Felicity was as good as her word; nor was there any delay in setting the
restored acolyte to her destined labours.
“I am afraid you will not find it very gay,” Lady Bletchley had said,
“but what with this mourning”--glancing at the very diluted ink of her
attire--“and the terrible _corvée_ of getting into the new house, I
really cannot be bothered with society just now. However”--with a
consolatory shrug--“it cannot well be duller than Stillington, where I
suppose you literally never set eyes upon any one except the Aylmers.”
The entire innocence of purpose evident in this mention of the family
alluded to proved to a relieved Miss Ransome that her late hosts had
kept the secret of her misdemeanors faithfully.
“By-the-by, I hear they have left the Dower House,” continued the other,
carelessly. “What _can_ poor Edward do with his Sunday afternoons!”
Upon this topic Bonnybell could have shed some light, but as the
question took an ejaculatory shape she did not think it necessary to
answer it.
Although Lady Bletchley had alluded to her future change of house as a
_corvée_, her haste to display the proportions of her new mansion--which
deserved that pompous name for better reasons than the prosaic technical
one of possessing a backstairs--to Bonnybell, took precedence of even
her eagerness to set Miss Ransome to work; and in enumerating the length
of feet to which the ballroom ran, and giving the genealogies of the
cabinets and chimney-pieces, she forgot to be bored. Her companion’s
mouth was filled with praise and thanksgiving, and her heart with
upbraiding wonder at the ways of Providence. Fancy meanwhile sported
among the alterations and improvements--all in atrocious taste--which
she herself would make, were Tom’s affection blessedly to take a less
amorous tone and he be moved to adopt and make her his heiress.
While awaiting this happy consummation she had to content herself with
receiving flattering comments upon her intelligent sympathy, as
contrasted with the block-like manner in which Miss Sloggett--Felicity’s
secretary--had treated the wonders of French art and delicate
eighteenth-century luxury displayed before her unappreciative eyes. In
point of fact, the worthy lady, with a desire as sincere as Bonnybell’s
to hit her employer’s mood, but a tact less sure, had expressed only an
aspiration in imagined accordance with Lady Bletchley’s well-published
philanthropy, that Lord Bletchley might be persuaded to sell all these
useless superfluities for the benefit of the East End.
This _naïve_ proposal to return to methods inculcated by the Teaching
beside the Sea of Galilee did not meet with the reception it expected,
and Miss Sloggett was shown nothing more. Even the present exhibition to
a much more understanding spectator had to be scamped.
“You are a delightful person to show things to, and there are any number
more treasures for you to see”--the poor fellow was a well-known
collector--“but the meeting is to be at four, and I have a good deal to
arrange in connection with it beforehand. You will help me, I know. One
is so cramped for space in Hill Street!”
The tone of resigned contempt in which the last clause of her speech was
uttered showed that Felicity’s ideas had thus early expanded to the size
of her new surroundings, and Bonnybell gave a sardonic inward chuckle.
But she threw herself with such ardour and appetite into the
arrangements for the function indicated, and showed such mingled
capacity and suavity in her manner of assigning seats to the company
when it arrived, as to draw upon her from Lady Bletchley further
comparisons of an invidiously favourable character with the blundering
Sloggett.
The meeting was that of a Ladies’ Debating Society, held by turns at the
house of each of the members, and was of a now not uncommon type. The
subject of discussion was “Domestic Servants. Whether they need culture.
If so, how we are to give it them?” It opened with the reading of a
fairly practical paper, much interrupted by voluble members. One large
woman with a lisp, and apparently enfranchised from the bondage of
corsets, was irrepressible in suggestions--not valuable--and
autobiographical experiences. A second joked rather scathingly. A third
was sensible and serious, but dull. The fourth, and worst, a very
foolish vessel, still more autobiographic, telling at great length of
how she almost daily personally conducted her servants to the British
Museum and the Tower. And when it was objected that this course must
lead to difficulties as to the discharge of their duties, answered
threadbarely, that if you wanted to do good you must make up your mind
to sacrifice your own convenience to a certain extent, and that she kept
a good many servants. The reader of the paper rejoined politely, but
sarcastically, that perhaps those who had smaller households would
suggest how the objection was to be met. And thereupon so many fair ones
complied at once--the irrepressible obesity leading the van--that the
chairwoman, Lady Bletchley, had to ring her bell repeatedly to call them
to order.
“Perhaps some of the members at the lower end of the room will let us
hear what they have to say on the subject,” Felicity suggested, when at
length she was able to make herself audible, and looking encouragingly
at half a dozen silent women. “Those at this end have taken up so much
time in the discussion that the others have not had a chance.”
But the silent women remained silent, and the localized garrulity
continued to rage fiercely, turning its boiling stream into the channel
of the G.F.S.; the foolish matron who announced the largeness of her
establishment taking up her tale again, and going into details almost as
intimate as, though less indelicate than, Mrs. Cluppins, when she
appeared as witness for the prosecution in the trial of Bardell _v._
Pickwick, of her domestic economy.
“It takes a good deal out of one,” Felicity ejaculated, when at the
close of the meeting--which every one present agreed had been a
particularly good and helpful one--she and Bonnybell retired to Lady
Bletchley’s private room, while the drawing-rooms were being restored to
their normal state. “But, as you see, it is well worth it.”
“Indeed I do.”
“The society has only been started three months, and it has already done
an untold amount of good.”
“I am sure it has.”
“Subjects are threshed out, and people are woke up to a sense of duties
which they had either forgotten or never realized.”
“I am sure they are.”
“But”--with a yawn and a stretch of luxurious relief--“it _does_ take a
good deal out of one!”
“Has the lady who takes her cook every day to the British Museum a
husband?” asked Bonnybell, feeling her way cautiously to a little gibe.
Felicity laughed. “Yes; but he can go to his club. Of course, she is a
fool, poor dear; but she is always good for a drawing-room meeting or a
cheque.”
Miss Ransome was respectfully silent, musing upon the different roots
from which the beauteous flower of female friendship springs.
“She is a Mrs. Slammer,” continued Felicity, between two luxurious
yawns. “She was an heiress, and her husband had to take her name. He was
a Colonel Ransome, a well-known fortune-hunter, but quite in society.
By-the-by, he may be a relation of yours. Is he?”
Bonnybell paused a moment. It was not likely to heighten her
consideration in the eyes of the world that her kindred had repudiated
her; but, on the other hand, the fact of Miss Ransome’s friendless state
might intensify Felicity’s compassion for her, and if she told a lie
upon the subject it was certain to be discovered, so she said with a
drooped head--
“Our relations would not have anything to say to us, and of course I
could not give Cl--my mother up.”
Felicity’s heart was not a hard one, and she rejoined hastily--
“Oh yes, of course; it was stupid of me to forget. I remember now what
unnatural monsters we thought them at the time; but, at all events, they
did _me_ a good turn in giving me _you_.”
This was charming, and Bonnybell would have been glad to be sure of
being able to keep the thermometer of her friend’s affection up to the
point indicated by this little burst of effusiveness, but even the next
sentence showed a descent.
“All the same, it might not be a bad plan for you to cultivate her--she
is not a bad-hearted woman, and has kept him wonderfully straight; and,
good and indulgent as Tom is to me, I cannot expect him to be willing
always to have some one _en tiers_ between him and me; and life is so
uncertain--Camilla’s alarmingly so--that you cannot count upon
Stillington.”
She paused, a little out of breath, or Bonnybell fancied so, from the
haste with which she had scampered away from the clause that referred to
Tom.
“There is no greater mistake than going to meet misfortune,” continued
Felicity, distracted by her own reference to Stillington from the theme
originally started; “but I really dare not face the question of what
would become of Edward in the case of Camilla’s death.”
Bonnybell turned her head aside, with a little wincing movement that
stood for emotion, but that in reality hid the ironic mirth which she
feared must be in some degree making itself visible on her face at this
grossly overcharged picture of Edward’s prospective affliction.
“Of course, they are very deeply attached to each other,” she answered
mournfully, “but men do get over things.”
“Get over things! Deeply attached!” repeated Felicity, derisively.
“Edward’s manner to her has always been perfect, his whole relation to
her kept in a key of the most exquisite taste, and I am sure that he has
a very sincere respect for her; but, poor dear Camilla”--with a little
involuntary laugh--“is hardly a person to inspire a _grander passion_.
No, no; it is the financial aspect of the question that keeps me awake
at night.”
There was nothing “put on” in the lengthening oval of Miss Ransome’s
face at this announcement.
“Do you mean,” she asked slowly, “that Mr. Tancred would not be so well
off if--he were to lose Mrs. Tancred?”
“_Not so well off?_” repeated Felicity, with an annoyed laugh. “That is
putting it very mildly. Why, if Camilla were to die to-morrow, he would
be left with his paltry younger son’s portion, and with whatever he
makes”--the accompanying shrug expressed a minimum--“on the Stock
Exchange.”
To put direct questions about other people’s finances had never been
permissible by Miss Ransome’s code of manners, yet she asked boldly and
blankly--
“Will not she leave him anything at all?”
“It is no question of her not leaving him anything,” rejoined Lady
Bletchley, impatiently, “but of _his_ folly in refusing to accept a
penny. At the time of the marriage he absolutely declined to allow her
to make any provision for him, in the event of her death. It was a
Quixotic notion that, because he did not care about her----quite
between ourselves, _she_ married him! Never shall I forget my
stupefaction when I heard the news. ‘That old _guy_!’ I said--people
used the word ‘guy’ more in those days than they do now, but I dare say
you know what it means.”
“I can guess.”
“Since he did not care about her”--picking up the dropped thread of her
sentence--“he would not be indebted to her for anything but his board
and lodging; and indeed” (with a renewal of vexed mirth), “I would not
answer for it that he is not highflown enough to pay her even for that.
I remember telling you once that Edward had strayed out of the Middle
Ages; you see now what I meant.”
Miss Ransome’s knowledge of the period indicated was not equal to
informing her whether the centuries alluded to were characterized by a
marked aversion from profiting pecuniarily by unions with elderly
heiresses; but she assented, adding, with a very grave face--
“Poor Mr. Tancred! he has indeed every reason to try to keep Mrs.
Tancred alive!” Then, feeling dimly that the reflection had not quite a
suitable ring, she hung on it a postscript. “And I am sure,” she said
prayerfully, “that I heartily wish it, for both their sakes.”
“I am sure you do,” replied Felicity, but she spoke, or Bonnybell
thought so, somewhat slowly, and looked at her rather hard, adding more
glibly, “So you see that, considering the uncertainty of everything, it
would not be a bad plan to cultivate the Slammers; and I shall see that
you have every opportunity for doing so.”
Bonnybell thanked her, and wondered internally whether they would be
likely to go to bed early. It needed solitude to face such a new aspect
of affairs as the last ten minutes’ conversation had presented to her.
* * * * *
“If Camilla died to-morrow, Edward would be almost as much of a pauper
as I am!” This was the fact that could be better faced by Bonnybell with
her hair hanging down her back in its nightly twisted cable and the
enlargement of a dressing-gown. The added flights of stairs which Lady
Bletchley would have had to climb made her visitor feel pretty secure
from an invasion by her, but, to be on the safe side, Miss Ransome
locked her door.
“_A pauper!_” During her eighteen years Bonnybell had known many persons
who freely gave themselves that name; but it had never, so far as she
could observe, produced any appreciable effect upon their mode of life
or expenditure. She dimly felt that Edward’s pauperism would be of a
different type. Her imagination tried to construct a pauper of the upper
classes with a sense of duty to his tailor and wine-merchant. Would he
smoke pipes, and drink gin-and-water, and wear napless hats, and
reach-me-down overcoats?
The frame was one into which it was so impossible to fit the portrait of
Mr. Tancred that she laughed aloud, secure in having a whole floor to
herself. “My jaw dropped half a yard when I heard it,” she soliloquized.
“I am afraid that Felicity must have noticed it.”
An advance upon the glass and a practise in it of elongating her face
to different lengths produced such unsatisfactory results that she soon
left off her efforts to reconstruct her own attitude under the late
thunderbolt. Nor did she disguise from herself that it _was_ a
thunderbolt! To do her justice, she had never, since hearing of its
probability, consciously wished for Camilla’s death; yet there was no
doubt that she had seen through a rosy mist, and at some future epoch,
herself in various attitudes of near relationship to Edward.
People’s love-dreams are shaped consonantly to their characters; and
Bonnybell’s were as artificial and sophisticated as herself. She saw
herself whizzing up the Champs Elysées in an automobile in May when the
chestnuts were out, in a _dernier cri_ hat, by Edward’s side; sitting in
an opera-box at Covent Garden, blazing in Camilla’s diamonds, reset by a
jeweller of the Rue de la Paix, by Edward’s side; at Stillington, during
one of their Saturday-to-Mondays there, smoking the best cigarettes
procurable for money all over the house, and with no apprehension of any
one smelling them, by Edward’s side; or without cigarettes, and
receiving discreet and moderate endearments, well and easily kept within
such bounds as she herself prescribed, from Edward.
To her own surprise, it was the last picture upon which she dwelt
longest, and with most pleasure. And now her house of cards lay in ruins
at her feet, and it took her all her philosophy, and a little more, to
pull herself together, and extract any cause of congratulation that
might be found among their _débris_.
“What a mercy it was that we kept ourselves well in hand! I do not think
he could have held out much longer; and as for me, whatever confidence
one has in one’s self, it is well not to put it to too severe a test. I
really believe that two more Sunday walks, if the sun had shone, and
those birds whose notes I never could distinguish apart had gone on
singing, would have finished me off!” After a pause, “I never could have
believed that it would be hard to keep from being fond of any one.”
With that she dropped down in a sitting position on the hearthrug, and,
embracing her knees with her lily arms and stooping her head down upon
them, wept copiously. She went to bed later, and her last thought was a
truly Christian one, “Poor dear old Camilla! Her death would not do me
the least good in the world, and I sincerely hope she may live to the
age of Methuselah.”