A carriage was driving up to the steps of Fianti's.
To allow it to approach, a waiting motor was obliged to move away,
and in the short interval that elapsed while this was being wound up
and started off the carriage paused almost immediately opposite the
window of Mrs. Vanderstein's bedroom; she had thus a better view of its
occupants than it had ever previously been her fortune to obtain.
On the right of the barouche sat an elderly lady, with grey hair piled
high under a very small black hat. She sat very upright and stiff,
giving a little nervous start when the horses moved forward impatiently
and were drawn up with a jerk by the coachman.
"That is the Princess," said Barbara, whose head was touching Mrs.
Vanderstein's.
Prince Felipe sat beside his mother, a middle-aged young man of forty
with a black upturned moustache and an eyeglass. He had a cigarette in
his hand and, as they looked, he turned round and gazed after a smartly
dressed woman who was driving by.
On the back seat of the carriage sat two other men--gentlemen in
waiting, no doubt.
Mrs. Vanderstein's eyes were, however, fully occupied with the Princess
and her son.
"Isn't he handsome?" she whispered to Barbara, as if there were a danger
of being overheard above the rattle and din of the busy roadway.
But it almost seemed as if the words reached the ears of the man she was
watching, for, the motor in the portico having at last got under way and
left the road clear for Their Highnesses, the Prince threw back his head
as the carriage moved on, and looking up met Mrs. Vanderstein's eyes
fixed admiringly on him.
She drew back her head in some confusion, but the Prince was still
looking up when the barouche disappeared in the shade of the portico.
"Madame! Son Altesse vous a reconnue!" cried Madame Querterot, her face
wreathed in smiles.
"He never saw me before," replied Mrs. Vanderstein, retreating into the
room. "How odd that he should have looked up just then! What a charming
face he has." And she subsided once more on the sofa, her own face aglow
with excitement and pleasure.
"Don't move from the window, Barbara, whatever you do," she said. "Just
think if we had missed them!"
As Madame Querterot resumed her rubbing, a knock came at the door, and
Mrs. Vanderstein's maid entered bearing the jewels her mistress intended
wearing that night at the opera. As she set the cases down on the
dressing-table and busied herself in laying out the various garments of
her mistress' evening toilet, she cast from time to time disapproving
glances in the direction of Madame Querterot, whom, although a
compatriot, she disliked very heartily, considering that in the privacy
of Mrs. Vanderstein's chamber any ministrations besides her own were
unnecessary, and having altogether a strong tendency to look upon her
countrywoman as an interloper, who had possibly an eye to a share in
various perquisites for which Amélie preferred to see no other candidate
in the field.
She took an elaborate gown from the wardrobe and spread it out upon the
bed together with divers other articles of attire. She placed a jug of
hot water in the basin and a jar of aromatic salts beside it.
She straightened several objects on the dressing-table, which had no
need of being made straight; tilted the looking-glass forward and
tilted it back again; lifted up a chair and set it down with a thud;
and finally, despairing of ever witnessing the departure of her dreaded
rival, was about to leave the room when her mistress' voice called her
back.
"Amélie," she said, "just show me what necklace you have brought up for
me to-night. Is it the one with the flower pendants or the stone drops?"
Amélie carried all the cases over to the sofa; and Madame Querterot left
off rubbing while Mrs. Vanderstein sat up and opened them one by one.
In the largest a magnificent diamond necklace, imitating a garland
of wild roses and their leaves, glistened against its blue velvet
background. The other cases, when opened, displayed bracelets and a
diamond tiara, as well as rings and a pair of ear-rings formed of
immense single stones.
Mrs. Vanderstein shut them all up again and handed them back to Amélie.
"Take them down again to Blake," she said, "and tell him I have changed
my mind and will wear the emeralds instead. They go better with that
dress."
"Ah, madame," sighed Madame Querterot, as Amélie departed with the
jewels, "what marvellous diamonds! Wherever one goes one hears the
jewels of Mrs. Vanderstein spoken of."
"It is true," said Mrs. Vanderstein, "that my jewels are very good. My
dear husband had a passion for them and collected stones as another
man collects bric-à-brac. He never made a mistake, they say, and my
ornaments are rather out of the way in consequence. For myself I feel
it an extravagance to lock up such a vast amount of capital in mere
gewgaws."
"My poor Eugène," said Madame Querterot, "had also this same enthusiasm
for precious stones. He loved so to adorn his wife with diamonds, that
dear soul! But with him it was, alas, more than an extravagance. It was
our ruin; for he was not a connoisseur, like monsieur votre mari, and
when the crisis came and we would have turned my jewellery back into
money, behold, we were told that we had been cheated in our purchases,
and that, for the most part, the stones were without value. Ah, the sad
day! As you know, madame, bankruptcy followed, and we had to give up our
beautiful _établissement_ in Bond Street. It broke the heart of that
poor Eugène. He never recovered from the blow and soon left me, I trust
for a happier world, by way, it goes without saying, of purgatory,"
added the masseuse, crossing herself like a good Catholic. "Since that
day I have faced the troubles of this life alone, without friendship,
without sympathy."
Here her emotion overcame Madame Querterot, and she turned away for a
moment with a display of her handkerchief. She had omitted from her
affecting narrative the fact that "that poor Eugène" had perished by
his own hand, on discovering the state of his affairs; and she slightly
trifled with the truth when she asserted that it was his unfortunate
craze for covering his wife with jewels which had brought about such a
disastrous state of things. It was Madame Querterot's own passion for
the adornment of her person that had resulted in the dissipation of
Eugène's savings, and brought him, at the last, to see with despair the
total disappearance of the business, which she had neglected and ruined.
Mrs. Vanderstein's kind heart was touched.
She had heard vaguely the reason of the Querterots' removal from their
gorgeous Bond Street rooms after the death of Eugène, the incomparable
hairdresser, and it was from a creditable desire not to desert the
unfortunate that she continued to employ the little Frenchwoman since
the day of the catastrophe. But no details of the affair had reached
her, and she now heard for the first time, and not without being
sincerely moved, the sad story of a man who, having spent his all in
lavishing tokens of affection on his wife, had in the end reduced her to
a state of poverty bordering on want, and even left her to confront this
terror in solitude, as a result of his misdirected tenderness.
Considerably affected, she tried to speak words of comfort to the poor
woman.
"It is dreadfully sad," she murmured. "Poor Madame Justine, how sorry I
am. Your poor husband, I see well how he must have adored you and that
what he did was all for the best. But you are not absolutely alone in
the world, are you? Have you not a daughter?"
"Yes, it is true, madame, that I have a daughter," replied Madame
Querterot, wiping her eyes and resuming her work.
"And she is no doubt a great comfort to you?"
"Children, madame, are at once a joy and a trouble," returned the
masseuse evasively.
"I hope your daughter has not caused you much trouble."
"She has given me nothing but worry since the day she was born. Her
childhood, her education, her illnesses! Measles, chicken pox, whooping
cough, mumps, scarlet fever; she has had them all one after the other."
"But not while you have been coming to see me!" cried Mrs. Vanderstein,
alarmed.
"Ah no, madame, all that is long finished," replied Madame Querterot,
"but since then I have been obliged to provide for her education, and
every year she has become more expensive. Now she is eighteen, and you
would imagine her anxious to repay some of the expense and _ennuis_ she
has caused me during all these years."
"Yes, no doubt," agreed Mrs. Vanderstein, "she will be a great help to
you now."
"So one would think. But figure to yourself, madame, what this young
girl proposes to me to do with her life. She desires to enter a convent
and to spend her days in good works rather than be of assistance to her
mother!" and Madame Querterot laughed bitterly.
"I think she ought not to take such a decisive step at present," said
Mrs. Vanderstein; "at the age of eighteen she can hardly know if a
religious life is really her vocation."
"She is obstinate like a donkey, madame. Just think of it, a young girl,
healthy, not ugly; already she has had offers of marriage. There is a
young man, very _bien_, very _comme il faut_, who demands her hand and
who thinks of nothing but her. But will she take him? No. Not at all. We
prefer to be a religious; and _voilà_!"
Madame Querterot, having finished her massaging, was repacking the brown
bag in which she had brought her apparatus.
"I hope that you will amuse yourself at the opera, madame," she went on,
folding her apron and laying it on top of the other things in the bag,
the lock of which clicked as she shut it down with an impatient snap.
"A demain, mesdames," she concluded, taking up the bag by the handle
and giving it a shake as if she only wished she could so shake her
unsatisfactory child. "A cette heure-ci, n'est-ce pas?"
And with that she bowed herself from the room.