Firmingham was the smallest of the Duke of Pentland's country seats,
and so cosy, that he invariably held his Christmas revels there, in
preference to dispensing Yule-tide hospitality in more splendid
mansions. Situated in a woody and elevated part of Essex--that county
presumed to be a fog-tormented puddle--the quaint Georgian house was
ideal in itself, and in the repose and charm of its surroundings.
Ugly it probably was when erected, but time had mellowed its glaring
walls of red brick, and nature had draped them with hangings of dark
green ivy. The square, lofty house, with its freestone ornamentation,
its many windows and gigantic porch, stood on a slight rise, a
position which enhanced its noble proportions. On three sides, level
with the ground floor, extended broad greystone terraces, with shallow
steps leading downward to smooth lawns. These, stretching for a
considerable distance, terminated in flower-beds, now devoid of
blossom and colour. And lawns, house, and flower-gardens were girdled
by pines and oaks, sycamore-trees and elms, with noble examples of the
birch, the beech, and cedars, proud and tall. A wide, straight avenue
ran for a quarter of a mile through grim firs to ornate iron gates
swinging between massive stone pillars, surmounted by the ducal arms.
And these same gates gave entrance to a spacious and wild park, as
delightful as that "wood near Athens" where Oberon tricked Titania.
The charming country outside this sacred enclosure appealed to artists
in search of the picturesque. Certainly, the landscape was domestic
and tame, for here nature yielded to the controlling hand of man. But
the pleasant walks, the deep lanes, the ancient villages, and the
comfortable farmhouses, sprinkled thickly for miles, made, in
conjunction, a pretty picture of rural peace and contentment. And the
contentment was genuine, for no better or more considerate landlord
than the Duke existed. He was popular in the neighbourhood, and his
sway almost imperial--a true king of the castle.
Jim and his wife drove from the station in quite a Darby and Joan
style, and, through fear of the Duke, rather than in compliment to the
season, were prepared to enact the parts of man and wife to
perfection. It was rather hard for Leah to say pretty things to Jim in
public, and for Jim to hover anxiously round Leah as a lover-like
husband; but the Duke expected such behaviour, and they were astute
enough not to disappoint him. In his rough tweeds, with jovial looks
and hearty words, Jim was quite the English squire of the story-book,
and shook hands with some of his father's tenants who haunted the
local station in quite the "all-men-are-brothers" style. Leah also
dispensed smiles and nods to marvelling villagers, who stared
open-mouthed at her beauty. But in the comfortable brougham, Jim
folded his arms and lapsed into sulky silence, and Leah yawned and
looked out of the window for want of something better to do. They were
off the stage now, and could take their ease.
Very wintry looked the landscape through which they passed. The
meadow-lands were deep in snow, and gaunt, leafless trees started like
black spectres from the milky ground. Ponds and ditches wore masks of
darkly-green ice, and the frozen road rang like iron under the hoofs
of the horses. A yellowish sky, with the promise of almost immediate
snow, lowered over the starving world, and, for lack of foliage, the
landscape widened to the observing eye. A dull crimson in the west
showed that the sun was sinking in foggy splendour. The shrill voices
of children, singing music-hall songs instead of carols, saluted their
ears.
"Quite like a Christmas card, isn't it, Jim?"
"If it wasn't for the music-hall songs," assented her husband, looking
out of his window. "Wonder if there'll be skatin'."
"I daresay. I hope so. I love skating."
"'Cause you can show off."
"We have each our little vanities, Jim," said Lady Jim, whom hope made
good-humoured. "There's the church--what a pretty old building, and
how well the snow contrasts with the red roof and the ivy!"
"We have to go there on Christmas Day," gloomed Kaimes.
"We must show an example to the lower orders," explained Leah, in her
British-matron tone. "Besides, Lionel preaches."
"How awful! Why has the Duke put him in the bill?"
"Mr. Dane, the vicar, is ill, and asked Lionel to fill the pulpit. The
Duke has nothing to do with it."
"Wish I had," grumbled Jim. "I'd have the sermon cut out."
"You'd have the church turned into a music-hall, I daresay," retorted
his wife, contemptuously. "But you must be as nice as you know how to
Lionel. Remember, he promised to speak to the Duke."
"I'll keep awake during his sermon, but I shan't promise to do more,
Leah. You're runnin' this show."
"Quite so, but I don't want you to spoil it. Lionel has great
influence with the Duke."
"Frightens the old man to death with texts and Tophet, I expect," said
Jim, crossly. "I know these parsons."
"I was not aware that your circle of friends included such respectable
acquaintances."
"Oh, I can hold a candle to a certain person as well as you, Leah. Who
do we meet at Firmingham?"
"The usual dull lot," said Lady Jim, with a yawn. "Frith and his
stupid little wife, who seems to model herself on David Copperfield's
Dora. Then Lady Canvey, with her new companion, is sure to be
present."
"Fancy havin' that death's-head at a Christmas feast. Who else, Leah?"
"That little Russian doctor, Demetrius. We met him at the Embassy, if
you remember. Not the Russian Embassy, but the French. He's out of
favour with the Czar, and dare not leave England in case he should be
sent to Siberia."
"He can practise for it here," said Jim, shivering, "Beastly cold,
isn't it, Leah? What's Demetrius doin' here?"
"Looking after the Duke's health. He says he can cure his gout."
"I hope he will," muttered Kaimes, devoutly. "For if Frith comes along
we shan't get a shillin'!"
"I'm half afraid we shan't get one now," sighed Lady Jim. "Here's the
avenue. What a charming place!"
"I'd let it out on buildin' leases, if I had it," remarked the prosaic
Jim, "an' cut the timber. Lot of money in those trees."
"Don't look into jewellers' windows, Jim. You're not rich enough to
buy the stock."
"Rich! It was as much as I could do to scrape enough together for our
tickets."
"Ah, well," said Leah, reassuringly, as the wheels scrunched the
frozen snow before the great porch, "we needn't spend anything here,
except half a crown for the plate."
"Catch me wastin' money in that way," snapped Kaimes, swinging himself
out to help his wife to alight. "Halloa, here's old Colley, lookin'
like a dean as usual"; and Jim, again assuming his hearty manner and
jovial leer, shook hands with the butler, whom he had known since
Etonian days.
The house-party was composed of hostile elements; consequently,
every one was compelled to adopt a forced air of Christmas peace and
good-will, which rather tried jumpy nerves. The Duke dug up fossilised
cousins to participate in the festive season, and these did not suit
with some fashionable folk, who for various reasons, as they put it,
"had to be nice to the dear old Duke." Mr. Jaffray and his poetic
sister of fifty, who quarrelled incessantly, hardly suited the tastes
of Mrs. Penworthy, as a daughter of the horse-leech and intensely
up-to-date. Nor did Graham, the Little England politician, enjoy the
company of Lord Sargon, a Tory, and a believer in the divine right of
the last legal descendant of the Stuarts. Also, the various young
women and men, who were really nobodies, and fancied themselves
somebodies, found the parts they were expected to take in an
old-fashioned Christmas rather a bore.
"The season of peace and good-will," explained the Duke, after dinner,
when this collection of smartness and do wellness embellished the
great drawing-room. "We must all love one another."
The company assented conventionally, and every one smiled violently on
every one, to the amusement of Lady Canvey. "If this was the Palace of
Truth," she announced, "there would be trouble."
"But the mellowing influence of the time----"
"Just so, Duke. But some people are like certain pears, they won't
mellow--they only become sleepy. And that reminds me," she added,
looking round for Joan. "I'll go to bed soon."
"Not on Christmas Eve," urged the Duke, bending over her chair.
"We intend to keep Yule-tide as our ancestors did--snap-dragon,
the mummers, the Christmas-tree, the carol-singers, and the
ghost-stories."
"Not one of them clever enough to tell a real ghost story," snapped
Lady Canvey, cynically examining faces old and young, made up and
natural.
"Oh, I know a lovely, lovely tale," said Miss Jaffray, who was gowned
girlishly in white, trimmed oddly with ivy, and who looked like a
ruin.
"That will last till to-morrow morning," chimed in her brother, seeing
an opportunity of being nasty; "snap-dragon is more fun. Eh, Lady
Frith--you used to enjoy that once."
"I do so now--dear snap-dragon," said the Marchioness, who
was sentimental and adored her tall lean husband; "but the
Christmas-tree--oh, that is too sweet. Bunny and I met for the first
time under a Christmas-tree, and he fell in love with me. Didn't you,
Bunny?"
It was rather hard on Lord Frith that he should be addressed by this
most inappropriate name. He was as stiff as a Spaniard, sad in his
looks, and spoke little. Although eminently well-bred, and clever in a
political way, he was not a genial personage. In this he differed from
his father, for the Duke was stout and kindly looking, beaming with
good-humour, and quite the style of host who would have figured in Sir
Roger de Coverley's time. Report said that he had been much too gay in
his youth, and that the late Duchess had put up with a great deal.
Lady Canvey could have related stories about the Duke likely to be
much more entertaining than the proposed ghost-tales. But she was fond
of her host, who, like herself, was a link with the remote past, and
never told stories out of school. When she and the Duke got together,
they wagged their old heads over dead and done-with scandals, and
lamented these days of vulgar and blatant sin. But whatever their
pasts may have been, they were an ideal couple in the way of venerable
looks and sweet old age. Quite a Philemon and Baucis of modern times.
Meantime, "Bunny" scowled on his frivolous little wife, and then gave
her a sentimental smile. He was always torn between love and
propriety, for Lady Frith, imitating Dora, as Lady Jim averred, said
the most exasperating things in a sweet treble. He used to lecture her
in private and explain what she should say; but these corrections
always ended in tears on the part of the child-wife, and in complete
surrender on the part of her doting husband. Lady Frith certainly
could play her part in society excellently well on occasions, and was
more shrewd than would have been guessed from her baby face and
infantile manners. But she wanted to be original, and therefore
plagiarised from Dickens' novel. This assumption of an imaginary
character she called "possessing a personality."
Mrs. Penworthy was old wine in a new bottle: that is, she looked
twenty-five, and acted like an experienced coquette of double the age.
Married to a modern Job, called Freddy, whose meekness was proverbial,
she led him about like a pet lamb and taught him a few parlor tricks,
so that people might say, "What an attached couple"; which they did,
tongue in cheek. A sweet look from Mrs. Penworthy warmed Freddy's
heart for four and twenty hours, even though the cost of the merest
glance sometimes ran into double figures. In his hours of leisure,
which were few, he frequently told her that she was an angel; but the
expression did not sound so agreeable on Freddy's lips, as on those of
the half dozen nice boys who constituted her court.
She went everywhere and knew everyone, and did the things she ought
not to have done, with discretion. Freddy thought her a playful
kitten, quite blind to the fact that she had grown rapidly into a cat.
But with smiling looks and sheathed claws, and Freddy's diamonds on
her neck, she was a very pretty cat, and blinked sleepily at those who
admired her, so long as Freddy gave her a silken cushion to rest on
and plenty of cream to drink. Moreover, she only scratched those who
could not scratch back.
"I really think it's awful fun," said Mrs. Penworthy to her
court--"all this sort of thing, you know--holly and snow and----"
"And mistletoe," suggested one of the nice boys.
"Now if you talk like that, Algy, you shan't be spoken to for a week."
"A look is enough for me," whispered the adoring Algy.
"Naughty! What would Freddy say?"
Lady Canvey's sharp ears overheard the banter. "Were I Freddy I know
what I'd say," she murmured grimly; then aloud, to spoil sport, "Is
your husband here, Mrs. Penworthy?"
"Freddy? Oh, dear me, no. He's gone to Paris, or Peru, or--I forget
exactly where--but it's something beginning with a 'P.' Dear Freddy,"
she laid an entirely useless fan on her lips, pensively, "he works so
very, very hard."
"And quite right too," said Lady Canvey, bluntly, "seeing what a
devoted wife he has."
"Ah, you don't know how Freddy tries me, dear Lady Canvey. I _am_
devoted--that I am. But, you see, I took Freddy for better or worse."
"Oh no," corrected the old woman, tartly; "you took the better, and
Freddy took the worse."
Mrs. Penworthy, not being ready with an answer, murmured something
about "jealous old thing," and moved away with her court to where Lord
Sargon was holding forth on his pet craze. "If only our ancient kings
were back," he said, but not too loud, as the Duke might have
disapproved of the disloyalty, "Christmas would be Christmas. In the
good old times of the blessed martyr Charles----"
"The bad old times," contradicted Mr. Graham; "it was then that our
beloved country began to annex places which are useless. Let us give
up everything beyond the Channel, and attend to our own country. Then,
indeed, Christmas will be Christmas."
"And the parish pump will pour forth beer," said Mr. Jaffray,
referring to the badge of the Little Englander.
"Ah, the conduits ran wine in those sweet old days," sighed his
sister, in her poetic vein.
"And people never washed," said a truculent old gentleman given to
sanitation. "What I say is, let every house have a bath-room."
"I say, Jim, is this going to last for ever?" asked Leah, considerably
bored by these intellectual fireworks.
"A week, anyhow," replied Jim, who was feeling happy after a large
dinner; "but if you will come to the Zoo, Leah, you mustn't find fault
with th' animals."
"They are scarcely so interesting."
"Oh! Animals don't talk, I 'spose you mean."
"You do," retorted Lady Jim, calmly. "There's Demetrius!" and she left
her husband in the clutches of Mrs. Penworthy, with a whispered
caution. "Don't let her go too far, Jim. This week we're the
respectable middle-class pair, who live in slate-roofed houses."
Jim did not quite understand, but he vaguely guessed that he was to
keep Mrs. Penworthy at a distance. For some minutes he did this, but
she soon overcame his scruples, and begged him to take her to the
picture gallery. The discreet court did not follow.
Constantine Demetrius was a small, dark, neat man with an ivory
complexion, black hair, a waxed moustache, and a stereotyped smile. He
was dressed perfectly in a foreign fashion, and placed his small feet
together when he made his bow to Lady Jim. His English was much better
than his morals, and perhaps this was why Lady Jim beckoned him to her
side. Demetrius was one of her most ardent admirers, and she had a
vague idea of making use of him. At present she did not see how to
utilise his services, but if ever she required a thoroughly
unscrupulous man, she knew that she would need him. Besides, he was
really a clever doctor, and when Lady Jim was ill, she felt it would
hasten the cure to think she was being attended to for nothing.
"What do you think of all this?" she asked him, when they were snugly
bestowed in a cosy corner.
"It is very English," said the Russian, with a shrug.
"That means very dull!"
Demetrius clicked his heels together and made a bow from the middle of
his body. "At present I cannot say so," said he, gallantly.
"And you wouldn't, if you thought so!"
"Madam, the truth to a ravishing woman----"
"Is like sunshine to a coal-miner: we get it so rarely. By the way,
how is Mademoiselle Aksakoff?"
"She is well."
"And as pretty as ever?"
"I see nothing of beauty but what is before me."
"All the same, you will leave me and marry Mademoiselle Aksakoff."
Demetrius looked at Lady Jim with such fire in his dark eyes that she
felt slightly uncomfortable in spite of her courageous nature. It was
easy to play with the hearts of phlegmatic Englishmen, but to amuse
herself with this fiery Slav was like trifling with a tiger.
Nevertheless, Lady Jim, with a view to future contingencies, allured
him with sweet looks, and tantalised him with half-granted favours.
Katinka Aksakoff, the daughter of a Russian official attached to the
Embassy, loved Demetrius even to the extent of helping him to escape
the lures of the secret police, which would have drawn him to the
Continent, _en route_ for Siberia. Therefore she hated Lady Jim,
because that astute diplomatist kept Demetrius dangling at her skirts
in the bonds of a never-to-be-requited love, on the chance that some
day she might require him. And the Russian knew that Leah Kaimes was a
woman who wanted all for nothing, but, if possible, he intended to
make his own bargain with her. Lady Jim was clever, but Demetrius
thought he could entangle her.
"Monsieur Demetrius," she said after a pause, during which the fire
died out of the Russian's eyes, "if you wanted money----"
"I would get it," said he, determinedly.
"But if you saw no way of getting it?"
"I would make the way."
"You can't make bricks without straw."
"Clever people can," replied Demetrius, dryly.
Lady Jim looked down at her rings.
"Are you clever?" she asked.
"To benefit some people I might be," he said in a low voice.
She stared straight before her, and noted that Lionel was chatting
with Miss Tallentire. As yet the curate had not spoken with the Duke,
so that was a quarter yet to be tried. Nevertheless, Lady Jim had a
shrewd idea, in spite of the comedy being played by herself and Jim,
and of Lionel's pleading, that the Duke would be adamant. It behoved
her to have another string to her bow, and this she could find in
Demetrius. But she did not know yet to what use she could put him. It
was impossible to ask him to sway the Duke, strong as his influence
was with that gouty nobleman. Lady Jim had a good deal of what she
called pride, and did not intend to let Demetrius know her true
position, if she could help it.
Before she could say anything, and really she did not know what to
say, the Duke gave the signal for the commencement of the Christmas
festivities. These were strong in intention, but weak in execution.
The company burnt their fingers over snap-dragon, capered in Sir Roger
de Coverley, tempted the Fates with roasting chestnuts, and finally
adjourned to a large hall, where glittered a splendid Christmas-tree.
Then danced in the mummers, villagers all, tricked out as Robin Hood
and Maid Marian, as the Terrible Turk, Santa Claus, St. George and the
Dragon--a most meek beast--and with hordes of merry, laughing
children. The Christmas-tree dropped its costly, many-coloured fruits
into expectant laps, and a chorus of praise hymned the munificence of
the gratified Duke. Even Lady Jim thanked him for the dainty gold-net
purse which she received, and if she did peep in slyly to see whether
it was lined with a cheque or a bank-note, that was only out of
compliment to her father-in-law's known generosity.
"Santa Claus has not got a banking account," she murmured to her
husband.
Jim, who was scowling at his gift,--a set of sleeve-links enamelled
with the four vices--women, cards, drink, and racing,--growled.
"He's got a dashed lot of impertinence. As if I'd wear these things!"
"No," said Leah, tickled by the implied rebuke, "it doesn't do to wear
your heart on your sleeve--links": a witticism which was entirely lost
on Jim. He was one of the many obtuse swine who trampled on Leah's
pearls.
What with eating and drinking, and professing seasonable sentiments
which certainly did not come from the heart, everyone became bored and
bilious and fractious. Leah surveyed the yawning revellers with a
feeling that Christmas, old style, was a failure.
"You can't arrange an orgy," was her comment to Lady Canvey, "it must
come by chance, to be successful."
"I don't think Pentland intended anything so disreputable," retorted
the old dame, "consequently you are disappointed."
"Bored," Lady Jim assured her. "I suppose it's eating plum pudding
which always makes me dull."
"But not good-natured."
"My digestion has its limits. Good night, godmother; I suppose it's
time for you to be taken to pieces," and having stricken Lady Canvey
dumb with rage, she slipped away to bed, wondering what would happen
before next Christmas.
"Something must be done," she thought, wearily climbing the stairs.
"If Lionel fails with the Duke, Demetrius might----"
Might what? She did not know. But she really did feel that something
might be done with Demetrius.