"Do you suppose this is one of Tommy Dare's jokes?"
"H'm!" mused Henriette, and then she laughed. "It wouldn't be unlike
him, would it?"
"Not a bit, the naughty boy!" cried Mrs. Shadd. "That's it, Mrs. Van
Raffles, as certainly as we stand here. Suppose, just to worry him, we
never let on that anything out of the ordinary has happened, eh?"
"Splendid!" said Henriette, with enthusiasm. "Let's act as if all turned
out just as we expected, and, best of all, _never even mention it to
him, or to Bunderby his confederate, neither of us, eh_?"
"Never!" said Mrs. Shadd, rising and kissing Henriette good-bye. "That's
the best way out of it. If we did we'd be the laughing-stock of all
Newport. But some day in the distant future Tommy Dare would better look
out for Pauline Shadd, Mrs. Van Raffles."
And so it was agreed, and Henriette successfully landed Mrs. Shadd's
musicale.
Incidentally, Jockobinski was very affable and the function went off
well. Everybody was there and no one would for a moment have thought
that there was anything strange in the transfer of the scene from Onyx
House to Bolivar Lodge.
"Who wrote that letter, Henriette?" I asked late in the evening when
the last guest had gone.
"Who do you suppose, Bunny, my boy?" she asked with a grin. "Bunderby?"
"No," said I.
"You've guessed right," said Henriette.
As a postscript let me say that until he reads this I don't believe
Tommy Dare ever guessed what a successful joke he perpetrated upon Mrs.
Shadd and the fair Henriette. Even then I doubt if he realizes what a
good one it was on--everybody.
XI
THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. INNITT'S COOK
"It is curious, Bunny," said Henriette the other morning after an
unusually late breakfast, "to observe by what qualities certain of these
Newport families have arrived, as the saying is. The Gasters of course
belong at the top by patent right. Having invented American society, or
at least the machine that at present controls it, they are entitled to
all the royalties it brings in. The Rockerbilts got there all of a
sudden by the sheer lavishness of their entertainment and their ability
to give bonds to keep it up. The Van Varick Shadds flowed in through
their unquestioned affiliation with the ever-popular Delaware Shadds
and the Roe-Shadds of the Hudson, two of the oldest and most respected
families of the United States, reinforced by the Napoleonic qualities of
the present Mrs. Shadd in the doing of unexpected things. The Gullets,
thanks to the fact that Mrs. Gullet is the acknowledged mother-in-law of
three British dukes, two Italian counts, and a French marquis, are
safely anchored in the social haven where they would be, and the rumor
that Mrs. Gushington-Andrews has written a book that is a trifle risque
fixes her firmly in the social constellation--but the Innitts with only
eighty thousand dollars per annum, the Dedbroke-Hickses with nothing a
year, the Oliver-Sloshingtons with an income of judgments, the study of
their arrival is mighty interesting."
"It doesn't interest me much," quoth I. "Indeed, this American smart
set don't appeal to me either for its smartness or its setness."
"Bunny!" cried Henriette, with a silvery ripple of laughter. "Do be
careful. An epigram from you? My dear boy, you'll be down with
brain-fever if you don't watch out."
"Humph!" said I, with a shrug of my shoulders. "Neither you nor my dear
old friend Raffles ever gave me credit for any brains. I have a few,
however, which I use when occasion demands," I drawled.
"Well, don't waste them here, Bunny," laughed Henriette. "Save 'em for
some place where they'll be appreciated. Maybe in your old age you'll be
back in dear old London contributing to _Punch_ if you are careful of
your wits. But how do you suppose the Oliver-Sloshingtons ever got in
here?"
"He holds the divorce record I believe," said I. "He's been married to
four social leaders already, hasn't he?"
"Yes--"
"Well, he got into the swim with each marriage--so he's got a four-ply
grip," said I.
"And the Dedbroke-Hickses?" asked Henriette. "How do you account for
them?"
"Most attractive diners and weekenders," said I. "They got all the
laughs at your dinner to the Archbishop of Decanterbury, and their man
Smathers tells me they're the swellest things going at week-end parties
because of his ingenuity at cotillion leading and her undeniable charms
as a flirt. By Jove! she's that easy with men that even I tremble with
anxiety whenever she comes into the house."
"But how do they live?--they haven't a cent to their names," said
Henriette.
"Simplicity itself," said I. "He is dressed by his tailors and she by
her dressmaker; and as for food, they take home a suit-case full of it
from every house-party they attend. They're so gracious to the servants
that they don't have to think of tips; and as for Smathers, and Mrs.
Dedbroke-Hicks's maid, they're paid reporters on the staff of _The Town
Tattler_ and are willing to serve for nothing for the opportunities for
items the connection gives them."
"Well--I don't envy them in the least," said Henriette. "Poor things--to
be always taking and never giving must be an awful strain, though to be
sure their little trolley party out to Tiverton and back was
delightful--"
"Exactly; and with car-fare and sandwiches, and the champagne supplied
free by the importers, for the advertisement, it cost them exactly
twelve dollars and was set down as the jolliest affair of the season,"
said I. "I call that genius of a pretty high order. I wouldn't pity them
if I were you. They're happy."
"Mrs. Innitt, though--I envy her," said Henriette; "that is, in a way.
She has no conversation at all, but her little dinners are the swellest
things of the season. Never more than ten people at a time and
everything cooked to a turn."
"That's just it," said I. "I hear enough at the club to know just what
cinches Mrs. Innitt's position. It's her cook, that's what does it. If
she lost her cook she'd be Mrs. Outofit. There never were such pancakes,
such purees, such made dishes as that woman gets up. She turns hash into
a confection and liver and bacon into a delicacy. Corned-beef in her
hands is a discovery and her sauces are such that a bit of roast
rhinoceros hide tastes like the tenderest of squab when served by her.
No wonder Mrs. Innitt holds her own. A woman with a cook like Norah
Sullivan could rule an empire."
A moment later I was sorry I had spoken, for my words electrified her.
"_I must have her!_" cried Henriette.
"What, Mrs. Innitt?" I asked.
"No--her cook," said Henriette.
I stood aghast. Full of sympathy as I had always been with the projects
of Mrs. Van Raffles, and never in the least objecting on moral grounds
to any of her schemes of acquisition, I could not but think that this
time she proposed to go too far. To rob a millionaire of his bonds, a
national bank of its surplus, a philanthropist of a library, or a
Metropolitan Boxholder of a diamond stomacher, all that seemed
reasonable to me and proper according to my way of looking at it, but to
rob a neighbor of her cook--if there is any worse social crime than that
I don't know what it is.
"You'd better think twice on that proposition, Henriette," I advised
with a gloomy shake of the head. "It is not only a mean crime, but a
dangerous one to boot. Success would in itself bring ruin. Mrs. Innitt
would never forgive you, and society at large--"
"Society at large would dine with me instead of with Mrs. Innitt, that's
all," said Henriette. "I mean to have her before the season's over."
"Well, I draw the line at stealing a cook," said I, coldly. "I've robbed
churches and I've made way with fresh-air funds, and I've helped you in
many another legitimate scheme, but in this, Mrs. Van Raffles, you'll
have to go it alone."
"Oh, don't you be afraid, Bunny," she answered. "I'm not going to use
your charms as a bait to lure this culinary Phyllis into the Arcadia in
which you with your Strephonlike form disport yourself."
"You oughtn't to do it at all," said I, gruffly. "It's worse than
murder, for it is prohibited twice in the decalogue, while murder is
only mentioned once."
"What!" cried Henrietta "What, pray, does the decalogue say about cooks,
I'd like to know?"
"First, thou shalt not steal. You propose to steal this woman. Second,
thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's maid-servant. How many times does
that make?" I asked.
"Dear me, Bunny," said Henriette, "but you _are_ a little tuppenny
Puritan, aren't you? Anybody'd know you were the son of a clergyman!
Well, let me tell you, I sha'n't steal the woman, and I sha'n't covet
her. I'm just going to get her, that's all."
It was two weeks later that Norah Sullivan left the employ of Mrs.
Innitt and was installed in our kitchen; and, strange to relate, she
came as a matter of charity on Henriette's part--having been discharged
by Mrs. Innitt.
The Friday before Norah's arrival Henriette requested me to get her a
rusty nail, a piece of gravel from the drive, two hair-pins, and a steel
nut from the automobile.
"What on earth--" I began, but she shut me off with an imperious
gesture.
"Do as I tell you," she commanded. "You are not in on this venture." And
then apparently she relented. "But I'm willing to tell you just one
thing, Bunny"--here her eyes began to twinkle joyously--"I'm going to
Mrs. Innitt's to dinner to-morrow night--so look out for Norah by
Monday."
I turned sulkily away.
"You know how I feel on that subject," said I. "This business of going
into another person's house as a guest and inducing their servants to
leave is an infraction of the laws of hospitality. How would you like it
if Mrs. Gaster stole me away from you?"
Henriette's answer was a puzzling smile. "You are free to better your
condition, Bunny," she said. "But I am not going to rob Mrs. Innitt, as
I told you once before. She will discharge Norah and I will take her,
that's all; so do be a good boy and bring me the nail and gravel and the
hair-pins and the automobile nut."
I secured the desired articles for my mistress, and the next evening she
went to Mrs. Innitt's little dinner to Miss Gullet and her fiance, Lord
Dullpate, eldest son of the Duke of Lackshingles, who had come over to
America to avoid the scrutiny of the Bankruptcy Court, taking the absurd
objects with her. Upon her return at 2 A.M. she was radiant and
triumphant.
"I won out, Bunny--I won out!" she cried.
"How?" I inquired.
"Mrs. Innitt has discharged Norah, though I begged her not to," she
fairly sang.
"On what grounds?"
"Several," said Henriette, unfastening her glove. "To begin with, there
was a rusty nail in my clam cocktail, and it nearly choked me to death.
I tried hard to keep Mrs. Innitt from seeing what had happened, but she
is watchful if not brainy, and all my efforts went for naught. She was
much mortified of course and apologized profusely. All went well until
the fish, when one of the two hair-pins turned up in the pompano to the
supreme disgust of my hostess, who was now beginning to look worried.
Hair-pin number two made its debut in my timbale. This was too much for
the watchful Mrs. Innitt, self-poised though she always is, and despite
my remonstrances she excused herself from the table for a moment, and I
judge from the flushed appearance of her cheeks when she returned five
minutes later that somebody had had the riot act read to her somewhere.
"'I don't understand it at all, Mrs. Van Raffles,' she said with a
sheepish smile. 'Cook's perfectly sober. If anything of the kind ever
happens again she shall go.'"
"Even as Mrs. Innitt spoke I conveyed a luscious morsel of filet mignon
with mushrooms to my mouth and nearly broke my tooth on a piece of
gravel that went with it, and Norah was doomed, for although we all
laughed heartily, the thing had come to be such a joke, it was plain
from the expression of Mrs. Innitt's countenance that she was very, very
angry.
"'Forgive her this time for my sake, Mrs. Innitt,' I pleaded. 'After all
it is the little surprises that give zest to life.'"
"And you didn't have to use the automobile nut?" I asked, deeply
impressed with the woman's ingenuity.
"Oh yes," said Henriette. "As dinner progressed I thought it wise to
use it to keep Mrs. Innitt from weakening; so when the salad was passed
I managed, without anybody's observing it, to drop the automobile nut
into the bowl. The Duke of Snarleyow got it and the climax was capped.
Mrs. Innitt burst into a flood of tears and--well, to-morrow, Bunny,
Norah leaves. You will take her this ten-dollar bill from me, and tell
her that I am sorry she got into so much trouble on my account. Say that
if I can be of any assistance to her all she has to do is to call here
and I will do what I can to get her another place."
[Illustration: "ON HER WAY TO BARLY CHURCH I WAYLAID NORAH"]
With this Henriette retired and the next morning on her way to early
church I waylaid Norah. Her eyes were red with weeping, but a more
indignant woman never lived. Her discharge was unrighteous; Mrs. Innitt
was no lady; the butler was in a conspiracy to ruin her--and all that;
indeed, her mood was most receptive to the furtherance of Henriette's
plans. The ten-dollar bill was soothing, and indicated that my mistress
was a "foine woman" and "surely Norah would come 'round in the evening
to ask her aid."
"It's ruined I am unless somebody'll be good to me and give me a
riference, which Mrs. Innitt, bad cess to her, won't do, at all, at
all," she wailed, and then I left her.
She called that night, and two days later was installed in the Van
Raffles's kitchen.
A new treasure was added to the stores of our loot, but somehow or other
I have never been happy over the successful issue of the enterprise. I
can't quite make up my mind that it was a lady-like thing for Henriette
to do even in Newport.
XII
THE LAST ADVENTURE
I am bathed in tears. I have tried to write of my sensations, to tell
the story of the Last Adventure of Mrs. Van Raffles, in lucid terms,
but though my pen runs fast over the paper the ink makes no record of
the facts. My woe is so great and so deep that my tears, falling into
the ink-pot, turn it into a fluid so thin it will not mark the paper,
and when I try the pencil the words are scarce put down before
they're blotted out. And yet with all this woe I find myself a
multi-millionaire--possessed of sums so far beyond my wildest dreams of
fortune that my eye can scarce take in the breadth of all the figures.
My dollars coined into silver, placed on top of one another, would form
a bullion tower that would reach higher into the air than fifteen
superimposed domes of St. Peter's placed on top of seventeen spires of
Trinity on the summit of Mont Blanc. In five-pound notes laid side by
side they'd suffice to paper every scrap of bedroom wall in all the
Astor houses in the world, and invested in Amalgamated Copper they would
turn the system green with envy--and yet I am not happy. My well-beloved
Henriette's last adventure has turned my fortune into bitterest gall,
and plain unvarnished wormwood forms the finish of my interior, for she
is gone! I, amid the splendor of my new-found possessions, able to keep
not one but a hundred motor-cars, and to pay the chauffeur's fines, to
endow chairs in universities, to build libraries in every hamlet in the
land from Podunk to Richard Mansfield, to eat three meals a day and
lodge at the St. Regicide, and to evade my taxes without exciting
suspicion, am desolate and forlorn, for, I repeat, Henriette has gone!
The very nature of her last adventure by a successful issue has blown
out the light of my life.
_She has stolen Constant-Scrappe!_
If I could be light of heart in this tragic hour I would call this story
the Adventure of the Lifted Fiance, but that would be so out of key with
my emotions that I cannot bring myself to do it. I must content myself
with a narration of the simple facts of the lengths to which my
beloved's ambition led her, without frivolity and with a heavy heart.
Of course you know what all Newport has known for months, that the
Constant-Scrappes were seeking divorce, not that they loved one another
less, but that both parties to the South Dakota suit loved some one else
more. Colonel Scrappe had long been the most ardent admirer of Mrs.
Gushington-Andrews, and Mrs. Constant-Scrappe's devotion to young Harry
de Lakwitz had been at least for two seasons evident to any observer
with half an eye. Gushington-Andrews had considerately taken himself out
of the way by eloping to South Africa with Tottie Dimpleton of the
Frivolity Burlesquers, and Harry de Lakwitz's only recorded marriage had
been annulled by the courts because at the time of his wedding to the
forty-year-old housemaid of the Belleville Boarding-School for Boys at
Skidgeway, Rhode Island, he was only fifteen years of age. Consequently,
they both were eligible, and provided the Constant-Scrappes could be so
operated on by the laws of South Dakota as to free them from one
another, there were no valid reasons why the yearnings of these ardent
souls should not all be gratified. Indeed, both engagements had been
announced tentatively, and only the signing of the decree releasing the
Constant-Scrappes from their obligations to one another now stood in the
way of two nuptial ceremonies which would make four hearts beat as one.
Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's trousseau was ready, and that of the future
Mrs. de Lakwitz had been ordered; both ladies had received their
engagement rings when that inscrutable Henriette marked Constant-Scrappe
for her own. Colonel Scrappe had returned from Monte Carlo, having
broken the bank twice, and Henriette had met him at a little dinner
given in his honor by Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. He turned out to be a
most charming man, and it didn't require a much more keen perception
than my own to take in the fact that he had made a great impression upon
Henriette, though she never mentioned it to me until the final blow
came. I merely noticed a growing preoccupation in her manner and in her
attitude towards me, which changed perceptibly.
"I think, Bunny," she said to me one morning as I brought her marmalade
and toast, "that considering our relations to each other you should not
call me Henrietta. After all, you know, you are here primarily as my
butler, and there are some proprieties that should be observed even in
this Newport atmosphere."
"But," I protested, "am I no more than that? I am your partner, am I
not?"
"You are my business partner--not my social, Bunny," she said. "We must
not mix society and business. In this house I am mistress of the
situation; you are the butler--that is the precise condition, and I
think it well that hereafter you should recognize the real truth and
avoid over-familiarity by addressing me as Mrs. Van Raffles. If we
should ever open an office for our Burglary Company in New York or
elsewhere you may call me anything you please there. Here, however, you
must be governed by the etiquette of your environment. Let it be _Mrs._
Van Raffles hereafter."
"And is it to be Mr. Bunny?" I inquired, sarcastically.
Her response was a cold glance of the eye and a majestic sweep from the
room.
[Illustration: "HENRIETTE WAS TESTING THE FIFTY-THOUSAND-DOLLAR PIANO"]
That evening Colonel Scrappe called, ostensibly to look over the house
and as landlord to see if there was anything he could do to make it more
comfortable, and I, blind fool that I was for the moment, believed that
that was his real errand, and ventured to remind Henriette of the leak
in the roof, at which they both, I thought, exchanged amused glances,
and _he_ gravely mounted the stairs to the top of the house to look at
it. On our return, Henriette dismissed me and told me that she would not
require my services again during the evening. Even then my suspicions
were not aroused, although there was a dull, disturbed feeling about my
heart whose precise causes I could not define. I went to the club and
put in a miserable evening, returning home about midnight to discover
that Colonel Scrappe was still there. He was apparently giving the house
and its contents a thorough inspection, for when I arrived, Henriette
was testing the fifty-thousand-dollar piano in the drawing-room for him
with a brilliant rendering of "O Promise Me." What decision they reached
as to its tone and quality I never knew, for in spite of my hints on the
subject, Henriette never spoke of the matter to me. I suppose I should
have begun to guess what was happening under my very nose then, but
thank Heaven I am not of a suspicious nature, and although I didn't like
the looks of things, the inevitable meaning of their strange behavior
never even dawned upon my mind. Even when two nights later Colonel
Scrappe escorted Henriette home at midnight from a lecture on the
Inscrutability of Sartor Resartus at Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's it did
not strike me as unusual, although, instead of going home immediately,
as most escorts do under the circumstances, he remained about two hours
testing that infernal piano again, and with the same old tune.
Then the automobile rides began, and pretty nearly every morning, long
before polite society was awake, Colonel Scrappe and Henriette took long
runs together through the country in her Mercedes machine, for what
purpose I snever knew, for whatever interest the colonel might have had
in our welfare as a landlord I could not for the life of me guess how it
could be extended to our automobiles. One thing I did notice, however,
was a growing coldness between Henriette and Mrs. Gushington-Andrews.
The latter came to a card-party at Bolivar Lodge one afternoon about two
weeks after Colonel Scrappe's return, and her greeting to her hostess
instead of having the old-time effusiveness was frigid to a degree. In
fact, when they clasped hands I doubt if more than the tips of their
fingers touched. Moreover, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, hitherto considered
one of the best fists at bridge or hearts in the 400, actually won the
booby prize, which I saw her throw into the street when she departed. It
was evident something had happened to disturb her equanimity.
My eyes were finally opened by a remark made at the club by Digby,
Reggie de Pelt's valet, who asked me how I liked my new boss, and whose
explanation of the question led to a complete revelation of the true
facts in the case. Everybody knew, he said, that from the moment she had
met him Mrs. Van Raffles had set her cap for Colonel Scrappe, and that
meeting her for the first time he had fallen head over heels in love
with her even in the presence of his fiancee. Of course I hotly denied
Digby's insinuations, and we got so warm over the discussion that when I
returned home that night I had two badly discolored eyes, and
Digby--well, Digby didn't go home at all. Both of us were suspended from
the Gentleman's Gentleman's Club for four weeks for ungentleman's
ungentlemanly behavior in consequence. Black as my eyes were, however, I
was on hand at the breakfast-table the following morning, and of course
Henriette observed my injuries.
"Why, Bunny!" she cried. "What is the meaning of this? Have you been
fighting?"
"Oh no, Mrs. Van Raffles," I returned, sarcastically, "I've just
strained my eyes reading the divorce news from South Dakota."
She gave a sudden start.
"What do you mean?" she demanded, her face flushing hotly.
"You know well enough what I mean," I retorted, angrily. "Your goings on
with Colonel Scrappe are the talk of the town, and I got these eyes in a
little discussion of your matrimonial intentions. That's all."
"Leave the room instantly!" she cried, rising and haughtily pointing to
the door. "You are insufferable."