weekly. But what I want to point out to you is this. In my opinion it is quite time you were married. You are rich. It is almost a national scandal that there is no entertaining at Cheriton House; and the title reverts to a branch of the family youdon’t esteem. Surely there is to be found in the world some youngish person of modest attractions—do not delude yourself, Cheriton, that you can ask for more—to whom you can offer a vocation.”
“There is a little actress at the Gayety,” said Cheriton, thoughtfully. “She seems a healthy creature. I dare say she——”
“Burden, quit the room,” said the old lady.
Blushing like a peony and trembling like an aspen—a double feat of which gentlewomen nurtured in the best Victorian traditions were always capable—Miss Burden obeyed.
Cheriton closed the door.
“Yes, I dare say she would,” said Caroline Crewkerne, with her hanging-judge demeanor. “All the same, Cheriton, you talk like a fool.”
What Caroline Crewkerne said to Cheriton, and what Cheriton said to Caroline Crewkerne, I shall not set down. The plain truth is, I dare not. She was a survival of a famous aristocracy which was never accustomed to mince its language. She had always been used, as her Georgian forbears had before her, to call a spade a spade. It was a mark of caste. And Cheriton, too, beneath his superficial airs and dandified graces, which had earned for him the title of “the last of the macaronis,” which really meant nothing at all, had a strain of the most uncompromising frankness.
Really I must apologize to my readers for these two old and hardened worldlings. I hope they will make all the allowance that is possible, for whateverthe pretensions of one of them, neither was inclined to view the great institution we call Woman at all romantically. Cheriton would certainly have rebutted the charge with scorn, but none the less it is perfectly just. His affectation of delicacy was only skin deep. Had a third person overheard their conversation without being furnished with the key to it, he would have concluded that it had to do with the bringing into the world of a pedigree horse, a thoroughbred dog, a prize cow, or a speckled rhinoceros. And he must have wondered how it was that two persons who had obviously moved in good society from their youth up, could sittête-à-têtein a beautiful room in one of the most fashionable thoroughfares in all London, discoursing with remarkable point and gusto upon a subject which would have befitted a couple of yokels in a farmyard.
“There’s my niece,” said Caroline Crewkerne.
“Have you a niece?” said Cheriton.
“A girl of Polly’s. You remember Polly?”
“Polly was a very plain woman,” said Cheriton, slowly. “I think, take her altogether, she was the plainest woman I ever saw.”
“It is odd,” said Caroline, “that I had all the good looks as well as all the brains. It made life so difficult for Polly. Yet I think her heart was better than mine.”
“Yes, Caroline, I think so,” said Cheriton, assenting gracefully. “But I don’t seem to remember Polly’s marriage.”
“It was not a marriage.”
“No?” said Cheriton, with a sudden access of interest which was open to misinterpretation.
“Polly married the village curate, who hadn’t a shilling.”
“Poor devil.”
“To which of the contracting parties do you refer?” said Caroline, incisively.
“Must have been a poor devil if he hadn’t a shilling.”
“Of course,” said Caroline, “the Family never forgave her. Dearest papa forbade her the neighborhood. He might have forgiven the village, and he might have forgiven the curacy, but he could not forgive the shilling.”
“Naturally,” said Cheriton. “But I’ve known parsons’ daughters turn out very well before now. I’ve seen one or two who looked capital in the Gayety chorus. What’s the age of the gal?”
“Nineteen.”
“An alluring period. Has she a good disposition?”
“She is my niece,” said Caroline, with admirable succinctness.
“I shall come and see her. When is she on view?”
Caroline Crewkerne enfolded herself in her mantle of high diplomacy. She paused to measure Cheriton with that hawklike eye of hers.
“A month to-morrow.”
“Capital,” said Cheriton.
He rose at his leisure.
“So long, Caroline,” said he. “It is a great pleasure to find you so fit.”
Caroline gave him a withered talon.
“Get another wig,” said she. “And consult a specialist about your mustache.”
“What, for a parson’s daughter!”
“A duke’s granddaughter,” said the imperious Caroline.
“I’m damned if I do,” said Cheriton, amiably.
“You are damned if you don’t,” said Caroline, making the obvious retort which is so apt to be mistaken for wit, and fixing an eye upon him that was positively arctic. “That is, if the creature is worth her salt.”
“You are doubtless correct, Caroline,” said Cheriton, with the air of a man who made a god of reason. “You have a good head. If only your heart——!”
With a bow and a smile, which had wrought great havoc in their time, although to some they had a certain pathos now, Cheriton withdrew. He pointed a course towards a famous shop at the corner of Burlington Gardens.
“It is quite true what they say,” this nobleman of distinguished appearance and open manners might have been heard to mutter to high heaven, as he gazed upwards to inquire of Jove whether he intended to ruin his hat. “Sheisthe most disagreeable old woman in London.”
However, there is always the reverse of the medal, the other side to the picture. This handsome, courtlyand carefully-preserved specimen had been somewhat badly mauled no doubt by the old lioness. But had he been endowed with eyes in the back of his head, or been gifted with some occult faculty, he would have found a salve for his wounds. For his exit from the house in Hill Street was marked by a mildly ascetic form which was efficiently and discreetly veiled amid the curtains of the dining-room windows. Could he have been conscious of the eyes that were concentrated upon the back of his gracefully erect and faultlessly tailored exterior; could he by some special process of the mind have ravished the secrets of that chaste yet susceptible bosom, he would have been assured that it is not always necessary to invoke the black arts of the perruquier to recommend one’s self to the mind and heart of a Christian gentlewoman. Had Lord Cheriton cut off his mustache as a Lenten sacrifice—which we regret to say was not at all likely, as there is reason to fear he did not respect the Church sufficiently to contemplate such a course of action—or had he been as bald as an egg, which Caroline Crewkerne declared he certainly was, within the sanctity of Miss Burden’s breast there would still only have reigned the image of one perfect man, of one true prince.