CHAPTER XIMISS PERRY IS THE SOUL OF DISCRETION
THE next morning at ten o’clock, when Jim Lascelles appeared for the second time in Hill Street, he was received in the blue drawing-room by the lilac frock and its wonderful canopy. Jim gave back a step before the picture that was presented.
“My aunt!” said he.
“The frock is a sweet,” said Miss Perry. “Isn’t it? Muffin’s——”
“Goose Girl,” said Jim, “you are marvelous.”
“I think the hat must flop a little too much,” said Miss Perry, “in places. It makes people turn round to stare at it.”
“Of course it does, you foolish person,” said Jim, with little guffaws of rapture. “It is an absolute aboriginal runcible hat. How did you come by it? It seems to me there are deep minds in this.”
“Lord Cheriton chose it,” said Miss Perry.
“My noble patron and employer. It does him infinite credit. That hat is an achievement.”
“Aunt Caroline doesn’t like it,” said Miss Perry. “Especially in church.”
“Aunt Caroline is a Visigoth,” said Jim. “Let us forget her. Sit there, you Goose, where you sat yesterday.And if you don’t move and don’t speak for an hour, you shall have a cream bun.”
It was bribery, of course, on the part of Jim Lascelles, but Miss Perry made instant preparation to earn the promised guerdon.
“You are so marvelous,” said Jim, “that poor painting chaps ought not to look at you. Oho! I begin to have light. I begin to see where that lilac arrangement and that incredible headpiece came from. By the way, Goose Girl, is it possible that Araminta, Duchess of Dorset, is one of your grand relations?”
“She is my great-grandmamma,” said Miss Perry.
“She must be,” said Jim. “What has old Dame Nature been doing, I wonder? Copying former successes. And old Sir President History, R.A., famous painter of genre, repeating himself like one o’clock.”
Jim Lascelles began to sketch the incredible hat with great vigor and boldness.
“By all the gods of Monsieur Gillet,” said Jim, vaingloriously, “they will want a rail to guard it at the Luxembourg.”
Yet Jim was really a modest young fellow. Could it be that already a phial of the magic potion had been injected into the veins of that sane and amiable youth?
“Goose Girl,” said Jim, “it is quite clear to me that if the Duchess was your great-grandmamma, Thomas Gainsborough, R.A., was my old great-granddad. Now, don’t move the Goose Piece. She wear-eth a mar-vel-ous hat!” Jim’s charcoal wasperforming surprising antics. “Chin Piece quite still. Wonderful natural angle. Can you keep good if you take your paw out of your mouth?”
“I will try to,” said Miss Perry, with perfect docility.
“We will risk it,” said Jim. “Keep saying to yourself, ‘Only thirty-five minutes more and I get a cream bun.’”
“Yes, Jim,” said Miss Perry, with a remarkable air of intelligence.
“Paws down,” said Jim. “Hold ’em thusly. Move not the Chin Piece, the Young Man said. No, and not the Whole of the White and Pink and Blue and Yellow Goose Piece neither.”
Perhaps it is not strictly accurate to state that Jim dropped into poetry as he continued the study of his subject. But certainly he indulged in a kind of language which assumed lyrical form.
“Paws down,” said Jim. “She approacheth her Mouth Piece upon pain of losing her Bun. Paw Pieces quite quiet. Move not the Chin Piece, the Young Man said.”
The blue eyes of Miss Perry were open to their limit. They seemed to devour the slow-ticking clock upon the chimney-piece. At last virtue was able to claim its reward.
“Cream bun, please,” drawled Miss Perry, in a manner that was really ludicrous.
“It can’t possibly be an hour yet,” said Jim.
“It is,” said Miss Perry, with great conviction. “It ishonestly.”
“Very good,” said Jim. “Young Man taketh Goose Girl’s word of honor.” He produced a neat-looking white paper packet from his coat pocket. “Goose Girl presenteth Paw Piece,” said he, “to receive Diploma of Merit. A short interval for slight but well-deserved nourishment.”
Miss Perry lost no time in divesting the packet of its trappings. I don’t say positively that her satisfaction assumed an audible form when she beheld the seductive delicacy of its contents. But, at all events, she lost no time in taking a very large bite out of a bun of quite modest dimensions.
“Jim,” said she, “it isquiteas nice as the ones that come from Buszard’s.”
“It is their own brother,” said Jim. “This comes from Buszard’s.”
“R-R-Really,” said Miss Perry, with a doubtful roll of the letter R. “But those that Gobo brings me are larger.”
“They grow more than one size at Buszard’s,” said Jim. “Gobo is a bit of a duke, I dare say.”
“Heisa duke,” said Miss Perry.
“If I were a duke,” said Jim, “I should bring you the large size. But as I am only Jim Lascelles who lives at Balham with his old mother, you will have to be content with the small ones.”
It may have been that Miss Perry was a little disappointed, because the small ones only meant a bite and a little one. But she contrived to conceal her disappointment very successfully. Althoughbrought up in the country she had excellent breeding.
“Jim,” said Miss Perry, “where is Balham?”
“Quite a ducal question,” said Jim.
“Is it as far from London as London is from Slocum Magna?” said Miss Perry.
“I acquit you ofarrière pensée,” said Jim. “Here is Lord Cheriton. You had better ask him where Balham is.”
That nobleman in resplendent morning attire entered with an air that was fatherly.
“Is it my privilege to make you known to one another?” said he, with an air of vast benevolence. “My ward, Miss Perry. Mr. Lascelles, the coming Gainsborough.”
“Oh, I’ve known Jim——” Miss Perry began blurting, when it is grievous to have to inform the gentle reader that Jim Lascelles dealt her a stealthy but absolutely unmistakable kick on the shin in quite the old Widdiford manner.
“Can you tell me where Balham is?” Miss Perry inquired of Lord Cheriton with really wonderful presence of mind. But there was a real honest tear in her eyes; and tears are known to be an excellent old-fashioned specific for the wits.
“Certainly I can,” said he, with courtly alacrity. “Balham is an outlying part of the vast metropolis. It is a most interesting place with many honorable associations.”
“Jim,” the luckless Miss Perry was beginning, but happily on this occasion Jim Lascelles had no needto do more than show her his boot, while Cheriton’s sense of hearing was by no means so acute as it might have been; “Mr. Lascelles,” Miss Perry contrived to correct herself, “lives at Balham.”
“Then we are able,” said Cheriton, “to congratulate Mr. Lascelles and also to congratulate Balham. But tell me, Lascelles, why you live in an outlying part of the vast metropolis when the center calls you?”
“We live at Balham,” said Jim, “my mother and I, because it is cheap and respectable.”
“A satisfying combination,” said Cheriton. “I trust the presence of my ward, Miss Perry, does not retard the progress of your artistic labors?”
“Quite the contrary, I assure you,” said Jim, with excellent politeness.
“I am glad of that,” said Cheriton. “But as you may have already discovered, Miss Perry has quite the feeling for art.”
“Yes,” said Jim, perhaps conventionally, “I am sure she has.”
“It is a very remarkable case of heredity. You see, my dear Lascelles, Gainsborough painted her great-grandmamma.”
“So I understand,” said Jim, with great solemnity.
“It is a great pleasure to me, my dear Lascelles, that Miss Perry’s taste in art is so sure. We go to the National Gallery together, hand-in-hand as it were, to admire the great Velasquez.”
“He is a sweet,” said Miss Perry.
“And, my dear Lascelles, we profoundly admire the great Rembrandt also.”
“He is a sweet too,” said Miss Perry.
“And, my dear Lascelles, together we share—Miss Perry and I—a slight distrust of the permanent merit of Joseph Wright of Derby. The fact is, Joseph Wright of Derby somehow fails to inspire our confidence. One can understand Joseph Wright of Sheffield perfectly well; or even perhaps—mind, I do not say positively—Joseph Wright of Nottingham; but I put it to you, Lascelles, can one accept Joseph Wright of Derby as belonging to all time?”
“I agree with you,” said Jim. “Yet was there not once an immortal born at Burton-on-Trent?”
“I never heard that there was,” said Cheriton, with an air of pained surprise. “And that is a matter upon which I am hardly open to conviction. By the way, Lascelles, which of England’s luscious pastures had the glory of giving birth to your genius?”
As a preliminary measure Jim Lascelles showed Miss Perry his boot.
“I was born,” said Jim, modestly, yet observing that the blue eyes of Miss Perry were adequately fixed on his boot, “at a little place called Widdiford, in the north of Devon.”
“Yes, of course,” said Cheriton, graciously; “I ought to have remembered, as your father and I were at school together. I remember distinctly that it was the opinion of the fourth form common room that the finest clotted cream and the finest strawberry jam in the world came from Widdiford.”
“It is almost as nice at Slocum Magna,” said Miss Perry, in spite of the covert threat that was still lurking in Jim’s outstretched boot.
“Quite so,” said Cheriton. “Ha, happy halcyon days of youth, when the cream was really clotted and the strawberries were really ripe! But I seem to remember that Widdiford is remarkable for something else.”
Miss Perry was prepared to enlighten Lord Cheriton, but Jim’s boot rose ferociously.
“Stick paw in Mouth Piece,” Jim whispered truculently, “and merely think of cream buns.”
“Widdiford,” said Cheriton, “let me see. In what connection have I heard that charmingly poetic name? Ah, to be sure, I remember—Widdiford is the place at which they have not quite got the railway, don’t you know. Miss Araminta, is not that the case?”
“Yes,” said Miss Perry; “but it is only three miles away.”
“And what is the proximity,” said Cheriton, a little dubiously it is to be feared, “of Widdiford to Slocum Magna?”
“The best part of two miles,” said Jim Lascelles, boldly taking the bull by the horns. “Quite a coincidence, isn’t it, that we should have lived at the Red House at Widdiford, and that Miss Perry’s papa should have lived at the Parsonage, at Slocum Magna? In fact, I seem to remember Miss Perry or one of her sisters as quite a tot of a girl sitting as good as pie in the vicarage pew.”
It was here that Jim’s boot did wonders. Miss Perry was simply besieged by voices from the upper atmosphere beseeching her to give the whole thing away completely. She refrained, however. Her respect for Jim’s boot enabled her to continue sitting as good as pie.
That being the case, let us offer this original piece of observation for what it is worth. Cream buns are remarkably efficient in some situations, while an uncompromising right boot is equally efficient in others. To Jim Lascelles belongs the credit of having assimilated early in life this excellent truth.
Cheriton turned to see what progress Jim Lascelles had made with his labors.
“Very good progress, Lascelles,” said he. Yet something appeared to trouble my lord. “Upon my word,” said he, “either my eyesight betrays me or the color of your girl’s hair is yellow.”
“Is it?” said Jim Lascelles, innocently. “Yes, so it is, as yellow as the light of the morning.”
“The duchess’s hair is auburn, unmistakably.”
“Why, yes,” said Jim; “but really, don’t you think yellow will be quite as successful?”
Cheriton gazed at Jim Lascelles in profound astonishment.
“My dear fellow,” said he, “I hope you understand what you are commissioned to do. You are commissioned to make a precise and exact copy of Gainsborough’s Duchess of Dorset for Cheriton House, not to perpetrate atour de forceof your own. Upon my word, Lascelles, that hair is really toomuch. And the set of the hat, as far as one may judge at present, certainly differs from the original. I am sorry to say so, Lascelles, but really I think in the interests of all parties it would be well if you started again.”
Jim put his hands in his pockets. Upon his handsome countenance was a very whimsical if somewhat dubious expression.
“Lord Cheriton,” said he, solemnly, “the truth is, if I could have afforded to lose a cool hundred pounds, which I don’t mind saying is more than the whole of what I made last year, I should not have accepted this commission. As I have accepted it I shall do my best; and if the results are not satisfactory I shall not look for remuneration.”
“Well, Lascelles,” said his patron, “that is a straightforward proposition. I dare say it is this confounded French method of looking at things that has misled you so hopelessly. ’Pon my word, I never saw such hair, and Gillet never saw such hair either. It is enough to make Gainsborough turn in his grave. It is most providential that I happened to look in. Take a fresh piece of canvas and start again.”
Jim Lascelles laid his head to one side with a continuance of his whimsical and dubious air. There was no doubt that the yellow was extremely bold and that the hair of the duchess was auburn.
Yet what of the cause of the mischief? There she sat on the sofa in her favorite pose, blissfully unconscious of the trouble she had wrought, for there could be no doubt whatever that her thoughts wereof cream buns. And further, it seemed to Jim Lascelles that there could be no doubt either that her hair had been painted by the light of the morning. Cheriton, however, was too much preoccupied with the duchess to observe that fact.
“My dear Miss Araminta,” said he, “as this is a really fine morning, and this is really the month of May, let us stroll into the park and watch young England performing maritime feats on the Serpentine. And after luncheon, if the weather keeps fine, we will go to the circus.”
“What fun!” said Miss Perry.