TRANSFORMATION.
When the Earl of Loughton left home in a four-wheeled cab it was by no
means his intention to drive direct to the railway. His first
stopping-place, as soon as he got clear of the neighborhood where he
was known, was at a French hairdresser's. When he came out of the
shop, half an hour later, the cabman did not recognize him till he
spoke. He had gone into the shop with a wild tangle of hair, beard,
and mustache about his face, neck, and throat. He came out with his
hair cropped after the military style, and with his face close shaved
except for an imperial, and a thick, drooping mustache with carefully
waxed tips, both of which had been artistically dyed. From the
hairdresser's he drove to a certain well-known outfitting emporium,
and here the transformation previously begun was consummated. Again
the cabman opened his eyes, this time very wide indeed. His
exceedingly shabby fare, respecting whose ability to pay him his legal
charge he might well have had some reasonable doubts, was transformed
into a military-looking, middle-aged gentleman (most people would have
taken him for an officer in mufti), in a suit of well-fitting dark
tweed, and an ulster. The frayed black satin stock and the patched
boots had disappeared with the rest, and when his fare with delicately
gloved hand drew forth a snowy handkerchief, and a celestial odor of
Frangipanni was wafted to his nostrils, the man could only touch his
hat and say, in a sort of awed whisper, "Where to next, colonel?" Had
he been bidden to drive to Hades he could hardly have wondered more.
The earl slept that night at the Great Northern Hotel, and went down
to Brimley next morning after a late breakfast. He took up his
quarters for the time being at the Duke's Head, the only really good
hotel in the little town. Everybody was anxious to see the new Lord
Loughton, concerning whose early life and long disappearance from the
world many romantic tales were afloat, and he was just as willing to
let himself be seen. For the first week or two he derived an almost
childlike pleasure from hearing himself addressed as "my lord" and
"your lordship," and from being the recipient of that adulation,
mingled with a mild sort of awe, with which a nobleman is almost
always regarded in small provincial towns. Twenty times a day he would
gaze admiringly at the reflection of himself in the cheval-glass in
his bedroom. He could hardly believe it was John Fildew of Hayfield
Street, that shabby, bepatched individual, who smiled back at him from
the glass. "And yet I am just the same that I was before," he said to
himself with a sneer. "The only change in me is that which the barber
and the tailor have effected."
He had several suits of clothes sent down after him, and he took a
boyish pleasure in frequently changing them. He always dressed for
dinner, although there was no one to dine with him. When a young man
he had been noted for his white hands, and he was determined that they
should be white again, to which end he smeared them every night with
some sort of unguent and slept in kid gloves. Every morning he
measured himself carefully round the waist, and when at the end of a
fortnight he found that his convexity in that region was less by three
quarters of an inch, he felt as if he could go out into the street and
play leap-frog with the boys. He had made up his mind from the first
to go in for popularity. With the change in his fortunes he had in a
great measure dropped that curt, sneering, cynical manner which had
not contributed to render him popular in days gone by. There was now
an easy condescension, a sort of genial affability, about him which
charmed every one with whom he came in contact; but then, how little
is needed to make us feel charmed with a lord! Everybody knew that he
was poor--how poor they did not know--but everybody knew also that he
was an earl, and as earls, even when their antecedents are somewhat
shady, are no more plentiful than green pease in December, we are
bound to make much of such as we have.
The news of Lord Loughton's sojourn at Brimley spread far and wide
through the county, and he need never have lacked company had he been
so minded. Nearly all the best families in the neighborhood left their
cards, and he might have had a dozen visitors a day had he not given
it out that he did not intend to see any one till he was safely housed
in his new home.
Laurel Cottage was not much of a place for a peer to take up his abode
in, but even peers must live according to their means. It was a
little, white, two-storied house, containing only eight or nine rooms
in all. Its front windows looked on to a circular grass-plot and a
tiny carriage drive that opened from the main road. From its back
windows could be seen a lawn, bordered by a terrace, and interspersed
with clumps of flowers, with meadow after meadow beyond. Stable and
coach-house were hidden away behind a shrubbery to the left.
Such as it was it was quite big enough for the needs of Lord Loughton,
and he at once secured it. There was one stipulation connected with
the letting of it which posed him for a moment, but for a moment only.
It was a _sine quâ non_ that the substantial, old-fashioned furniture
should be taken at a valuation by the incoming tenant. The valuation
was fixed at two hundred pounds. To this the earl, when he had walked
slowly through the rooms, made no demur. The same evening he wrote as
under to the dowager countess:
"My Dear Aunt,--I have taken Laurel Cottage, near this place, for a
term of years, as I told you that I should do. It contains nine rooms.
The rent is £60 a year, and it will suit me admirably. But I could not
obtain possession till I agreed to take the furniture, which has been
valued at £200. As it was an impossibility to live in a house without
furniture, the opportunity seemed to me too good a one to be missed.
Will you therefore kindly send me a check for the amount in question
as early as possible, and oblige,
"Your affectionate nephew,
"Loughton."
After three days came the following laconic reply:
"Check for £200 enclosed, but don't do this sort of thing again. An
agreement is an agreement, and no further demands beyond the usual
allowance will receive attention."
The letter was undated and unsigned, but it was evidently in the
countess's own writing. A few days later the earl removed to his new
home.
He started his modest establishment with two women and one man
servant. A gardener was engaged to come once a week to attend to the
lawn and flowers. When the earl had paid his hotel bill and a few
other expenses he found that upwards of two thirds of his 1150 had
gone already, while more than two months of the quarter had yet to
run. But this did not trouble him. He calculated, and rightly, that
when once he was established in Laurel Cottage he might go on credit
for everything he wanted for several months to come. As a matter of
fact, he was inundated with offers from tradespeople of all kinds, so
that his only difficulty lay in choosing which of them he should
patronize. Even horses and carriages were pressed on him, but he
decided that for the present both stable and coach-house should remain
empty. He might, perhaps, have afforded to buy a cheap cob if an
opportunity for doing so had offered itself however, there would be
time enough to think about such luxuries by and by. But in this
matter, as in most others, he was probably actuated by some motive
other than appeared on the surface.
Long before the earl had got quietly settled down one carriage after
another came flashing up to the little green gate of Laurel Cottage.
His lordship was at home to everybody that called. Everybody was
charmed with his affability and the simple kindliness of his demeanor.
"What delightful manners!" exclaimed the ladies, with one accord.
"What ease and polished courtesy! A thorough man of the world,
evidently." Could these fair dames have seen his lordship six weeks
previously, as he sat behind a long pipe in the coffee-room of the
B. B., with his brandy-and-water in front of him, what would their
thoughts of him have been?
Calls, as a matter of course, were succeeded by pressing invitations
to dinner. But the earl frankly pleaded his poverty in fact, he almost
made a parade of it before his newly found friends. "You say that you
live three miles away. Pray tell me how I am to reach you when I have
neither a hoof nor a wheel on the premises." Then, of course, came
offers to send the brougham or other conveyance for him, which,
equally as a matter of course, involved the sending of him home when
the evening was at an end. For the earl had made up his mind that if
people wanted him they must both send for him and send him back, and
before long this necessity came to be accepted as a well-understood
fact among those whom he honored with his company.
The vicar of the parish was one of the first to call at Laurel
Cottage. Before leaving he expressed a hope that he should
occasionally see his lordship at church, and his lordship was good
enough to promise that next Sunday morning should find him in the
vicar's pew. It was quite a novel sensation for the earl to find
himself inside a place of worship. The vicar's wife handed him an
elegantly bound, large-print prayer-book, which he accepted with a
smile and a little bow, but when he tried to follow the service and
find the different places he got "terribly fogged," as he afterwards
expressed it; and as he was afraid to let people see the dilemma he
was in, he shut the prayer-book up altogether by and by, and tried to
put on the air of a man who was so thoroughly familiar with the service
that the book was rather an encumbrance to him than otherwise. "The
places used to be easy enough to find when I was a lad," he muttered to
himself; "but I suppose the Rubric has been altered since then, and
evidently altered for the worse."
He had been rather dubious on his arrival at Brimley whether some of
the very big people of the neighborhood might not still bear in mind
some of the escapades of his early years, and decline to acknowledge
him. But his uneasiness on this score was quickly dispelled. A new
generation had grown up since he was a young man, and whatever any of
the older people might remember, they held their tongues in public,
and welcomed him as warmly as if he were the most immaculate of men
and peers.
The nearest house to Laurel Cottage was a large redbrick mansion of
modern erection and imposing appearance. It bore the dignified name of
Bourbon House, from the fact of a certain French prince having at one
time made it his home for a few months. As the earl was passing the
lodge gates one day a basket-carriage containing two very pretty young
ladies was coming out. It then struck him for the first time that he
had never been at the trouble to inquire who lived at Bourbon House,
neither could he call to mind that any one from there had ever left a
card at the Cottage. As soon as he reached home he sent for his man
and questioned him. It then came out that Bourbon House was the home
of a certain Mr. Orlando Larkins and his two sisters--the pretty girls
whom the earl had remarked. The youthful Orlando, it appeared, was the
son of a celebrated father--Larkins _père_ having been none other than
the inventor and vender of a certain world-famed pill. Everybody has
heard of Larkins's pills, and hundreds of thousands of people have
swallowed them. As the result, Mr. Larkins, senior, amassed a very
comfortable fortune, which he more than doubled by certain lucky
speculations. Having done this, there was nothing left him to do but
to die; so die he did, and Orlando reigned in his stead. "He's said to
be very rich, and he's nothing to do with the pill trade now, my
lord," concluded the man. "He's a good-natured, sappy sort o' young
gentleman; but somehow the swell people about here don't seem to take
to him, and even the lads shout after him, 'How are you, young
Pillbox?' when he goes riding into the town."
"Very rich and very good-natured, and not received into society," said
the earl to himself. "It might, perhaps, answer my purpose to
cultivate the acquaintance of Mr. Orlando Larkins."