English grammar and lexicon--the phrase book, dictionary, and the other
volumes which constituted his tutorial equipment--were doomed to grow
gray and dog’s-eared, drooping and shabby together?
Then he looked up, for some one touched him upon the arm.
“The ladies permit us to smoke in the library, which is the best
room for music in the house,” said the pleasant voice of Monsieur de
Courvaux; “so we will take our _café_ and _chasse_ in their company, if
you please.”
Mr. Brown reached the door in time to open it, and to comprehend
that the act of gallantry was not expected of him. And the feminine
paroquets and the sable-coated male rooks went by, and Mademoiselle
Lucie gave the handsome, well-groomed Englishman a shy glance of
approval from under her black eyelashes, and Monsieur Frédéric, puffy
with incipient indigestion, grinned feebly. Brown put his hand upon the
boy’s shoulder, and followed the rest.
“You don’t want me to do any English to-night, do you, Monsieur Brown?”
young hopeful insinuated, as they went into the long walnut-paneled
room with another bay at the southern end with blinds undrawn,
revealing a wonderful panorama of moonlit forest and river and
champaign. “I can say ‘all-a-raight!’ ‘wat-a-rot!’ and ‘daddle-doo!’
already,” the youth continued. “The English groom of papa, I learned
the words of him, _voyez_! You shall know Smeet, to-morrow!”
“Thanks, old fellow!” said Mr. Brown, with a good-humored smile.
“Grandmamma is making a sign that you are to go and speak to her,
Monsieur,” said Mademoiselle Lucie, Brown’s elder pupil-elect.
“Everybody in this house obeys Grandmamma, and so must you. Mamma says
it is because she was so beautiful when she was young--young, you
comprehend, as in that portrait over the fireplace--that everybody fell
down and worshiped her. And she is beautiful now, is she not, sir? Not
as the portrait; but----”
“The portrait, Mademoiselle?... Over the fireplace.... Good Lord,
what an extraordinary likeness!” broke from Mr. Brown. For the
counterpart of the exquisite picture of Varolan that had hung in the
dining hall of the gray old northern castle where Mr. Brown’s boyhood,
youth, and earliest manhood had been spent, hung above the hooded
fifteenth-century fireplace of the noble library of this French château.
There she stood, the golden, slender, lily-faced, sapphire-eyed young
aristocrat of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with her indefinable air of
pride and hauteur and exclusiveness mingled with girlish merriment
and mischief. And there she sat--the original in the flesh--Madame la
Marquise de Courvaux, the Grandmamma of these young people--regal in
sweeping folds of amethyst velvet and wonderful creamy Spanish point
lace.
Obedient to the bidding of her fan, Mr. Brown crossed the library and
took the chair she indicated near her. And the diamond cross upon her
still beautiful bosom moved quickly, with the beating of Grandmamma’s
heart, as he did this.
“How like he is!--how like!” she whispered to herself; and the electric
lights became crystal girandoles, and the library became a ballroom at
the Tuileries. The Empress, beautiful and cold, passed down the ranks
of curtsying, bare-backed, bejeweled women and bowing, gold-laced men.
Monsieur de Courvaux, with his orders, his bald forehead, and his white
whiskers, released mademoiselle at the claim of a tall, tawny-haired,
hazel-eyed, fair-faced partner, a Highland gentleman, in plaid and
philabeg, with sporran and claymore, the antique gold brooch upon his
shoulder set with ancient amethysts, river pearls and cairngorms. And
he told her how he loved her, there in the alcove of palms, and heard
her little confession that, had she not been bound by a promise of
marriage to Monsieur de Courvaux she would--oh, how gladly!--become the
wife of Monsieur Angus Dunbar.
“As you say.... Fate has been cruel to both of us.... And--and I am
engaged. She lives in Leicestershire. I met her one hunting season. She
is in Paris, staying at Meurice’s with her mother now. They’re buying
the trousseau.... God help me!” groaned Angus Dunbar.
But the little lady of the Faubourg Saint-Germain drew back the hand he
snatched at, and swept him a haughty little curtsy, looking straight
in his face: “The State Quadrille is beginning. Be so good as to take
me to Mamma.... And I wish you all happiness, sir, and your _fiancée_
also.” Another little curtsy he got, poor lad, with her “Adieu, and
a thousand thanks, Monsieur!” and then--he walked the dusty streets
of Paris until morning; while Mademoiselle lay sleepless on her
tear-drenched lace pillows. And----
Grandmamma awakened as though from a dream, to meet the frank hazel
eyes of Mr. Brown, the English tutor.
“Monsieur will forgive the curiosity of an old woman,” she said, with
her inimitable air of grace and sweetness. “I wished to ask whether
you were not of Northern race--a Scot, for example? Yes? Ah, I thought
I had guessed correctly. The type is not to be mistaken, and I once
had--a dear friend!--whom Monsieur resembles to identity. But his name
was not Brown.”
“I was within an ace of telling her mine was not, either,” reflected
the English tutor as, an hour or so later, he got into bed. “How
perfectly beautiful Madame--not the _agaçante, espiègle_ little Madame,
but the old one--must have been in the rich prime of her womanhood! Did
she and my uncle ever meet again, I wonder? No, I should think not. The
dear old boy is just the sort of character to hug a romance all his
life, and she--she is just the woman to be the heroine of one. Are
all French country-house beds in this style, and is one supposed to
draw these rosebudded chintz curtains modestly round one, or let them
alone?” Mr. Brown concluded to let them alone, and fell very soundly
asleep.
At the late breakfast, an elaborate meal, beginning with soup and
fish, and ending with tea and cakes, it was explained to the tutor
that no English lesson was to be given that day, as a costume ball of
the calico type was to take place that evening, and the children’s
study, a homely, comfortable little wainscoted parlor on the ground
floor, looking out upon a grass-grown courtyard with a bronze fountain
in the middle, was to be given up to hats, coats, and opera cloaks.
Monsieur Frédéric was to personate one of his own ancestors, page to
the Duke of Burgundy, killed in a jousting match in 1369, Monsieur le
Marquis and Madame respectively appearing as the Chevalier de Courvaux
and his lady, parents of the youth referred to, represented in a
miniature by Othea. Mademoiselle Lucie chose to be “Undine” in gauze
and water-lilies. For Monsieur Brown a character could surely be found,
a costume devised, even at the eleventh hour. There were jack-boots,
_salades_, and coats of mail innumerable in the great hall, Mr. Brown,
who shared the objection of his British countrymen to being made to
appear ridiculous, shook his head. He preferred not to dress up; but he
had, or thought he had, packed away in one of his portmanteaux (which
were too numerous for a tutor) something that would do. A Highland
costume, in fact, of the modified kind worn by gentlemen of Caledonia
as dinner dress or upon occasions of festivity.
Thus Mr. Brown unconsciously pledged himself to bring about a crisis
in the lives of two people, one of whom was actively engaged at that
moment in trying to find him. For Lord Hailhope was genuinely attached
to his nephew, and the basis of the quarrel between them, never very
secure, had been shaken and shattered, firstly, by the indifference
manifested by the young lady concerned, a rather plain young heiress,
at the news of the said nephew’s disappearance, and, secondly, by
her marriage with her father’s chaplain, a Presbyterian divine of
thunderous eloquence and sweeping predestinary convictions.
“Tell him that I was in the wrong--that I apologize--that everything
shall be as it was before, if he will come back! The money shall be
secured to him; I will guarantee that,” Lord Hailhope wrote to the
London solicitor employed in the search for Young Lochinvar, who had
sprung to the saddle and ridden away--without the lady. “If he will not
come to me, I will go to him. The insult _was_ gross; I admit it, and
will atone to the best of my ability!”
“The hot-headed old Highlander!” commented the man of law, as he filed
the letter. “He adopts the boy--his dead brother’s son--brings him up
in the expectation of inheriting his private fortune as well as the
title, and then turns him out of doors because he won’t marry a girl
with teeth like tombstones and a fancy for another man. If Master Angus
Dunbar is wise, he will hold out against going back until that question
of the money has been disposed of irrevocably. Though people never have
sense--lucky for my profession!”
Meanwhile, at Charny les Bois preparations for the ball--the materials
of which owed much more to the lordly silkworm than the plebeian cotton
pod--went on apace. Evening came, the band of the _cuirassiers_,
generously lent by Monsieur the Colonel, drove over from the barracks
in a couple of _chars-à-bancs_, the Colonel and the officers of that
gallant regiment, arrayed to kill in the green and gold costumes of
the hunt of the Grand Monarque, followed upon their English _drague_.
_Voitures_ of every description disgorged their happy loads. Monsieur,
Madame, the young ladies and the young gentlemen, hot, happy, smiling,
and fearfully and wonderfully disguised.
“Their unconsciousness, the entire absence of the conviction that they
are ridiculous, makes them quite lovable,” thought Mr. Brown. “That
fat, fair papa, with spectacles and large sandy whiskers, as Pluton,
from _Orphée aux Enfers_, in red satin tunic and black silk tights
spotted with yellow, a satin cloak with a train, a gilt pasteboard
crown and trident pleases me tremendously. He is, I believe, a
magistrate from Charny. His wife is the even fatter and fairer lady
attired as Norma, and those three little dumpy girls, flower girls of a
period decidedly uncertain.”
“Does not Monsieur dance?” said Mademoiselle Lucie, looking, with her
filmy green draperies, her fair locks crowned, and her slim waist
girdled with water-lilies and forget-me-nots, a really exquisite river
sprite.
“If Mademoiselle would accord me the honor of her hand in a valse,” Mr.
Brown began; then he broke off, remembering that in England the tutor
did not usually dance with the daughters of the house--if, indeed, that
functionary danced at all. But----
“Mamma has been telling me that Englishmen dance badly,” observed
Mademoiselle, with a twinkle in her blue eyes. “Grandmamma will have
it, by the way, that you are Scotch! Do not look round for her; she
was a little fatigued by so much conversation and fuss, and will not
come down to-night.... Heavens! look at Frédéric,” she added, in a
tone of sisterly solicitude, as the page of the Court of Burgundy
moved unsteadily into sight, clinging to the arm of a bosom friend in
a “celadon” costume and a condition of similar obfuscation. “Alas! I
comprehend!” she continued. “Those plums conserved in cognac have a
fatal fascination for my unhappy brother. Quick, Monsieur! make to
remove him from the view of Papa, or the consequences will be of the
most terrible.... Frédéric has been already warned....”
And outwardly grave and sympathetic, albeit splitting with repressed
laughter, Mr. Brown went in chase of the unseasoned vessels, and
conveyed them to the safe harbor of the small study on the second
floor, which had been allotted to him as a den. Locking them in, he
was about to descend in search of seltzer water, when, in the act of
crossing the gallery, unlighted save for the dazzling moonlight that
poured through the long mullioned windows, giving a strange semblance
of fantastic life to the dark family portraits on the opposite wall,
and lying in silver pools upon the shining parquet islanded with
threadbare carpets of ancient Oriental woof, he encountered the elder
Madame de Courvaux, who came swiftly toward him from the opposite end
of a long gallery, carrying a light and a book that looked like a
Catholic breviary. With the glamour of moonlight upon her, in a loose
silken dressing robe trimmed with the priceless lace she affected, her
wealth of golden-gray tresses in two massive plaits, drawn forward and
hanging over her bosom, almost to her knees, her beauty was marvelous.
Mr. Brown caught his breath and stopped short; Madame, on her part,
uttered a faint cry--was it of delight or of terror?--and would have
dropped her candle had not the tutor caught it and placed it on a
_console_ that stood near.
“Pardon, Madame!” he was beginning, when....
“Oh, Angus Dunbar! Angus, my beloved, my adored!” broke from Madame de
Courvaux. “There is no need that either of us should ask for pardon.”
Her blue eyes gleamed like sapphires, her still beautiful bosom heaved
and panted, her lips smiled, though the great tears brimmed one by one
over her underlids and chased down her pale cheeks. “We did what was
right. The path of honor was never easy. You married, and I also, and
all these years no news of you has reached me. But I understand now
that you are dead, and bound no longer by the vows of earth, and that
you have come, brave as of old, beautiful as of old, to tell me that
you are free!”
With an impulse never quite to be accounted for, Angus Dunbar, the
younger, stepped forward and enclosed in his own warm, living grasp
Madame’s trembling hands....
“My name is Angus Dunbar, Madame,” he said, “but--but I believe you
must be speaking of my uncle. He succeeded to the peerage twenty years
ago; he is now Lord Hailhope, but he--he never married, though I
believe he loved, very sincerely and devotedly, a lady whose portrait
by Varolan hangs in the dining-room at Hailhope, just as it hangs in
the library here at Charny les Bois.”
“I--I do not understand.... How comes it that----” Madame hesitated
piteously, her hands wringing each other, her great wistful eyes fixed
upon the splendid, stalwart figure of the young man. “You are so
like.... And the costume----”
“It is customary for Highland gentlemen to wear the kilt at social
functions; and when I left Hailhope--or, rather, was turned out of
doors, for my uncle disowned me when I refused to marry a girl who did
not care for me, and who has since married to please herself--Gregor
packed it in one of my kit cases. The cat is out of the bag as well
as the kilt.... I came here as English tutor to your grandchildren,
Madame, at the suggestion of an old friend, the Duke of Atholblair, to
whom I told the story of the quarrel with my uncle.”
Madame began to recover her courtly grace and self-possession. Her
hands ceased to tremble in Dunbar’s clasp; she drew them away with a
smile that was only a little fluttered.
“And I took you for a ghost ... a _revenant_.... I was a little
agitated.... I had been suffering from an attack of the nerves....
Monsieur will make allowances for a superstitious old woman. To-morrow,
after breakfast, in the garden Monsieur will explain the whole story to
me--how it came that Monsieur Dunbar, his uncle, now Lord Hailhope--ah,
yes! there was a crippled elder brother of that title--disowned his
nephew for refusing to give his hand to one he did not love.... I
should have imagined---- Good-night, Monsieur!”
In the garden, after breakfast, Angus Dunbar, no longer handicapped by
the plebeian name of Brown, told his story to a sympathetic listener.
Madame’s head was bent--perhaps her hearing was not so good as it
had been when, more than forty years previously, Angus Dunbar, the
elder, had whispered his secret in that delicate ear. But as footsteps
sounded upon the terrace, and one of the fresh-faced, black-liveried
footmen appeared, piloting a stranger, a tall, somewhat stern-featured,
gray-moustached gentleman, she started and looked round. In the same
moment the late Mr. Brown jumped up, over-setting his chair, the pugs
barked, and----
“I owed it to you to make the first move,” said Lord Hailhope, rather
huskily, as the uncle and nephew grasped hands. “Forgive me, Angus, my
dear boy!”
“Lady Grisel has married the Presbyterian minister, sir, and we’re all
going to be happy for ever after, like people in a fairy tale,” said
Angus Dunbar. Then he turned to Madame de Courvaux, and bowed with his
best grace. “Madame, permit me to present my uncle, Lord Hailhope, who
I believe has had the honor of meeting you before!”
And, being possessed of a degree of discretion quite proper and
desirable in a tutor, Mr. Angus Dunbar moved away in the direction of
a rose walk, down which Mademoiselle Lucie’s white gown had flitted a
moment before, leaving the two old lovers looking in each other’s eyes.
AN INDIAN BABY
When old Lovelace-Legge sank into a stertorous final coma which his
lovely marble tombstone called by a much prettier name, and the blinds
were drawn up after a decent interval, and a tremendous heraldic joke,
furnished by Heralds’ College, was dismounted from over the front door,
Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, after the requisite period of seclusion, took an
exquisite little gem of a house in Sloane Street, furnished it to a
marvel, and began, with discreetness, to enjoy herself. All her affairs
flourished, her pet plans prospered, her gratifications were many, her
disappointments nil; people began to call her “Lucky Lotta Legge.” She
took her good fortune as her due.
“Perhaps she feels she deserves something of Providence for putting up
patiently with old Lovelace-Legge during those ten awful years,” said
Lady Cranberry, her dearest friend, to another just a shade less dear,
as they walked up Sloane Street one fine morning.
“I suppose he _was_ awful?” hazarded the second-best beloved.
Lady Cranberry crumpled her eyebrows. “He had a complexion like New
Zealand meat,” she said. “Next time you walk up the King’s Road with
Lotta, watch her as you pass a cheap butcher’s shop. She will wince and
look the other way, and you may guess what she is thinking of, poor
darling!”
“She said to me once,” remarked the second-best one, “‘_I always
fretted for children, but perhaps they were wisely withheld._’”
“I should think so,” consented Lady Cranberry. “When there is a chance
of an infant’s coming into the world with three chins and a nose like
Punch, to say nothing of bandy legs and patent shoes like bicycle gear
cases----”
The second-best reminded Lady Cranberry that children were not usually
born with shoes.
“Of course, I meant feet,” said Lady Cranberry. “Feet of that size and
flatness, too. And if there is the merest chance of a child’s coming
into the world thus handicapped, it is infinitely better that the child
should keep out of it. Here we are at Lotta’s door. Isn’t that cream
enamel with the old Florentine copper-embossed knocker and bells too
divine for anything? Great Heavens!”
She had evidently received a shock, for she was paler than her powder,
and as she clutched her companion’s arm her eyes were fixed in quite a
ghastly stare.
“Mercy!” the next best-beloved friend of the owner of the cream-white
door with the Florentine copper work adjuncts exclaimed, “you saw
something--what?”
But Lady Cranberry, with more energy than her weak state seemed to
warrant, had ascended Mrs. Lovelace-Legge’s brown doorsteps, and was
plying the Florentine knocker. The servant who responded to the summons
thought that Mrs. Lovelace-Legge was at home, but knew her to be
profoundly engaged.
“Take up the names. We will wait,” said Lady Cranberry. Then, as the
respectful servant went upstairs, she drew her companion into the
shelter of a little reposeful niche, in Liberty draperies and Indian
carved wood, where palms and things flourished in pots, and an object
of familiar shape, in bamboo work, and newly freed from swathings of
brown paper, stood upon a table. To this she pointed with a neatly
gloved forefinger that trembled with emotion.
“Oh! Why,” cried the other, “it is A BABY’S CRADLE!”
“It was delivered,” said Lady Cranberry, “at this door as we came up.
It cannot be for a doll: it is full-sized. What on earth can Lotta want
with such a thing?”
As she uttered these words the servant returned. His mistress begged
the ladies to come upstairs. He delivered his message, and then, with
well-trained gravity, lifted the compromising cradle and led the way
upstairs. Mrs. Lovelace-Legge did not purpose to receive her friends
in the drawing-room, it appeared, or even on the floor above, where
her bedroom and boudoir were situated. The ladies were conducted by
their guide to regions more airy still; indeed, their progress knew
no pause until they reached the highest landing. Here Lady Cranberry
received another shock, for a gaily-painted wooden gate, newly hung,
gave access to a space where a rocking-horse stood rampant in all
the glory of bright paint and red leather trappings; and beyond,
through an open door, shone a glimpse of an infantile Paradise, all
rosebud dimity, blue ribbons, and brightness, in the midst of which
moved Mrs. Lovelace-Legge radiant in a lawn apron with Valenciennes
insertion, issuing directions to a head nurse of matronly proportions,
an under-nurse of less discretionary years, and a young person dressed
in blue baize, trimmed with red braid and buttons, whose functions were
less determinable.
“My dears!” Mrs. Lovelace-Legge fluttered to her friends and kissed
them, and nothing save Lady Cranberry’s imperative need of an
explanation kept that lady from swooning on the spot. “You find me all
anyhow,” said Lotta, with beaming eyes. “But come--come and look.”
She pioneered the way into the room beyond, with its Lilliputian
fittings, its suggestive cosiness, its scent of violet powder and new
flannel. “Do you think he will be happy here?” she asked, with a tender
quasi-maternal quaver of delightful anticipation.
“Who is--He?”
Lady Cranberry hardly recognized her own voice, so transformed was
it by the emotions she suppressed; but Mrs. Lovelace-Legge noticed
nothing. “Who?” she echoed, and then laughed with moist, beaming eyes.
“Who but the baby? Is it possible I haven’t told you? Or Lucy?” The
second-best-beloved shook her head. “No. You see--the news of his
coming was broken so suddenly that I was carried off my feet, and since
then I’ve done nothing but engage nurses and buy baby things. This is
Mrs. Porter”--she turned to the matronly person--“who will have entire
charge of my pet--when he arrives; and this is Susan, her assistant.
This”--she indicated the anomaly in blue baize and red braid--“is Miss
Pilsener, from the Brompton Kindergarten. She is going to teach me how
to open his little--_little_ mind, and be everything to him from the
very beginning!”
“Won’t you open _our_ little minds?” implored the second-best friend.
“You know we are in a state of the darkest ignorance.”
Mrs. Lovelace-Legge dismissed her attendants, and made her friends
sit down on the nursery sofa, and sank into a low nursing-chair. She
absently tried on an india-rubber apron as she spoke, and it was plain
her heart was with the invisible infant. “Ask me questions,” she
said. “I don’t seem able to keep my thoughts concentrated on anything
but--baby!”
“You must understand, Lotta,” said Lady Cranberry, “that to find you in
possession of”--she gulped--“a baby is a shock in itself to your most
intimate friends. And in the name of your regard for Lucy, supposing
myself to have no claim upon your confidence, I must ask you to explain
how you come to be in possession of such a--such a thing? And to--to
whom it belongs--and where it is coming from?”
“I came into possession of baby through a dear friend,” explained
Mrs. Lovelace-Legge. She added: “Perhaps you have heard of General
Carabyne--Lieutenant-General Ranford Carabyne of the Ordnance
Department, Calcutta?”
Her friends replied simultaneously: “Never!”
“He is the father of my child,” continued Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, “and, I
am given to understand, a charming person!”
Lady Cranberry’s lips moved soundlessly. She might have been breathing
a prayer for patience.