_Wherein a Great Financier is Satisfied with his Bargain_
Betty had dressed herself with elaborate care; yet she stood before
a large shop-window and frowned upon herself. She was fretted with a
doubt that she looked too young.
Ah, the quaint goals of the human! It is ever the itching folly of the
young to appear older; of the old to appear younger.
And the exceeding great beauty that faced the girl in the mirrored
world before her troubled her not at all. She was very, very young.
So she turned on dainty heel and called a hansom--to drive her to
the elaborate mansion of Mr. Pompey Malahide, who had his gorgeous
dwelling amidst the rich who pay extortionately for life in Park Lane.
She shrewdly paid this, to her, heavy toll upon her resources, for she
knew, her instincts revealed, what stupid people arrive at by mere
mathematics and the rebuffs of experience, that a man respects a woman
who has the air of rising, Venus-like, armed at all points from a sea
of band-boxes.
Indeed, the girl’s manner and appearance, following upon the weighty
pronouncement of Doome’s introduction, dazzled the city man, who rose
to meet her, on her announcement by the elaborate footman. Mr. Pompey
Malahide had intended to interview her seated at his desk; but a
certain distinction and that air aloof and apart and of another world
that baffled him in Doome, baffled him now. He stood up with the sudden
and unforeseen intention of trying to be a gentleman. From lack of
habit, he missed the trick, and at once fell into the first position
for taking an order, and became the deferential shopman.
And, to give him his due, his own dignities, or the crudities that
passed with him for such, were banished as at a stroke out of his
kindly bulk by the ambition which leaped within him that this winsome
young woman might transfer something of her gracious bearing and pretty
voice to his own two buxom daughters. The very hope of it set his thick
blood sounding bassoon notes of delight in his ears, and the proud
vision of it went whirling through his emotions. It were as though he
had secured an estimate, and could have the work done at a price.
From the moment the girl entered the room she was sure of the post.
To her astonishment, she found the man vulgar; yet almost his first
comment had a strange note of good-taste that as much surprised her:
“Miss Modeyne,” said he, “that Mr. Bartholomew Doome should recommend
you is alone good enough for me.... But”--he hesitated, a little
embarrassed, and added with an effort--“I’m a rough man, and I hope I
don’t make you misunderstand me, but I have two girls, and I want you
to be with them and leaven them with your pretty ways; and if you will
allow me to do it in my own way, I would rather you did not enter this
house as a companion or a governess, for the girls would--take--well,
they would take the wrong way with you. If you would enter my house as
the daughter of a friend of friends of mine, come for a long visit, I
would pay you your fees without its being known to them or anyone, and
I think you yourself would be in a better and pleasanter position.”
Betty thought over the scheme for a while; her strict code of honour
made her consider only the other value--of what she was giving in
return.
“Yes,” she said--“perhaps it would be best.... May I see the--girls,
first?”
Pompey Malahide moved eagerly towards the bell, hesitated--came back:
“I’m real glad to think it, Miss Modeyne,” said he; “but look here,
there’s another thing. I don’t want any schooling for them. They are
as old as you are, the more’s the pity--both gals have got their
hair up.... Ah,” he sighed, “you would have been the making of ’em
five years ago; you see”--he sighed again, sadly--“they’ve modelled
themselves a bit on me now.... Their mother never comes out of her
boudoir. But what I was going to say was this: you can tell ’em what’s
bad manners, and go with them to picture-galleries and show them the
good things, can’t ye? and all that!”
Betty smiled:
“I think I can do that,” she said simply.
He nodded:
“That’s right. I like to hear a gal say the name of the fellow who
did a picture without lookin’ at the catalogue. And all that sort of
thing.... Make the girls smart, and knock some sense into them....
They’re as good as gold--real warm-hearted good gals. But they want
style. And you can spare them a ton of it--if you’ll excuse a rough and
rather vulgar fellow tellin’ you so.”
Betty laughed.
“I think I should like to see the girls now,” she said, “before we
decide.”
“Come along, bless ye,” said he, bustling to the door, and walking out
first. “Judith!” he bawled--“Mary!”
A girl’s voice called back:
“Why do you bawl, father? Aren’t there servants enough?”
A door opened, and two young women entered the hall.
They were a couple of handsome girls, with a good swinging swagger of
the body, and held themselves aggressively in all the trim comeliness
of young womanhood, as though they could pay their way and expected
the men to cast a glance that same way. Their full red lips were
undisciplined; they were the outward sign of their wills, they would do
only what it pleased them to do. No young and comely thing is wholly
vulgar; and they were young and comely.
The stout man’s bloodshot eyes watched the young girl’s face keenly to
read what passed on the first impression; but Betty was not easy to
read. She turned to him--was touched with the anxious eagerness of his
attitude:
“Yes,” she said in a low voice--“I will come.”
“Girls!” bawled the millionaire--“here is Miss Betty Modeyne, whose
father was a friend of a great friend of mine--take her off with you,
and introduce her to your mother--she has come to stay for a good long
visit, if a soldier’s daughter can put up with the dull house of a city
man.”
The two girls came and kissed Betty, and, taking her by the arm, adored
her. The young love the beautiful and the young....
Nevertheless, Betty decided to keep on her little attic; and, making a
business visit the excuse, she went away for the afternoon to purchase
garments and brought back with her the black dress-basket--that was
largely filled with emptiness. But it had a lock upon its emptiness.
Late that afternoon, as the twilight fell, Mr. Pompey Malahide burst
in upon Bartholomew Doome, where he sat in the dusk of his studio; the
millionaire praised as lavishly as he spent money.
“No,” said Doome, “I have never seen her; but I know all about her....
There are so few beautiful women.”
“By the book,” said Mr. Pompey, swelling, “a marchioness, sir--a
marchioness. And a chit of a girl, too--ties her very ribbons like a
damn blue-blooded countess.... I wonder where some women get it!”
Doome rose from his chair languidly, and strolled over to the fussing
excited man:
“Lord of advertisements,” said he, tapping the chest of the
other--“there is a book you do not read--it would baffle you as
Bradshaw’s railway guide baffles me. That book is called _The Extinct
and Dormant Peerage_.”
The stout millionaire stared at him with questioning eyes:
“Well?” he asked.
“Well,” said Bartholomew Doome--“she comes out of that.”