A THROWBACK
Cheriton entered, bearing a small parcel, with a certain ostentation.
“Caroline,” said he, “as I was coming out of Truefitt’s I remembered
that for the first time in forty years I had forgotten to give you a
present on your birthday. Last year I gave you a Bible. This year I
have brought you this.”
He cut the string of the parcel, and handed the present to Caroline
Crewkerne.
With a grim, but not ungrateful, inclination of the second-best turban,
the recipient began to relieve the present of its numerous trappings. A
small but expensive hand-glass was exposed to view.
“Thank you, Cheriton. A very charming present.”
“I hope it pleases you, my dear Caroline,” said Cheriton, with quite
the _bel_ air. “You have so long defied time that I felt a memento of
his impotence might appeal to you.”
“Thank you, Cheriton,” said the redoubtable Caroline. “It is very kind
to remember an old woman.”
“A woman is as old as she looks,” said Cheriton, “as Byron says.”
“Byron?”
“I ascribe every truism to Byron. It confers a factitious importance,
which at the same time is perfectly safe. Everybody pretends to have
read Byron, yet nobody has.”
“Burden has read him, I believe.”
Miss Burden sighed romantically.
Lord Cheriton shook his finger at Miss Burden with arch solemnity.
“No boy under the age of twenty should be permitted to smoke
cigarettes,” said he. “And no woman under forty should be permitted to
read Byron.”
Caroline Crewkerne snorted.
“By the way,” said Cheriton, “now I am here, I must pay homage to my
duchess.”
He took a half turn in the direction of the sofa. Miss Perry was still
seated upon it in her pensive attitude. She was still gazing into
vacancy, and she was somewhat in the shadow.
Immediately to the left of Miss Perry, intervening between her and
Aunt Caroline, was the object that claimed for the moment the whole of
Cheriton’s attention. Rightly so, indeed, for it was nothing less than
one of the world’s masterpieces. It was a full-length portrait in a
massive gilt frame: a truly regal canvas in the full meridian splendor
of English art. Under the picture, in bold letters, was the magic
legend, “Araminta, Duchess of Dorset, by Gainsborough.”
Araminta, Duchess of Dorset, was a young girl in her teens, in an
inordinately floppy hat of the period. Her countenance, ineffably
simple, was a glamor of pink and white; her lips were slightly parted;
the wonderful blue eyes were gazing into vacancy; and one finger was
unmistakably in her mouth.
Cheriton, having fixed his glass with some elaboration, slowly backed a
few paces, and yielded to the pose he always affected in the presence
of this noble work.
In silence he stood to absorb the poetry, the innocence, the appeal of
youth. He sighed profoundly.
“Caroline,” he said, “I would give a whole row of Georgiana Devonshires
for this. In my humble judgment it has never been equaled.”
“Grandmamma Dorset wears well,” said Caroline, with a grim chuckle.
“It ought to be called ‘Simplicity’; it ought to be called ‘Innocence.’
Upon my word of honor, Caroline, I always feel when I look at the
divine Araminta that I want to shed tears.”
Caroline Crewkerne snorted.
“Cheriton,” said she, “I have noticed that when a man begins life as a
cynic he invariably ends as a sentimentalist.”
“Caroline,” said her old friend, sighing deeply, “you are a pagan. You
have no soul.”
“Burden has a soul,” said the contemptuous Caroline. “In my opinion she
would be better without it.”
“How ironical it is,” said Cheriton, “that you, who distrust art so
profoundly, should have such a masterpiece in your drawing-room.”
“I am given to understand that a committee would like to buy it for the
nation,” said the owner of the masterpiece, with a gleam of malice.
“Caroline, you promised years ago that if the time ever came when money
could buy Araminta she should go to Cheriton House.”
“Well, the time has not come yet.”
“When it does come, I shall hold you to your promise.”
While Cheriton continued his examination of Gainsborough’s masterpiece,
Caroline Crewkerne said to her gentlewoman--
“Burden, get my spectacles.”
Cheriton turned away from the picture at last. Naturally enough his
gaze alighted on the sofa. Sitting in the center thereof was the
wonderful Miss Perry. She was still at Slocum Magna. She had got to her
third slice of bread and jam. Polly was pouring out a second sensible
cup. Dearest Papa had just made one of his jokes. Charley and Milly
were conducting an argument as to who was entitled to the cake with
the currants in it. Miss Perry’s blue eyes were unmistakably moist;
and although she was not actually sucking her finger, there could be
no doubt that at any moment she might begin to do so. And the inverted
vegetable basket that crowned her seemed to flop more than ever.
It was no wonder that Cheriton gave a little exclamation. A lover of
beauty in all its manifestations, he had an eye for nature as well
as for art. And here, side by side with Gainsborough’s masterpiece,
making due allowance for a number of trifling details which did not
in the least affect the subject, was an almost exact replica of that
immortal work. Cheriton, in spite of his foibles, had the seeing eye.
Notwithstanding the cobbled boots, the print frock, and the cloak with
the hood, one thing was clear. Here was Araminta, Duchess of Dorset, in
the flesh.
He swung round to his old friend with the glass leaping out of his eye.
“Caroline,” he cried, “a throwback!”
That old woman gazed through her spectacles at the occupant of the
sofa. Miss Perry, still at Slocum Magna, was debating seriously whether
a fourth slice of bread and jam was within the range of practical
politics.
“Cheriton,” said Caroline, coolly, “I believe you are right.”
Surprise and enthusiasm began to work great havoc with the amateur of
the fine arts.
“Upon my word,” said he, “it is the most wonderful thing I have ever
seen in my life. A pretty trick of old Mother Nature’s.”
“Don’t be a coxcomb, Cheriton,” said Caroline, warningly.
“A perfect throwback!” said that amateur.
Once more his gaze was brought to bear on the distracting occupant of
the sofa, whose hair was the color of daffodils and whose eyes reminded
him of the sky of Italy. He approached her with an _empressement_ that
was tremendous.
“I have no need to ask,” said he, “whether the famous duchess is a
kinswoman.”
Miss Perry returned from Slocum Magna with a little start. She removed
her finger from her lip, yet her thoughts were not of famous duchesses.
In the meantime the redoubtable Caroline said nothing. All the same she
was watching everything with those relentless eyes of hers.
Miss Perry exhibited neither surprise nor embarrassment at being
summoned so peremptorily from Slocum Magna by such a magnificent
specimen of the human race. Perhaps her wonderful blue eyes opened a
little wider and she may or she may not have hoisted a little color;
but it really seemed as though her thoughts were more concerned with
bread and jam than with Lord Cheriton.
“Will you pardon an old worshiper of your famous ancestress if he asks
your name?” said he. “I hope and believe it is a legitimate curiosity.”
Miss Featherbrain made an effort to cease wool-gathering. She smiled
with a friendliness that would have disarmed a satyr.
“My name is Araminta,” she drawled in her hopelessly ludicrous manner,
“but they call me Goose because I am _rather_ a Sil-lay.”
Cheriton gave a chuckle of sheer human pleasure. He was to be pardoned
for feeling that a new delight had been offered to an existence which
had long exhausted every æsthetic form of joy.
“Your name is Araminta,” he repeated by a kind of hypnotic process,
“but they call you Goose because you are _rather_ a silly.”
Miss Perry rewarded Lord Cheriton with an indulgent beam. It assured
him that he had had the good fortune to interpret her correctly. It was
not easy for that connoisseur to withdraw his enchanted gaze. However,
at last he contrived to do so. He turned to his old friend.
“Caroline,” said he, “the fairies have fulfilled my wish. I have always
wanted to meet a Gainsborough in the flesh and to hear what she had to
say for herself. And now I have done so I know why Gainsborough painted
’em.”
“Faugh!” said the old lady, vigorously, “sentimentality is the national
bane.”
“No, Caroline,” said Cheriton, sadly, “you’ve no soul. Why don’t you
present me?”
“My niece, Miss Perry,” said Caroline. “Lord Cheriton, my old friend.”
“Oh, how do you do?” said Miss Perry, shooting forth her hand in her
own private and particular manner to Aunt Caroline’s old friend. “I
hope you are quite well.”
The manner in which Cheriton enclosed the ample paw of Miss Perry,
which nevertheless, speaking relatively, contrived to appear long and
slender, in his own delicately manicured fingers was almost epic.
“Miss Perry,” said he, “this is a great moment in my life.”
“Don’t be a coxcomb, Cheriton,” said Caroline Crewkerne with great
energy.
No one made fuller use than that old woman of the privilege accorded to
age of being as rude as it pleases. But it was so necessary that the
wearer of the vegetable basket should not get notions under it before
she had been in Hill Street an hour.
“My dear Miss Perry,” said Cheriton, with the magniloquent air with
which he asked an occasional question in the Hereditary Chamber, “are
you acquainted with the vast metropolis?”
“I have always lived at Slocum Magna,” said Miss Perry with perfect
simplicity.
“Really,” said my lord, with an insincere surprise. “By the way, where
_is_ Slocum Magna?”
Doubtless owing to the fact that she was a duke’s granddaughter,
Miss Perry had excellent if somewhat rustic breeding. Brains were
not her strong point, but she had been long enough in London to
anticipate almost instinctively Lord Cheriton’s inquiry. Moreover, her
astonishment at the ignorance of London people was softened by the
friendly indulgence she extended to everybody on the slightest pretext.
“Slocum Magna,” said Miss Perry, without the least appearance of
didacticism, “is the next village to Widdiford. They haven’t _quite_
got the railway at Widdiford yet, don’t you know, but it is only three
miles away.”
The absence of the railway at Widdiford appeared to decide Cheriton
upon his course of action. With the air of a man whose mind is quite
made up, he addressed the fair inhabitant of Slocum Magna, North Devon.
“As an old friend of your accomplished aunt’s,” said he, “of many
years’ standing, I feel that during your sojourn in the vast metropolis
it is only wise and right that I should act, as it were, _in loco
parentis_.”
Although Miss Perry’s papa was a very good classic, he had been unable
to communicate his excellence in the dead languages to his second
daughter. Miss Perry made no secret of the fact that she had an earnest
desire for a little more enlightenment.
“A sort of combination, you know,” said Cheriton, lucidly, “of a
courier and a cicerone and a sincere well-wisher. One feels sure it
will help you at first to have some one to guide you through the
traffic.”
“Burden is quite competent to see that she doesn’t get run over,” said
the accomplished aunt of Miss Perry.
“Also, my dear Miss Perry,” said Cheriton, mellifluously, “you may
require a little advice occasionally from a man of the world. The vast
metropolis is full of pitfalls for your sex.”
“We have poachers at Slocum Magna,” said Miss Perry.
“The metropolis is different,” said Cheriton. “I regret to say it
harbors every known form of wickedness.”
Miss Perry’s eyes opened so wide that they seemed to magnetize my lord.
“Are there r-r-robbers?”
“A great number. They lurk in every thoroughfare. If you are really
unacquainted with the vast metropolis I urgently recommend advice and
protection.”
“How splendid!” said Miss Perry. “I shall write to tell Muffin.”
“Would it be an unpardonable curiosity if one inquired who is Muffin?”
“My sister, don’t you know; her name is Elizabeth really. But we call
her Muffin because she is _rather_ a ragamuffin.”
“Your family appears to be a singularly interesting one, if one may
presume to form an estimate.”
“Papa says we are none of us very bright, but we are all of us very
healthy, except Doggo, who has had the mange twice.”
My lord found it necessary to repeat the dictum of Miss Perry’s papa.
He then sat down beside her in a truly paternal manner.
“Tell me about your papa,” said he, musically. “I am immensely
interested in him. One feels one ought to have so many things in common
with such a papa as yours.”
“Papa is just as sweet----” began Miss Perry, with a perfectly
delightful fervency. But she got no farther.
Aunt Caroline uplifted an immutable finger.
“Araminta,” said she, “it is time you went up to dress. Burden, take
her to her room.”
Miss Perry rose at once with a docility that was charming. She bestowed
her most frankly indulgent beam upon Lord Cheriton, and quitted the
drawing-room in Miss Burden’s custody.
Cheriton screwed his glass into his astonished eye to gaze after such
magnificence.
“A goddess!” said he. “Juno! A great work of nature.”
He prepared to take his leave.
“I am afraid, Caroline,” said he, “your memory begins to fail a little.”
“Rubbish.”
“Do you know how long it is since you asked me to dine with you?”
“You refused three times running. I am determined that no human being
shall refuse a fourth.”
“Well, you know,” said Cheriton, coolly, “you were just a little
difficult the last twice I dined with you, and the wine was abominable.
And with all that excellent claret that you have, and that ’63 port,
and that really priceless madeira--really, Caroline, considering what
your cellar can do if it chooses, the wine was unpardonable. Still, I
am in no sense a vindictive man. I’ll dine with you this evening.”
“Thank you, Cheriton,” said Caroline, dryly. “Eight o’clock.”
“Eight o’clock.”
My lord took his leave with a jauntiness that recalled the vanished era
of his youth.
Two hours later the noble earl was back in Hill Street. He looked
particularly _soigné_ in the choicest of evening clothes. They fitted
his corseted form to perfection.
“Where is the fair Miss Araminta?” said he, yielding his arm to his
hostess.
“My niece is dining upstairs this evening,” said Caroline Crewkerne.
Profoundly distrusting the appearance of the sherry and the claret, the
guest made a modest demand for whisky and soda. The fare was scanty,
but what there was of it was not ill cooked. Also Caroline was not so
tiresome as he had anticipated. Doubtless she was a little exhilarated
by the doings of the day. She was a very sharp-witted old woman.
Her shrewdness had already foreseen that the appearance of a highly
original niece in a somewhat moribund _ménage_ might bring renegades
back to Hill Street craving pardon. A glimpse of the immediate future
was afforded by the spectacle of a peculiarly spick and span Cheriton
seated between Miss Burden and herself.
The turn of events lent an old-time pungency to what had once ranked as
the most malicious tongue in London.
“Upon my honor,” said the enchanted guest, “my dear Caroline, you are
quite at your high-water mark this evening.”
Caroline valued that kind of compliment, and she acquiesced in it
grimly. Cheriton’s remark was quite sincere; and in order to attest
his _bona fides_ he told a story that caused Miss Burden to spill the
salt, while only the intervention of a miracle averted a more signal
disaster to the claret.
Cheriton was duly rewarded. By the time they had got to the
mahogany--Caroline Crewkerne was a stickler for old fashions--the
hostess said in an aside to Mr. Marchbanks, “The madeira and the ’63
port wine.”
There can be little doubt that Cheriton was sustained throughout a not
particularly exhilarating function by the hope of seeing the peerless
Miss Araminta in the drawing-room afterwards. In this, however, he
was disappointed. The tardy minutes passed, but Miss Araminta did not
appear. At last in desperation he was moved to inquire--
“Where hides the reluctant fair?”
“Speak English, Cheriton.”
“The adorable Miss Perry.”
“The creature is in bed,” said Caroline, incisively. “It is a long
journey from Slocum Magna for a growing girl.”
“Is one given to understand that she made the whole journey in a single
day?”
“In something under twenty-four hours, I believe,” said Caroline.
“Express trains travel at such a remarkable rate in these days.”
In the circumstances there was only one thing for Cheriton to do, and
this he did. He took his leave.
In the privacy of his hansom on the way to the Gaiety Theatre he
ruminated exceedingly.
“That old woman,” he mused, “has got all the trumps in her hand again.
A disagreeable old thing, but she does know how to play her cards when
she gets ’em.”
The stall next to Cheriton’s was in the occupation of no less a person
than George Betterton.
“Hallo, George,” said he; “you in London!”
“Ye-es,” said George, heavily. He did not seem to be altogether clear
upon the point. “The War Office people are in their usual mess with the
Militia.”
“But _she_ is at Biarritz.”
“I have another one now,” said George, succinctly.
The noise and flamboyance of the ballet rendered further conversation
undesirable. However, Cheriton took up the thread of discourse at the
end of the act.
“George,” said he, with considerable solemnity, “like myself you have
grown old in the love of art.”
George’s assent was of the gruffest. Cheriton was going to be a bore as
usual.
“You remember that Gainsborough of Caroline Crewkerne’s?”
“Ye-es,” said George. “I offered her twenty thousand pounds for it for
the Cheadle Collection.”
“Did you, though! Well, mind you don’t renew the offer. The refusal of
it was promised to me in Crewkerne’s lifetime.”
George began to gobble furiously. He looked as though he wanted to call
some one a liar.
“Well, it’s too soon to quarrel over it,” said Cheriton, pacifically,
“because she doesn’t intend to part with it to anybody at present.”
“She’s a perverse old woman,” said George, “and age don’t improve her.”
“I mentioned her Gainsborough,” said Cheriton, who was on the rack
of his own enthusiasm, “because a very odd thing has happened. The
original of that picture has found her way into Hill Street.”
“What! Grandmother Dorset!” said George, contemptuously. “Why, she’s
been in her grave a hundred years.”
“An absolute throwback has turned up at Hill Street,” said Cheriton,
impressively. “If you want to see a living and breathing Gainsborough
walking and talking in twentieth-century London call on Caroline
Crewkerne some wet afternoon.”
George Betterton was not at all æsthetically minded. But like so many
of his countrymen he always had a taste for “something fresh.”
“I will,” he said. And he spoke as if he meant it.
Then it was that Cheriton grew suddenly alive to the magnitude of his
indiscretion. Really he had acted with consummate folly! He had a clear
start of all the field, yet through an unbridled natural enthusiasm and
a lifelong love of imparting information he must needs within an hour
set one of the most dangerous men in England upon the scent.
George Betterton had his limitations, but where the other sex was
concerned he was undoubtedly that, as Cheriton had reason to know. A
widower of nine-and-fifty, who had buried two wives without finding
an heir to his great estates, there was little doubt that he meant to
come up to the scratch for the third time, although to be sure of late
his courses had not seemed to lead in that direction. But Caroline
Crewkerne, who knew most things, seemed quite clear upon the point.
Yes, George Betterton’s “I will” had a sinister sound about it.
Cheriton himself was five-and-sixty and a bachelor, and in his heart
of hearts he had good reason to believe that he was not a marrying
man. He had long owed his primal duty to a position in the world;
and, to the scorn of his family and the amusement of his friends,
he had not yet fulfilled it. He was too fond of adventures, he
declared romantically--a confession that a man old enough to be a
grandfather ought to be ashamed to make, declared the redoubtable
Caroline, with her most fearsome snort. More than once, it is true,
Cheriton had fancied he had seen the writing on the wall. But when his
constitutional apathy permitted him to examine it more closely, he
found it had been written for some one else.
However, he had come away from Hill Street that evening in such a state
of suppressed enthusiasm, that in his present mood he was by no means
sure that he had not seen the writing again. It was certainly odd that
a man with his record and at his time of life should have any such
feeling. But there is no accounting for these things. Therefore he left
the theater with an idea taking root in him that he had been guilty of
an act of gross folly in blowing the trumpet so soon. Why should he
help to play Caroline’s game? He should have left it to her to summon
this Richmond to the field.
“Caroline will lead him a dance, though,” mused Cheriton on the
threshold of Ward’s. “And I know how to handle the ribands better than
he does. He’s got the mind of a dromedary, thank God!”
In the meantime the cause of these reflections was lying very forlorn
and very wide-awake in the most imposing chamber in which she had
ever slept. The bed was large, but cold; the chintz hangings were
immaculate, but unsympathetic; the engravings of classical subjects
and of august relations whom she had never seen with which the walls
were hung, the austere magnificence of the furniture, and the expensive
nature of the bric-à-brac, made Miss Perry yearn exceedingly for the
cheerful simplicity of Slocum Magna.
Almost as far back as Miss Perry could remember, it had been given
to her before attempting repose to beat Muffin over the head with a
pillow. But in this solemn piece of upholstery, which apparently had
been designed for an empress, such friendly happenings as these were
out of the question.
However, she had Tobias with her. The wicker basket was on a little
lacquered table beside her bed; and as she lay, with a slow and silent
tear squeezing itself at regular intervals out of her blue eyes, she
had her right hand resting firmly but affectionately on the lid of
Tobias’s local habitation. That quaint animal, all unconscious of the
honor done to him, was wrapped in slumber, with his ugly brown nose
tucked under his lean brown paws.
Thus was Miss Perry discovered at a quarter to eleven that evening
when Miss Burden entered to embrace her.
“I want to go home to Slocum Magna,” said Miss Perry, with a drawl and
a sob whose united effect must have been supremely ridiculous had it
not been the offspring of legitimate pathos.
Miss Burden offered her the consolation of one intimately acquainted
with pathos. Every night for many long and weary years she had longed
to go home to her own rustic hermitage, which, however, had no
existence outside her fancy.
“Dearest Araminta,” said Miss Burden, caressing her affectionately,
“you will soon get used to the strangeness.”
“I want to go home to Slocum Magna,” sobbed Miss Perry.
“I am sure you are a good and brave and noble girl,” said Miss Burden,
who believed profoundly in goodness and bravery and nobility.
“Papa said I was,” sobbed Miss Perry, settling her hand more firmly
than ever upon the basket of Tobias.
“To-morrow you will feel happier, Araminta dearest,” said Miss Burden,
bestowing a final hug upon the distressed Miss Perry.
Miss Burden was guilty of saying that which she did not believe, but
let us hope no one will blame her.