CHAPTER XXVIIREVEL IS HELD AT PEN-Y-GROS CASTLE
MODEST revel was held that evening at the Castle. Jim’s mother erred so much on the side of youth that Jim was disposed to blame her for wearing her best gown. She knew as well as anybody that she always did look young in her best gown, almost to the point of impropriety. It had been obtained in Paris for one thing, not very recently, it is true, for Jim was then a gay and careless student at L’École des Beaux Arts; but, even at that time of day, the dressmakers of Paris were said to possess a lightness of touch, a grace, and a felicity which made for youth. In her heart, there is reason to believe, Jim’s mother considered her son to be unduly sensitive upon the score of her appearance.
Caroline Crewkerne was moderately civil to Jim’s mother. But of course she wore a certain number of airs, as she did invariably when she had to do with persons of her own sex whom she did not consider to be her equals socially. But perhaps there is no need to blame her. The chameleon can change its spots, but it is not really more respected than the leopard. Caroline Crewkerne was three and seventy, and habit was strong in her. She belonged to a period when airs were more in vogue, when the world was not sodemocratic as it is in these days, when human destinies were more unequal.
If Jim’s mother was a little amused by the “grand manner”—and doubtless she was, because she had seen something of Cosmopolis, and was therefore not exactly a provincial—she was too good-natured and too well bred to show it. But it is to be feared that Jim resented it. He blamed himself for being fool enough to come. Jim had at least one of the essentials necessary to success in life. He was an excellent hater. He hated well, and he hated heartily, and he forgave with difficulty. And certainly he hated this old woman and all her works.
A common and watchful friend in fine lawn and pomatum stood a little apart to witness Caroline Crewkerne offer two fingers and to witness Jim Lascelles accept them. Jim got through the ordeal without any real loss of credit, although his mother knew that he was angry. However, there were compensations. George Betterton greeted the young fellow in quite a hearty manner; Miss Burden beamed upon him, and her appearance was singularly agreeable with “a romantic tale on her eyelashes”; while the Miss Perrys, of course, were triumphs of female loveliness. The elder of the twain, in her “play-acting frock,” as Aunt Caroline called it, and with her daffodil-colored mane done low down in her neck in a most remarkable simulation of the eighteenth century, by the hand of the incomparable but exacting Fanchette, was enough to haunt any young painter for many days to come. Muffin, too, with her brillianthealth and her open manners, with a coloring only less wonderful than that of her sister, and with a physique pure of line and of a spreading stalwart symmetry, looked every inch of her a veritable younger sister of the goddess. Fanchette had been coaxed, perhaps by an inborn love of her art, to embellish Muffin’s yellow mane also with the hand of her great talent, so that it also sat low down in her neck in a fashion fit to inspire a sonnet. Muffin’s frock was of pure white—at least, it was of that hue when it was first purchased. And although it was cheap and countrified and by no means new, and it was rent in three places, and was very short in the sleeves and very tight all over, it really suited her to perfection, as somehow everything did that she wore.
Lord Cheriton was delighted.
“Mrs. Lascelles,” said he, at the first opportunity, “what do you think of our Miss Gunnings?”
Jim’s mother sighed a little.
“Perfectly distracting,” said she. “And yet it only seems yesterday that they were long-legged creatures in short white socks.”
By the dispensation of the powers George Betterton took in his hostess, Cheriton took in the wife of the Vicar, the Vicar took in Mrs. Lascelles, Jim took in Miss Burden, and the Miss Perrys took in one another.
Jim Lascelles never remembered a meal that he enjoyed less, except in after-years when—but we must not overrun our story. For the greater part of the conversation was confined to one theme, and thetheme was heroism. Cheriton claimed the respectful indulgence of the table while Muffin furnished her thrilling narrative with all the latest embellishments. It is true that she suffered occasional contradiction in the course of it from her muddle-headed but tenacious sister Goose, but her testimony remained substantially unshaken. Mr. James Lascelles was a hero, no doubt about that.
When the dessert stage was reached, Cheriton pledged Jim’s health in felicitous terms and in some excellent madeira. Jim responded with a vehement denial of the charges brought against him.
“Why,” said Cheriton, “the young fellow will deny his genius next.”
“Yes,” said Jim’s mother, “he would, only he knows it is no use.”
After dinner there was music. Caroline Crewkerne had an ingrained dislike of music which amounted to detestation, but on this occasion it was permitted as a concession to the Church. The Vicar’s wife had a light soprano voice, and sang very pleasantly, although rather nervous at first. The Vicar’s rendering of the “Bay of Biscay” was justly admired. Jim’s mother interpreted Chopin with such refinement and delicacy that Caroline Crewkerne was able to get a short nap. But quite one of the most admired achievements of the evening was George Betterton’s rendering of what he called his “one horse,” a technical term which baffled everybody as to its meaning, including Cheriton himself, that veritable encyclopedia of human information.
George Betterton’s “one horse” was “We’ll all go a-hunting to-day,” with chorus. This he rendered with the most resolute disregard of time and tune, and in the most dogged and sonorous manner. The Vicar’s wife accompanied him and finished three bars in front of George, and so “won as she pleased,” in the judgment of Cheriton, who, in addition to his other accomplishments, was a critic of the art of music. However, Muffin and Jim Lascelles were heard to such advantage in the chorus that there was no doubt about its success. They were importuned upon this revelation of their talent to sing a solo apiece. They contrived to evade this penalty on the plea that they had never sung in public before, although Goose declared that Muffin had sung by herself twice in Slocum Magna parish church with great distinction.
“But that wasn’t in public,” said Muffin, staunchly. “Besides, it was after dearest papa had preached his sermon.”
“I am afraid, my dear Miss Muffin,” said Cheriton, “that the point is too subtle for the lay intelligence.”
Although Muffin and Jim Lascelles were absolved from singing solos, they were unable wholly to evade the penalty incurred by the revelation of their gifts. They were haled to the piano to sing a duet fromH.M.S. Pinafore; and made such a hopeless mess of the performance that Jim’s mother, to whom the accompaniment was intrusted, took the extreme course of closing the piano in the middle of it and retiring in dudgeon.
A display of thought-reading concluded the proceedings. The Vicar’s wife was a clairvoyante, noted for miles around. Cheriton also confessed to powers in this occult science. The Vicar’s wife was only permitted to perform one feat, because the Vicar declared that if she attempted more than one in an evening it excited her so much that she never slept all night. The task allotted to her was that she should take the ribbon from Ponto’s neck and tie it around Goose’s finger. The feat was performed with such exemplary ease that Muffin felt sure that she could do something. Her task was the elementary one of giving Miss Burden a kiss. Instead of doing this, however, she hugged Aunt Caroline. In the opinion, however, of those best acquainted with these mysteries, she was held to be so nearly right that her reputation was established forthwith.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” said Goose, with dilated eyes. “I shall write to dearest papa about it. At the next entertainment in Slocum Magna parish-room Muffin will have to do something.”
“I think,” said Jim’s mother, “her powers as a clairvoyante are superior to her powers as a cantatrice.”
Muffin was showing a desire to give a further display of her newly discovered talent, when Aunt Caroline said it was half-past ten, and that Araminta and Elizabeth must retire.
After saluting Aunt Caroline in a very dutiful manner they obeyed this edict with most admirable docility. It proved a signal for the general dispersalof the company. There is reason to believe that Aunt Caroline intended that it should.
No sooner were the Vicar and his wife and Jim Lascelles and his mother abroad in the rapt summer stillness, and they were picking their way through the tomblike darkness of the wood towards Pen-y-Gros hamlet, than the inmates of the castle sat down to the green table. Caroline Crewkerne yawned vigorously. But her opponents did well not to misinterpret that action, because this old woman was never known to sit down to cards without proving herself to be more than usually wide-awake.
“Caroline,” said her oldest friend, “this is certainly one of the whitest days in all my recollection of you. I can’t say positively that you were genial, but I feel that I am entitled to affirm that you got through the evening without insulting anybody.”
“The middle classes are so tiresome,” said Caroline, cutting for the deal and winning it easily.
“The middle classes are almost extinct as a genus,” said Cheriton. “They have assimilated culture so rapidly since that fellow Arnold wrote to them upon the subject that nowadays they are almost as extinct as the dodo.”
“Pshaw!” said Caroline, carefully sorting a hand that contained four aces and three kings. “It is only skin deep. Don’t be a coxcomb, Cheriton. I declare no trumps.”
“I shall not double,” said Cheriton, who found himself in possession of a “Yarborough.”
In a very short space of time, Cheriton and MissBurden had suffered the indignity of the “grand slam.”
“Well played, partner,” said George, as soon as he woke up.
There can be really no question at all that few persons could have played their cards better than Caroline Crewkerne, when that old woman found herself with a good hand. And few persons found themselves oftener in that enviable position than did she. Certainly this evening she surpassed herself. It is true that the cards came her way in the most surprising fashion. But she utilized them to the full; and further, she took advantage of the mistakes of her principal adversary.
It was not often that Cheriton was guilty of flagrant errors, but on this occasion he certainly held bad cards, and to these he added unmistakably inferior play. He forgot important cards constantly; and twice at a critical moment he revoked. Caroline was in the highest glee. Everything went right for her; and the sum she won from Cheriton it would not be wise or right to divulge, lest it shock the less affluent among our readers. It was not really enough “to endow a hospital for the incurably insane,” as Cheriton declared it was, but it certainly enabled the lucky Caroline to contemplate the purchase of a few of those Westralians which she had coveted for some time past.
Happily neither Miss Burden nor George Betterton could afford to play for money; the former because her salary of forty pounds per annum was her onlymeans of subsistence; the latter because his high rank rendered it necessary that in all respects his life should be a pattern to his admiring countrymen. We have no desire to lower a very worthy man in the public estimation, but this desire for respectability did not prevent his losing continually at piquet to Caroline Crewkerne. But then piquet is not like bridge. The one is old and of good report; the other is new and plutocratic.
A little after midnight George Betterton retired in earnest to his virtuous repose, while Miss Burden followed his example. And no sooner had the hostess and her old friend the field to themselves than they reverted to the topic of the previous night. The matter had been left in an interesting stage. Cheriton felt it to be a hopeful one. He was sure that he had no serious rival to contend against, for George with all his flourishes was sure to end by marrying Priscilla. The Georges of this world invariably marry the Priscillas.
“I am willing to tie three thousand a year upon the creature,” said Cheriton. His tone was not exactly that of an auctioneer, although his standard of wisdom rendered it necessary that he should always suit his discourse to his company. “Upon the condition, my dear Caroline, that you tie an equal sum upon her. And there is also a living in my gift worth eleven hundred a year which is likely to be vacant.”
So much for the terms. Caroline Crewkerne pondered them well. She was a shrewd, covetous, hard-headed, hard-hearted old woman. But if shetook a thing in hand she carried it through. And she had determined to do something for her dead and disgraced sister’s portionless daughter. Up to a point she was able to plume herself upon the success of the negotiations. What she did not like was the sacrifice of some of her own money. It would not make the least difference to her. She had more already than she knew what to do with, but to part with her substance always hurt her.
“We will say fifteen hundred, Cheriton, and call it settled,” said Caroline with the air of a money-lender.
Her old friend frankly enjoyed the situation. He knew where the shoe pinched as well as she did. Her craft and her avarice reminded him of Balzac’s novels.
“If you say fifteen hundred, my dear Caroline,” said her old friend, “I must say fifteen hundred too.”
Caroline pondered again. Cheriton was not a good life, and nearly everything was entailed.
“Three thousand a year in perpetuity?” said Caroline, harshly.
“Ye-es,” said Cheriton. “Dooced liberal, I think, for a poor parson’s daughter.”
Caroline bristled. She looked not only prickly but venomous.
“Don’t forget, Cheriton,” she said truculently, “that the creature is a Wargrave.”
“An effete strain, there is reason to fear,” said Cheriton with perfect composure.
The head-dress performed surprising feats. Cheritonfell to considerations of how far it might be safe to bait the old lioness. No sport is worth much without there is a spice of danger in it. He enjoyed the play none the less because he was so sensible of its peril. Caroline Crewkerne was not a person to be baited with impunity.
However, in spite of the head-dress and the gleams of red that flashed from the ruthless orbs beneath it, he was able to assume an aspect of excellent indifference. The finished duplicity may not have deceived his old friend or it may have done so. At least the old lioness grew more couchant in her aspect. But the mouth was as resolute in its sarcasm as ever.
“Well, Caroline,” said Cheriton, amiably, “let us settle the thing one way or the other. It is becoming tedious.”
Perhaps Caroline thought so too. Or perhaps she thought she had made a reasonably good bargain, all things considered, and that she was not likely to do better. For there came a further accession of scorn to the grim old countenance, and for a moment the head-dress ceased its immodest gyrations.
“Take the girl and be damned,” said Caroline Crewkerne.
Cheriton bowed with ironical politeness. He had got his way, not of course that there was anything surprising in that. He had had it so often. Still there was a certain satisfaction in it, for it always seems a part of the essential fitness of things that one should get one’s way, no matter how much one is accustomed to getting it. He was also a little inclinedto plume himself, as was too often the case with him, on his diplomacy. It was really an achievement to screw a cool three thousand a year out of the most avaricious old woman in England. Yet it may have been that he had only inserted that clause into the negotiations to give them a further spice. It had enabled him to pose as the prophet of justice, liberality, and other delectable things. He had never cared greatly about money, but that was no reason why he should not bait those who did care greatly about it when he was in need of a little private relaxation.
Cheriton went to bed and slept the sleep of the just. By the exercise of his talents he had got a charming countess on liberal terms. How the young fellows would envy him! His affectation of youth would now lose its point. Upon the day he married his young goddess he would resume his natural age, which was sixty-five. In his mind’s eye he could see himself walking down the aisle on the happy occasion with all the gravity of a pillar of the Government, of one eminent in council, looking if anything rather more than his years in order to score off the rising generation.
“He is so old, my dear!” he could hear the buzz of tongues. Yes, so old; what had happened to Youth and its vaunted pretensions?
Caroline Crewkerne went to bed, and she slept the sleep of the just also. All the same there is really no reason why she should have done so. For there was precious little justice in that old woman. She was well satisfied that she had won at cards, but inthe matter of her niece she had a very decided feeling that that man Cheriton had overreached her. The clause of the three thousand pounds per annum took a good deal of the gilt off the gingerbread. Without that clause there would have been a certain amount of gilt upon it.
Cheriton, for all his coxcombry, was a pretty considerableparti, at whom the arrows of the worldly had been aimed for two generations. But in Caroline’s own phrase, “Cheriton was no fool.” In spite of his vanity and his fribbling he knew his way about the world. He was a cool hand. He marked his quarry and pursued it at his leisure, in his own impersonal and peculiar way, and never once had he been caught napping. Great would be the applause and the merriment when it became bruited about that this astute bird had actually been limed by the old fowler of Hill Street. And after all nobody need know about that three thousand pounds per annum.
Therefore both parties to this transaction slept the sleep of the just, and next morning had breakfast in their rooms. At half-past five a.m. the unconscious object of their negotiations was haled out of bed by her sister Muffin. And as the descent to the floor did not arouse her, she was beaten about the head with a pillow until that object had been attained. They spent incomparable hours among the dew on the slopes of Gwydr and his brethren. Jim Lascelles was with them. He piloted them among the rocks, and was of course prepared to save their lives if necessary.
These were indeed golden and enchanted hours. For all her slowness of speech and action the Goose Girl had a certain animation and inward fire when in her true Slocum Magna form. Little of it had been seen in Hill Street, for amid that rather dismal splendor she was a bird in a cage. But now with the freedom of the mountains conferred upon her, with Jim upon one hand and Muffin upon the other, existence was a carol. The old glories of the Red House at Widdiford were revived.
These joys continued during a number of glorious and golden days. Cheriton, secure in his prize, was in no hurry to impale his butterfly. She was a charming picture, and he would claim her at his leisure. In the meantime let her garner up a store of health and vigor upon the mountains in the society of her peers. For, truth to tell, the bridegroom-elect was apt to get fatigued rather easily, and it was really more satisfying to share a red umbrella with an intellectual equal and to discuss the French writers beside the lake.
Therefore, with that humane wisdom which distinguished him above other men, Cheriton was content that each of them should continue in their paradise as long as it could possibly endure. Things were going very well as they were. Why disturb them? The prize was secure. Caroline Crewkerne had given her sanction and had written to her lawyer upon the subject. There was really no more to be said. Why imperil the perfect harmony of the passing hour? All in good season; when there were no mountains,no lakes, no cloudless August skies, no red umbrellas, no green frocks, no singularly companionable, cultivated, and agreeable students of the best French literature, would be the time to speak of love.
Yes, Cheriton was a cool hand. Indeed, so much so that Caroline Crewkerne was a little inclined to doubt hisbona fides.
“I have not seen the creature in tears yet,” said she three days after that memorable night in which the compact was made.
“Do not let us commit the indiscretion, my dear Caroline,” said the happy wooer, in his most musical manner, “of acting prematurely. I have always been a believer inlaissez faire. If things are going obviously right, why disturb them? The creature rejoices like a lark in her youth, her companions, and her mountains. I am too old for mountains myself. But do not let us curtail her happiness by a single hour. And, upon my word, she seems to grow more glorious every time I look at her.”
“Humph!” said Caroline Crewkerne.
She was too wise to say anything else.
“Let us do nothing, my dear Caroline,” said the happy wooer, “to impede the spontaneous acquisition of health, vigor, gayety, and flowerlike simplicity. Upon my word, the bracing climate of the Welsh mountains has given her a fire and a gladness and natural spontaneity which I do not think even Borrow himself could wholly account for. It does one good to sit apart and see it grow.”
“Cheriton,” said Caroline Crewkerne, “if I hadnot the best of reasons to know the contrary I should think you were a fool.”
“I am very happy to be one just now,” said he, “in the cause of youth.”
“You were always a coxcomb,” said his unsparing critic, “and I quite expect that one of these days you will have to pay a price for it. In my opinion it is quite time the creature began to shed a few tears.”
“No, no, Caroline. Let us have the common humanity to give her the undiluted joy of her mountains as long as we can.”
Caroline shook her worldly wise old head. She grew very thoughtful indeed. There was the question of the red umbrella. But she did not alarm herself. Cheriton had played that game so often.
The days passed merrily. It was a perfect time, with hardly more than the suspicion of a cloud about the noble head of Gwydr. And as the waters of Lake Dwygy preserved their seductive and delicious coolness it is not to be wondered at that the picture of the naiad made great progress.
There was no doubt about the wonderful increase of power that had come to Jim Lascelles. Having given his days to the painting of the Goose Girl and his nights to thoughts of her, this expenditure of spirit was now manifesting itself in his brush. The naiad bade fair to be a brilliantly poetic composition, whose color had that harmonious daring that had given Monsieur Gillet an European fame. The frank treatment of the naiad’s blue eyes and yellow hair, which had made the portrait of her sister so wonderful,were here adjusted to the majestic scheme of Dwygy’s blue waters, and Gwydr’s brown slopes crowned with a golden haze, with here and there a black patch of the woods about Pen-y-Gros. Cheriton, who among his other recommendations was a trustee of the National Gallery, ministered to the pride of the painter’s mother by his outspoken praise of what he considered to be a signal work of art.
The August sunshine, however, cannot last for ever. And at last, as Muffin’s second triumphant fortnight was nearing its close, the clouds gathered about Gwydr and his brethren, and the woods of Pen-y-Gros were drenched with a sopping mist. This presently turned to a downpour of rain which lasted a day and a night, and in that period something happened.