Mrs. St. John Deloraine, whose letter to Mr. Cranley we have been
privileged to read, was no ordinary widow. As parts of her character and
aspects of her conduct were not devoid of the kind of absurdity which is
caused by virtues out of place, let it be said that a better, or kinder,
or gentler, or merrier soul than that of Mrs. St. John Deloraine has
seldom inhabited a very pleasing and pretty tenement of clay, and a
house in Cheyne Walk.
The maiden name of this lady was by no means so euphonious as that which
she had attained by marriage. Miss Widdicombe, of Chipping Carby, in the
county of Somerset, was a very lively, good-hearted and agreeable young
woman; but she was by no means favorably looked on by the ladies of the
County Families. Now, in the district around Chipping Carby, the County
Families are very County indeed, few more so. There is in their demeanor
a kind of _morgue_ so funereal and mournful, that it inevitably reminds
the observer (who is not County) of an edifice in Paris, designed by
Méryon, and celebrated by Mr. Robert Browning. The County Families near
Chipping Carby are far, far from gay, and what pleasure they do take,
they take entirely in the society of their equals. So determined are
they to drink delight of tennis with their peers, and with nobody else,
that even the Clergy are excluded, _ex officio_, and in their degrading
capacity of ministers of Religion, from the County Lawn Tennis Club. As
we all know how essential young curates fresh from college are to the
very being of rural lawn-tennis, no finer proof can be given of the
inaccessibility of the County people around Chipping Carby, and of the
sacrifices which they are prepared to make to their position.
Now, born in the very purple, and indubitably (despite his profession)
one of the gentlest born of men, was, some seven years ago, a certain
Mr. St. John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct position of a squarson,
being at once Squire and Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At
the head of the quaint old village street stands, mirrored in a moat,
girdled by beautiful gardens, and shadowy with trees, the Manor House
and Parsonage (for it is both in one) of Wentley Deloraine.
To this desirable home and opulent share of earth’s good things did Mr.
St. John Deloraine succeed in boyhood. He went to Oxford, he travelled
a good deal, he was held in great favor and affection by the County
matrons and the long-nosed young ladies of the County. Another, dwelling
on such heights as he, might have become haughty; but there was in this
young man a cheery naturalness and love of mirth which often drove him
from the society of his equals, and took him into that of attorneys’
daughters. Fate drew him one day to an archery meeting at Chipping
Carby, and there he beheld Miss Widdicombe. With her he paced the level
turf, her “points” he counted, and he found that she, at least, could
appreciate his somewhat apt quotation from _Chastelard_:
“Pray heaven, we make good Ends.”
Miss Widdicombe _did_ make good “Ends.” She vanquished Mrs. Struggles,
the veteran lady champion of the shaft and bow, a sportswoman who was
now on the verge of sixty. Why are ladies, who, almost professionally,
“rejoice in arrows,” like the Homeric Artemis--why are they nearly
always so well stricken in years? Was Maid Marion forty at least before
her performances obtained for her a place in the well-known band of
Hood, Tuck, Little John, and Co.?
This, however, is a digression. For our purpose it is enough that the
contrast between Miss Widdicombe’s vivacity and the deadly stolidity
of the County families, between her youth and the maturity of her
vanquished competitors, entirely won the heart of Mr. St John
Deloraine. He saw--he loved her--he was laughed at--he proposed--he was
accepted--and, oh, shame! the County had to accept, more or less, Miss
Widdicombe, the attorney’s daughter, as _châtelaine_ (delightful word,
and dear to the author of _Guy Livingstone_) of Wentley Deloraine.
When the early death of her husband threw Mrs. St John Deloraine almost
alone on the world (for her family had, naturally, been offended by her
good fortune), she left the gray old squarsonage, and went to town. In
London, Mrs. St John Deloraine did not find people stiff, With a good
name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a gentle tongue, and plenty
of money, she was welcome almost everywhere, except at the big County
dinners which the County people of her district give to each other when
they come to town.
This lady, like many of us, had turned to charity and philanthropy
in the earlier days of her bereavement; but, unlike most of us, her
benevolence had not died out with the sharpest pangs of her sorrow.
Never, surely, was there such a festive philanthropist as Mrs. St. John
Deloraine.
She would go from a garden-party to a mothers’ meeting; she was great
at taking children for a day in the country, and had the art of keeping
them amused. She was on a dozen charitable committees, belonged to at
least three clubs, at which gentlemen as well as ladies of fashion were
eligible, and where music and minstrelsy enlivened the after-dinner
hours.
So good and unsuspecting, unluckily, was Mrs. St. John Deloraine,
that she made bosom friends for life, and contracted vows of eternal
sympathy, wherever she went. At Aix, or on the Spanish frontier, she
has been seen enjoying herself with acquaintances a little dubious, like
Greek texts which, if not absolutely corrupt, yet stand greatly in need
of explanation. It is needless to say that gentlemen of fortune, in the
old sense--that is, gentlemen in quest of a fortune--pursued hotly or
artfully after Mrs. St. John Deloraine. But as she never for a moment
suspected their wiles, so these devices were entirely wasted on her, and
her least warrantable admirers found that she insisted on accepting
them as endowed with all the Christian virtues. Just as some amateurs of
music are incapable of conceiving that there breathes a man who has no
joy in popular concerts (we shall have popular conic sections next),
so Mrs. St John Deloraine persevered in crediting all she met with a
passion for virtue. Their speech might bewray them as worldlings of the
world, but she insisted on interpreting their talk as a kind of harmless
levity, as a mere cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature.
Thus, no one ever combined a delight in good works with a taste for good
things so successfully as Mrs. St John Deloraine.
At this moment the lady’s “favorite vanity,” in the matter of good
works, was _The Bunhouse_. This really serviceable, though quaint,
institution was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland’s enterprise of
the philanthropic public-house, the _Hit or Miss_. In a slum of Chelsea
there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the
coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the
sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was
the work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine’s friends, an artist of the
highest promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch
and Irish whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened beginning, _The Bunhouse_
did very useful work. It was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for
Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and domesticated slavery
of common life, but for the tameless tribes of young women of the
metropolis. Those who disdain service, who turn up expressive features
at sewing machines, and who decline to stand perpendicularly for fifteen
hours a day in shops--all these young female outlaws, not professionally
vicious, found in _The Bunhouse_ a kind of charitable shelter and home.
They were amused, they were looked after, they were encouraged not to
stand each other drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers
and fathers. “Places” were found for them, in the rare instances when
they condescended to “places.” Sometimes they breakfasted at _The
Bunhouse_, sometimes went there to supper. Very often they came in a
state of artificial cheerfulness, or ready for battle. Then there would
arise such a disturbance as civilization seldom sees. Not otherwise than
when boys, having tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the handle
of a door--they then spit, and shriek, and swear, fur flies, and the
clamor goes up to heaven: so did the street resound when the young
patrons of _The Bunhouse_ were in a warlike humor. Then the stern
housekeeper would intervene, and check these motions of their minds,
_haec certamina tanta_, turning the more persistent combatants into the
street. Next day Mrs. St. John Deloraine would come in her carriage, and
try to be very severe, and then would weep a little, and all the girls
would shed tears, all would have a good cry together, and finally the
Lady Mother (Mrs. St John Deloraine) would take a few of them for a
drive in the Park. After that there would be peace for a while, and
presently disturbances would come again.
For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a
housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been
told, had yielded to love, “which subdues the hearts of all female
women, even of the prudent,” according to Homer, and was going to share
the home and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible
innocence, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas
Cranley as a kind good Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in
her need of a housekeeper and assistant.
No application could possibly have suited that gentleman better. _He_
could give his own servant an excellent character; and if once she was
left to herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, that
young lady’s earthly existence would shortly cease to embarrass Mr.
Cranley. Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds
of Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s acquaintance who would have used her
unsuspicious kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr.
Cranley had (when there was no personal danger to be run) the courage of
his character.
“Shall I go and lunch with her?” he asked himself, as he twisted her
note, with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and
gold. “I haven’t shown anywhere I was likely to meet anyone I knew, not
since--since I came back from Monte Carlo.”
Even to himself he did not like to mention that affair of the Cockpit
The man in the story who boasted that he had committed every crime in
the calendar withdrew his large words when asked “if he had ever cheated
at cards.”
“Well,” Mr. Cranley went on, “I don’t know: I dare say it’s safe enough.
She does know some of those Cockpit fellows; confound her, she knows all
sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely to be up so early in the
day--not up to luncheon anyhow. She says”--and he looked again at the
note--“that she’ll be alone; but she won’t. Everyone she sees before
lunch she asks to luncheon: everyone she meets before dinner she asks to
dinner. I wish I had her money: it would be simpler and safer by a very
long way than this kind of business. There really seems no end to it
when once you begin. However, here goes,” said Mr. Cranley, sitting
down to write a letter at the escritoire which had just served him as a
bulwark and breastwork. “I’ll write and accept Probably she’ll have no
one with her, but some girl from Chipping Carby, or some missionary from
the Solomon Islands who never heard of a heathen like me.”
As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. Cranley arrived, when the
clock was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s house
in Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that
lady, in a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of
beauty, rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont
terrier, and holding out both her hands.
The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine had scarcely grasped the
hand which Mr. Cranley extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the
carpet and was consoling the Dandie.
“Love in which thy hound has part,” quoted Mr. Cranley. And the lady,
rising with her face becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair,
smiled, and did not remark the sneer.
“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Cranley,” she said; “and, as I have
put off luncheon till two, _do_ tell me that you know someone who will
suit me for my dear _Bun-house_. I know how much you have always been
interested in our little project.”
Mr. Cranley assured her that, by a remarkable coincidence, he knew
the very kind of people she wanted. Alice he briefly described as a
respectable woman of great strength of character, “of body, too, I
believe, which will not make her less fit for the position.”
“No,” said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, sadly; “the dear girls are sometimes
a little tiresome. On Wednesday, Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper, you know,
went to one of the exhibitions with her _fiancé_, and the girls broke
all the windows and almost all the tea-things.”
“The woman whom I am happy to be able to recommend to you will not
stand anything of that kind,” answered Mr. Cranley. “She is quiet, but
extremely firm, and has been accustomed to deal with a very desperate
character. At one time, I mean, she was engaged as the attendant of a
person of treacherous and ungovernable disposition.”
This was true enough; and Mr. Cranley then began to give a more or less
fanciful history of Margaret She had been left in his charge by her
father, an early acquaintance, a man who had known better days, but had
bequeathed her nothing, save an excellent schooling and the desire to
earn her own livelihood.
So far, he knew he was safe enough; for Margaret was the last girl to
tell the real tale of her life, and her desire to avoid Maitland was
strong enough to keep her silent, even had she not been naturally proud
and indisposed to make confidences.
“There is only one thing I must ask,” said Mr. Cranley, when he had
quite persuaded the lady that Margaret would set a splendid example to
her young friends. “How soon does your housekeeper leave you, and when
do you need the services of the new-comers?”
“Well, the plumber is rather in a hurry. He really is a good man, and I
like him better for it, though it seems rather selfish of him to want
to rob me of Joan. He is; determined to be married before next Bank
Holiday--in a fortnight that is--and then they will go on their
honeymoon of three days to Yarmouth.”
Mr. Cranley blessed the luck that had not made the plumber a yet more
impetuous wooer.
“No laggard in love,” he said, smiling. “Well, in a fortnight the two
women will be quite ready for their new place. But I must ask you to
remember that the younger is somewhat delicate, and has by no means
recovered from the shock of her father’s sudden death--a very sad
affair,” added Mr. Cranley, in a sympathetic voice.
“Poor dear girl!” cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, with the ready tears
in her eyes; for this lady spontaneously acted on the injunction to weep
with those who weep, and also laugh with those who laugh.
Mr. Cranley, who was beginning to feel hungry, led her thoughts off to
the latest farce in which Mr. Toole had amused the town; and when Mrs.
St. John Deloraine had giggled till she wept again over her memories of
this entertainment, she suddenly looked at her watch.
“Why, he’s very late,” she said; “and yet it is not far to come from the
_Hit or Miss_.”
“From the _Hit or Miss_!” cried Mr. Cranley, much louder than he was
aware.
“Yes; you may well wonder, if you don’t know about it, that I should
have asked a gentleman from a public-house to meet you. But you will be
quite in love with him; he is such a very good young man. Not handsome,
nor very amusing; but people think a great deal too much of amusingness
now. He is very, very good, and spends almost all his time among the
poor. He is a Fellow of his College at Oxford.”
During this discourse Mr. Cranley was pretending to play with the
terrier; but, stoop as he might, his face was livid, and he knew it.
“Did I tell you his name?” Mrs. St. John Deloraine ran on. “He is a--”
Here the door was opened, and the servant announced “Mr. Maitland.”
When Mrs. St. John Deloraine had welcomed her new guest, she turned, and
found that Mr. Cranley was looking out of the window.
His position was indeed agonizing, and, in the circumstances, a stronger
heart might have blanched at the encounter.
When Cranley last met Maitland, he had been the guest of that
philanthropist, and he had gone from his table to swindle his
fellow-revellers. What other things he had done--things in which
Maitland was concerned--the reader knows, or at least suspects. But it
was not these deeds which troubled Mr. Cranley, for these he knew were
undetected. It was that affair of the baccarat which unmanned him.
There was nothing for it but to face Maitland and the situation.
“Let me introduce you--” said Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
“There is no need,” interrupted Maitland. “Mr. Cranley and I have known
each other for some time. I don’t think we have met,” he added, looking
at Cranley, “since you dined with me at the Olympic, and we are not
likely to meet again, I’m afraid; for to-morrow, as I have come to tell
Mrs. Si John Deloraine, I go to Paris on business of importance.”
Mr. Cranley breathed again; it was obvious that Maitland, living out of
the world as he did, and concerned (as Cranley well knew him to be)
with private affairs of an urgent character, had never been told of the
trouble at the Cockpit, or had, in his absent fashion, never attended
to what he might have heard with the hearing of the ear. As to Paris, he
had the best reason for guessing why Maitland was bound thither, as he
was the secret source of the information on which Maitland proposed to
act.
At luncheon--which, like the dinner described by the American guest,
was “luscious and abundant”--Mr. Cranley was more sparkling than
the champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. He recounted little
philanthropic misadventures of his own--cases in which he had been
humorously misled by the _Captain Wraggs_ of this world, or beguiled by
the authors of that polite correspondence--begging letters.
When luncheon was over, and when Maitland was obliged, reluctantly, to
go (for he liked Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s company very much), Cranley,
who had determined to see him out, shook hands in a very cordial way
with the Fellow of St. Gatien’s.
“And when are we likely to meet again?” he asked.
“I really don’t know,” said Maitland. “I have business in Paris, and I
cannot say how long I may be detained on the Continent.”
“No more can I,” said Mr. Cranley to himself; “but I hope you won’t
return in time to bother me with your blundering inquiries, if ever you
have the luck to return at all.”
But while he said this to himself, to Maitland he only wished a
good voyage, and particularly recommended to him a comedy (and a
_comédienne_) at the Palais Royal.