On the morrow, at the appointed hour, the real Otterbourne jewels
were consigned to the representatives of the Otterbourne bankers, and
Hurstmanceaux, like all kind-hearted persons, now that he had got his
own way, felt sorry he had been obliged to enforce it, especially as he
heard that his sister was unwell, and could see no one. “Poor little
Sourisette,” he thought remorsefully. “Perhaps I am too hard on her.
She had a beast of a husband. She is more to be pitied than blamed.”
Always ready to forgive, he called in Stanhope Street more than once,
but she refused to see him. The children told him she was unwell and
invisible.
Boo came flying down the staircase between the palms and pointsettias
in all the glee which to be the bearer of an unpleasant message
naturally afforded her.
“Mammy says she won’t see you ever any more, uncle Ronald,” said this
miniature woman, with much contemptuous dignity. “She would like, if
you please, that you shouldn’t speak to her even in the street.”
Boo felt very important, standing in the middle of the hall, in her
crape frock, with her black silk legs, and her golden cascade of hair
on her shoulders, as she delivered herself of this message, and pursed
up her lips like two red geranium buds.
“Tell your mother that her desires shall be obeyed,” said
Hurstmanceaux, and he turned and went out, followed by the saucy echoes
of Boo’s triumphant laugh.
She never liked her uncle Ronald; she was very pleased to see such a
big, tall, grown-up man go away in discomfiture.
“You should have said it kinder, Boo,” murmured Jack, from above on the
staircase.
“Why?” said Boo, with her chin in the air. “He don’t ever give us
anything, at least, hardly ever.”
“Oh, yes, he does,” said Jack, with remonstrance. “And _she’s_ cruel
nasty. She’s took away the Punch, and sent away Harry.” He did not much
like his uncle Ronald, but he was sorry for him now that he, too, was
dismissed.
Hurstmanceaux was sad at heart as he walked down Great Stanhope Street
into the Park; he was full of compunction for having, as he imagined,
wronged his sister about the jewels, and he was deeply wounded by the
unforgiving ingratitude of her feeling toward himself. He had made many
sacrifices to her in the past, and although a generous temper does not
count its gifts, he could not but feel that he received poor reward for
a devotion to her interests which had impoverished him to a degree he
could ill support. The day was bright and breezy, the flowers blazed
with color, the season was at its height, everyone and everything
around him was gay, but he himself felt that cheerless depression of
spirit which is born in us of the ingratitude of those we cherish.
Katherine Massarene passed him, driving herself a pair of roan ponies.
She thought how weary and grave he looked, so unlike the man who had
laughed and talked with her as they had gone together over the snowy
pastures and the frozen ditches of the hunting country more than two
years before.
“It’s really flying in the face of Providence, Ronnie, not to marry the
Massarene heiress,” said Daddy Gwyllian, that evening, in the stalls at
Covent Garden, letting fall his lorgnon, after a prolonged examination
of the Massarene box.
“I never knew that Providence kept a Bureau de Marriage,” replied
Hurstmanceaux, “and I do not see what right you have to speak of that
lady as if she were a filly without a bidder at Tattersall’s.”
“Without a bidder! Lord, no! She refuses ’em, they say, fifty a week.
But you know, Ronnie, you do fetch women uncommonly; look what scores
of ’em have been in love with you.”
“If they have, I am sure it has benefited them very little, and myself
not at all,” replied Hurstmanceaux, very ungraciously.
“She keeps a circular printed--a stamped form of refusal,” said Daddy
Gwyllian with glee. “Sends ’em out in batches. Have a mind to propose
to her myself, just for the fun of getting a circular.”
“Your wit is as admirable as your invention is original,” said
Hurstmanceaux, with much impatience, glancing, despite himself, at the
box on the grand tier, where the classic profile and white shoulders
of Katherine Massarene were visible beside the large, gorgeous, and
much-jeweled person of her mother.
Margaret Massarene disliked the opera-house. What she called the
“noise” always reminded her of the braying of bands and the rattling
of shots on a day of political excitement in Kerosene City. But she
was not displeased to sit in that blaze of light with her di’monds on
her ample bosom, and feel that she was as great a lady as any other
there; and she was proud and pleased to see the number of high and
mighty gentlemen who came to make their bow in her box, and with whom
Katherine “talked music” in the most recondite and artistic fashion.
“That’s the Duchess’s brother down there,” she whispered, as she turned
her lorgnon on Hurstmanceaux.
“It is,” replied Katherine.
“Why don’t he come up here like the rest?” she asked. “He’s the best
looking of them all.”
“He has never left his card on you,” answered her daughter. “It would
be very bad manners indeed if he came here.”
“And why hain’t he left his card? I’m sure we’ve done enough for his
sister.”
“He probably does not feel that any gratitude is obligatory on him. He
probably does not approve of her accepting favors from strangers.”
“Then he’s born a century out of his time,” said Mrs. Massarene, with
the acuteness which occasionally flashed up in her. “In these days, my
dear, everybody takes all they can lay their hands on----”
“Hush!” said Katherine, as Jean de Reszké came on to the stage.
Margaret Massarene would have preferred a companion who would have worn
big pearls, and had some color in her gown, and who would have talked
all through “the music,” and would have made a sign with a flower or a
fan to that handsome man down there to come up with Daddy Gwyllian and
chat with them.
“Why didn’t my lord come up with ye?” she asked, as Daddy did appear.
“His lordship’s music mad, ma’am,” replied Daddy, who delighted in
adopting her style; “never misses a season at Bayreuth, or a _première_
of Saint-Saëns’s.”
“He’s never left a card, and ’tis rude,” said Mrs. Massarene. “We know
all his sisters and brothers-in-law.”
“It _is_ rude, madam,” assented Daddy, “but men don’t go often where
they’re liable to meet their own families.”
“That’s a heathen sentiment,” said Mrs. Massarene severely.
“Only human nature,” said Daddy cheerfully. “Human nature is much the
same, dear lady, whether heathen, Chinee, or Christian.”
“Ye don’t know much about the Chinese, sir,” said Mrs. Massarene.
“They’re that wrapped up in their families that they’re always agoin’
to their graves; not like the folks here, who poke a dead person into
the earth and give orders to a florist, and then thinks of ’em never no
more. The Chinese pray to their dead; ’tis very touching, though it may
be an offence to Deity.”
“I imagine, ma’am, their sensibilities are not blunted by
death-duties,” said Daddy rather crossly; he disliked being corrected,
and he disliked being taken _au pied de la lettre:_ it is highly
inconvenient to anyone who has the reputation of a humorist.