CHAPTER VIIn which my Lady Kilcroney Strikes a Match andMiss Pounce Throws Cold Water on it
In which my Lady Kilcroney Strikes a Match andMiss Pounce Throws Cold Water on it
Thelate Lady Standish was one of my Lady Kilcroney’s earliest friends.
When Kitty first burst upon society in the select precincts of Bath—then the fabulously rich, unpardonably pretty, delightful, audacious, amazing little Widow Bellairs—Julia Standish was scarce a three weeks’ bride.
From the very beginning Kitty’s endeavour had been to insert some backbone into the lovely but invertebrate Julia, and once, in despair, she had summed up the situation by exclaiming: “That ’twas like trying to mould too soft a jelly: the moment you thought you had her into shape, she was deliquescent again.”
Therefore, though the connection was long and close; though Kitty, whether as Mistress Bellairs or my Lady Kilcroney, counted no party complete without her Julia; though, when in town together, scarce a day could pass upon which Julia, driven by the stress of some overwhelming emotional crisis, did not fling herself, weeping, upon Kitty’s breast, it could not be said that my Lady Kilcroney was very ardently attached to Lady Standish, or that her death, sad and premature as it was, plunged her in any depth of sorrow.
The truth was that Julia Standish, elegant and virtuous, fair to look on and fond of feeling, belonged to the class that wear out the affections by over-usage. The stuff of Kitty’s sturdy good comradeship had been worn so uncommonly thin, that at the time of Julia’s lamenteddeath scarcely enough had been left between them to make a darn worth while.
Kitty liked life in a strong brew, and Lady Standish wept into her cup so persistently that there was nothing left but salt water.
Nevertheless, when the news of the irreparable event reached her, my Lady, being the best-hearted little woman in the world, wept herself for quite three minutes, and then, dispatching her Lord to see what service he could be to poor Sir Jasper, ordered her sedan and had herself deposited at Madame Mirabel’s in Bond Street, to order a black bonnet and mourning mantle for the funeral.
My Lord had set out on his melancholy errand with a dutiful concealment of its intense distastefulness.
He thought Jasper’s case the most confounded dreadful a man could be placed in, and shrank, with all his Irish softness, from the spectacle of a woe beyond his consolation.
He found matters even more tragic than he anticipated. The last word Sir Jasper’s incomparable Julia murmured to him, as, her hand in his, she left him for a better world, was to remind him of his promise never to replace her. This pledge had been exacted many times during the seven years of their existence together, but never more solemnly than in the hours that had preceded her demise.
From the moment of her seizure—spasms on the lungs—to that last breath, Sir Jasper had been in unremitting attendance. Every physician of note had been summoned to her bedside; but, in spite of all the resources of science, bloodings, blisters and cuppings, pills and potions, poor Julia Standish persisted in succumbing. He was the most afflicted of widowers! She had been the pearl of wives. No woman could ever compare with her in the whole world again. He was a blasted man. Console himself! he roared. That angel, that departed saint need have put him to no promise. She might sleep in peace; her Jasper was henceforth naught but a solitary mourner. What was left him, indeed, but to live forhis little ones, those five pledges of their mutual affection; to rear them worthy of such a mother, and, his task accomplished, take his broken heart to lie beside her in the grave? “For I will be buried with my Julia,” he cried upon each fresh gush of tears.
“Faith,” said Lord Kilcroney to his Kitty, describing the scene to her when they met again, “she’s dropt her mantle upon him with a vengeance. Wasn’t it the watering-pot you used to call her, me darling? The poor lady. He caught me by the neck a while ago, and troth he soaked me to the skin. ‘She was the most elegant woman!’ cries he. ‘She was that, me lad,’ says I. ‘And the most virtuous!’ cries he, with another gulp. ‘Aye, that she was,’ cries I. And sure, Kitty, if ever a poor soul made virtue tedious and dismal——”
“Hush, hush!” my Lady Kilcroney interrupted. “Speak no ill of the dead, sir. Poor Julia, she was a fond, foolish creature, but she was an old friend, and, ’pon honour. Denis, I’m crying for her myself. ’Tis but fitting indeed, that Sir Jasper, who was a sad, bad husband, my love, and would have given any woman red eyes, should mourn her now.”
“’Tis the frantickest widower I ever met. Mourn, quotha! ‘How shall I survive?’ is all his cry, and to see him going on that way, you’d scarce give him a sennight.”
“Psha!” said Kitty. “Such frantick fits never last. I give him a sennight, my Lord, to—to dry his eyes and look about for number two.”
“’Pon me honour, Kitty, you’re out of it! Didn’t she extract a promise from him, the dying angel, that he’d never look at woman again, and as for marriage——”
“And if that isn’t Julia all over!” cried Kitty indignantly. “And he with five children! A man of Sir Jasper’s temperament! Tush! Pooh! And were I on my death-bed, Denis, ’twould be the last of my wishes to lay such a monstrous bit of nonsense on your spirits. Why, ’twould be but tempting you to perjury. Yes,you—or any other man. ‘Look out for a well-bred creature, pray,’ I would say, ‘and a healthy, that she be kind to our little Denis, and pick her sensible, for the Lord’s sake.’ Now, Sir Jasper, mark my words ... I give him a week to bellow, and, after that—observe me—he will be found at such common, low places as a cockfight, or a bruising match, with a kerchief high about his neck, and a hat down on his eyes. And he will, like as not, make expeditions to Bristol and Plymouth, where he is less known, and where a man may attend a bit of sport without his friends’ eyes upon him. Do I not know your masculine ways, my Lord? And by and by he will be found at the clubs, at the cards, and the betting; and however lugubrious he may show his countenance, and however sadly he may heave his sigh when he first appears, ’twill wear off marvellous! And oh, and oh,” cried Kitty, breaking into wrathful laughter, “then there will be never such a buck on the town, nor one with such an eye for petticoats, as your disconsolate widower!”
“’Tis a biting tongue ye have in your head, me darling,” said Kilcroney, half admiring, half displeased.
“Before the year is out,” concluded my Lady triumphantly, “’twill be the duty of all his friends, aye, and of poor dear Julia’s, who care for the welfare of her children, to see that he is safe wed. I shall look to it myself, I owe it to the memory of poor dear Julia!”
Kitty broke off. Her glance roamed. A frown corrugated her white forehead. Kilcroney saw that she was mentally seeking, among all her acquaintance, for a substitute with the desired qualifications.
About the time of Sir Jasper’s bereavement, that distinguished peer, my Lord Ongar, put off this mortal coil. The title and fortune passed to a nephew, and it was found that his widow, and the daughter who was yet too young to have left the parent nest, were singularly ill-provided for. My Lady Ongar, who was a Frenchwoman, was in poor health; and much sympathy wasfelt for her situation, as well as for that of the little Lady Selina, who, on the threshold of presentation to the world, found herself suddenly at so great a disadvantage. It was true that both her sisters had made good marriages; one to Lord Verney, who had a house in town as well as country property; the other to Squire Day, of Queen’s Compton. But then, as Kitty Kilcroney said, who, that had a heart in her breast, could suggest placing a high-spirited girl under the charge of Susan Verney? “For sure, my dear, somewhere back there must have been a slave-driver among her ancestors. And as for Nan Day, was she not lost in domestic bliss? and no one ought to expect pretty Selina to bury herself in haycocks and babies—other people’s babies!”
It was owing to the Viscountess Kilcroney’s influence that the young lady was offered a post about the Princess Augusta, the second of the bevy of beautiful Royal Princesses; for, since assuming her duties as Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Charlotte, Kitty had vastly pleased Her Majesty in that capacity.
Not indeed that my Lady Kilcroney, who now had her own personal experience to go by, approved of Court life as a career for any young unmarried female. ’Twas monstrous cramping, she declared to those who had her complete confidence; and the Royals, perfect beings as they were, and gratifying as it was to be chosen to serve them, had a fashion of very naturally considering themselves paramount, and their favour the chief benefit of existence.
“I’ll not have the child’s youth sucked out of her,” quoth my Lady, in the strict privacy of her chamber, to the grunting Denis, who himself disliked the Court and all its ways with a large intolerance, born of its demands on his Kitty. “But a year, my love, ’twill give her a certain stamp of elegance. We can scarce look for a very great marriage for our Selina, with never two farthings in her pocket, but there are a vast of pleasant gentlemen of the second rank who water at themouth at the thought of anything favoured by Royalty.”
It was not till Lady Selina had been some nine months in her new post, and Sir Jasper Standish well-nigh a year a widower, that the great idea flashed into Kitty’s mind.
Sir Jasper was a personable man, and had not yet topped thirty-five; a very prime age for a bridegroom with the greenness of youth cast off, the tedium of maturity not yet as much as dawned. With your man of thirty-five it is a point of honour to be as ready with the generosity of youth as the lad of twenty, especially should his fancy turn to sweet seventeen. He will have gained, however, a vast experience, and, unless he be a fool, a seasoned judgment. Sir Jasper was no fool; and though he had so far justified my Lady Kilcroney’s prognostications as to be more conspicuous at any dashing sport-meeting than ever before, he kept chiefly in the company of his own sex, and never so much as noticed the passage of the most flouncing petticoat; and who was more likely to know than Kitty, since she was the only lady in the world whose society the widower now frequented?
At first the talk would be all of his Julia; but in a little while lamentations gave way to more cheerful discourse anent the young family.
It was in her capacity of godmother to little Kate Standish that, a due interval having elapsed since the loss of their ever-to-be-regretted Julia, Kitty Kilcroney first addressed Sir Jasper on the subject of a second marriage. She was, of course, quite prepared for the shocked refusal which met her.
Was it possible my Lady Kilcroney should not be aware of the solemn vow, by which he had pledged himself to his Dying Treasure, to remain ever faithful to her memory?
My Lady Kilcroney was very well aware of it. Heaven knew, she exclaimed, rolling her pansy eyes towards the ceiling of her drawing-room—she was for the while free of her Court duties, and was established in the HertfordStreet mansion—Heaven knew, if ever there was anyone in the world who could appreciate what a second marriage meant to a true mourner it was she! When Bellairs went—“Ah, you never knew my first, Sir Jasper! The most excellent, the most estimable, the most generous and noble-minded of men. There was not a condition in his will, I do assure you! Everything, everything left to me! ‘My dearest wife, Kitty, in token of the perfect happiness she gave me.’ Those were his words, Sir Jasper. But a year’s happiness, alas! and he, poor seraph, scarce able to endure anyone in the room with him with the gout so cruel settled in his joints that, if you’ll believe me, his feet were like nothing so much as warming-pans, and his hands—my poor Bellairs’ hands, why, there were days when he could not have borne that a butterfly should settle on them! When my cherished martyr was released from his sufferings, did I not, like you, vow in my heart that I never, never would replace him?”
Here Kitty fixed her eyes upon Sir Jasper’s lugubrious countenance, and, positively, though her tone was filled with such pious melancholy, they twinkled.
“I fail to see the analogy, my Lady Kilcroney,” said he huffily. “My Julia was as young as she was fair, as elegant in form as she was virtuous in character.”
“True, true, Sir Jasper! Bellairs became, very shortly after our espousals, a wreck, an absolute wreck. But he retained the most admirable amiability of temper. ’Twas indeed that which first drew my heart to him. ‘My dear,’ he said to me, ‘when I heard that my poor old friend Ned had gone smash, and shot himself, and left a little daughter without a farthing to buy a ribbon with, I cast about in my mind what I should do to help her. And, faith, I can think of no better way, my dear, than to make a rich widow of you.’ And then he set to laughing in his droll, wheezing way. ‘I’m game for a year,’ says he, ‘if you can stand the old man for a year,’ says he. ‘I’ll put you in the way of getting the best the worldcan give you; honour and good repute, and wealth and a young husband in due time—better than if your poor father had kept out of indigo. If you’ll trust me, I’ll trust you,’ says he. And my dear Bellairs kept his word royally. He’d never so much as a suspicion of me; or aught but a smile for my pleasures.” Here a tear suddenly flashed. “I’m proud to say,” cried Kitty. “I deserved his confidence. Is there ever anything so beautiful in life as wedded trust?”
Sir Jasper went home thoughtful. His Julia had had every merit, but if she had had also just the tiniest part of Bellairs’ the Nabob’s generosity of mind, would he, could he have so often—as alas! he had! But there were times when he had been goaded, indubitably driven, to seek distraction. Angel as she had been, to what screaming vapours, what swoons had she not treated him? How often also—here he held his head higher, and made a knowing thrust at a door post with his gold-headed walking-stick as he went by—had she not suspected the vilest deeds when he had been as innocent as the lambs in the field?
“You cannot,” said Sir Jasper, sapiently to himself, as his marital crimes appeared before him suddenly transmogrified into peccadilloes. “You cannot be said to betray a trust that has never been reposed in you.”
Next time my Lady spoke of matrimony to the bereaved, it was in the tone of one who regrets a rash determination, but recognises its binding quality.
“What a pity, Sir Jasper, you should have been led into such fond folly! To take such a vow! Irrevocable of course. Who would have the dreadful courage to suggest the breaking of a pledge to one who is now among the saints. What if a father’s duty points one way? that death-bed obligation sternly points the other.”
She pitied Sir Jasper—she did indeed. How was a man, and he so young, to deal with five children, and they with all the difficulties of life before them; character, education and—heavens!—illnesses? Measles andmumps, hectics and whooping coughs, and all the rest of it! “Poor Julia, could she but see now to what her intemperate passion for you has led! If our Julia had a fault—dare I say it, Sir Jasper?—she was a little, leetle inclined to jealousy.”
When Kitty returned to Queen’s Lodge, to take up service with Her Majesty, Sir Jasper and she had come to discussing very freely the kind of person who might be regarded as worthy to fill their dearest Julia’s shoes.
Kitty was full of suggestions, but, one way or another, the paragons enumerated by the lady were never to the gentleman’s taste.
When Lady Selina joined the Court circle, she was, if truth be told, the very last young female whom Kitty could in conscience have selected as a fitting companion for a widower of Sir Jasper’s kidney, or the proper kind of stepmother to his peevish brats. Nevertheless when the idea came, it was with the brilliant conviction of a flash of lightning.
Selina Vereker was not dark and masterful like Susan Verney, nor was she soft and warm-hearted, all feminine impulse and charm, like Nan Day. She was a bold piece, Kitty had decided from the first, with a short nose and a short temper, and hair under her powder as blazing as Sir Jasper’s own, and a grey eye that possessed a certain cold, reflective audacity which made Kitty thoughtful. She was a judge of minxes. Withal the creature if not pretty, was mighty attractive; with a little head on a white throat, and a way of tossing it; slim, long limbs like a boy, and a freedom of movement inside her voluminous skirts that was almost unbecoming to her sex. And the tiresome child was in a hundred scrapes, and in Royalty’s black books before she had been a fortnight at her duties. This was unpleasant for Kitty, who had recommended her. And, as she had a kind heart, it filled her with apprehension for the future. For if anything so awful were to happen as that Selina should fall into serious disgrace and be dismissed from Court, whatin the world would become of her? So poor, so naughty, and so innocent; with a pair of selfish sisters, and her mother retired to a convent! Why, with Royal displeasure upon her, never could she hope to ally herself to a genteel family!
Sir Jasper! Was not the man to her hand? He deserved a wife with some fire in her, after having so long endured the deliquescent Julia, and he deserved too, sad rake that he was, something with a temper of her own to keep him to attention and in his place.
“To heel, sir, or beware, there are other fine fellows in the world who are ready to appreciate what you have the bad taste to neglect.”
Her mind made up, Kitty set to work with a transparent artifice, to which only the blundering male would fall a prey.
“Pray come to tea, to-morrow, sir—or stay, perhaps better not, for I have Princess Augusta’s Maid-of-Honour, the little Selina Vereker, and, oh no, I would not for the world that you should meet!”
“And why, pray?”
“La, Sir Jasper, and you on the look-out for a new Lady Standish! You might fall in love with her, to be sure.”
“And what then, my Lady Kilcroney?”
“Oh, Sir Jasper, Sir Jasper, that would never do!”
“And why not, ma’am?”
“But eighteen, sir.”
“I see no objection there.”
“Fie, Sir Jasper, and you turned thirty-six!”
“But thirty-five my last birthday, ma’am, as I’m a sinner.”
“A sinner, indeed, Sir Jasper, and now you have it. What? Would you, sir, mate with innocence, guilelessness; lamb-like light-heartedness, and sprightliness; you with——?”
“Come, come, my Lady Kilcroney. I’ve not been a model husband, I dare say.”
“I dare say not, sir. Heavens, my poor Julia!”
“Your poor Julia, ma’am, would have driven a saint—Pshaw! She was too good for me!”
“Believe me, sir, you should wed a young lady of some experience, if not a widow; a staid female, sir.”
“Thank you, my Lady, I’m vastly obliged, I’m sure.”
“And you so jealous, Sir Jasper, who could scarce even trust virtue’s self, in the shape of Julia! La, to think of you with Selina—such beauty, Sir Jasper; such grace, such charm, so ready to take the pleasure of her years, so pure ignorant of the world’s ways.”
“Good heavens, my Lady Kilcroney, if I do not come to your tea-party to-morrow, ’twill be that I am a dead man.”
“Do not say you were not warned,” said my Lady, and had the laugh of scorn to herself to see with what conquering airs Sir Jasper glanced at himself in each mirror when, departing, he crossed the long length of her drawing-room at Queen’s Lodge.
The pretty Maid-of-Honour and the already foresworn widower duly met over Kitty’s bohea, next afternoon. Sir Jasper duly fell head over heels in love; and before the week was out, they were engaged to be married. Royalty approved, my Lady Ongar gave her consent with tears of joy; and both Susan Verney and Ann Day sent cool sisterly sanction.
Having secured her victim Kitty prepared herself to enjoy every moment of the delightful process of decking her for the sacrifice. What woman but does not feel that in the trousseau lies the true inward satisfaction of the bridal state? To a benevolent heart like my Lady Kilcroney’s the choice of Lady Selina’s garments, the proper expenditure of the funds entrusted to her for the purpose by the widowed mother offered a task in which duty went hand in hand with delight. Generous soul that she was, she promptly decided to supplement the Dowager’s exiguous allotment by a contribution of her own: secretly, so as not to hurt the poor child’s feelings,but to an extent which should in her estimation befit the wedding of a maid-of-honour under the protection of the Lady Kilcroney.
Needless to add that to bring Selina to Pamela Pounce was almost the first of her desires as self-elected Fairy Godmother. Who but Pamela indeed, could set out a Bride so that her appearance on the great morning should be an event in the world of Fashion? Pamela under Kitty’s instructions—there never was such a combination of intellect!
My Lady Kilcroney as she drove up through the bright sunshine from Windsor was filled with anticipations so agreeable and exciting that she had little thought to spare for the silence and irresponsiveness of the girl beside her.
Selina had a delicious little countenance, even though she was sulking heavily; so when her glance strayed reflectively upon her my Lady found nothing in the contemplation to disturb her equanimity.
It was the first time in its annals that the House of Mirabel beheld a carriage with the Royal liveries halt before its portals, and the flutter in its discreet walls was indescribable.
Madame Mirabel herself catching sight of the scarlet splendour, through the first floor window, was seized with the trembles, and had to send Miss Clara Smithson for a glass of ratafia out of the back parlour cupboard before she could control her limbs sufficiently to walk downstairs. It was true that her immense agitation was promptly allayed by Miss Polly Popple, who put her head in at the door to say:
“It’s only my Lady Kilcroney after all, what’s brought a pale Miss for a wedding hat. So don’t you put yourself about, Madame Mirabel, and Miss Pounce that cool it don’t look as if her opinions were what they ought to be, and gracious goodness where is the roll of silver ribbon came from Lyons? I laid it out of my hand, Clara, when I ran up a while ago about Mrs. Lafone’s bill,and him giving all sorts in the showroom. I wouldn’t be married to an elderly gentleman what’s miserly not for—where’s the silver ribbon for mercy’s sake? There’s the bell going after me like mad. Thank you, dear. Don’t put yourself about, Madame Mirabel—who ever told you it was the Queen! It’s only my Lady Kilcroney—drat it, there it goes again—I’m coming.”
Pamela Pounce had caught a glimpse of Kitty’s dainty profile behind the misleading scarlet as the Queen’s barouche halted; and it was with her usual graceful self-composure that she swam forward to curtsy to her patroness. Four steps and a nicely graduated obeisance, with just an undulation which included my Lady’s companion, Pamela had a perfect command of the correct attitude. Then she waved her hand.
“Chairs, Miss Popple. Pray be seated, ladies.”
Then, with a pretty spring of alacrity in manner and voice, a most respectful yet delightfully confidential approach to familiarity:
“And what can I show your Ladyship to-day?” cried she. “There’s the sweetest head, a twist of cherry tulle with a bunch of green grapes, just come from Paris—made for your Ladyship.”
Kitty waved the tempting suggestion on one side. “Nothing for me to-day, my dear creature. I’ve brought Lady Selina.”
Selina, who had entered, stood and sat down like an automaton with every reason to be dissatisfied with its surroundings, here gave her patroness a steely look of enmity, and then cast down her eyes so that their long eyelashes cast a shadow on her white cheek.
Pamela appraised the small set face and Kitty proceeded to expound; “The fact is, Miss Pounce, I am here with Lady Selina for a wedding order.”
“Indeed, my Lady.”
“Yes, indeed,” cried Kitty, warming to her subject, “the wedding hat, no less, child, and the going away! Oh! And a head for the dinner party I mean to givein honour of the engagement. Princess Augusta has promised to attend. And the wedding is to take place from my house in Hertford Street, Pamela, the very moment May is over. What with my Lady Verney having a feeling about the mourning, and my Lady Anne Day so set about with measles in her nursery, there isn’t anyone as near to this dear girl as myself, if it’s reckoned by old friendship.”
Here Kitty paused for breath and after duly waiting for Lady Selina to express some acknowledgments of these handsome sentiments, Pamela, in the young person’s persistent mutism, was fain to remark that there was no one like her Ladyship for kindness, that she knew. And though this was but a deferential murmur, there was conviction in it. Pamela had every reason for this testimony.
Kitty glanced askance at the bride’s most unbride-like countenance; she faintly shrugged her shoulders. None of the Verekers had good tempers and she was not going even to notice Selina’s moods.
“A wedding hat.”
Pamela pondered upon the bride, while her quick brains worked.
(“Dear to be sure, the poor young lady! One would think ’twas her funeral things they were getting together. Who are they going to marry her to? And why is my Lady Kilcroney managing it all, and that mortal tickled?) I wouldn’t recommend white satin for my Lady Selina,” she said out loud, “though I know it’s the usual thing, my Lady. And if I might venture, it wouldn’t do to be putting dead white next her face. No, my Lady Kilcroney, no, my Lady Selina, not if you was to rouge ever so andthatwould be a thousand pities; my Lady’s skin is a treat to look at. And it’s hercachetto be pale with those dark eyes—excuse me, my Lady, for dropping into French, it’s a way I got into in Paris. Now I’d like lace.” The milliner spoke slowly as if she were tasting one by one, the condiments of an exquisite dish. “Afine brim of real lace, my lady, with a tulle lining, three layers of tulle, and the middle one pale pink. Oh, pale, pale, pale.” Pamela twiddled her fingers in the air, mitigating the colour till it faded into nothingness. “The tint they’re calling in Paris,cuisse de nymphe émue. Excuse me, my Lady, I won’t be so bold as to translate it. Yes, your Ladyship, the French have droll minds! But your Ladyship has seized the idea; not pink, but just a warmth, a lightening of the white, ’twill be exquisite. A twist of silver ribbon to hold it together—Miss Popple, where’s that silver ribbon that came from Lyons? I have a model here,” went on Pamela, stooping to pull out one of the deep drawers of the cupboard which ran the length of the room, and in which the most special treasures in the millinery line were hidden away from the ordinary public, only to be brought out for the favoured. “I have a model here which is the very latest, out of Paris. It’ll never be seen at all, so to speak, till next month, and that on a Queen’s head.”
Queen Charlotte’s Lady-in-waiting sprang up and tripped across the carpet to stand by the milliner’s side.
“It must be worth while for a female of Fashion,” my Lady was thinking, “to have a post about Queen Marie Antoinette, always the first in the land in modes and in looks as in everything else.”
Now Lady Selina Vereker, hearing the two women whisper as they stood together, lifted her eyes and watched and hearkened very intently.
“The young lady’s just engaged I take it,” said Pamela, shaking the tissue paper from a cobweb vision of blue tulle and lace.
“’Twas only ratified by Lady Ongar last night, from her retreat at Wimbledon. (They say it’s a convent of nuns my dear, but ’tis not generally known.)”
“Dear, to be sure, the poor lady!”
Here Kitty lowered her voice, but Selina’s irately keen ears caught the murmur.
“Sadly ill-provided for. My Lord Ongar’s affairs ina desperate state. Hardly a brass farthing between the three poor girls! A most prodigious relief to have the third settled.”
Then Pamela’s clear compassionate undertone.
“I trust the young lady is happy in her choice, so young as she looks.”
The milliner’s eye wandered to the Bride-elect and met her darkling gaze.
“Why, that goes without saying,” exclaimed my Lady tartly, “since I made the match, Miss Pounce. Sir Jasper Standish is one of my Lord’s oldest friends.”
“Sir Jasper Standish! Good God!” Pamela started and wheeled round. She echoed the words in accents which left no doubt as to the consternation evoked by the name.
Her face was reflected in the glass in front of her, and Selina had a vision of its blasted expression of horror and disapproval.
The next moment Miss Pounce had resumed her usual bland self-control, and was bending over the French hat, feigning to be absorbed in twitching its knotted ribbons into place.
“Upon my word, Miss Pounce,” exclaimed Kitty, in high surprise and anger. “And what have you got against Sir Jasper Standish, may I ask, that you should couple his name with such impiety?”
“Oh, nothing, my Lady, nothing!”
Pamela’s hands trembled as she twitched the faint pink ribbons. “Nothing but a bit of a business trouble between my father and Sir Jasper, our place being all but next door to Standish Hall—I crave your Ladyship’s pardon, I’m sure, for letting my feelings go away with me,—but Sir Jasper was hard on father over a mortgage.”
“Oh! a mortgage! Pish, child!” Kitty was immensely relieved, though she could not conceal that she considered it a great liberty in a milliner thus to obtrude her family affairs upon the notice of distinguished clients. She had not so very high an opinion of Jasper herself,and Pamela was a prodigious handsome girl! She had been actually trembling over what might have come out!
My Lady’s manner for the rest of theséancecomically varied between a dignified displeasure and the overwhelming fascination exercised by the milliner’s supreme talent.
Lady Selina submitted to all the trying-on and listened to the prolonged discussions with the same demeanour of angry martyrdom which she had brought into the shop.
“You’ve been insufferable, my dear!” cried Kitty, patience giving way at length, as the sleek royal horses started on their homeward way.
Selina turned her long, brilliant eyes upon her companion without speaking. There was a pert question and an underlying significance in them, which further exasperated the chaperone.
“’Pon honour!” exploded Kitty, “I marvel what’s to do with you. You, with everything the world can give you, and three as sweet hats chosen as ever I’ve seen in my whole life! Such a picture as you’ll look, a Bride, with your mother’s lace and all! and by the airs of you, you might have been trying on sackcloth to go to the stake.”
“You must remember, my Lady Kilcroney, that I am in mourning.”
“Psha!”
“And Sir Jasper a widower himself.”
“And what of that, child?”
“Oh, nothing,” said Selina. “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
Kitty looked at her long and earnestly. Was there ever such a little shut-up countenance, such obstinate close lips and such naughty secret eyes?
“I wish to Heaven,” she said, at last, “that you’d say what you’ve got in your heart, child.”
“Oh, I was just thinking about Miss Pamela Pounce!”
“And what of her?”
My Lady still uneasily remained cross.
“Oh, I only thought she looked honest!” said the girl. And not one other word to the purpose could my Lady Kilcroney extract from her.
They drove into Windsor in a strained silence and separated to their divers duties in no very cordial mood.
Kind-hearted people in positions of authority are apt to fall into the danger of doing good to their neighbours in spite of themselves. They see so clearly the value of the benefits they mean to confer, that fate having given them the power to enforce their acceptance, they do not hesitate to wield it. With the best intentions in the world they become tyrants. Kitty had a real desire to be of use to the orphan, and she was quite sure that the plans she had laid for her were entirely for her comfort and well-being. In any case matters had gone too far for Selina, even to dream of such a catastrophe as a withdrawal of her word.
The Maid-of-Honour had accepted Sir Jasper of her own free will. If she had secretly repented, if she chose to sulk and make a martyr of herself, Kitty knew better than to encourage her by seeming to notice it. And my Lady told herself that the moods of such a chit were of no account. She was too fresh out of the schoolroom to stand so much promotion all together—Maid-of-Honour, Bride-elect, the pet of royalty, all in a couple of months—a little spoilt cat, and if she scratched Jasper ’twould but do him a vast of good.
Nevertheless, my lady Kilcroney felt slightly uncomfortable until she next beheld the engaged couple together. Then, indeed—it was the next evening after their shopping drive to London, in my Lady’s own rooms—Selina appeared to have completely forgotten her gloomy fit. The child was in outrageous spirits, with quite scarlet cheeks, taunting and mocking her ardent lover, till he was beside himself.
Kitty forbore rebuke. In her relief she was full ofindulgence towards behaviour which, at another time, she would have severely reprobated.
“My dear love,” she wrote to her husband that night. She was still in attendance at Windsor and Denis, very much injured, was alone at Hertford Street. “Everything is going as well as possible. Do not forget to call on Mr. Gunter’s about the wedding cake and on Mr. Bartolozzi about the tickets of invitation.”
Could she have known how Lady Selina had employed the afternoon of that very day, the poor Lady-in-Waiting would have issued very different instructions.
For Selina had obtained leave from her “Royal” to go to town about her trousseau. The Princess Augusta, all blandness and good nature, offered every facility, even to her own carriage.
How grateful was Lady Selina! But “Oh, no, Ma’am,” she pleaded, “it makes me feel so horrid shy! There we were yesterday, my Lady Kilcroney and I, in one of the Queen’s barouches and every one turning round and staring at us, and oh! so disappointed, Ma’am, not to see the Royal faces. My mother is sending her own maid for me, and we’ll take a chaise and Sister Verney will meet me in the town.”
Princess Augusta looked very kindly at the child. She liked her modest disclaimer and the little flattery it wrapped about, and it all sounded very proper and becoming. How could she guess that Selina was lying like a little devil, that the audacious creature would positively set out from the consecrated precincts of Queen’s Lodge alone, take the common coach to town and proceed on foot to Bond Street; in a kind of disguise indeed, a plain bonnet, borrowed off a Royal housemaid, which had a brown gauze veil to drop over her face, so that she might have passed her own mother in the street and not been known!
The cunning girl watched her opportunity and slipped into Miss Pounce’s showroom at a slack moment. Asshe flung back her veil Pamela’s colour changed; she saw who it was.
Selina walked quite close up to her and the two stood a moment staring at each other. The milliner was too acute not to feel the moment big with importance, and too shrewd not to guess at the cause.
“What did you mean,” said Selina then, “by saying yesterday like that: ‘Sir Jasper! good God!’?”
Pamela was not often taken-to, but she felt herself in a most disagreeable fix.
“La!” she faltered. “I could have bitten my tongue out. I can only ask your pardon.”
“I want you to answer my question. What did you mean?”
Pamela, who had been growing pale, grew paler.
“Father had trouble with him over a mortgage.”
“Oh, tush with your mortgage! That’s only a bit of trumpery. It wasn’t the mortgage. You know something of Sir Jasper.”
The milliner hesitated: then she tossed her head.
“And if I do, my Lady? There! There ain’t anything for you to suspect me about, I do assure you.”
“Oh, I don’t suspect you!” cried Selina wildly. “I see you hate him! I hate him myself! I haven’t anyone to help me. What do you know of him?”
“Nothing that would count as against a gentleman’s honour,” said Pamela bitterly, recalling, with an inward shudder, the vile trick that had been played upon her, and the narrowness of her escape.
Selina caught the working-woman’s two capable hands.
“I won’t get you into a scandal! I know you’ve got your bread to earn. I’ll never mention your name or let anyone guess! I promise! I promise! Look here, I’ll put it differently: if you were me, would you marry Sir Jasper Standish?”
Pamela drew a long breath and the truth leaped.
“I’d see myself dead rather!”
The absurdity of the phrase did not detract from its effectiveness.
“Ah!” cried Selina. “Thank you! That’s all I wanted to know.”
She wrung the hands she had caught, whisked her veil over her flushed countenance and turned to leave. On the threshold of the shop she paused and flung back a quick reassurance.
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll never betray you!” which Miss Polly Popple, overhearing, promptly carried to the awestruck ears of Miss Clara Smithson.
“There’s a low-class girl just been in the showroom blackmailing Miss Pounce and gone off Heaving knows with how much hushmoney! ‘I won’t betray you,’ says she. And Miss Pounce looking after her, that distraught; you’d think she’d seen a ghost.”
“Ah! my dear,” said Miss Smithson. “Retribution is gathering over that abandoned creature’s head.”