those exquisite lips but guessed, as Elsa described the appearance of
her dream-defender, her shining Knight, and sank upon her knees in an
ecstasy of passionate prayer, that the celestial deliverer was at that
moment gasping in the agonies of indigestion!
“Let me behold
That form of light!”
entreated the maiden; and amidst the exclamations of the eight-part
chorus the swan-drawn bark approached the bank; the noble, if somewhat
fleshy, form of Alberto Fumaroli, clad from head to foot in silvery
mail, stepped from it.... With lofty grace he waved his adieu to the
swan, he launched upon his opening strain of unaccompanied melody....
Alas! how muffled, how farinaceous those once clarion tones!... In
labored accents, amid the growing disappointment of the Smutchester
audience, Lohengrin announced his mission to the King. As he folded the
entranced Elsa to his oppressed bosom, crying:
“Elsa, I love thee!”
“She-devil, you have ruined me!” he hissed in the De Melzi’s ear.
“My hope, my solace,
My hero, I am thine!”
Teresa trilled in answer. And raising her love-illumined, mischievously
dancing eyes to her deliverer, breathed in his ear: “Try pepsin!”
“FREDDY & C^{IE}”
It is always a perplexing question how to provide for younger sons, and
the immediate relatives of the Honorable Freddy Foulkes had forfeited a
considerable amount of beauty sleep in connection with the problem.
“My poor darling!” the Marchioness of Glanmire sighed one day, more in
sorrow than in anger, when the Honorable Freddy brought his charming
smile and his graceful but unemployed person into her morning-room. “If
you could only find some congenial and at the same time lucrative post
that would take up your time and absorb your spare energy, how grateful
I should be!”
“I have found it,” said the Honorable Freddy, with his cherubic smile.
He possessed the blonde curling hair and artless expression that may be
symbolical of guilelessness or the admirable mask of guile.
“Thank Heaven!” breathed his mother. Then, with a sense that the
thanksgiving might, after all, be premature, she inquired: “But of what
nature is this post? Before it can be seriously considered, one must be
certain that it entails no loss of caste, demands nothing derogatory in
the nature of service from one who—I need not remind you of your
position, or of the fact that your family must be considered.”
She smoothed her darling’s silky hair, which exhaled the choicest
perfume of Bond Street, and kissed his brow, as pure and shadowless as a
slice of cream cheese, as the young man replied:
“Dearest mother, you certainly need not.”
“Then tell me of this post. Is it anything,” the Marchioness asked, “in
the Diplomatic line?”
“Without a good deal of diplomacy a man would be no good for the shop,”
admitted Freddy; “but otherwise, your guess is out.”
Doubt darkened his mother’s eyes.
“Don’t say,” she exclaimed, “that you have accepted a Club
Secretaryship? To me it seems the last resource of the unsuccessful
man.”
“It will never be mine,” said Freddy, “because I can’t keep accounts,
and they wouldn’t have me. Try again.”
“I trust it has nothing to do with Art,” breathed the Marchioness, who
loathed the children of canvas and palette with an unreasonable
loathing.
“In a way it has,” replied her son, “and in another way it hasn’t. Come!
I’ll give you a lead. There is a good deal of straw in the business for
one thing.”
“You cannot contemplate casting in your lot with the agricultural
classes? No! I knew the example of your unhappy cousin Reginald would
prevent you from adopting so wild a course ... but you spoke of straw.”
“Of straw. And flowers. And tulles.”
“Flowers and tools! Gardening is a craze which has become fashionable of
late. But I cannot calmly see you in an apron, potting plants.”
“It is not a question of potting plants, but of potting customers,” said
Freddy, showing his white teeth in a charming smile.
A shudder convulsed Freddy’s mother. Freddy went on, filially patting
her handsome hand:
“You see, I have decided, and gone into trade. If I were a wealthy cad,
I should keep a bucket-shop. Being a poor gentleman, I am going to make
a bonnet-shop keep me. And, what is more—I intend to trim all the
bonnets myself!”
There was no heart disease upon the maternal side of the house. The
Marchioness did not become pale blue, and sink backwards, clutching at
her corsage. She rose to her feet and boxed her son’s right ear. He
calmly offered the left one for similar treatment.
“Don’t send me out looking uneven,” he said simply. “If I pride myself
upon anything, it is a well-balanced appearance. And I have to put in an
hour or so at the shop by-and-by.” He glanced in the mantel-mirror as he
spoke, and observing with gratification that his immaculate necktie had
escaped disarrangement, he twisted his little mustache, smiled, and knew
himself irresistible.
“The shop! Degenerate boy!” cried his mother. “Who is your partner in
this—this enterprise?”
“You know her by sight, I think,” returned the cherub coolly. “Mrs.
Vivianson, widow of the man who led the Doncaster Fusiliers to the top
of Mealie Kop and got shot there. Awfully fetching, and as clever as
they make them!”
“That woman one sees everywhere with a positive _procession_ of young
men at her heels!”
“That woman, and no other.”
“She is hardly——”
“She is awfully _chic_, especially in mourning.”
“I will admit she has some style.”
“_Admit_, when you and all the other women have copied the color of her
hair and the cut of her sleeves for three seasons past! I like that!”
Freddy was growing warm.
“When you accuse me of imitating the appearance of a person of that
kind,” said Lady Glanmire, in a cold fury, “you insult your mother. And
when you ally yourself with her in the face of Society, as you are about
to do, you are going too far. As to this millinery establishment, it
shall not open.”
“My dear mother,” said Freddy, “it has been open for a week.”
He drew a card from an exquisite case mounted in gold. On the pasteboard
appeared the following inscription in neat characters of copperplate:—
FREDDY & C^{IE}
COURT MILLINERS,
11, CONDOVER STREET, W.
“Freddy and Company!” murmured the stricken parent, as she perused the
announcement.
“Mrs. V. is company,” observed the son, with a spice of vulgarity; “and
uncommonly good company, too. As for myself, my talents have at last
found scope, and millinery is my _métier_. How often haven’t you said
that no one has such exquisite taste in the arrangement of flowers——”
“As you, Freddy! It is true! But——”
“Haven’t you declared, over and over again, that you have never had a
maid who could put on a mantle, adjust a fold of lace, or pin on a toque
as skillfully as your own son?”
“My boy, I own it. Still, millinery as a profession? Can you call it
_quite_ manly for a man?”
“To spend one’s life in arranging combinations to set off other women’s
complexions. Can you call that womanly for a woman? To my mind,” pursued
Freddy, “it is the only occupation for a man of real refinement. To
crown Beauty with beauty! To dream exquisite confections, which shall
add the one touch wanting to exquisite youth or magnificent middle-age!
To build up with deft touches a creation which shall betray in every
detail, in every effect, the hand of a genius united to the soul of a
lover, and reap not only gold, but glory! Would this not be Fame?”
“Ah! I no longer recognize you. You do not talk like your dear old
self!” cried the Marchioness.
“I am glad of it,” replied Freddy, “for, frankly, I was beginning to
find my dear old self a bore.” He drew out a watch, and his monogram and
crest in diamonds scintillated upon the case. His eye gleamed with proud
triumph as he said: “Ten to twelve. At twelve I am due at Condover
Street. Come, not as my mother, if you are ashamed of my profession, but
as a customer ashamed of that bonnet” (Lady Glanmire was dressed for
walking), “which you ought to have given to your cook long ago. Unless
you would prefer your own brougham, mine is at the door.”
The vehicle in question bore the smartest appearance. The Marchioness
entered it without a murmur, and was whirled to Condover Street. The
name of Freddy & Cie. appeared in a delicate flourish of golden letters
above the chastely-decorated portals of the establishment, and the
plate-glass window contained nothing but an assortment of plumes,
ribbons, chiffons, and shapes of the latest mode, but not a single
completed article of head apparel.
The street was already blocked with carriages, the vestibule packed, the
shop thronged with a vast and ever-increasing assemblage of women,
amongst whom Lady Glanmire recognized several of her dearest friends.
She wished she had not come, and looked for Freddy. Freddy had vanished.
His partner, Mrs. Vivianson, a vividly-tinted, elegant brunette of some
thirty summers, assisted by three or four charming girls, modestly
attired and elegantly _coiffée_, was busily engaged with those would-be
customers, not a few, who sought admission to the inner room, whose pale
green _portière_ bore in gold letters of embroidery the word _atelier_.
“You see,” she was saying, “to the outer shop admission is _quite_ free.
We are charmed to see everybody who likes to come, don’t you know? and
show them the latest shades and shapes and things. But consultation with
Monsieur Freddy—we charge five shillings for that. Unusual? Perhaps. But
Monsieur Freddy is Monsieur Freddy!” And her shrug was worthy of a
Parisienne. “Why do you ask? ‘Is it true that he is the younger son of
the Duke of Deershire?’ Dear Madame, to _us_ he is Monsieur Freddy; and
we seek no more.”
“A born tradeswoman!” thought Lady Glanmire, as the silver coins were
exchanged for little colored silk tickets bearing mystic numbers. She
moved forward and tendered two half-crowns; and Freddy’s partner and
Freddy’s mother looked one another in the face. But Mrs. Vivianson
maintained an admirable composure.
And then the curtains of the _atelier_ parted, and a young and pretty
woman came out quickly. She was charmingly dressed, and wore the most
exquisite of hats, and a murmur went up at sight of it. She stretched
out her hands to a friend who rushed impulsively to meet her, and her
voice broke in a sob of rapture.
“Did you ever see anything so _sweet_? And he did it like magic—one
scarcely saw his fingers move!” she cried; and her friend burst into
exclamations of delight, and a chorus rose up about them.
“_Wonderful!_”
“_Extraordinary!_”
“_He does it while you wait!_”
“_Just for curiosity, I really must!_”
And a wave of eager women surged towards the green _portière_. Three
went in, being previously deprived of their headgear by the respectful
attendants, who averred that it put Monsieur Freddy’s taste out of gear
for the day to be compelled to gaze upon any creation other than his
own. And then it came to the turn of Lady Glanmire.
She, disbonneted, entered the sanctum. A pale, clear, golden light
illumined it from above; the walls were hung with draperies of delicate
pink, the carpet was moss-green. In the center of the apartment, upon a
broad, low divan, reclined the figure of a slender young man. He wore a
black satin mask, concealing the upper part of his face, a loose,
lounging suit of black velvet, and slippers of the same with the
embroidered initial “F.” Round him stood, mute and attentive as slaves,
some half-dozen pretty young women, bearing trays of trimmings of every
conceivable kind. In the background rose a grove of stands supporting
hat-shapes, bonnet-shapes, toque-foundations, the skeletons of every
conceivable kind of headgear.
Silent, the Marchioness stood before her disguised son.
He gently put up his eyeglass, to accommodate which aid to vision his
mask had been specially designed, and motioned her to the sitter’s
chair, so constructed that with a touch of Monsieur Freddy’s foot upon a
lever it would revolve, presenting the customer from every point of
view. He touched the lever now, and chair and Marchioness spun slowly
around. But for the presence of the young ladies with their trays of
flowers, plumes, gauzes, and ribbons, Freddy’s mother could have
screamed. All the while Freddy remained silent, absorbed in
contemplation, as though trying to fix upon his memory features seen for
the first time. At last he spoke.
“Tall,” he said, “and inclined to a becoming _embonpoint_. The eyes
blue-gray, the hair of auburn touched with silver, the features, of the
Anglo-Roman type, somewhat severe in outline, the chin——A hat to suit
this client”—he spoke in a sad, sweet, mournful voice—“would cost five
guineas. A Marquise shape, of broadtail”—one of the young lady
attendants placed the shape required in the artist’s hands—“the brim
lined with a rich drapery of chenille and silk.... Needle and thread,
Miss Banks. Thank you....” His fingers moved like white lightning as he
deftly wielded the feminine implement and snatched his materials from
the boxes proffered in succession by the girls. “Black and white tips of
ostrich falling over one side from a ring of cut steel,” he continued in
the same dreamy tone. “A knot of point d’Irlande, with a heart of
Neapolitan violets, and”—he rose from the divan and lightly placed the
beautiful completed fabric upon the Marchioness’s head—“here is your
hat, Madame. Five guineas. Good-morning. Next, please!”
Emotion choked his mother’s utterance. At the same moment she saw
herself in the glass silently swung towards her by one of the
attendants, and knew that she was suited to a marvel. She made her exit,
paid her five guineas, and returned home, embarrassed by the discovery
that there was an artist in the family.
One thing was clear, no more was to be said. The _Maison Freddy_ became
the morning resort of the smart world; it was considered the thing to
have hats made while Society waited. True, they came to pieces easily,
not being copper-nailed and riveted, so to speak; but what poems they
were! The charming conversation of Monsieur Freddy, the half-mystery
that veiled his identity, as his semi-mask partially concealed his fair
and smiling countenance, added to the attractions of the Condover Street
_atelier_.
Money rolled in; the banking account of the partners grew plethoric; and
then Mrs. Vivianson, in spite of the claims of the business upon her
time, in spite of the Platonic standpoint she had up to the present
maintained in her relations with Freddy, began to be jealous.
“Or—no! I will not admit that such a thing is possible!” she said, as
she looked through some recent entries in the day-book of the firm. “But
that American millionairess girl comes too often. She has bought a hat
every day for three weeks past. Good for business in one way, but bad
for it in another. If he should marry, what becomes of the _Maison
Freddy_?”
She sighed and passed between the curtains. It was the slack time after
luncheon, and Freddy was enjoying a moment’s interval. Stretched on his
divan, his embroidered slippers elevated in the air, he smoked a
perfumed cigarette surrounded by the materials of his craft. He smiled
at Mrs. Vivianson as she entered, and then raised his aristocratic
eyebrows in surprise.
“Has anything gone wrong? You swept in as tragically as my mother when
she comes to disown me. She does it regularly every week, and as
regularly takes me on again.” He exhaled a scented cloud, and smiled
once more.
“Freddy,” said Mrs. Vivianson, going direct to the point, “this little
speculation of ours has turned out very well, hasn’t it?”
“Beyond dreams!” acquiesced Freddy. She went on:
“You came to me a penniless detrimental, with a talent of which nobody
guessed that anything could be made. I gave this gift a chance to
develop. I set you on your legs, and——”
“_Me voici!_ You don’t want me to rise up and bless you, do you?” said
Freddy, with half-closed eyes. “Thanks awfully, you know, all the same!”
“I don’t know that I want thanks, quite,” said Mrs. Vivianson. “I’ve had
back every penny that I invested, and pulled off a bouncing profit. Your
share amounts to a handsome sum. In a little while you’ll be able to pay
your debts.”
“I shall never do that!” said Freddy, with feeling.
“Marry, and leave me—perhaps,” went on Mrs. Vivianson. A shade swept
over her face, her dark eyes glowed somberly, the lines of her mouth
hardened.
“Keep as you are!” cried Freddy, rebounding to a sitting position on the
divan.
“Where’s that new Medici shape in gold rice-straw and the amber _crêpe
chiffon_, and the orange roses with crimson hearts?” His nimble fingers
darted hither and thither, his eyes shone, and his cheeks were flushed
with the enthusiasm of the artist. “A tuft of black and yellow cock’s
feathers, _à la Mephistophele_,” he cried, “a topaz buckle, and it is
finished. You must wear with it a _jabot_ of yellow _point d’Alençon_.
It is the hat of hats for a jealous woman!”
“How dare you!” cried Mrs. Vivianson. But Freddy did not seem to hear
her—he was rapt in the contemplation of the new masterpiece; and as he
rose and gracefully placed it on his partner’s head, Miss Cornelia
Vanderdecken was ushered in. She was superbly beautiful in the
ivory-skinned, jetty-locked, slender American style, and she wore a hat
that Freddy had made the day before, which set off her charms to
admiration.
She occupied the sitter’s chair as Mrs. Vivianson glided from the room,
and Freddy’s blue eyes dwelt upon her worshipingly. To do him justice,
he had lost his heart before he learned that Cornelia was an heiress.
Now words escaped him that brought a faint pink stain to her ivory
cheek.
“Ah!” he cried impulsively, “you are ruining my business.”
“Oh, why, Monsieur Freddy? Please tell me!” asked Miss Vanderdecken,
with naïve curiosity.
“Because,” said Freddy, while a bright blush showed beyond the limits of
his black satin mask, “you are so beautiful that it is torture to make
hats for other women—since I have seen you.”
There was a pause. Then Miss Cornelia’s silk foundations rustled as she
turned resolutely toward the divan.
“I can’t return the compliment,” she said, “by telling you that it is
torture to me to wear hats made by any other man since I have seen you,
for other men don’t make hats, and I can’t really see you through that
thing you wear over your face. But——”
Her voice faltered, and Freddy, with a gesture, dismissed his lady
assistants. Then he removed his mask. Their eyes met, and Cornelia
uttered a faint exclamation.
“Oh my! You’re just like him!”
“Who is he?” asked Freddy.
“I can’t quite say, because I don’t know,” returned Cornelia; “but all
girls have their ideals, from the time they wear Swiss pinafores to the
time they wear forty-eight inch corsets; and I won’t deny”—her voice
trembled—“but what you fill the bill. My! What _are_ you doing?”
For Freddy had grasped his materials and was making a hat. It was of
palest blush tulle, with a crown of pink roses, and an aigrette of
flamingo plumes was fastened with a Cupid’s bow in pink topaz.
“Love’s first confession,” the young man murmured as he bit off the last
thread, “should be whispered beneath a hat like this.” And he gracefully
placed it on Cornelia’s raven hair.
Mrs. Vivianson, her ear to the keyhole of a side door, quivered from
head to foot with rage and jealousy. Time was when he, a penniless,
high-bred boy, had implored her to marry him. Now—her blood boiled at
the remembrance of the half hint, the veiled suggestion she had made,
that they should unite in a more intimate partnership than that already
consolidated. With her jealousy was mingled despair. As long as Freddy
and his hats remained the fashion, the shop would pay, and pay royally.
There had as yet occurred no abatement in the onflow of aristocratic
patronage. To avow his identity—never really doubted—to become an
engaged man, meant ruin to the business. The blood hummed in her head.
She clung to the door-handle and entered, as Freddy, with real grace and
eloquence, pleaded his suit.
“And you are really a Marquis’s second son, though you make hats for
money?” she heard Cornelia say. “I always guessed you had real old
English blood in you, from the tone of your voice and the shape of your
finger-nails, even when you wore a mask. And it seemed as though I
couldn’t do anything but buy hats. I surmised it was vanity at the time,
but now I guess it was—love!”
“My dearest!” said Freddy, bending his blonde head over her jeweled
hands. “My Cornelia! I will make you a hat every day when you are
married. Ah! I have it! You shall wear one of mine to go away in upon
the day we are wed, the inspiration of a bridegroom, thought out and
achieved between the church door and the chancel. What an idea for a
lover! What an advertisement for the shop!” His blue eyes beamed at the
thought.
But Cornelia’s face fell.
“I don’t know how to say it, dear, but we shall never be married. Poppa
is perfectly rocky on one point, and that is that the man I hitch up
with shall never have dabbled as much as his little finger in trade.
‘You have dollars enough to buy one of the real high-toned sort,’ he
keeps saying, ‘and if blood royal is to be got for money, Silas P.
Vanderdecken is the man to get it. So run along and play, little girl,
till the right man comes along.’ And I know he’ll say you’re the wrong
one!”
Freddy’s complexion, grown transparent from excess of emotion and lack
of exercise, paled to an ivory hue. His sedentary life had softened his
condition and unstrung his nerves. He adored Cornelia, and had looked
forward to a lifetime spent in adorning her beauty with bonnets of the
most becoming shapes and designs. Now that a coarse Transatlantic
millionaire with soft shirt-fronts and broad-leaved felt hats might step
in and shatter for ever his beautiful dream of union, bitter revulsion
seized him. He feared his fate. What was he? The second son of a poor
Marquis, with a particularly healthy elder brother. He looked upon the
chiffons, the flowers and the feathers that surrounded him, and felt
that the hopes of a heart reared upon so frail a basis were insecure
indeed. Then his old blood rallied to his heart, and he rose from the
divan and clasped the now tearful Cornelia to his breast.
“Go, my dearest,” he said, “tell all to your father—plead for me. Do not
write or wire—bring me his verdict to-morrow. Meanwhile I will compose
two hats. Each shall be a masterpiece—a swan-song of my Art. One is to
be worn if”—his voice broke—“if I am to be happy; the other if I am
fated to despair. Go now, for I must be alone to carry out my
inspiration.”
And Cornelia went. Then Freddy, sternly refusing to receive any more
customers that day, set himself to the completion of his task. Before
very long both hats were actualities. Hat Number One was an Empire shape
of dead-leaf beaver, the crown draped with dove-colored silk, a spray of
sere oak-leaves and rue in front, a fine scarf of black lace, partly to
veil the face of the wearer, thrown back over one side of the brim and
caught with a clasp of black pearls set in oxidized silver. It breathed
of chastened woe and temperate sadness, and was to be worn if Papa
Vanderdecken persisted in refusing to accept Freddy as a suitor.
But Hat Number Two! It was of the palest blue guipure straw, draped with
coral silk and Cluny lace. In front was a spray of moss rosebuds and
forget-me-nots, dove’s wings of burnished hues were set at either side.
It was the very hat to be worn by a bringer of joyful news, the ideal
hat under which might be appropriately exchanged the first kiss of
plighted passion. Upon it Freddy pinned a fairy-like card, white and
gold-edged.