Years passed, fourteen happy and uneventful years, during most of which
the Bonairs lived quietly on their English estate, among their friends
in England and from America. Charles’ sisters, Lucile and Marie,
with their families, spent alternate summers at Thetford Towers, or
traveling on the Continent, while during the winters the Bonairs fled
to California.
One day, in early summer, Berry intended to drive over to Crumplesea,
in her motor car, to say good-by to her old friends, the Westons,
who were leaving the next morning. Willis Weston had married a
charming American heiress years ago, and had become one of the leading
dramatists and managers of America.
Charles was absent from England, at this time, having gone to New York
on business which would detain him there.
It was a perfect summer day, warm and sunny, and Berry could not help
feeling happy and secure from trouble or harm. But as in every life,
clouds sometimes gather on the horizon and overshadow it for a while;
so now, had she only known it, another storm was impending.
The first sign thereof was a slight mishap which brought the motor car
to a standstill halfway on the road to Crumplesea.
Berry, who was somewhat of a fatalist in her way, always declared that
the thing was foreordained. Mellish, chauffeur, simply said--sotto
voce, of course--that it was “cursed bad luck, though no more than he
had expected when Mrs. Bonair would have the car out to-day, after
she’d been told that it ought to be sent to the garage yesterday, and
she might just as well have used the victoria as not.”
The facts of the case may be related in a few words: The motor car had
come up over the brow of the hill on its way back from Thetford Towers,
and was rolling sedately through the drowsy stillness of Crumplesea,
when a sharp metallic “zing-g-g!” sounded, and off came the tire of
the left forewheel. Crumplesea boasted of three hotels and no end of
“apartments,” but it could only lay claim to one garage, at the other
end of the town, close to where the new hall--dignified by the name
of opera house--had recently been erected. Mellish, who had learned
this fact from the small gathering of idlers which the accident had
collected--and to whom Berry was known, by sight and by name, about as
well as the town clock itself--imparted the knowledge to his mistress,
and was rather surprised that she took it with such equanimity.
“Very well, send for the man and have the thing set right at once,”
she said. “It is only a step to the Crumplesea Hotel, and I dare say
that Mercy Blint can manage to make me comfortable and get me a cup
of tea while I am waiting. You can come back there for me when the
tire has been put on again. But don’t be any longer than is absolutely
necessary; I want to get home before dark, if possible!”
And then with the utmost serenity she alighted and walked straightway
to the Crumplesea Hotel, which establishment was run by a woman who had
once been her maid, and who, on the occasion of her marriage with the
under butler, had been pensioned off some years ago.
Inquiry brought forth the intelligence that Mercy herself was absent
for the day, but Mercy’s husband was there, and himself showed her
ladyship into what was known as the coffee room--every other room in
the house being engaged at the time--and rushed away in person to get
tea for her.
And here it was that Berry saw another sign of trouble--the glaring,
brightly colored aggressively prominent sign which always made her
think that to-day’s accident had been foreordained.
It took the shape of a bill announcing the forthcoming opening of
the new Crumplesea Opera House, when--to quote the announcement
verbatim--“Mr. Milton Dante’s celebrated company of London artists
would present the world-famous musical play, ‘The Beauty of Gotham,’
headed by the gifted and beautiful American actress and prima donna,
Miss Rosalind Montague-Vance.”
A slow pallor, creeping like a snail, came steadily down over Berry’s
face as she saw that bill. She stood for a long time looking fixedly at
the printed words and not saying one word, not making one sound.
So she was still standing when, some twenty minutes later, her tea was
brought into her by the obsequious Blint himself.
She sat down and drank the tea and ate the buttered toast she had
ordered, and then rang the bell and called the man back to the room.
“Blint,” she said, pointing to the bill hanging upon the wall, “have
those people come to Crumplesea as yet? I see they are advertised to
open the new hall next Thursday. Have they come here yet?”
“No, my lady, not yet, of course; it’s best part of a week until
Thursday. The advance agent will be here to-morrow, though, to make
arrangements for rooms and the like. Hamer--him as runs the Cliff
Hotel, as you may remember, seeing that he’s a tenant of yours--got
word to that effect this afternoon, and come over to see if I’d any
rooms vacant; him not being able to put up the whole party.”
Berry pushed back her empty teacup, and rose.
“See that they don’t get any, then,” she said, in a singularly dry
voice. “See that every room in every hotel in the place is engaged for
me. I don’t care what it costs, I want them all. Engage them for me.”
“I beg pardon, ma’am, but--but can you really mean it?”
“Am I in the habit of saying things that I do not mean? I see that
they are billed to appear for three nights. Take all the vacant rooms
in all the hotels for that period, in my name. Shut them out of every
accommodation and force them to go elsewhere, if you can, and that
woman, above all!”
The man gave a nervous start and looked as though he had received a
shock.
“My lady!” he said, with a frightened look. “Heaven preserve us! it’s
not her? It’s never the--the Yankee woman who married your--your
brother, Mr. Vance?”
“Yes, it is. I never want to see her, but I recognize the name; as
Mercy would have done, had she been at home. Now go and do what I have
told you, and see that the woman finds no place to stop here. If you
think the manager of the hall can be bought to cancel the engagement of
the company----”
“It is not possible, my lady; the thing was arranged months ago.”
“So much the worse for me, then. However, I’ll do what I can. Go and
engage every vacant room you can hear of, and go at once, please.”
Blint, in a state of shaking nervousness, flew to obey, and when, half
an hour afterward, he came back to announce that he had done as he
had been bidden, he found the repaired motor car at the door and her
ladyship sitting in it.
“Thank you,” she said, as Blint came back with the list of the rooms he
had engaged in her name. “Reckon up the sum total and I will send you a
check for the amount. Home, Mellish.”
And then the motor car swung out into the roadway and rolled off
through the fast deepening Kentish dusk.
And this was how it was that when Mr. Milton Dante’s advance agent came
down to Crumplesea to arrange accommodations for the company, he found
every available inch of room in the several hotels engaged for a week
to come.
“Company’ll have to go into apartments, that’s all,” he said, in
his airy, offhand way to Mr. Bodwin, the proprietor and manager of
the newly erected Crumplesea Opera House. “Dante won’t like that,
of course, for he’s struck a rich thing in getting the provincial
rights to the ‘Beauty of Gotham,’ and he’s putting on no end of
side, and insisting on all the members of the company putting up at
hotels, instead of lodging houses and the like. It’s hard on some
of ’em--especially the low-salaried ‘utility people’--but he’s in a
position to dictate, and it’s that or nothing for most of ’em, poor
devils! I dare say there’ll be many of ’em who’ll be as pleased as
Punch over the mishap; but if the Montague doesn’t raise the roof, when
she learns that she will have to go into apartments, you can write me
down as an ass.”
“Dear me! is she a very violent person, then?” queried the manager
apprehensively. “We are a very circumspect people here in Crumplesea,
Mr. Billet, although the place is gaining renown as a seaside resort,
and you quite alarm me with these hints.”
“Oh, don’t let that worry you. She won’t be in the town twenty-four
hours before every man in it is gone on her and willing to swear that
she’s the sweetest thing that ever happened. If ever she manages to get
a hearing in London--and she will yet; she’s not the kind of woman to
be kept in the provinces forever--somebody’s title will come her way,
I warrant you. And it won’t be a mere empty title, either; it will be
one well backed up with capital--trust her for that! She’s a highflyer,
and she comes from a country where they know how to get full value for
everything. Wait till she gets to London, that’s all. She’s not too old
to hook a fish worth landing, even yet.”
“How old is she, Mr. Billet?”
“Ask me something easier! On the stage she looks about twenty, on the
street about--oh, well, I’m too old a hand at this business to be
caught belying the posters,” returned Mr. Billet, with a laugh and a
wink. “But look here; draw your own conclusions. She owns up to five
and twenty, and when a woman does that--especially a woman in the
theatrical profession--you can safely add anything from five to ten
to her figures, and not feel that you are doing her any injustice.
Now then, show me the way to the post office, will you? I want to
send a wire to Dante to prepare him for this little muddle about the
accommodations; and, look here, Mr. Bodwin! take a fool’s advice and
don’t you waste your time in going off your head over fair Rosalind
when you see her--though, I dare say, you will, for all that; she seems
born to make men do it wherever she goes--but just remember that you
haven’t the ghost of a chance; and wouldn’t have if you owned all
Crumplesea. Remember, I have warned you.”
“Thank you, but it is useless warning. I am already a married man.”
Mr. Billet looked up into his face, and laughed.
“So was Anthony,” he said. “Now come and show me the way to the post
office.”
* * * * *
The curtain had fallen upon the close of the second act of “The Beauty
of Gotham,” and Miss Montague-Vance had disappeared for the nonce from
the enraptured gaze of Oakhampton--it was at the Oakhampton Theater
that the company was appearing to-night--when Mr. Milton Dante--his
baptismal certificate read “Peter Burridge,” by the way--came round
behind the scenes in a state of angry excitement and rapped loudly upon
Miss Montague-Vance’s dressing-room door.
“It’s me--Milt,” he said, in the quiet original grammar of his native
Battersea. “I’ve got something to show you. Can I come in?”
“No. If it’s anything important, just wait five minutes and I’ll be
out.”
The five minutes passed and the door opened, and out of it issued a
creature so lovely, that even Mr. Milton Dante--who ought by this time
to be used to it, Heaven knows--felt a little thrill as the vision
dawned upon him.
“Scotland! but you do look scrummy to-night!” he said admiringly.
“Never mind how I look,” returned “the vision,” with an exceedingly
earthy air. “You didn’t come here to pay me silly compliments, I fancy;
or if you did, you are wasting your time and mine, to no purpose. What
is it you want to say to me? Is it anything nice, or the reverse?”
“The reverse, I’m afraid. Our next ‘stand’ is Crumplesea, and the
company will have to go into apartments when we get there.”
“Oh! no, it won’t; at least I won’t. None of your seaside apartments
for me, if you please! Let others do what they like--or what you like;
I suppose it amounts to that--but I want the best hotel in the place.”
“Well, I’m afraid we can’t get in. Billet has just wired me that every
hotel in the place is engaged by some old fool of a woman called Mrs.
Bonair, and that--I say! great Scott! are you ill? Thunder! you’re as
white as a ghost.”
“Never mind what I am or what I am not,” she answered, in a singularly
hard and singularly uneven voice. “So that woman has heard of my
coming and has tried like this to shut me out, has she?”
“What woman? What the dickens are you talking about? And I say,
whatever has come over you? I expected you to raise the roof and to shy
things when you heard of this, and I’m blessed if you’re not taking it
as meek as Moses.”
“No, not quite so meek--as you will learn before this affair is over.
So that woman is going to try to shut me out, is she? Well, it will
be a bad day’s work for her--I promise you that. I would have let her
alone if she had been sensible and let me alone. But she chooses to
show her claws, and so I’ll show mine.”
“Who the dickens are you talking about?”
“About this woman, this Mrs. Bonair, who is going to try the trick of
shutting me out of Crumplesea.”
“Great Scott! do you know her?”
“Oh, yes, I know her--and what’s more, she shall know me in a few days,
and better than she ever knew me before in her life. Look here, here’s
something for you to know about me as well--I’ve a daughter.”
“You?”
“Yes. You’ve often wondered where I sent so much of my salary, and now
you know. I’ve a daughter who’s nearly sixteen years old.”
“The dickens you say! It can’t be true.”
“Oh, yes, and what’s more, it is. She’s at school, and I haven’t seen
her--no, and haven’t wanted to, either--since she was old enough to
walk alone. I’m going to see her now, however, and Mrs. Bonair is going
to see her, too--see her and hear of her for the first time. Shut me
out, will she? Show her claws like that, eh, after I’ve let her alone
for all these years? Well, if ever--get out of the way, for goodness’
sake! That’s the curtain bell, and that little beast of a call boy
never notified me that it was time to begin.”
And then, without another word, she turned and ran up the stairs to the
stage as fast as her little satin-shod feet could go.