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Secret History Revealed by Lady Peggy O'Malley
By C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON
Author of "The Lightning Conductor Discovers America," "A
Soldier of the Legion," "Lady Betty Across the Water," Etc.
With Frontispiece in Colors
By CLARENCE ROWE
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangements with Doubleday, Page and Company
_Copyright, 1915, by_
C. N. & A. M. Williamson
_All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages, including the Scandinavian_
[Illustration: _"As I kicked it away, one of the slippers flew off and
seemed spitefully to follow the coat."_]
CHAPTER I
If I didn't tell this, nobody else ever would; certainly not Diana, nor
Major Vandyke--still less Eagle himself--I mean Captain Eagleston March;
and they and I are the only ones who know, except a few such people as
presidents and secretaries of war and generals, who never tell anything
even under torture. Besides, there is the unofficial part. Without that,
the drama would be like a play in three acts, with the first and third
acts chopped off. The presidents and secretaries of war and generals
know nothing about the unofficial part.
It's strange how the biggest things of life grow out of the tiniest
ones. There _is_ the old simile of the acorn and the oak, for instance.
But oaks take a long time to grow, and everybody concerned in oak
culture is calmly expecting them to do it. Imagine an acorn exploding to
let out an oak huge enough to shadow the world!
If, two years ago, when I was sixteen, I hadn't wanted money to buy a
white frock with roses on it, which I saw in Selfridge's window, a
secret crisis between the United States and Mexico would have been
avoided; and the career of a splendid soldier would not have been
broken.
One month before I met the white dress, Diana and Father and I had come
from home--that's Ballyconal--to see what good we could do with a season
in London; good for Diana, I mean, and I put her before Father because
he does so himself. Every one else he puts far, far behind, like the
beasts following Noah into the Ark. Not that I'm sure, without looking
them up, that they did follow Noah. But if it had been Father, he would
have arranged it in that way, to escape seeing their ugly faces or
smelling those who were not nice to smell.
I suppose I should have been left at Ballyconal, with nothing to do but
study my beloved French and Spanish, my sole accomplishments; only
Father had contrived to let the place, through the New York _Herald_, to
an American family who, poor dears, snapped it up by cable from the
description in the advertisement of "a wonderful XII Century Castle."
Besides, Diana couldn't afford a maid. And that's why I was taken to
America afterward. I can do hair beautifully. So, when one thinks back,
Fate had begun to weave a web long before the making of that white
dress. None of those tremendous things would have happened to change
heaven knows how many lives, if I hadn't been born with the knack of a
hairdresser, inherited perhaps from some bourgeoise ancestress of mine
on Mother's side.
When the American family found out what Ballyconal was really like, and
the twelfth-century rats had crept out from the hinterland of the old
wainscoting ("rich in ancient oak," the advertisement stated), to
scamper over its faces by night, and door knobs had come off in its
hands by day, or torn carpets had tripped it up and sprained its ankles,
it said bad words about deceitful, stoney-broke Irish earls, and fled at
the end of a fortnight, having paid for two months in advance at the
rate of thirty-five guineas a week. Father had been sadly sure that the
Americans would do that very thing, so he had counted on getting only
the advance money and no more. This meant cheap lodgings for us, which
spoiled Diana's chances from the start, as she told Father the minute
she saw the house. It was in a fairly good neighbourhood, and the
address looked fashionable on paper; but man, and especially girl, may
not live on neighbourhood and paper alone, even if the latter can be
peppered with coronets.
I don't know what curse or mildew collects on poor Irish earls, but it
simply goes nowhere to be one in London; and then there was the handicap
of Father's two quaint marriages. Diana's mother was a music-hall
"artiste" (isn't that the word?) without any money except what she
earned, and also--I heard a woman say once, when she thought Little
Pitcher's ears were engaged elsewhere--without any "h's" except in the
wrong places.
My mother, the poor darling, must have been just as unsuitable in her
way. She was a French chocolate heiress, whom Father married to mend the
family fortunes, when Diana was five; but some one shortly after sprang
on the market a better chocolate than her people made, so she was a
failure, too, and not even beautiful like Diana's mother. Luckily for
her, she died when I was born; but neither she nor the "artiste" can
have helped Father much, with the smart friends of his young days when
he was one of the best-looking bachelors in town.
Diana was considered beautiful, but "the image of her mother," by those
inconvenient creatures who run around the world remembering other
people's pasts; and though she and Father were invited to lots of big
crushes, they weren't asked to any of the charming intimate things which
Diana says are the right background for a débutante. This went to Di's
heart and Father's liver, and made them both dreadfully hard to get on
with. Cinderella wasn't in it with me, except that when they were
beastly, I was beastly back again; a relief to which Cinderella probably
didn't treat herself, being a fairy-story heroine, stuffed with virtues
as a sultana cake is stuffed with plums.
The day I asked Father for the white frock with roses on it in
Selfridge's window, he was so disagreeable that I went to my room and
slammed the door and kicked a chair. It was true that I did not need the
dress, because I never went anywhere and was only a flapper (it's almost
more unpleasant to be called a flapper than a "mouth to feed"); still,
the real pleasure of having a thing is when you don't need it, but just
want it. The farther away from me that gown seemed to recede, the more I
longed for it; and when Father told me not to nag or be a little idiot,
I determined that somehow or other, by hook or crook, the frock should
hang on my wall behind the chintz curtain which calls itself a wardrobe.
The morning of the refusal, Father and Di were starting off to be away
all that day and night. They were asked to a ridiculous house party
given by a rich, suburban Pickle family at Epsom for the Derby, and Di
had been grumbling that it was exactly the sort of invitation they
_would_ get: for one night and the Derby, instead of Ascot. However, it
was the time of the month for a moon, and quite decent young men had
been enticed; so Di wasn't so very sorry for herself after all. Her
nickname at home in Ireland, "Diana the Huntress," had been already
imported, free of duty, to England, by a discarded flirtée; but I don't
think she minded, it sounded so dashing, even if it was only grasping.
She went off moderately happy; and I was left with twenty-four hours on
my hands to decide by what hook, or what crook, I could possibly annex
the dress which I felt had been born for me.
At last I thought of a way that might do. My poor little chocolate
mother made a will the day before she died, when I was a week old,
leaving everything she possessed to me. Of course her money was all
gone, because she had been married for two years to Father, and Himself
is a very expensive man. But he hadn't spent her jewels yet, nor her
wedding veil, nor a few other pieces of lace. Since then he's wheedled
most of the jewellery out of me, but the wedding veil I mean to keep
always, and a Point d'Alençon scarf and some handkerchiefs he has
probably forgotten. I had forgotten them, too, but when I was racking my
brain how to get the Selfridge dress, the remembrance tumbled down off
its dusty little shelf.
The legacies were at the bottom of my trunk, because it was simpler to
bring them away from Ballyconal, than find a stowaway place that the
American family wouldn't need for its belongings. The veil nothing would
have induced me to part with; but the scarf was so old, I felt sure it
must have come to my mother from a succession of chocolate or perhaps
soap or sardine grandmammas, and I hadn't much sentiment about it. I had
no precise idea what the lace ought to be worth, but I fancied Point
d'Alençon must be valuable, and I thought I ought to get more than
enough by selling it to buy the white dress, which cost seven guineas.
Taxying through Wardour Street with Di, I had often noticed an antique
shop appropriately crusted with the grime of centuries, all but the
polished window, where lace and china and bits of old silver were
displayed. It seemed to me that a person intelligent enough to combine
odds and ends with such fetching effect ought to be the man to
appreciate my great--or great great-grandmother's scarf. I didn't run to
taxis when alone, and would as soon have got into one of those appalling
motor buses as leap on to the back of a mad elephant that had
berserkered out of the Zoo. Consequently, I had to walk. It was an
untidy, badly dusted day, with a hot wind; and I realized, when I caught
sight of myself in a convex mirror in the curiosity-shop window, that I
looked rather like a small female edition of Strumpelpeter.
There was a bell on the door which, like a shrill, disparaging _leit
motif_, announced me, and made me suddenly self-conscious. It hadn't
occurred to me before that there was anything to be ashamed of or
frightened about in my errand. I'd vaguely pictured the shopman as a
dear old Dickensy thing who would take a fussy interest in me and my
scarf, and who would, with a fatherly manner, press upon me a handful of
sovereigns or a banknote. But as the bell jangled, one of the most
repulsive men I ever saw looked toward the door. There was another man
in the place, talking to the first creature, and he looked up, too. Not
even the blindest bat, however, could have mistaken him for a
shopkeeper, and his being there put not only a different complexion on
the business, but on me. I felt mine turning bright pink, instead of the
usual cream that accompanies the chocolate-coloured hair and eyes with
which I advertise the industry of my French ancestors.
The shopman stared at me with a sulky look exactly like that of
Nebuchadnezzar, our boar pig from Yorkshire, which took a prize for its
nose or something. This person might have won a prize for his nose also,
if an offer had been going for large ones. The rest of his face, olive
green and fat, was in the perspective of this nose, just as the lesser
proportions of his body, such as chest and legs, were in the perspective
of his--waist. The shop was much smaller than I had expected from the
window--a place you might have swung a cat in without giving it
concussion of the brain, but not a lion; and the men--the fat proprietor
and his long, lean customer, and two suits of deformed-looking armour,
seemed almost to fill it. I've heard an actor talk about a theatre being
so tiny he was "on the audience"; and these two were on theirs, the
audience being me. I was so close to the fat one that I could see the
crumbs on the folds of his waistcoat, like food stored on cupboard
shelves. I took such a dislike to him that I felt inclined to bounce out
as quickly as I had bounced in, but the door had banged mechanically
behind me, as if to stop the bell at any cost. The shop smelt of moth
powder, old leather, musty paper, and hair oil.
"Well, my little girl, what do you want?" inquired Nebuchadnezzar, with
the kind of lisp that turns a rat into a yat.
Little girl, indeed! To be called a "little girl" by a thing like that,
and asked what I wanted in that second-hand Hebrew tone, made me boil
for half a second. Then, suddenly, I saw that it was funny, and I almost
giggled as I imagined myself haughtily explaining that I had reached the
age of sixteen, to say nothing of being the daughter of two or three
hundred earls. I didn't care a tuppenny anything whether he mistook me
for nine or ninety; but I did begin to feel that it wouldn't be pleasant
unrolling my tissue-paper parcel and bargaining for money under the eyes
and ears of the other man.
They were very nice eyes and ears. Already I'd had time to notice that;
for even in these days, when men aren't supposed to be as indispensable
to females as they were in Edwardian or Victorian and earlier ages, I
don't think it's entirely obsolete for a girl to learn more about a
man's looks in three seconds than she picks up about another woman's
frock in two.
This man wasn't what most girls of sixteen would call young; but I am
different from most girls because I've always had to be a sort of law
unto myself, in order not to become a family footstool. I've had to make
up my mind about everything or risk my brain degenerating into a bath
sponge; and one of the things I made it up about early was that I didn't
like boys or nuts. The customer in the curiosity shop, to whom the
proprietor was showing perfect ducks of Chelsea lambs plastered against
green Chelsea bushes, was, maybe, twenty-eight or thirty, a great age
for a woman, but not so bad for a man; and I wished to goodness he would
buy or not buy a lamb and go forth about other business. However, I
couldn't indefinitely delay answering that question addressed to "little
girl."
"I want to show you a point-lace scarf," I snapped. Nebuchadnezzar's
understudy squeezed himself out from behind the counter, and lumbered a
step or two nearer me, moving not straight ahead, but from side to side,
as tables do for spiritualists.
"We don't mend lace here, if that's what you've come for, my child," he
patronized me.
"It doesn't need to be mended," said I. "It's beautiful lace. It's to be
sold."
"Oa--oh," he exploded with a cockney drawl, and a rude look coming into
his eyes which he'd kept out while there was hope that the dusty,
blown-about little thing might turn into a customer. "Well! Let's see!
But I've got more old lace on hand now than I know what to do with."
As I unrolled layers of tissue paper which seemed to rustle loudly out
of sheer spite, I was conscious that the customer had sauntered away as
far as possible, and was gazing at some old prints on the wall which
gave him an excuse to turn his back to us. I thought this sweetly
tactful of him.
Nebuchadnezzar (over the shop he calls himself Franks, the sort of
noncommittal name a Jacobs or Wolfstein likes to hide under) almost
snatched the lace from my hands as I opened the package, shook out its
folds, held it close to his eyes, pawed it, and sniffed. "Humph!" he
grunted ungraciously. "Same old thing as usual. If I've got one of 'em,
I've got a dozen. What did you expect to ask for it?"
"Ten pounds," I announced, as bold as one of those lions that could not
be swung in his shop.
"Ten pounds!" I don't know whether the sound he made was meant for a
snort or a laugh. "Ten grandmothers!"
"Yes," said I, flaring up as if he'd struck a match on me. "That's just
it! Ten of my grandmothers have worn this scarf since it was made, and I
want a pound for each of them."
There was a small funny noise behind me, like a staunched giggle, and I
glanced over my shoulder at the customer, but his back looked most calm
and inoffensive.
"You'll have to take it out in wanting, I'm afraid, my girl," returned
the shopkeeper. "I can offer you thirty bob, no more and no less. That's
all the thing's worth to me."
I tried to pull the scarf out of his hands, but he didn't seem ready to
give it up. "It's worth a great deal more to me," I said. "I'll carry it
away somewhere else, where they _know_ about old lace."
"My word! You're a pert young piece for your size!" remarked the
horrible man; and though I could have boxed his ears (which stood out
exactly like the handles on an urn), I felt my own tingle, because it
was _true_, what he said: I was a pert young piece. Holding my own at
home, and lots of other things in life (for sixteen years of life seem
fearfully long if they're all you've got behind you), had made me pert,
and I didn't love myself for it, any more than a porcupine can be really
fond of his own quills. I couldn't bear, somehow, that the man with the
nice eyes should be hearing me called a "pert piece," and thinking me
one. Quite a smart repartee came into my head, but a heavy feeling in my
heart kept me from putting it into words; and Nebuchadnezzar went
grunting on: "I know as much about old lace as any man in this street,
if not in town. That's why I don't offer more."
"Give me back my scarf, please," was my only answer, in quite a small
voice.
Still he held on to the lace. "Look here, miss," said he in a changed
tone, "how did you come to get hold of this bit of property, anyhow?
Folks ain't in the habit of sending their children out to dispose o'
their valuables. How can I tell that you ain't nicked this off your
mother or your aunt, or some other dame who doesn't know you're out? If
I was doin' my dooty, I shouldn't wonder if I oughtn't to call in the
police!"
"You horrid, horrid person," I flung at him. "You're trying to frighten
me--to blackmail me--into selling you my lace for thirty shillings, when
maybe it's worth twenty times that. But if any one calls the police, it
will be me, to give you in charge for--for intimidation."
Almost before I had time to be proud of the word when I'd contrived to
get it out, the customer had detached himself from the prints and
intervened.
"I beg your pardon for interfering," he said (to me, not to
Nebuchadnezzar), "but I can't help wondering"--and he smiled a perfectly
disarming smile--"if you aren't rather young to be a business woman on
your own account. Will you let me see the lace?"
Of course the shopkeeper gave it up to him instantly, shamefaced at
realizing that his customer, instead of admiring his smart methods, was
entering the lists against him.
While my champion (I felt sure somehow that he was my champion at heart)
took the scarf in his hands, and began trying to look wise over it, I
had about forty-nine seconds in which to look at him. Even at first
glance I had thought him nice, but now I decided that he was the nicest
man I had ever seen. Not the handsomest; I don't mean that, for our
county in Ireland is celebrated for its handsome men, both high and low.
Also I'd seen several Dreams since we came to London: but--well, just
the _nicest_.
Because it was the middle of the season and he was in tweeds, I fancied
that he didn't go in for being "smart." I'd learned enough already about
London ways to understand as much as that. But all the same I thought
that he had the air of a soldier. And he had such a contradictory sort
of face that it interested me immensely, wondering what the
contradictions meant.
He had taken off his hat when I came into the shop (I'd noticed that,
and had been pleased), and now I saw that the upper part of his forehead
was very white and the rest of his face very tanned, as if his
complexion had slipped down. He had almost straw-coloured hair, which
seemed lighter than it was because of his sunburned skin; and his
eyebrows and the eyelashes (lowered while he gazed at my lace) were two
or three shades darker. They were long, arched brows that gave a look of
dreamy romance to the upper part of his face, but the lower part was
extremely determined, perhaps even obstinate. It jumped into my head
that a woman--even a fascinator like Diana--would never be able to make
him change his mind about things, or do things he didn't wish to do.
That was one of the contradictions, and the nose was another. It was
rather a Roman sort of nose, and looked aggressive, as if it would be
searching about for forlorn hopes to fight for; anyhow, as if it must
fight at all costs. Then, contradicting the nose, was the mouth (for he
was clean-shaven as all young men ought to be, and not leave too much to
our imagination), a mouth somehow like a boy's, affectionate and kind
and gay, though far from being weak. I didn't know what to make of him
at all, and, of course, I liked him the better for that.
"I think this is mighty fine lace," he pronounced, when he had studied
it long enough to show off as a connoisseur; and all of a sudden I
realized that he was an American. Diana had collected two American
friends who often invited her to the Savoy, and I'd heard them, and no
one else, say "mighty fine." "Are you sure you want to get rid of it?"
I thought he was a dear to put it like that, as if I could have no real
need for money, but had such a glut of lace scarves at home that I must
rid myself of a few superfluous ones. As he spoke he was looking
straight at me with the kind eyes I had noticed first of all--gray and
yellow and brown mixed up together into hazel. I suppose it must have
been some quality in that look which made me decide instantly to tell
him everything. I'd have suffered the torture of the boot (anyhow, for a
minute or two) before I would have explained myself to Nebuchadnezzar.
"I'm sure I do want to sell, if I can get as much as ten pounds for the
thing," I answered. "Nothing less than seven guineas would be of any use
to me. There's something which costs seven guineas--a thing I'm dying to
buy. My mother left this scarf to me, as well as some other lace I
wouldn't sell for the world. But it's quite mine and I can do as I like
with it."
"Let me see! Ten pounds is fifty dollars, isn't it?" the man reflected
out aloud.
"I don't know," I caught him up, "anything about American money or
America."
He smiled at me again. Perhaps I had hoped he would.
"That's too bad! You ought to come over on our side and learn."
"I'd love to, especially to the parts where I could show off my French
and Spanish. But I'm sure I shall never get the chance to cross the
sea." I was three thousand miles from dreaming then of all the things
that were to come out of this little affair of the scarf and the dress
which had tempted me to put my lace on the market.
"Well," he went on, going back from me to my property. "I'll buy this
pretty thing for ten pounds if you like to sell it to me; but honestly,
I warn you that for all I know it may be worth a lot more."
"I'll be perfectly satisfied with ten pounds," I said. "But I don't wish
you to buy just out of kindness, when I'm almost sure you don't really
want to."
"But I do," he assured me. "I came into this place to carry out a
commission for an aunt of mine in America. She wrote and asked me to
find her something in a curiosity shop in England that she could give
for a wedding present to a girl who's wild about antiques. An old friend
of ours is going to take the parcel back with her when she sails
to-morrow; smuggle it, maybe, but that's not my business. I thought of a
miniature on ivory, but I haven't taken a big fancy to anything I've
seen so far. I like your lace better, and it costs just the money my
aunt told me to spend. So there you are."
"And there's the lace," I added, laughing. "It's yours. Thank you very
much."
"It's for me to thank you," said he. "I'm awfully afraid I'm getting the
best of the bargain, though. Wouldn't you rather go somewhere first and
consult an expert?"
"No, indeed," said I. "Maybe the expert would tell us the lace was worth
only five pounds, not ten. What I'm in a hurry to do is to dash to
Selfridge's, and buy the dress I want before some beast of a girl gets
it before me. Oh, horror! Maybe she's there already!"
"The worst of it is," said my new friend--I felt he was that--"I haven't
got the ten pounds on me. I meant to have anything I might decide to buy
sent home and paid for at my hotel."
"Can't I go with you to your hotel, and you give me the money there?" I
wanted to know. "You see, I'm in such a hurry about the dress."
He glanced at me with a funny look in his eyes, and somehow I read what
it meant. _He_ hadn't called me a "little girl," and had behaved as
respectfully as if I were a hundred; but I could see that he thought me
about twelve or thirteen; and now he was saying to himself: "No harm
carting a child like that about without a chaperon."
This was the first time I'd ever been glad that I had sacrificed myself
for Di, and come to London in my old frocks up to the tops of my boots,
and my hair hanging in two tails down to my waist. Of course, if any one
were caddish or cattish enough to look her up in the book, it could be
found out at a glance that Lady Diana O'Malley was twenty-three; but
even if a person is a cad or a cat, he (or she) is often too lazy to go
through the dull pages of Debrett or Burke; and besides, there is seldom
one of the books handy. Therefore, Di had a sporting chance of being
taken for eighteen, the sweet conventional age of a débutante on her
presentation. Every one did know, however, that Father had married
twice, and that there must be a difference of five or six years between
Diana and the chocolate child. Accordingly, if I could be induced to
look thirteen at most, it would be useful. As for me, I hadn't cared
particularly. I knew I shouldn't get any grown-up fun in London, whether
my hair were in a tail or a twist, or whether my dresses were short or
long. Sometimes I had been sorry for beginning in that way, but now I
saw that virtue was going to be rewarded.
"All right," said my friend. "Maybe it will be the best arrangement."
And we left Nebuchadnezzar looking as the dog in the fable must have
looked, when he snapped at the reflected bit of meat in the water and
lost the bit in his mouth.
A taxi was passing, and stopped at the flourish of a cane. I jumped in
before I could be helped. The man followed; and though I was looking
forward only to a little fun, my very first adventure in London "on my
own," the chauffeur was speeding us along a road that didn't stop at the
Waldorf Hotel: it was a road which would carry us both on and on, toward
a blazing bonfire of wild passion and romance.