“Poor papa is deaded,” said Jack to Boo on his return to town; in the
tenderness of his heart he was beginning to forget the dead man’s
pinches and to pity his retirement from the world.
“I know; and I do hate black so,” said Boo twitching wrathfully at her
frock.
“I’m ’fraid he must be so dull in heaven,” said Jack seriously. “I
don’t think they let them race, or bet, or do anything amusin’ there.”
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he had heard so.
“I ought to have gone down as well as you, instead of Gerry,” said Boo,
who had been exceedingly aggrieved at being left in town like Baby.
“Oh, no,” said Jack with much dignity, “you’re not in the succession;
you’re a female.”
“A female? Me? How dare you?” cried Boo in a red fury of wrath, and
gave him a resounding box on the ear. The head of her House perceived
that he was not a hero to his relatives, and, ignorant of the French
proverb, turned to the servants.
“I’m Duke, James,” he said to his friend the hall-boy.
“So I’ve heard, your Grace.”
“We’ll play marbles all day long, James.”
“All right, sir.”
“Why aren’t you a duke, James?”
The hall-boy grinned.
“_M. le Duc ne doit pas causer avec les domestiques_,” said the French
governess, and took hold of him by his right ear and propelled him
upstairs.
“_Pourquoi nong pas?_” asked Jack.
“_Parcequ’ils sont vos inférieurs_,” replied the French lady.
Jack did like the reply, it sounded harsh, he did not believe it was
true; James beat him at marbles, and could make popguns and cut out
boats, and had talents and virtues innumerable.
Jack loved the hall-boy, and had once got into dreadful disgrace by
taking his place and answering the door, to let his friend go round the
corner.
As he was being driven upstairs by the governess he heard the voice of
Brancepeth arguing with a footman; the young man was insisting that
they should let him in, and the servants were apologizing, her Grace’s
orders had been positive. Jack, with a leap like a chamois’s, rushed
downstairs and leaped into his friend’s arms.
“Well, your Grace,” said Brancepeth, as he kissed the child, “how is my
lord duke, eh?”
Brancepeth had not been allowed to go down to Staghurst, even for the
funeral; he had been desired to allege military duties as an obstacle,
and had done so, though he thought it brutally uncivil to poor Cocky.
Jack laughed; his rosy face was bright above his black jersey; but he
tried to look serious, as he had been told that he ought to do.
“Mammy says we must not laugh,” he said sorrowfully. “Come in here.”
He pulled his favorite by the hand into the library.
“He’s deaded you know,” he whispered solemnly.
Brancepeth nodded; he sat down on a low chair, took Jack on his knee
and kissed him.
“He won’t pinch my calves any more,” said Jack with a sense of relief.
“He won’t do anything any more, poor devil,” said his friend, who
sincerely mourned him.
Jack was silent, trying to realize the position and failing.
“Cuckoopint’s mine now, ain’t he?” he said suddenly.
Cuckoopint was Cocky’s cob.
“Everything’s yours, you lucky little beggar,” said Brancepeth. “But
don’t flatter yourself they’ll let you do as you like. Ronnie and the
bishop between ’em will keep you uncommon tight.”
Jack did not attend to this foreboding: his mind was full of Cuckoopint.
“Were you with him when he died, Jack?” asked Brancepeth, who felt a
morbid interest in Cocky’s end. Jack nodded.
“Yes; he said ‘damn’; they told me to go on the bed and kiss him, but
he wouldn’t; he said ‘damn.’”
“Poor devil!” sighed Brancepeth with a twinge in his conscience like
neuralgia.
“Well, you’ve a long minority,” he added as he kissed the child again.
“Things’ll pull round and get straight in all these years, but I’m
afraid you’ll run amuck when you’re your own master, you naughty little
beggar. I don’t know though, I think you’ve got grit in you.”
Jack meditated profoundly. Then he whispered in his elder’s ears, “If
I’m all that grandpa’ was mayn’t I live without mammy somewhere? Take
Cuckoopint and Boo and live with ’oo?”
Brancepeth shook his head with a sigh. “No, Jack, you’ll never live
with me. At least----” he paused as a certain possibility crossed his
mind. “As for your mother,” he added, “well, you’ll see as much of her
as _she_ wishes, wherever you live. You won’t see more.”
Jack’s face puckered up ready for a good cry; his position did not seem
to him changed in any of its essentials.
“And Cuckoopint?” he said piteously.
“They’ll sell Cuckoopint probably,” said Brancepeth. “But I’ll try and
buy him and keep for you; you’re not big enough to ride him yet.”
Jack threw his arms about his friend’s throat.
“I do love ’oo, Harry. Oh, I _do_ love ’oo!”
Brancepeth pressed the boy to him fondly; he knew the caress was
chiefly for the sake of Cuckoopint. Still it was sweet to him.
“And that poor devil died with a bad word in his mouth,” he thought;
and something as like remorse as any modern person can feel stirred in
him.
The widowed duchess could not see her Parisian creditor at her own
house. It would be known that he came there, and would look very odd
at such a time, and might awaken her brother’s suspicions. She ordered
him to meet her at the house of a famous Court dressmaker, a woman who
had been often useful to her in more agreeable appointments and more
interesting embarrassments. She went out alone on foot, ostensibly to
church, deeply veiled of course, at ten o’clock on the Sunday morning
which followed her husband’s funeral. The Court dressmaker lived in a
private house in Green Street, and she had not far to go. There, in a
perfectly safe seclusion, she awaited the arrival of her creditor.
She was in a pretty room on the first floor. It had rose blinds and
heavy curtains, and had been furnished in subdued and artistic style by
a famous firm of decorators; she knew the room well, and it had always
been at her disposition. Her heart had throbbed more agreeably, but
never so nervously, there, as it did this Sunday morning whilst the
church bells jangled and boomed in her ears, and the warm steam of a
_calorifère_ heating a foggy atmosphere, made her feel sick and faint.
In a few moments the jeweler was announced--a slender, frail, fair
man of some sixty-five years old, who saluted her gracefully, and in
return had a haughty stare which revealed to him forcibly that he was
a tradesman and she was a gentlewoman. Beaumont, who was accustomed to
different treatment, said to himself that she wanted a lesson. Nothing
costs us so dear in this world as our pride, and if we cannot afford to
purchase the privilege of its indulgence the world will make us smart
for claiming so great a luxury.
The deep black of her attire, so trying to most of her sex, only made
fairer her skin, made brighter her hair and her eyes, and lent a richer
rose to her lips; she looked extremely well, though she looked cross
and anxious as she saw the jeweler enter.
“Good morning, Beaumont!” she said sharply. “Have you brought the
jewels?”
He smiled: the question seemed to him of an extraordinary _naïveté_ for
a lady who knew the world so well.
“I do not carry jewels in my pocket, madame,” he replied. “I am here to
speak of yours.”
“Didn’t you get my letter?”
“Yes, madame; am I not here by your appointment?”
“But I ordered you to bring the diamonds?” she asked with that brusque
authority which was part of her being.
“I came to speak of the transaction, madame,” he repeated and smiled.
The cool audacity of her manner and commands diverted him. He perceived
that she had no intention of paying him. “The cocotte has never been
born,” he thought, “who could hold a candle to a great lady for
impudence.”
If she had asked him to sit down he still would have refrained from
troubling her; but she said no syllable that was civil; she continued
to look at her creditor with haughty impatience.
“Be quick about what you have to say then,” she remarked; “I can only
stay a few moments here; I am going to church.”
A creditor, if deftly treated as a Buddha of power and sanctity,
may be disarmed, for, although a creditor, he is human. But if he
be “cheeked” and treated as of no importance he is naturally moved
to use his thunderbolt and assert his godhead. Beaumont sat down
without invitation or permission, and she, to show her disgust at such
familiarity, rose and remained standing.
“Madame,” he said very politely, “have you forgotten the paper which
you signed?”
She was silent, darting azure lightning on him from her eyes. She did
not distinctly remember what she had signed. She had not very clearly
understood it at the time of signing; it had been all done in such a
hurry, and the cab had been waiting for her in the rain, and she had
wanted to get back to the Bristol unseen and dress for a dinner at the
English Embassy, and the time to do so had been very short. Certainly
she remembered writing her name; but the words above her name she did
not recall; it was more than four years ago.
Beaumont saw that she had forgotten.
“I warned you of the importance of what you signed,” he said politely.
“If you desire now to read it over----”
“Is that what I signed?” she said eagerly; she thought it would not be
difficult to get it away from him; he looked very weak and small, and
must, she thought, be seventy if he were a day.
Beaumont smiled.
“It is a copy.”
Her face clouded; she took it with an impatient gesture and read its
clauses. The lines were few, but they clearly stated that she was the
sole and lawful owner of the diamond and transferred it to the keeping
of the jeweler until such time as he should be repaid in full, capital
and interest.
“Well, madame?” said Beaumont, having waited for five long minutes,
during which she stood looking out of the window, her foot irritably
beating on the carpet.
“What is there to say?” she replied bluntly, her brain was less clear
than usual. “I can’t pay you, if that’s what you want.”
Beaumont raised his eyebrows.
“I conclude I have the honor of being your Grace’s first creditor, or
you would have learned by painful experience that it is not well to
be impolite to creditors. The situation is changed since you signed
that little memorandum. I was content to wait whilst the good Duke of
Otterbourne was living: but he is dead, and I am indisposed to wait,
and if you cannot pay me I must see who will.”
“You beast!” muttered Mouse between her pearl like teeth.
“I do not think I am a beast,” said Beaumont meekly. “At least, not
more so than most men. I took you at your word, madame, and it appears
that your word was--was not entirely to be depended upon. It appears
that the jewel is an heirloom; it goes to your little boy under
settlement in trust. So I am informed by those competent to know.”
She stood with her profile turned toward him, and continued to look out
of the window at the house opposite.
“If it is my son’s you can’t claim it,” she said sullenly. “You knew
well enough at the time it wasn’t mine. You only pretended to believe
that it was. You did an illegal thing when you lent me the money; and
you know you can’t go into any Court about it. My husband was alive
then; my signature was not worth a farthing, you know that!”
Beaumont gazed at her in admiration for her boldness, in compassion for
her temerity and want of worldly wisdom.
“I have done business sometimes, madame, in Paris,” he said softly,
“with persons of your sex who are not considered, there, pure enough to
sit beside you in the tribune at Chantilly, or at the Institute, or at
the Chambers. But amongst those _horizontales_ I never knew one quite
of your force. _Je vous en fais mes compliments._”
Angry blood flew into the fair cheeks of his debtor; her blue eyes
flashed like stormy summer skies; her hand clenched till her rings cut
into the skin.
“You dare to insult me because my lord is dead!”
Cocky in memory really appeared to her, at this moment, as a very tower
of strength.
Beaumont made a little gesture of smiling protestation.
“Oh, madame, if your lord were living he would not make much difference
to me in this matter, or to any action of your creditors. But he would
certainly have apprehended the situation more quickly than you do.”
“You are an insolent!”
She would have reached to touch the button of the electric bell, but
Beaumont interposed.
“Do not make a scandal, duchesse; I shall not, if you do not press me
too far. I am not your enemy. I never expose women if I can help it.
Nature made them dishonest; jewels and money are to them what cherries
and apples are to schoolboys. That is why they are so much better
shut up in harems. However, I came for strict business; let us limit
ourselves to it. You say I cannot go into a tribunal. You have relied
upon that fact. But it is a rotten staff to lean on; it is not a fact.
I both can and will go into any number of tribunals about this matter.
They may nonsuit me. I may, perhaps, lose both the diamond and the
money; but I have plenty of money and no children, and it will amuse
me, madame, to see you cross-examined. It will not amuse you.”
She stared fixedly at the windows of the opposite house, and observed,
as people do observe extraneous matters in moments of horrible
agitation, that the lace curtains to them were very soiled. Her heart
heaved under the crape _fichû_ of her bodice, and he saw that it was
only by great effort that she controlled herself from some bodily
assault upon him.
“What a godsend for the illustrated press such a trial would be!” he
continued, in quiet, amused tones. “But it would be disagreeable to
you, because those papers disfigure so the pretty people whom they
pretend to represent.”
“You would never dare to go to law!” she interrupted in a hoarse,
fierce voice. “You would not dare! You would be punished yourself!”
“I should be punished, possibly, by losing the money. They would
nonsuit me, but I think they would make you pay my costs. But as I
have said, I do not mind losing the money; I have a good deal and no
children, and I am old----”
“Well, then, why make this hideous fuss?”
Beaumont smiled.
“Why not make you, madame, a free gift of the money and the interest?
_Allez donc!_ You ought to be too proud to dream of taking a present
from a tradesman. If I were a young man I might--on conditions--but I
am old, and a beautiful woman is not much more to me than an ugly one,
alas! Besides, you have been very rude, duchesse. No one should be so
rude as that who does not stand on a solid bank balance.”
She turned her head over her shoulder and flashed a scathing glance
upon him.
“How much longer are you going to prose on in this way? I want to go
out.”
Beaumont shook his head. “You will not learn wisdom? You are wrong,
madame. Twist a tiger’s tail, laugh at an anarchist, and put
nitro-glycerine in your dressing-bag, but never, ah, never be rude to
anyone who has you in his power.”
“In your power? I? In yours? You are mad.”
“Oh, no; I am entirely sane. Saner than you, madame; for you do not
seem to understand that you have done a very ugly thing, a vulgar thing
even; what is called in English, I believe, a first-class misdemeanor,
for you obtained a very large sum by false representation.”
She changed color; she was intelligent and she did see her conduct in
the light in which twelve London jurymen would be likely to see it,
and also in the shape in which the Radical press would be certain to
present it to their public.
Beaumont relented a little. A man may be too old to fully appreciate
beauty, but he is always kinder to a pretty woman than to a plain
one. Moreover he had no real inclination to figure in the law courts
himself, though to punish her he was prepared to take her into them.
“Is it possible, madame,” he said with hesitation, “that all the great
people you belong to cannot arrange this small matter for you without
forcing me to go to extremes? The magnificent English aristocracy.”
“The magnificent English aristocracy,” she repeated with unspeakable
scorn, “who are coal-owners, corn-factors, horse-dealers, game-vendors,
shop-owners, tradesmen, every man-jack of them, are most of them
bankrupt tradesmen, my good Beaumont! They are obliged to ally
themselves with tradesmen who aren’t bankrupt--like you--to keep their
heads above water. The great families with whom I am allied, as you
expressed it, couldn’t, I believe, amongst them all raise a thousand
guineas in solid coin.”
“But you came to me for twelve thousand,” thought Beaumont; aloud he
merely said, “But monsieur your brother? Surely he----”
A shiver ran over her from head to foot. She would rather, she thought,
face the Middlesex jury than tell this tale to Ronald.
“My brother has all the copy-book virtues,” she answered sharply. “He
would sell his shirt to pay you if you told him this story, but if he
hasn’t got a shirt?”
“You speak figuratively, I presume?”
“Figuratively? I mean what I say. Well, of course he’s got shirts to
his back; but that is pretty well all he has got. And he is guardian to
the boy, to all the children.”
“I understand.”
He saw in what a position Hurstmanceaux would be placed between his
duty to his wards and his sentiment for his sister if the knowledge
of what had been done with the roc’s egg came before him. “But if he
be a poor man it would be no use to worry him,” thought Beaumont, who
was keenly practical, and who, in this matter, merely wanted to get
his money back, and to be safely out of what he knew was not a very
creditable position for himself, since the family would naturally argue
that he should not have taken Lady Kenilworth’s unsupported word in a
matter of so much importance.
“Everyone knows the high character of Lord Hurstmanceaux,” he said, to
gain time for his own reflections. Mouse repressed a rude exclamation;
she was so utterly sick of Ronnie’s character. A brother who had known
how to do all the things that Cocky had used to do, and would have
put her up to doing them, would have been so much more useful at the
moment. She felt that she had not drunk at the fountain of knowledge
during her husband’s lifetime as she ought to have done. For a person
who was not hampered by scruples she was most blamably ignorant about
the ins and outs and hooks and crooks of left-handed financing.
Beaumont waited in polite silence. He was not a hard or harsh man
and he was not insensible to the purity of her profile as she stood
sideways against the window; he saw that she was genuinely alarmed and
genuinely powerless; the folded crape which went crossways over her
bosom heaved with her deep drawn hurried breathing.
“Have you no friend?” he said at last very softly and with a world of
meaning in the tone.
She changed countenance; she could not pretend to misunderstand his
meaning.
“Friends have more sympathy than relatives,” he added in the same
meditative manner. “It is true, madame, that your dilemma is not
in itself interesting; it resembles too much actions which receive
unlovely names when in a lower class than yours, still a beautiful
woman can always persuade the weaker sense to be blind to her errors;
at least until those errors have been proclaimed in print, so that all
who run may read them.”
He took a natural and not a very malignant vengeance in his words, but
to her he seemed a very Mephistopheles torturing her with every refined
devilry.
And she was insulted and she could not resent! She could not ring for
her servants and have this man turned into the street.
The twelve thousand pounds had melted like morning mist. She could
scarcely remember what they had gone for; but the bitter insult
remained, would remain, she thought, with her for ever.
He rose and stood before her. “Well?” he said gently.
“You have a right to your money, I suppose,” she said sullenly between
her set teeth. “I have no notion on earth how to get you a farthing,
but if you will wait a month and not speak to my brother in the
interval, I will--I will see what I can do.”
Beaumont bowed.
“I will wait six months and I will speak to no one. But if at the end
of six months I do not receive all, I shall speak, with pain, madame,
but inevitably not to your brother but to the world.”
“I understand,” she said haughtily. “You will do your worst. Well,
never enter my presence again, that is all; and leave it now this
moment.”
Beaumont smiled with admiration and regret combined.
“You are very unwise, madame. If you had not been rude to me I would
have accorded you a year. _Mais on chasse de race._”
She knew that it was unwise to be so insolent, but she could not have
made herself polite to him to save her life. He punished her for
having tricked him and flouted her. He was a very rich man and she had
offended him.
She saw her mistake, but she would not have resisted repeating it if he
had come back into the room. Women always bring temper into business,
and that is why they fail in it so frequently, for those who do not
bring temper bring sentiment, and the one is as ruinous as the other.
She had a rapid imagination; she saw before her the crowded court, the
witness-box where prevarication was of no use, all her dearest friends
with their _lorgnons_ lifted, the bench of the scribbling reporters,
the correspondents of the illustrated papers making their sketches
furtively and staring at her as she had stared at people in _causes
célèbres_; she saw it all, even the portraits of herself which would
appear in those woodcuts of artistic journals which would make Helen’s
self hideous and Athene’s self grotesque.
She saw it all--all the huge headings in the posters and papers, all
the staring eyes, all the commiserating censure, all the discreet
veiled enjoyment of her acquaintances, all the rancid acrid virulence
of the rejoicing Radical press.
She imagined that Beaumont would not get his money easily because she
knew something about the risks run by those who lend on an imperfect
title, as to minors or to women; but she had seen in his regard that he
would not mind losing any amount of money if he had his revenge on her
in putting her into court.
Actually, Beaumont was by no means a revengeful, nor even a hard man,
and a very little diplomacy would have made him favorable to her.
She hated him more intensely than she had ever hated anyone. For in
the first place he had done her a favor, and in the second place she
had done him a wrong--a mixture which naturally produces the strongest
hatred. She knew that, despite his courtesy, she had nothing more to
hope from him; that he would have his money back again, or he would
make the transaction public.
Public sympathy would be entirely with him against herself. Even that,
however, seemed to her less horrible than the fact that Ronald would
know what she had done. At the bottom of her heart she was not very
brave; she could hector and bully, and command, and she had that share
in the physical courage of her race which took her unflinching over a
bullfinch in the shires. But she had not the moral courage which would
allow that punishment was just and bear it calmly. It was probable
that Ronald and her brothers-in-law would never let the matter come to
a trial, that they would get the money between them together somehow,
though they were all as poor as Job; but to have the matter brought
before these prejudiced persons seemed to her worse than the law court
itself. Ronald she dreaded, the Ormes she detested, and her sisters’
husbands she thought the most odious prigs in the world; to come before
a family council of this sort would be more unsupportable than the law
court itself, which would at least contain an element of excitement,
and in which her personal appearance would be sure to rouse some
feeling in her favor. To that personal fascination her brother and her
brothers-in-law were at all times insensible.
“Some women have men belonging to them who are of some use,” she
thought bitterly, “but all the men I have anything to do with are
paupers and prigs. What is a family made for if it is not to pull one
through awkward places, and follow one with a second horse?”
She hated her family fiercely. It seemed to her that it was all their
fault that she had been placed in such a dreadful dilemma. If there
was one thing more sure than another, she knew that it was the dead
certainty that everybody in her world were as poor as rats, unless they
were men of business who did not properly belong to that world at all.
It was wonderful how soon you come to the end of a man’s resources! No
one knew that better than herself. As for the bigwigs who look so swell
and imposing to the classes which know nothing about them, she was but
too well aware of the carking cares, the burdened lands, the desperate
devices which sustained their magnificent appearances as the rotten
timbers of a doomed ship may support a gilded figure-head.
“By the time Jack’s thirty years old the whole rotten thing will be
gone like a smashed egg,” she thought, with a certain pleasure in
reflecting that all the wearisome and impertinent precautions which
Jack’s guardians took to shelter his interests would be of no avail
for him in the long run against the rapidly rising tide of English
socialism.