PAMELA POUNCE
_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
THE INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS
JOHN SENESCHAL’S MARGARET
THE PRIDE OF JENNICO, ETC.
_HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED_
PAMELA POUNCE
A TALE OF
TEMPESTUOUS PETTICOATS
BY
AGNES & EGERTON CASTLE
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD.
TORONTO LONDON NEW YORK
ST. PAUL’S HOUSE WARWICK SQUARE E.C.4
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE ix
PROLOGUE xiii
CHAPTER I
HOW MY LADY KILCRONEY ENTERED INTO ROYAL SERVICE UNDER THE
SHADOW OF THE ITALIAN HAT TRIMMED BY MISS PAMELA POUNCE 17
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH MISS PAMELA POUNCE IS ORDERED TO PACK 47
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH MISS PAMELA POUNCE, THE MILLINER’S ASSISTANT,
BECOMES ARBITER OF LIFE AND DEATH IN HIGH SOCIETY 58
CHAPTER IV
SHOWING STORM WITHIN AND WITHOUT 79
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH MISS PAMELA POUNCE DEMONSTRATES THE VALUE OF
VIRTUE TO HER FAMILY AND HER FRIENDS 106
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH MY LADY KILCRONEY STRIKES A MATCH
AND MISS POUNCE THROWS COLD WATER ON IT 131
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH IS MANIFEST THE HAND OF THE SAINTED JULIA 152
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH A WONDERFUL BIT OF LUCK COMES OUT OF MISS
POUNCE’S BANDBOX FOR SOMEBODY ELSE 162
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH MISS PAMELA POUNCE HAS DONE WITH LOVE 187
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH MISS PAMELA POUNCE SETS THREE BLACK FEATHERS
FOR TRAGEDY 202
CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH THERE IS A PRODIGIOUS SCANDAL ABOUT PINK FLOUNCES 227
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH MY LADY KILCRONEY INSISTS ON THE DUTY OF MORALITY 238
CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH MY LADY KILCRONEY MAKES AN INDELICATE FUSS 254
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH KITTY IS MORE INCOMPARABLE THAN EVER 274
CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH THE MAD BRAT TAKES THE BIT BETWEEN HER
TEETH, BUT MISS PAMELA POUNCE KEEPS HOLD OF THE REINS 285
CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH MY LADY KILCRONEY HAS THE LAST WORD 313
PREFACE
There can be no doubt that shedding her petticoats a woman has shed
much, if not all, of her femininity, till she is now merely a person of
an opposite sex. She is a female; for nothing will ever make her a man,
but Woman (with a capital W), Woman with her charm, her elusiveness,
her mystery, her reserves, her virginal withdrawals, her exquisite
yieldings; she is that no longer.
How much of her queenship has she not given up with her petticoats?
At no time was Woman more thoroughly feminine, more absolutely
mistress of her own fascinations and of the hearts of men, than in the
eighteenth century; preferably the latter half.
That was a time when it may be said that no woman could look ugly;
that beauty became irresistible. Take the period consecrated by the
art of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and of Romney; take the picture of the
Parson’s Daughter, by the latter artist; that little face, so piquante,
innocent, fresh, sly, mischievous, is nothing at all without its cloud
of powdered curls but a very ordinary visage; almost common indeed!
With its distinctive coiffure, framing, softening, etherealising,
giving depth to the eyes and allurement to the smile; how irresistibly
delicious! How irresistibly delicious, too, is the mode which exposes
the young throat so modestly between the soft folds of the muslin
kerchief.
Youth then, even without much beauty, is served to perfection by the
taste of the period. What of beauty itself? Look at the portrait of the
Duchess of Devonshire, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous one with the
big hat, where she is holding the dancing baby. There is an answer more
eloquent than any words can give.
And, rarest thing in a fashion! it became age as completely. Even
elderliness emerged triumphant. I vow that Mrs. Hardcastle, Mrs.
Malaprop, Mrs. Primrose are delightful figures of buxomness on
any stage. Their double chins assume a pleasant sort of dignity,
overshadowed by the curls and loops of their tremendous coiffures. The
dress with its panniers, its apron, its general amplitude is peculiarly
advantageous to the too, too solid flesh of the matron.
The mode of the moment has a singular effect on the morals of the
moment. Our emotions are more moulded and coloured by our clothes than
we are aware.
It is quite certain that when a young lady went panniered and patched,
fichued and ruffled, powdered and rouged, tripping on high heels, ready
for the minuet, her feelings went delicately with her, metaphorically
garbed in daintiness to match.
And, when a gentleman of fashion was a Beau; when his fine leg showed
to its utmost in a silk stocking; when his pampered hand was as elegant
of gesture with a pinch of snuff between falling ruffles as it was in
whipping out a small sword, he retained his masculine virility none
the less; but like the blade of that same small sword, was cutting,
polished, deadly, vicious even, all within the measure of courtesy and
refinement.
The world has mightily changed since the days when hearts beat under
the folds of the fichu or against the exquisite embroideries of the
waistcoat. Sad divagations then, as now, were taken out of the path of
rectitude, but they were taken with a rustle of protesting petticoats,
to the gallant accompaniment of buckled shoes or, more romantic still,
dashing top-boots.
A tale of 1788 is necessarily a tale of petticoats.
“A winning wave, deserving note
Of a tempestuous petticoat,”
cries the poet of an earlier age. Femininity must needs rustle and
whisper, and curtsy and flounce through every chapter.
* * * * *
The collaborator whose name appears for the last time on this title
page, turned to the century of The Bath Comedy and the subsequent and
connected chronicles as a kind of relaxation of the mind from what
he most hated: the ugliness of modern life. The realism which sets
itself to describe the material, the grosser aspect of any emotion,
the brutality that miscalls itself strength, that forcing of the note
of horror--which is no more power than the beating of a tin can or
the shrieking of a syren is music--were abhorrent to him. He liked
the pretty period in spite of its artificialities; he liked the whole
glamour of the time; he liked its reticence and its gaiety, its
politeness, its wit, and its naughtiness and its quaintness, because,
as in an artistic bout of fencing, it was all bounded by a certain
measure of grace and rule.
The laughter he gave to these conceptions came, as true laughter must,
from a most innocent and wholesome heart. It is this laughter which is
his last legacy to a sad, tangled, and rather ugly world.
AGNES EGERTON CASTLE.
PROLOGUE
“_No man is hero to his valet_”; so runs the cynical adage. But you can
reverse the saying with reference to the other sex. _Every woman is a
heroine to her lady’s maid_; it may not be true in all cases, but ’tis
true enough for any proverb.
The romance of a lady’s own woman is centred in her mistress. She
will clothe her in finery with a greater joy than if she were draping
herself; rather than see her go shabby she would wear sackcloth; she
will hang over the banisters, on a dinner-party night, to observe the
sit of her train as she sweeps downstairs on the arm of some notable
personage; she will lean out of the window to watch her step into her
sedan, and if there are Beaux hovering and my Lady tosses her plumes
and whisks her panniers to proper advantage it is Abigail’s heart that
beats high with pride.
Even Miss Lydia Pounce, own woman to my Lady Kilcroney, a damsel
remarkable from her earliest youth for her tart and contradictious
ways, who was verging on elderliness now with the acidity and leanness
peculiar to the “born old maid,” would have laid down her life to
ensure that my Lady’s court gown should fit her trim waist without a
wrinkle, or that the pink silk stocking that clothed her pretty leg was
drawn to its proper skin-tight limit.
(Both the Incomparable Kitty and her Lydia were exceedingly particular
that these same stockings should never be worn with the gross
slovenliness that permitted a sag. Not indeed that anything but the
merest glimpse of slender, arched feet, like the “little mice” of an
earlier poet’s fancy, peeping in and out from under the flutter and
foam of lace and silken flounce, was ever displayed to the vulgar eye;
but to know these niceties complete in the smallest and most delicate
detail was necessary to the comfort of any self-respecting Woman. And
on this point Lydia was in thorough sympathy with her mistress, as upon
all others connected with the elegance and _bon ton_ of the most modish
of Mayfair belles; of that leader of Fashion, Feeling and Style which
the Lady Kilcroney undoubtedly was.)
If Woman be a heroine to her lady’s maid, in what light does she appear
to her Milliner?
Here we come upon debatable ground. At first sight it would seem
that the milliner, being dependent upon her customers for her very
existence, it must follow that whatever her private opinion may be with
regard to their appearance and taste, she can have but one burning
desire: to please her patronesses. There is nevertheless another side
to the question.
What Woman of intelligence but does not realise that a Mode may make
or mar her? How much may hang on the droop of a feather; the tilt
of a hat-brim; the glow of a rose in cunning juxtaposition with the
soft carmine of a blushing cheek? Blue eyes may flash into sudden
significance under a knot of azure ribbon, that had before languished
their tenderest in vain. Saucy innocence may triumph beneath a
shepherdess wreath; or tired charms kindle into new brilliancy
stimulated by the consciousness of the perfect inspiration. In fine,
all that life holds best is at the mercy of the mantua maker where
the Lady of Fashion is concerned. Let but a clever business woman
grasp this great and awful truth; and she who combines the brain
that can devise, the taste that never fails, the acumen that knows
no hesitation, the finger that is at once light and firm, unerring
and ethereal, becomes to her employers a treasure beyond the mines of
Golconda!
Such a treasure did Miss Pamela Pounce, with whom these pages are
concerned, prove herself to the noted Madame Mirabel of Bond Street.
And such an influence, far-reaching and subtle, did she exercise on the
lives of the _Elégantes_ who consulted her, with the eager submission
and reverence of the believing Greek for his Oracles, though with far
other and comfortably practical results!
Miss Pamela Pounce, Goddess of Modes, was _ipso facto_ Goddess of the
Machine of Life, deciding, with a lucky toss of ribbons or hitherto
undreamt of combination of fallals, the fate of her fair customers, and
incidentally that of their Beaux, their lovers and their husbands; my
Lady Kilcroney and her lazy, jolly life-loving Lord; dark-browed Susan
Verney, who would fain have bent the whole world to her sway as she
did her weary Baron; Lady Anne, her sister, still fondly, foolishly in
love with her stalwart, countrified Squire, Philip Day; their young
sister, the last of the fair Vereker Ladies and the naughtiest, with
her tangled love-stories; Mr. Stafford, the once famous Beau, proud of
the startling beauty of his excellent, dull, childish wife, and anxious
that she should flaunt it _à la mode_ with the best of them; Sir
Jasper Standish, the sporting Baronet, who, bereaved of his exquisite,
clinging Julia, found himself entangled beyond belief with Miss Pamela
Pounce’s ribbons; the noted young actress, Miss Falcon, known as “Fair
Fatality,” whose brief life drama was more tragic than any she had
enacted for the benefit of the public; the plain Miss Vibart, who found
beauty and love and happiness all in a Pounce bandbox; Mistress Molly
Lafone, own sister--who would believe it?--to the pearl of ingenuous
womanhood, Prue Stafford, Molly Lafone that minx, whom the members of
my Lady Kilcroney’s coterie were so unanimously leagued to suppress
and exclude, and who, in spite of their efforts contrived to insinuate
herself disastrously into all their combinations (was it not under a
wreath twisted by Pamela’s long clever fingers that this elegant little
adventuress came to her most deserved catastrophe?)--there was not one
of them but came under her wand!
But at the same time the arbiter of the fate of others, in the shape of
a very human young woman, guided the shuttle of her own destiny, and
wove a remarkably pretty design for herself.
Milliners, unlike Oracles and Sybils, have each their personal human
span with its joys and fears, pleasures, pains and triumphs. Pamela’s
romance ran like a cherry-coloured thread through the warp and woof of
those other existences, so far above her, in which her profession had
involved her. To show the whole pattern, light and dark, sparkling and
deep-hued, flowered, dotted, arabesqued, of this brocade of earthly
life, the poor _Modiste_ must assume as important a place as that of
her clientele.
CHAPTER I
HOW MY LADY KILCRONEY ENTERED INTO ROYAL SERVICE UNDER THE SHADOW OF
THE ITALIAN HAT TRIMMED BY MISS PAMELA POUNCE
While Miss Pamela Pounce was serving her third year as apprentice
to the great art of Hat Confectionery, under the ægis of no less a
personage than the world-famous Madame Eglantine of Paris--once “the
little French Milliner” of Bath--her aunt and benefactress, who had
placed her in these favourable circumstances, had begun to taste the
proudest triumph of her life.
Miss Lydia Pounce was about to become own woman to a Court lady!
My Lady Kilcroney--to whom she had so faithfully and ruthlessly
devoted herself--from the days when, as the Widow Bellairs, she first
scintillated in the world of fashion, to her present position of
Viscountess--was chosen by Her Majesty, Queen Charlotte, to fill the
post of Lady-in-Waiting to her own Sacred Person.
To enter Court circles had been the dream of Lydia’s angular and
ambitious breast. Her mistress’s gratified vanity was a trifling
emotion compared to the bursting satisfaction which this upward step on
the social ladder afforded the maid. It is not too much to say that she
regarded herself in the light of a Prime Minister who has successfully
brought about some great political event, and who is a far more
important person than the Sovereign whom he serves.
It came to pass in this wise.
His Most Gracious Majesty, King George III, had been ordered to
Cheltenham Spa for the waters by his physicians; his state of health
was causing anxiety, the extent of which was as yet quite unknown to
the bulk of his loyal subjects. Queen Charlotte, the most devoted of
spouses, of course determined to accompany him; and the Royal party
duly proceeded to the Spa.
It happened to be Lady Flora Dare-Stamer’s term of attendance on Her
Majesty, and that stout estimable Lady-in-Waiting happened to be Lady
Kilcroney’s very close and dear friend. There was nothing remarkable,
perhaps, in the conjunction of these two happenings; but it was indeed
singular that Kitty Kilcroney should happen to discover a delicacy in
her son and heir which necessitated an instant visit to the celebrated
health resort now so vastly honoured.
These events having succeeded each other, nothing more natural than
that my Lady Kilcroney should invite her “poor dear Flo” to a dish of
tea and a chat at her lodgings, to rest her of the fatigue consequent
upon her eminent but exhausting office.
Though Lady Flora had made no secret to her intimates of her intention
to rid herself of her honours as soon as might be, who so surprised as
her dearest Kitty to learn that she now believed her emancipation at
hand?
“To tell you the truth, my dear,” said Lady Flo, chewing a macaroon,
“it’s not a job that suits me in the least. ’Twould fit you vastly
better.”
“O, Lady Flo!” cried Kitty in accents of amazement. “What a strange
thought! I vow and declare such an idea never crossed my mind. And, in
truth, ’tis rank impossible. There are a hundred reasons, a thousand
reasons, why I am the last person likely to be selected by Her Majesty.
I am too young.”
“Upon my word,” said her companion bluntly. “I doubt if there’s so
much between us, my dear, were it not that I have run to fat. These
macaroons are excellent. ’Tis like your genius to be so well served in
lodgings. You’ve brought the best of your staff with you, I make no
doubt.”
“And, O, my love! the difficulty of housing them! There’s scarce a
tradesman in the town that hath not a servant of mine.”
Kitty spoke with the careless self-importance of the wealthy woman. And
Lady Florence approved.
“How right of you, my love, to insist on Comfort!” Comfort was the
first and last of her aspirations. “Aye, I will have a little more
cream. This whipped stuff--I dare swear ’tis your idea to have it so
lavishly flavoured with the vanilla; vastly delicate. Your chocolate is
as incomparable as your agreeable self! But yours are not the years of
giddiness. I speak in all friendship, I beg you to believe.”
Kitty murmured in an absent voice, that she had married her
first--worthy Bellairs--a mere child, practically out of the nursery.
“Anyhow, my sweet Kilcroney, no woman who has had two husbands can deny
a certain amount of experience, and upon rep,” with a rolling laugh, “I
don’t care who knows that I’m on the wrong side of thirty! You must be
pretty well advanced on the right side of it?”
“If you can call twenty-eight----”
“Admit to twenty-eight, by all means!--nevertheless, ’tis an age of
discretion. And Her Majesty----”
“I understand----” said Kitty, balancing her teaspoon on the rim of
her handleless cup with a musing air--she wondered in her soul if the
excellent Lady Flo could really be taken in by this pretence; if it
were possible she did not guess that she, Kitty Kilcroney, was longing,
grilling to step into her Court shoes--as if she cared who knew that
she was over thirty her last birthday, and warming but to riper beauty
as the months slipped by!
“’Tis not,” she said aloud, with a pout, “that I would decline a post
about our gracious Queen, if ’twere offered me, God forbid! I am too
loyal a subject. But I understand the German woman, that frumpish
creature, the Keeper of the Robes--what’s her barbarous name?--hath the
royal ear, and will not suffer anything young or comely, if she can
help it, about Her Majesty--(And there’s one for you, my Lady Flo, with
your right and your wrong side of thirty!) ’Tis a vast of pity you will
not continue to occupy a position so honourable and so becoming to you.”
“To tell you the truth,” said Lady Flora unmoved, helping herself to
another macaroon, “’tis the standing that undoes your poor friend!
Conceive it, my love, full fourteen stone, and on my feet hours
every day. Hours did I say? Centuries. Look hither!” She thrust out
a large sandalled foot, which certainly had a plethoric appearance.
“’Tis swollen beyond belief. I acknowledge my stoutness. I made but
little count of it, for I’ve been a prodigious comfortable woman
along of it. ’Tis a cushioned life. It pads the mind as it were. I
assure you, I believe myself to have been, only some three months
ago, the most good-tempered woman in England. And now! ’Pon rep, I am
growing peevish! Fie upon it--stout and peevish! Was there ever such a
combination?”
As if to contradict her own statement she again gave way to her jolly
laugh. Kitty, watching her through long eyelashes, sighed.
“But what can induce you to think of me, my Lady Flo? Poor little
retiring me?”
“Pray my dear, do not play the Molly Lafone with me!”
Molly Lafone! Such a comparison was too comic! Kitty laughed, and
dropped her not very successful mask.
“Upon my word, then, I believe it would suit me! But how can it be
accomplished? I am not one to push myself forward. My Lord Kilcroney
is an Irishman and no courtier, and their Majesties have their own
favourites; and indeed to begin with, I doubt whether you will find it
so easy to resign.”
“Resign, Kitty! Resign? No, dear Kilcroney, I am on the point of being
graciously dismissed. It took some management, but I was desperate.
Another month of this, I said, and Mr. Stamer will be able to look
out for a new wife--which he would do, my dear love, across my very
coffin--’twas yesterday sennight then, I made up my mind. I took my
best rose-point flounce--by the mercy of heaven it was just returned
from the lace-menders, neatly packed in tissue tied with ribbon and a
scent bag within, as elegant a parcel as you could wish to see!--and I
sought Mrs. Schwellenberg--aye, that same!--and says I, ‘For mercy’s
sake, give me a chair. My poor feet will scarce support me?’ At which
she looks as sour as a crab, and quoth she: ‘We all have veet, Lady
Florence’ (you know her vile accent), ‘but we forget dem in our great
honour and brivilege,’ ‘Would God I could forget mine,’ thinks I. But
she glances at the parcel in my hand: ‘Take a zeat,’ she says with a
roll of her old eye. ‘Ah, my good Frau,’ says I to myself, ‘you may
look, but you shan’t clutch yet a bit!’”
Lady Florence laughed reminiscently, and Kitty screamed:
“Never tell me you gave the old Dutch villain your rose-point flounce!”
“And what would be the good of a rose-point flounce to me, when I
should be dropped dead in the Queen’s apartment, like any hackney
jade? My love, I showed that ancient toad my two feet--and I vow toad
is a good name for her, for she hath the countenance and the croak of
her own pet frogs--I showed her my feet, and I lamented my stones of
weight. ’Pon rep! I gave myself sixteen, I did indeed, and what with
the swelling, I looked ’em! ‘Let me confide in you,’ I cries, ‘if
ever I saw a truly noble soul writ on a human brow, ’tis on yours! My
frame,’ I cries, ‘is not equal to my devotion. My ankles will not
support the loyalty of my heart! ’tis not that I should grudge passing
away in such service,’ I cries, turning up my eyes--You could not have
done it better, Kitty!--‘but were I to faint in those sacred precincts,
were I to pass away in that august Presence, Her Majesty would be
justly annoyed. Dr. Jebb has warned me. Alas! look at me. Am I not
fat?’ ‘Vat you are,’ says she, ‘but so am I.’ Well, then, my love, I
gave her a peep of the lace, and she began to dribble at the corners of
her mouth, and I knew the trick was done! ‘If I speak to Her Majesty,’
says she, and she fingering my rose-point, ‘I vonder vot substitute I
could suggest. Her Majesty she does not like the changes, and----’ And
then, I thought of you, Kitty.”
“I wonder why, in the name of Heaven!” cried this lady tartly.
“Your feet won’t swell, my love.”
“I need not accept,” quoth Kitty, pinching her lips.
“Kitty, if you play your cards well, the post will be offered to you
while their Majesties are here at Cheltenham. ’Tis all settled with the
Schwellenberg. Do you not know,” said Lady Florence, pushing the dish
with a single remaining macaroon upon it, virtuously from her, “that
Susan Verney is making all the interest in the world for the honour?
But she was rude to the Schwellenberg one day--you know poor Susan’s
way!--when they met in my drawing-room at Queen’s Lodge, and the
Schwellenberg will have none of her!”
“Say no more!” cried Kitty, and fires shot from her eyes.
“My love, I believe I have served you,” said Lady Florence, replying
to the eloquence of that glance. “‘My royals are not bartial to the
Irish,’ said Schwellenberg. ‘Ah, but Madam,’ I says. ‘My Lady Kilcroney
is not Irish. She is true-born English, and has vast wealth--widow of
an Indian Nabob--vast wealth and a generous heart!--And you admire the
lace, Madam?’ says I, ‘in the very truth I was hoping I might venture
to offer it to you, for ’tis lace that should be worn at court, Madam,
and in no other place--and as I mentioned to you, my Lady Kilcroney and
her Lord have practically severed all ties with Ireland. If you would
accept the flounce, Madam, on my retirement (I think there is a narrow
edging of rose-point to match).’ ‘I will tink of what you say about my
Lady Kilcroney,’ croaks she. Am I not a good friend, Kitty?”
She looked at Kitty with such beaming kindness that all this latter’s
caprices vanished; she cast herself affectionately on Lady Florence’s
huge bosom and voted that she was indeed the best and dearest!
* * * * *
It was agreed between them before the large and jovial lady left the
pleasant apartments overlooking the meadows, that she would call early
next morning, and report the result of Mrs. Schwellenberg’s “tinking,”
since she had been given to understand that Her Majesty would deliver
her gracious dismissal that evening, during the process of the Royal
disrobing.
“You must hold yourself ready, my sweet child, to be at any point
considered suitable along Her Majesty’s path during the next few days.
By the looks Her Majesty casts on me I am convinced Schwellenberg has
kept her word, and prepared the ground ’ere we left Queen’s Lodge.
Well, she knew she would not get the rose-point otherwise.”
Kitty stood reflecting in the bow-window long after Lady Florence’s
chairmen had reeled away with their burden towards Lord Fauconberg’s
small house on the hill, which had been placed at their Majesties’
disposal. It could not be said that she had quite so altogether
consuming a desire for the post of Lady-in-Waiting since hearing Lady
Florence’s talk and gazing on those swollen feet, but, rather than that
Susan Verney--dark, overbearing Susan!--should have the advantage,
Kitty would have stood on burning ploughshares. She had, thank Heaven,
as good health as any lady in the kingdom, a back that was never tired,
and a fund of humour and good humour that made her equal to most
trials. Moreover she had a fighting spirit, and, she flattered herself,
a charm of her own. If she did not get the better of Schwellenberg on
the one hand, and ingratiate herself with Royalty on the other, then
she was no longer Incomparable Bellairs!
Her agreeable reflections were broken in upon by the entrance of my
Lord Kilcroney.
Now, hot-blooded, red-headed Irishman as he was, it was the rarest
thing in the world for this nobleman to be seriously out of temper with
anyone, let alone with the wife of his bosom; but, as he flung himself
into Kitty’s hired parlour, he was in as irate a mood as he had ever
indulged in, and that with his Lady.
“Here’s a pretty business!” quoth he, and cast his hat on the table in
the middle of the room, very nearly dislodging the glass dome which
protected a gold filigree basket containing the most purple plums,
the reddest strawberries, the bluest grapes that ever artist in wax
produced. “Here’s a pretty to-do!” cried Denis Kilcroney.
“There seems indeed to be a to-do!” retorted Kitty. She wheeled round
from the window. “But you will condescend to explain the cause perhaps,
my Lord?”
“So I hear you’ve got a place about the court, me darling,” said Denis,
plunging into sarcasm, with a flushed countenance. “’Pon me soul, ’tis
the grand lady you’re going to be entirely! ’Tis the back seat your
husband will have to be taking. Glory be to God, what’s a husband? And
an Irish one into the bargain!”
“Pray, my Lord,” cried Kitty, all eagerness. “Where have you heard the
news? For, as I’m a living woman, ’tis news to me.”
“Ah! go on out of that.” My Lord was certainly very angry, and
more than usually Hibernian. “Didn’t that fat baggage come straight
out of these doors? Didn’t she put that full moon face of hers out
of the sedan window and bawl to her men to stop, and them with the
sweat dripping off them, God help them! And ‘oh,’ she calls, ‘My Lord
Kilcroney,’ she cries, ‘’tis quite settled,’ she says. ‘And your Kitty
to take my post about Her Majesty.’ Why, all Cheltenham could have
heard her.”
“Tush!” Kitty’s peach-tinted countenance, agog with delight, fell. “Is
that all? Why----” she was about to expound to Denis with some firmness
the folly of giving way to passion over an event that was still in
the uncertain future, at the same time conveying to him her clear
intention to leave no stone unturned towards its accomplishment, when
her little black page appeared at the open door, grinning at the sounds
of dispute, and announced: “Mistress Lafone.” And if the sight of dusky
innocence amused was exasperating to my Lady, what can be said of the
feelings aroused by the smile of minxish artfulness?
“Good heavens,” cried Kitty. “And what brings you to Cheltenham, if one
may ask?”
“Good-morrow, my sweet Kilcroney.”
This familiarity!
“Good-morrow, Madam.” Kitty swept a curtsy to mark her distance, the
while my Lord kissed the creature’s hand, positively as if he liked
doing so, and him but out of such a tantrum as never was.
“And what should bring me to Cheltenham--(no, my Lord, pray. I prefer
the little stool. I do indeed)--why should not poor little me be here
with the rest?”
“Why, indeed?” growled Kilcroney.
“And what has brought you, my Lady, if one may inquire?”
“She thought little Denis looked pale!” cried my Lord, and gave a great
guffaw.
“You may laugh, Madam,” said Kitty, as Mrs. Lafone tinkled delicately.
“There are feelings which only a mother can understand.”
Mistress Lafone was childless.
“One excuse will serve as well as another.” My Lord let himself fall
into a chair that creaked threateningly beneath his weight.
“Oh, I seek for no excuse,” quoth Molly Lafone. Crouching on the low
stool, she had a singular air of astuteness, in spite of her fostered
childishness. “I never can understand why people should not tell the
truth.” She raised arch eyes towards my Lord, while Kitty sat with the
majesty of an Eastern idol, and had not as much as the quiver of an
eyelash.
“I’m here to curry favour with royalty,” she laughed again sweetly,
“like the rest of us!”
The brazenness of it! My Lord guffawed again. He certainly was in a
most unpleasant mood.
“Huthen. I hope you’ll be as successful as my Lady there!”
“Oh! My Lady Kilcroney!...”
“Sure, isn’t it the surprise of her life.” Kilcroney once again waded
heavily in sarcasm. “She hadn’t as much as the faintest notion such
a thing could happen to her--had you, me Lady? She hadn’t as much as
opened her mouth for the plum”--it was perhaps the purple artifice on
the table that suggested the simile--“but didn’t it drop into it? It’s
going to be Lady-in-Waiting she is, in place of my Lady Flo----”
“Oh! my Lord, say you so? Says he right, my dearest Lady Kilcroney?
’Tis the most splendid, the most monstrous delightful news I’ve heard
this long time. Oh!” cried Mrs. Lafone, clasping and wringing her hands
in an ecstasy. “May not your little Molly rejoice with you?”
“You are vastly disinterested,” said Kitty.
Mrs. Lafone gave her tinkling laugh.
“Ah, my Lady--indeed, my Lord, I have said that I am frank. Dearest
Lady Kilcroney, I will be frank--If I could obtain some little
post--the teeniest, weeniest little post at court----”
But Kitty interrupted, bouncing out of her stateliness.
“Pray, Mrs. Lafone, for what post should you consider yourself
qualified about the august person of our gracious Queen?”
“Oh! My Lady Kilcroney, the least little post in all the world! Hath
not the Queen appointed a plain Miss Burney reader? I believe I could
very well be reader. Mr. Lafone says I have a silver tone in my voice,
and our curate at home once told me----”
“Tush, the celebrated Miss Burney hath qualifications, child, which you
in your foolishness fail to appreciate.”
“Yet she is but a music teacher’s daughter, Madam,” said Molly with a
mighty sigh. She dropped her white eyelids and turned a green glint on
my Lord, and sighed again. “Or if not actually about her Majesty--who
am I, indeed, to aspire to that Presence?--some office about yourself,
dear Lady Kilcroney. I would be your secretary, your Lady-in-waiting,
your devoted attendant!”
“This is folly,” cried Kitty. “I am by no means appointed to my Lady
Flo’s post, and if I were--well, to be frank with you, Lafone, since
you like frankness so much--you are the last person in the world I
should ever be instrumental in bringing to court. Heavens!” cried
Kitty, gazing upwards at the low ceiling, as if she saw through it
into the celestial regions. “What discretion, what faultless propriety
of conduct, what a delicate sense of responsibility, what a blameless
record should be demanded of one who would enter that sacred circle!...”
(It was the glint of her visitor’s green eye at my Lord which gave this
stern decision to Kitty’s tones.)
Here, quite unexpectedly, and with admirable effectiveness, large tears
rose in Mrs. Lafone’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks, without in the
least disturbing the prettiness of her pointed visage. My Lord cast a
glance from one to the other; it was lit with a tender sympathy as it
fell on this touching impersonation of grief, and kindled with reproach
as it shot to Kitty.
Mrs. Lafone gave a small sob.
“Your sweet lady,” she said, now audaciously addressing her male
champion, “has ever been a friend in need. ’Tis for that, that
I have ventured, my Lord, that I have ventured to come to her
to-day, hearing--yes! I will own it, I already knew that she was
like to be next in the Queen’s choice. I made the journey hither
in the hopes--’tis for no reason of petty vanity, no mere envious
ambition----” (Thus the minx) ... “oh! my Lord, I scarce know why, I
have ever been sadly persecuted. I am the victim of evil tongues!... My
reputation has been assailed....”
“Ha!” said Kitty. The ejaculation leaped from her.
Molly Lafone produced another silver sob. “Quite unfoundedly,
I do assure you! My conscience is spotless, my Lady Kilcroney,
spotless!”--she caught Kitty’s eye, and went on in a humble voice--“in
this instance! Indeed, my Lady--but Mr. Lafone--I am sadly maligned,
he is suspicious, he----” Here the unfortunate young woman became
quite incoherent in her demonstrations of distress. She wrung her
white hands with extra pathos. Another large tear flowed, and a volley
of little sobbing, disjointed phrases accompanied it, “domestic
happiness--ignorance of the world--poor little me, country-bred and
guileless--salvation or despair!”
In the midst, Kitty rose, returning to majesty.
“I must put a stop to a scene so useless and so painful. How is it
possible, Madam, you do not see that every word you utter but marks the
impossibility of your request? Pray, my Lord, see Mistress Lafone to
her chair.”
“Kitty!” cried Kilcroney, springing to his feet. He had not thought it
of her, to requite these open-hearted confidences with insult; to turn
so trusting and touching a creature into the street; a lady--an old
friend! “Pray Mistress Lafone, let us be offering you a dish of tea,”
cried he.
There are days when everything goes askew. Kitty’s great footman
marched into the room and presented his mistress with a letter which,
he said, had just been brought by a riding messenger. Kitty took it
from the salver with all the air of one glad of the diversion, but
no sooner had she perused it than she exclaimed, in tones of such
consternation, that my Lord leant forward and took it out of her hand.
He exclaimed in his turn, but in accents of pleasure.
“Why, what is this? Sure, Alanna, there is naught here to upset you,
’tis the best of good fortune on the contrary! Here’s your sweet
friend, my Lady Mandeville, actually at Malvern and proposing to drive
over and spend the day with you to-morrow, bringing her little rogue to
play with ours.”
“Oh, this is intolerable,” cried Kitty, “this is past bearing! Bid the
messenger wait. Good heavens, do I not hear him riding away?--Call him
back, my Lord, call him back! On no account must my Lady Mandeville be
permitted to visit me to-morrow.”
My Lord stood rooted to the spot, and the veins on his forehead
swelled. Kitty rushed to the window and hailed vigorously; the rhythmic
footfalls of a horse receding at slow pace along the cobble stones was,
on a sudden, altered to the clatter of a returning trot.
“Damnation!” cried my Lord. “This passes all!”
Mistress Lafone had stopped the wringing of hands and the production of
tears, and was all malicious interest.
Kilcroney had entered into a towering passion. He protested that it was
the most monstrous low thing, that he forbade my Lady to behave so base
to her friend.
“Tare an’ ’ounds!” cried he, “if it wasn’t ashamed you were, and that,
not a minute ago, to be enjoying the finest hospitality in the world,
the kindest, the most open-hearted, ’tis not ashamed you should be to
return a thrifle of it! Shame!” ejaculated Denis. “Shame! ’tis on the
other leg. Gad, ’tis the shameful bit of meanness you’d be practising
and ’tis ashamed I am of you meself (that I should live to say it).
Your best friend! And all for what? For what if ye please? For the
favour of them that never as much as acknowledged your existence. ’Pon
me soul, rather than wound the feelings of that angel upon earth, that
fair, fond, gentle, noble creature----” My Lord’s voice cracked. “I’d
see the whole of Windsor, and Kew to boot, tumble into the Liffey.”
Kitty, white under her delicate smears of rouge, sat down at her
writing-table with the most sublime air of offended virtue, but the
hand that dipped the pen into the ink shook, and there were tears in
the voice which presently declared that if ever there was woman here
maligned by her own husband, it was my Lady Kilcroney: she who had not
liked to disturb her Lord, but who had nevertheless noticed a red spot
behind their darling little Denis’s ear that very morning; which spot,
as every one who was a mother knew, might very well betoken no less
a malady than the measles, which malady, being highly infectious to
young children, she, as a mother, now felt it her duty to put off her
cherished Lady Mandeville and the adored little Impington to a more
auspicious day.
“Spot!” interrupted my Lord, with a roar between derision and wrath, and
“Spot?” cooed Mistress Lafone, now letting herself go openly to
insolence. “My dearest Lady Kilcroney, you are too droll!”
There was contempt written on the countenances of the pair so odiously
conjoined against Kitty; neither of them being subtle enough to see
that my Lady was content with any excuse, so long as it flung a veil of
elegance over her set purpose.
This incomparable woman recovered herself, rose, summoned Pompey, and
sent him forth with her letter to my Lord Mandeville’s groom. She
watched its delivery, through the window, and having beheld the man
start off again, returned to the centre of the room, made in silence a
profound curtsy, which included her Lord and her visitor, and sailed
forth, closing the door carefully behind her.
My Lord let himself fall again into the arm-chair, and once more this
article of furniture protested with ominous creaks and cracks.
“There’s not a stick in the place, bejabers, that isn’t as rotten as
pears. ’Pon my word,” grumbled Denis Kilcroney, “I wish the plaguey
waters had never been discovered, I do indeed; ’tis a poor thing when
a man’s own son and heir is made a weapon against him, and him but
turned of three. ‘Little Denis is pale, and we must to Cheltenham. And
we’ll lie at Lady Mandeville’s, which is on our way, my love’ (and
it thirty miles out, taking the back and the forth of it). ‘And our
little Denis will have a playfellow, ’twill be so vastly good for him.
Little Impington and he will be comrades.’ And scarce are we settled
at Impington Court with as good entertainment--aye--and as generous
(’tis the cellar of the world my Lord Mandeville has, and ’tis as free
with it he is--troth, as I’d be meself if my Lady’d let me, and I can
give him no finer character!) No sooner are we settled, and scarce a
cork drawn ye may say, but ’tis ‘Little Impington is too rough for our
darling Denis. He will teach him ill ways, he will do him a hurt. And
Impington Court is a thought too low for the child’s health. And we
must move on to Cheltenham, my love, or there will not be a lodging to
be had.’ And you should have seen the farewells, the clingings, the
embracings, and the tears, and heard the promises. ‘We shall meet again
soon, my dearest, dearest Rachel. I vow I’ll not be parted from the
most cherished of my friends!’ And now ’tis: ‘Keep away--little Denis
hath a spot!’ To be sure, our dearest Rachel must not cast a blight
over my Lady’s Court prospects.”
“But why, pray you, why, my Lord Kilcroney, should my Lady Mandeville
cast a blight? Is she not in the Court favour?”
Mistress Molly’s tones were as insinuating as the fillet of sweetness
that issues from a flute; nevertheless, Denis, starting from his black
mood, gave her a sudden odd look.
“Prithee, why, my Lord?”
Kitty was in the right of it. The little jade was as false as loaded
dice! As if every one did not know poor Rachel’s story; how she had
been a Quaker and an actress, and my Lord Mandeville’s mistress before
she had been his wife; and how, save for that one stain, which, indeed,
had been the fall of a pure woman piteously and devotedly in love, she
had ever shone in a wicked world, the noblest example to her sex.
Mistress Lafone caught my Lord’s look upon her and deemed it time to
depart. Without waiting, therefore, for his reply to her question, she
feigned horror at the lateness of the hour, and bustled away from the
Kilcroney lodgings, malcontent with her visit, the more so that my Lord
Kilcroney brought a wooden countenance and a dry manner to the very
hall door.
She went forth down the single street and across the meadows; for her
rooms were in an out-of-the-way cottage, far from the fashionable
quarter patronised by the well-to-do. Mrs. Lafone’s fortunes were
indeed at a low ebb. Her elderly, niggardly husband had vowed some time
ago that he would pay no more debts for her, and he was keeping his
vow. In her efforts at self-extrication, Mistress Molly, not having
a scrupulous delicacy of conduct, had become further considerably
entangled. A scandal threatened which might be the undoing of her. And
there was my Lady Kilcroney not only declining to help her, but as good
as turning her out of the house!
Molly Lafone was sharp of scent as a weasel. It was unpleasantly clear
to her that the irate great lady was determined to seize the first
opportunity of cutting her altogether; and when my Lady Kilcroney,
leader of society as she was, cast her off, she would be lost indeed!
She had no thought in her breast, as she walked along the road between
the flat fields, but the longing to pay Kitty out.
The way was deserted. Evening shadows were lengthening across the
mellowness of the sun-steeped plain. Molly Lafone slackened her pace.
Why, indeed, should she hurry back to the stuffy little room where she
could afford herself no better supper than bread and milk?
Truly, if there are angels who reward the virtuous, there must be
little demons who provide dainties for those who serve the ways of
evil! There, just at her feet, shining quite golden in the rays of the
setting sun, lay a letter.
It lay so that its superscription was visible, and Molly could hardly
believe her eyes when she read in Kitty’s writing the words: “For the
hand of my Lady, the Countess Mandeville.”
“The careless fellow,” said she, “he’s dropped it from his belt as he
jogged along. Pshaw, how I hate a clumsy fool!”
Then she laughed shrilly. “My Lady Mandeville will never get her
Kitty’s affectionate answer, nor hear how little Denis hath a spot, and
she will come driving in to-morrow to hang herself and her tarnished
name round Kitty’s neck for all Cheltenham to see, under the nose of
the virtuous Queen Charlotte. That is very well done!” cried Molly.
“That is a very fit punishment for such base intentions. I am very
glad.”
And lest anyone should be busybody enough to pick up the dropped letter
and forward it to its destination, which would be a sad interference
with the just action of Providence, Mistress Lafone picked it up
herself and minced it into small pieces as she walked along towards her
cottage lodging. She had quite a good appetite for her bread and milk
that night.
* * * * *
It had been my Lady Kilcroney’s intention to keep her cherished little
Denis in his cot, for the space of at least a day, for indeed there was
more than one red mark on the satin of his small, plump body, and Kitty
vowed it was of a piece with the rest of my Lord’s brutality to declare
that those who leave their own homes for the discomforts of lodgings
must expect the occasional flea. But on receipt of a letter sent round
by my Lady Flora’s woman, she promptly altered her plans, and ordered
the protesting cherub to be arrayed in his best robe-coat covered with
fine muslin, and his white satin hat with feathers.
My Lord, as soon as his infant’s roars had been soothed by candies,
picked up the letter which Kitty had dropped on the floor in her
hurried exit to her bed-chamber; and, while his Lady was alternately
pealing at her bell and shouting for Lydia, without compunction read it.
“_My Dearest Lady Kilcroney: ’Tis all arranged. I consider my freedom
well purchased at the price of the rose-point flounce, and the
service to a friend, no less, by the trimmings to match. Her Majesty
received me in her closet last evening, and the matter was settled
quick. I must confess, dearest Kitty, with all the_ veneration _and_
love (these words were heavily underlined) _that I cherish for her
August Person, I did feel it hard to find that my poor feet were
represented as the dropsy. Dropsy, my love. And I but turned of
thirty! ‘You should have warned me,’ said Her Majesty, ‘that you were
suffering from a disease.’ ‘Ma’am,’ said I, ‘if disease there is’--(I
was afraid to deny it, dear Kitty, lest the fetters should not be
struck off my aching ankles)--‘’twas contracted in Your Majesty’s
service.’ And now if my Kilcroney has a taste for gilded slavery
(though there’s less gilding than you would believe), let her be at
the entrance of the pump room, to receive Her Majesty at the head
of the other lady visitors, on her first visit thither this very
morning at eleven o’clock. The Gentlemen-in-Waiting are informing the
other notabilities of the town, and Her Majesty is prepared for the
little ceremony which she desires shall have the appearance of an
Impromptu, it being her wish to avoid state during the Royal Visit
and not to be incommoded by the crowd. If your little Denis were to
offer a bunch of roses, it would, I think, please the Queen, who
likes to see ladies occupied of their children and is interested in
any who are about the age of the Princess Amelia. From what Mrs.
Schwellenberg--oh! Kitty, to think of that toad festooned about with
my lace--hath wrote to me (thank God we have left the_ frog-fancier
_behind at Windsor) I understand you can consider the appointment as
good as made----_”
The letter dropped from Kilcroney’s hand. His good-natured face (for
in spite of tantrums he was to the core a man of good nature), clouded
with genuine dismay. It looked as if the plaguey business, which he had
regarded in the light of a mere game, was like to turn to earnest.
Why, in the name of Heaven, a woman with all the world could give her,
and a devoted husband besides, should break up her family life for the
pleasures of an annual three months’ slavery--Lady Florence had well
named it--passed his comprehension.
“Nay, Lydia,” Kitty’s voice was uplifted in the other room, “take back
the tabby; aye, and the satin cloak from Madame Mirabel’s. I have
thought better of it, child. Put away the Eglantine new hat with the
feathers. I will wear muslin and a plain straw. I wish to Heaven,”
cried Kitty pettishly, “that there was a milliner in the Kingdom who
could run up a hat to suit a lady’s eyelashes or the tilt of her nose
outside Paris.”
“There’s the Italian straw we bought last time we was staying over
there at Madame the Duchess’s,” said Lydia tentatively; “the same your
ladyship ordered for yourself to wear at the _Feet_ at Trianon to which
the French Queen asked us--and a sweet elegant creature Her Majesty is,
with all her fancies for dairies and such--and the thunderstorm coming
on it was the disappointment of the world, and one that I am not like
to forget in a hurry! Sure your ladyship ain’t forgotten it? A plain
rice straw, with a ribbon round, but with a set to it! Aye, and trimmed
by my blood-niece, as is apprenticed to Madame Eglantine out of my own
poor savings; me being always one to stand by my family, cost what it
do.”
“The Italian straw,” my Lady reflected; “’twas monstrous thoughtful of
you, child, to pack it--la, Lydia, ’tis the very thing--trimmed by your
niece did you say? Nay, only the genius of Eglantine could twist a bow
like that. Put it on my head. Why, ’tis perfect--aye, I will wear it.
Her Majesty desires simplicity.”
“Simplicity, is it?” Kilcroney groaned. “God help us all!”
As Kitty sallied forth, all in vapoury white, fresh and sweet as a
privet blossom, her face delicately pink under the artful shepherdess
hat, Pompey following with the great rose-bunch in a bandbox, and
little Denis trotting alongside scarlet-cheeked from a triumphant
battle royal over the wearing of gloves, my Lord looked after them with
some melancholy.
“I’ll stroll along presently and keep in the background. I’d not like
to be blighting Kitty’s prospects after the fashion of yonder poor
Rachel. By all accounts Her gracious Majesty Queen Charlotte is no more
like to fancy an Irishman than the unhappy girl that has a mistake to
her name.”
Kitty had determined to walk to the pump room. ’Twas scarce a hundred
yards away, and “squeeze those crisp flounces into a chair before they
had served their purpose--never!” She had taken but a few steps along
the street when who should cross her but Mrs. Lafone. Molly, all in the
modesty of lilac dimity, with pensiveness, something even approaching
penitence, on her pert face. Kitty was in a fair humour, and as her
little enemy flung her a deprecating glance of green eyes, actually
paused and smiled.
“Whither away, Lafone?”
“Alas, my Lady Kilcroney, stepping into the pump room anon to drink my
glass of the waters, I heard as how Her Majesty was expected, and how
you and the other ladies of note are to receive her on this, her first
appearance.... My Lady Kilcroney, knowing myself so unfit, feeling
myself so out of spirits, I deemed it more becoming to retire till all
was over.”
Now Kitty, riding on the top of the wave, was a trifle intoxicated. It
was in a tone of almost Royal patronage that she exclaimed:
“Why should you miss the sight, child? You could very well find a
little place where you could see and not be seen. Retrace your steps
with me.”
“Oh! My Lady Kilcroney,” cries Molly, with her dramatic clasp of the
hands, “was there ever anyone so truly benevolent as you are!”
Hanging her head, the little minx started off, a humble step behind her
patroness, and, looking over his shoulder at her, Denis the younger was
fascinated by the wicked mockery on her face, and nearly fell into a
puddle for staring.
There was no excitement in the town, for Her Majesty’s intention was
known but to the favoured few. The Royal Family, it was bruited, were
still reposing from the fatigues of their journey. There was, however,
a small group of gentlemen about the pump room doors, in elegant
morning attire, and two or three barouches and as many chairs were in
the very act of depositing their fair burdens as Lady Kilcroney sailed
up. She was just in time, indeed, to see Lady Verney--black-browed
Susan, panting, flushed, incredibly plumed--hurl herself out of her
hired sedan. At sight of Kitty this personage halted in her rush
forward into the pump room.
“You here, dear Kilcroney?” her voice shook. There was fury in her eye.
“Even so, dear Verney. Pray, my Lord Courtown, shall I take my stand on
this spot? Hither with the flowers, Pompey. My little son is to offer
these to Her Majesty, Colonel Digby; certainly ’twould be a mercy if
you would have the kindness to hold them till the right moment comes.
Such tender years are scarcely to be trusted!--Nay, Denis, lambkin, no
more sugar plums till we get home again, or little pandies would be so
sticky, Denis couldn’t give the nosegay to the beautiful Queen--What
a pity, my dearest Susan, you should have made yourself so fine. By
Her Majesty’s most express wish, all is to have the appearance of the
simplest impromptu! Still, my skirts are fairly wide. If you place
yourself behind me----”
Place herself behind Kitty! Had her beloved friend run mad, she that
was always so flighty? My Lady Verney to place herself in the rear, be
hidden by another’s flounces, she who had posted day and night, all the
way from Hertfordshire, upon the news of a probable vacancy about the
Queen’s person! Was it possible that Kitty, with her Irish husband,
labelled with such a name, could fancy that she was like to meet with
the Queen’s favour? Susan was sorry for her poor friend. She tossed her
head with a snort. My Lady Verney had something of the appearance of a
handsome horse.
But stupefaction succeeded indignation when Lord Courtown, very civilly
addressing her, begged her to take her place with the other ladies in
the rear of my Lady Kilcroney, for the royal party might be expected
any moment.
“Mrs. Tracy, ma’am, as one conversant in these matters, will you stand
at my Lady’s elbow?--My Lady Kilcroney, Mrs. Tracy--Her Majesty’s
Senior Bedchamber Woman, who is at the waters on her own account.”
My Lady Verney, biting her lip, stamped heavily on her neighbour’s
foot as she shifted her position. Turning at the low cry, her fierce
black eyes met the plaintive green ones of Mrs. Lafone, who in spite
of her discreet protestations, had taken as forward a place in the
group as well she could. As a rule Molly was in no better favour with
Susan Verney than with the rest of the coterie, but at that moment they
shared a sentiment which made them suddenly and momentarily sympathetic.
“Oh, my Lady Verney,” whispered Molly, “did you ever see anyone so
sadly cocked up as our poor Kitty? It frightens me for her, it does
indeed. I fear such pride must have a fall.”
Although Susan could see no sign of this prognostication being
fulfilled, it comforted her nevertheless; and she was able to bear,
with a better equanimity than any who knew her would have thought
possible, the painful spectacle of my Lady Kilcroney’s success with the
Queen. Success it indubitably was, though Her Majesty was a dry woman
and not given to displays of affability. It was evident that she had
come prepared to be pleased with Kitty Kilcroney and that pleased she
found herself. And truly, Kitty in her snowy flounces, so charmingly
blushing under her wide-brimmed hat--which was indeed trimmed by
Lydia’s niece, Miss Pamela Pounce--Kitty so daintily maternal with the
sturdy little boy clutching his roses, was as pretty a picture as any
would wish to gaze upon.
The two blooming Princesses exclaimed upon the darling child, and
good-natured Lady Flo was one broad beam behind “her Royals’” back.
And if Kitty blushed she had nevertheless the most elegant ease. Her
curtsy was a model; the dignified modesty with which she advanced and
then retreated within the due measure of etiquette was perfect of its
kind. And when the incident took place, which might indeed have proved
awkward, of Master Denis declining to part with his posy, his mother
saved the situation. “Denis,” quoth she, bending but not whispering;
all with a modest assurance that could not have been bettered by one
who had been years at Court. “Lambkin, do you not remember what I bid
you? To whom were you to offer these flowers?”
“To the beautiful Queen,” said the child, his great brown eyes roaming
about as if he were seeking--as well he might, poor innocent!--whom the
description might fit. The Queen, with a flattered smile, herself took
the offering from his chubby fingers.
“Pretty rogue!” said Princess Augusta.
When the other introductions had been gone through it seemed to be
nobody’s business to present Mistress Lafone; and though the equerries
looked tentatively at her and then at my Lady Kilcroney, nothing could
be less responsive than that usually alert being. So Molly made an
artless curtsy as became her simplicity, and thought, in her disloyal
heart, how frumpish and dowdy Her Majesty looked; and wondered if ’twas
Miss Burney who appeared so shortsighted and awkward and timid, with
no more air than nothing at all. And save for the gentlemen, who were
very personable and had bright looks about them as if they might be
enjoyable company to a woman of spirit, there was really naught in this
vision of the Court which would make her, little Molly, yearn for it--a
vast stiffness and dullness indeed! If it had not been that needs
must when the devil drives she would have snapped her slender fingers
and ‘thank you,’ but as matters stood--the drowning do not pause to
contemplate the quality of the spar flung to them.
Mrs. Lafone looked vindictively at Kitty and then turned a watchful
glance at the door. She wondered how soon and in what circumstances
Kitty’s dearest friend, who was not received at Court, might make her
appearance? However Kitty might strive to hide the visit, Mrs. Lafone
would take care that it should be known of; she had but to whisper the
fact to my Lady Verney and she did not doubt that the Royal occupants
of Fauconberg Hall would promptly be in possession of the damning fact.
Other people could put spokes in wheels besides my Lady Kilcroney; and
the more swiftly they were rolling to favour, the greater might be the
upset!
Her Majesty, talking very affably to Kitty, had advanced towards the
counter where the waters were distributed. Here divers magnates of
the town were awaiting her, whom the Comptroller of the Household, my
Lord Courtown, named to her, one after the other. Kitty and her group
of ladies were left thus for the moment outside the Royal circle of
attention. The hall by this time contained a certain amount of curious
spectators, very respectfully aligned against the walls, for the public
of Cheltenham, genteel quiet folk, would have died rather than presume
on Her Majesty’s condescending informality.
“Pray,” said the Queen, to Mr. Clark, the town doctor, “let me have a
taste of the water, sir, to drink which the King has been sent hither.
I ought at least to know,” she added archly, “to what penance he hath
been condemned.”
She sipped and declared she had expected worse; Princess Royal and
Princess Augustus also sipped, but they cried out and protested that
they were sorry for dear papa. And while the Royal pleasantries were
producing the most exquisite if refined mirth throughout the whole
assembly, Mrs. Lafone, who had been conscious that she was the object
of considerable interest to one of the equerries (indeed, he was
lifting his quizzing glass to mark his notice), perceived his glance
wander from herself and become fixed. He dropped his quizzing glass,
the better to see; a warmth of wondering admiration, prodigiously
different from the familiar ogle she had herself evoked, wrote itself
on his countenance. But for the presence of Royalty, she thought he
might have exclaimed out loud. Molly’s glance promptly followed his.
She could hardly believe her eyes. Here was fate playing her game with
a vengeance. Her enemy was delivered into her hands. Everyone knew the
face of Rachel Peace!
My Lady Mandeville advanced, clad, like Kitty herself, in white, but
with a flutter of grey ribbons here and there to mark her Quaker
preference. Her delicate pale face was faintly flushed, under the wide
brim of her simple hat. She was not less fair than the pearls at her
throat, not less shining in delicate beauty. She held by the hand a
noble boy, slightly older than little Denis, who marched as if the
place belonged to him and gazed about under frowning brows as though he
wondered who dared occupy it without his permission.
If Kitty made a charming picture with her little son, Rachel, with the
heir of Mandeville, graceful and gracious, with a lovely tenderness
emanating from her, was the very embodiment of sweet motherhood.
She came across the wide hall with swift step, looking from right to
left, a smile hovering on her lips, her seeking eyes already lit with
fond pleasure. Where was her dear Kitty? Suddenly she stopped--the
smile faded, the light of the expectant gaze went out, shadow fell
upon her radiance, a flutter as of fear shook her; yet she had but
encountered the gaze of my Lady Verney. Susan Verney, who was very well
acquainted with Rachel Mandeville, who had indeed also tasted of her
hospitality, both in town and in the country, now withered her with a
blasting stare of denegration, a stare which said: “My Lady Mandeville,
I am pure virtue to-day, _I do not know you_.”
The room was all eyes to look at Rachel, and though so decorous it was
all whispers.
The next moment the poor thing saw the Queen and the Princesses, and
Kitty Kilcroney white as death and good Lady Flora scarlet in the face;
she saw and understood. Motionless she strove to rally her courage. She
wanted strength of heart and clearness of mind to do just what would be
right; Quaker Rachel who had never done wrong but once! And for that
breathless moment, unknown to herself, her eyes hung on Kitty’s face;
and Kitty’s eyelids were cast down.
The little Viscount Impington tugged at her hand. His was an impatient
spirit.
“Come on, Mamma,” cried he, in loud authority; and at the same moment
little Denis O’Hara raised a piping cry: “Imp, Imp, Imp!” and tearing
himself from the maternal clasp, galloped across the room to hurl
himself upon his baby comrade.
The Queen looked at Kitty with an air of profound surprise and
disapproval, and Kitty looked back at the Queen. And her heart rose
within her; for, with all her foibles and fancies, she had a heart.
It led her then to do the noblest act of her whole existence.
Holding herself very erect and moving with a beautiful dignity, she
slowly backed the length of the room that divided her from Rachel
Mandeville; and, keeping her eyes on the Royal face the while, she took
her friend by the hand. Then she stood very upright and waited. Rachel
could do naught else but wait too.
In the dead silence the Queen prepared to take her departure.
Little Mr. O’Hara and my Lord Impington were beginning to show signs of
following up their affectionate greeting with a rough-and-tumble fight
and each mother had to take possession of her child and keep him firmly
held; but they kept tighter hold of each other still.
The Royal group advanced; the kindly young Princesses with awed looks,
as if they felt how ill things were going without understanding. When
she reached my Lady Kilcroney and her friend, Queen Charlotte paused
and seemed to hesitate. She cast a strange troubled glance at the two
young women, and Kitty and Rachel fell, still clasping hands, into a
great curtsy. And the question was, which of the two made it with a
nobler grace.
The last of the equerries to follow looked back at the door, and saw my
Ladies Mandeville and Kilcroney embracing and kissing and he thought
they were both in tears.
My Lord Kilcroney had been among those who unobtrusively joined
the lookers-on in the pump room during the Royal visitation, and,
beholding the scene, his own eyes filled. In the effort to regain his
self-control he turned his dimmed gaze away from the two who enfolded
each other in such affecting and unaffected friendship and it fell upon
Mistress Lafone. As awhile ago his son and heir, he was fascinated
by the expression on the small pale visage. Molly caught his riveted
glance, wilted beneath it, and somehow vanished. Not my Lord Kilcroney
nor anyone could ever as much as guess at her share in the morning’s
business; yet so does conscience make cowards of us all, as Mr.
Shakespeare has it.
My Lord kissed his wife’s hand before most respectfully saluting that
of my Lady Mandeville. At sight of him, Kitty mingled laughter with her
tears.
“Is it not delightful, Denis,” cried she, “that our sweet Rachel should
have had this happy thought? But, oh, my dear love, our little rascals
are at fisticuffs again!”
“_My dear Kitty_,” wrote Lady Florence that evening, in a letter
brought round from Fauconberg Hall by one of the pages in waiting,
“_I thought you were dished, I did indeed. And of all the odd
tiresome_ contretemps, _my love!... Well, I have not time to say even
a word of what I felt: Her Majesty is not fond of audacities and you
did, dearest Kitty, the most audacious deed.... Well, never mind
again!_
“_’Twas your hat did the trick to begin with, my love; you was always
so clever about clothes, Kitty. Sure, it was the finest inspiration
to wear that modest country straw with its plain ribbon. It caught
Her Majesty’s eye from the first moment, and that you know means so
much. So modest, sensible and quiet you showed beside poor Susan!
Susan, with that tow-row of feathers on her head! ’Tis she who is
dished after all: ‘A loud young woman,’ says the Queen to me. ‘I do
not approve of Lady Verney’s style.’ And what must she do on the
top of it but present herself in my parlour at Fauconberg Hall this
very afternoon?--a vast piece of presumption, since the Queen hath
forbidden visitors to all and sundry!--And wants an interview of
Her Majesty, to apologise--prithee, Kitty, think of it!--for Her
Majesty’s having been exposed to such a meeting. She, to apologise
for the town! She, to cast her stone at poor Rachel! I have never
known my Royal so angry! ‘Are you then not acquainted with my Lady
Mandeville?’ She asks our Verney. You should have seen Susan’s face
under her red plumes. (I had taken good care Her Majesty should
know we_ all _were.) To be brief, Kitty, Verney went forth with her
comb considerably cut, and Her Majesty took a twist in the other
direction and spoke very kind to me; though regretting the incident,
she said she could not find too grave a fault with a display of
loyalty. ‘Tell my Lady Kilcroney,’ she says, ‘that about My Person I
appreciate loyalty!_’”
Denis Kilcroney heard the contents of this missive with a grave
countenance. Then, looking at his wife’s charming face, all irradiated
between the joys of her good conscience and its unexpected reward, he
exclaimed generously that it was a proud day for the House of O’Hara.
“Though,” he added, “the proudest moment of it all was when I saw you
stand by your friend, me darling girl!”