IN WHICH IS MANIFEST THE HAND OF THE SAINTED JULIA.
“Oh, my Lady Kilcroney, I haven’t a moment! The most dreadful thing has
happened!”
Selina Vereker stood before the astonished Kitty. She was robed for
Court ceremonial and looked a very splendid young woman in brocaded
whites and silver laces. Her hair was full dressed and spread mightily
in wings and curls. In her hand she held a posy of pink roses. But
against all this elegance, the small countenance looked troubled; it
was, indeed, contorted like that of a child about to cry.
“I haven’t a moment,” she repeated. “The Princess Augusta expects me to
attend her to the Duchess of Hampshire’s ball, and even now she will be
waiting for me. But oh, my Lady, oh, my Lady, I thought I must run in
to tell you--Sir Jasper has broken with me!”
“Never say so, child! And the marriage for next Monday as ever was!”
My Lady Kilcroney was in the long, narrow parlour which formed part
of her set of rooms in St. James’s Palace. She, too, was in full fig;
a marvel of glistening white, with the fashionable purple trimmings
that proclaimed attachment to Royalty. The Bellairs diamonds shone on
her throat and bodice, and diamonds shot from every angle of her piled
and flying curls. At the Maid-of-Honour’s words she shook and sparkled
and quivered in all her finery, looking like some magic tropical bird
spreading out wings for battle.
“The Princess Augusta is waiting for me!” cried Selina, and sobbed.
“Let her wait,” quoth Kitty fiercely. She had enough familiarity with
the Royals now to appreciate the fact that, after all, they were but
human beings.
“What has happened? Sit there and tell me this moment. Sir Jasper
break off his engagement! Some fantastick of jealousy, sure. The man’s
mad! Why, ’tis but this morning you showed me that wonderful knot of
brilliants he gave you, child, on your complaining you had no fancy for
a dead woman’s jewels.”
Selina let herself fall into the chair indicated, and hid her face in
her hands.
“Oh, the disgrace!” she moaned.
“It shall not be,” stormed her patroness. “You’ve dropped your roses,
child.”
“What, the roses? How--did I still hold them? Oh, my Lady, the roses,
’tis they undid me!”
“Your roses undid you? Talk plain, in the name of common sense.”
“The roses undid me, Madam,” said Lady Selina, lifting up her head to
grind her teeth at Kitty, as that lady said afterwards, for all the
world like her little Denis at ten months old with the double ones
coming. “How should I know that when the beautiful pink roses arrived
they were not from Sir Jasper? and oh, my Lady, he came storming into
my parlour, demanding to see me, and I scarce out of the hands of
Monsieur Achille and going in to him in my wrapper, I do assure you,
not knowing what prodigious important thing he had to say to me, and
he, my Lady Kilcroney, scarce able to speak with the fierce rage. ‘The
roses,’ he says, ‘where are the roses you was to wear to-night?’ And
there they were, unpacked at his elbow before I had had time as much as
to take them in my hand. As I’m a living woman, as I hope to be saved,
my Lady, I, all innocence! ‘The roses?’ says I, and he falls upon them,
and, oh, to think of it, in the very middle rose, hidden like a snake
in the grass, was a billet. A billet, my Lady Kilcroney, I scarce know
how to tell you--from----”
“Another gentleman?” screamed Kitty, jumping to the horrid truth.
“Some stranger.”
“And indeed I hope so, Miss. And what was wrote in it, pray?”
Selina dropped long white eyelids over those brilliant curious eyes
of hers which never seemed to corroborate her lips, and, drawing an
immense quivering sigh, the corners of the same pretty lips going down
over a sob: “Oh, my Lady, the monstrous audacity of it,” she cried.
“The creature wrote--God knows who he can be--
‘_If you wear these roses to-night, Beauteous Selina, your adorer
will know that; whatever happens, he may still hope._’”
“’Pon my word,” said Kitty.
“It seems Sir Jasper had had an anonymous letter----”
“Ha,” interrupted the Queen’s Lady-in-Waiting. “Now lift up your head,
my love. ’Tis all a vile plot. An anonymous letter, say you? Why, now
all is plain. ’Tis some base, envious creature--Heaven knows who!” said
Kitty. “Some old flame, some wretch who wants to break the marriage for
abominable designs of her own. Psha! Was there ever a grosser scheme?
’Twould not take in a mouse!”
“Sir Jasper will not listen to a word of reason,” complained the
bride-elect, now unveiling the fury of her eyes. “He declares that
there was guilt on my face; that he had long had suspicions of me.
He vows I have been cold to him, dearest Lady Kilcroney, and that
matters must have gone very far between me and my lover--oh, is it not
monstrous of him?--before anyone would have dared address me in such
familiar words.”
“You need not repeat his raving to me,” cried my Lady Kilcroney
decidedly. “Dry your eyes now, and hasten to your duty. Sir Jasper
in his present mood may very well not come to the ball, but he
shall render an account of his folly in this very room to-morrow
morning, and if the marriage does not take place from my house next
Monday as arranged, I am a Dutchwoman, as complete a Dutchwoman as
Mrs. Schwellenberg. I can say no more. And I trust,” said Kitty,
soliloquising as the door slammed on the Maid-of-Honour’s exit, “and
I trust you will pay Sir Jasper back for this evening’s work in good
ringing coin, child, once you’re Lady Selina Standish. As I have no
doubt you will, my love--cold-hearted, capricious?--aye, he’s not so
far out there--and fiery tempered to boot! It will give me a vast of
pleasure to see such a buck as he proper punished and tamed!”
She herself began the process with considerable conscientiousness next
morning in that interview which Sir Jasper was ready enough to grant.
My Lady was tired; for to be in attendance on Royalty was to make of a
ball more of a fatigue than a diversion. She was anxious, too; for the
Queen had heard that it was Lady Selina’s visit to Lady Kilcroney which
had resulted in the Princess Augusta actually being kept waiting; and
had shown displeasure at so extraordinary a breach of etiquette.
Kitty had no explanation to offer. She would have died rather than hint
at the threatening scandal. So considerable peevishness had accumulated
to fall upon the devoted head of Sir Jasper.
But at first that individual was beyond feeling anything save his own
anguish. He roared like a wounded bull; hit his brow till the powder
flew; thumped his chest till his vocal chords reverberated; paced the
room, declaiming in one breath that he was infamously betrayed, and
in the next that ’twas a just retribution for perjury to the best of
wives. He swore that his heart was broken; never had he loved, never
could he love woman as he loved the false, intriguing Selina. Then he
declared that the organ in question had never been mended, but lay in
fragments under the tombstone sacred to Julia.
It was only when his passion had expended itself in exhaustion that
my Lady was able to make herself heard. Then she dissected the value
of the evidence upon which he proposed to take so outrageous a step.
She exposed the folly of his jealousy, she mocked the absurdity of the
figure he cut.
“You have now,” she said, “lost the finest young lady in the kingdom.
You were about to contract a marriage altogether beyond what a man of
your position and birth could hope for. You a middle-aged widower, of
no particular title--what’s a baronet?--of no such remarkable fortune,
with certainly no good looks to commend you--you were about to espouse
the loveliest little creature in all the world, the Queen’s favourite,
scarce eighteen--a beauty, sir, of the first family! And on some kind
of monstrous whimsy, arising from your own bad past--oh, of that I am
quite certain, Sir Jasper--you have cast away this flower, and you have
cast away with it your good name, your good fame, your own claim to be
a gentleman! Never will that cake be eaten for your wedding with Lady
Selina Vereker, I can promise you that! Oh, she’s out of conceit with
you, poor child! ‘Only one thing I beg of you!’ she says to me. ‘Do not
ask me to look at him again, for I never, never can!’ ‘Then you shall
not,’ says I. I uphold her, sir, in her determination. ‘You’ve come
out of this business with flying colours, my love,’ I says, ‘and the
Queen shall hear the whole story.’ Fie, Sir Jasper, how you bellow! I
have one last word to speak to you, sir, aye, indeed, the very last
you shall ever hear from these lips, and that is that I scarce think
there’s a gentleman of your friends, when it gets about the clubs, who
would deem it worth his honour to cross swords with such as you.”
She made a great flounce of silk skirts as if to withdraw, but he was
down on his knees clutching at them; to do him justice, less affected
by her threats and the picture she had drawn of his awful position than
by the realisation that he had lost his bride. Never had Lady Selina
appeared to his eyes in a light so entrancing; never did he so clearly
perceive the worthlessness of his existence without her, as in this
moment, when he believed he had lost her. His distress was so genuine,
his supplications were so heartrending, that Kitty Kilcroney could not
but let herself be mollified. She exacted every possible pledge of
future good conduct, she obtained the completest retractation, the most
abject and repeated apologies before sending for Selina.
When this young lady appeared Sir Jasper was put to another half-hour
of torture ere he was re-admitted to favour; and even then the bride
remained cold and unresponsive, and looked with a hard glitter in her
eyes from one to the other, as if she had by no means forgiven her
betrothed, and was scarce grateful to my Lady Kilcroney for her share
in the reconciliation.
She had that moment, she informed him, sent the parcel containing Sir
Jasper’s presents, including the betrothal ring, by a trusted hand to
his house; she vowed she considered matters vastly well as they stood;
both would yet repent a return to the old terms.
Sir Jasper did not kneel to Selina. He behaved, Kitty thought, with a
better dignity than she could have expected and also more intelligence.
He promised perfect confidence in the future and a rope of pearls;
the most tender forbearance in all difficulties and emerald earrings;
the unswerving devotion of a manly heart and six Catalonian horses to
the finest coach woman ever drove in. He furthermore volunteered to
double his wife’s pin-money, and altogether, as Lady Kilcroney informed
her Denis afterwards, made a more graceful leg out of the business
than could have been imagined from the gross fashion in which he had
cantered in.
Lady Selina at length allowed an inert hand to lie in his clasp, and
even permitted him to touch an averted cheek in token of her pardon;
and it was an extremely chastened buck that wended his way out of
St. James’s Palace in the direction of Bond Street, and it was a
tremendous sigh of relief that my Lady Kilcroney heaved.
“Now child,” quoth she, “as Mr. Shakespeare hath it, ‘All’s well that
ends well.’ But do not make the mistake of keeping up your frigid airs
too long. The real way to treat the wretches is to grant a little from
time to time, and demand a great deal.”
“I’m much obliged to you, I’m sure, ma’am, for your kind interest,”
said Lady Selina, and dropped her white eyelids over her audacious cold
eyes.
“_There has been another elopement_,” wrote Miss Burney, the Queen’s
reader, to her sister, “_and you would never believe, my dearest
Susan, who and in what circumstances. Lady Selina Vereker was, you
know, to wed Sir Joseph Standish, that handsome widower (scarce
indeed a year widowed of his poor Julia; men are strange things! I
met her once, she was a very elegant woman). Lady Selina was, as
I say, dear Susan, to wed Sir Jasper this actual next Monday, and
my Lady Kilcroney who, as you know, hath the kind of good nature
that is for ever interfering in other people’s affairs, was to give
the breakfast at her own mansion in Hertford Street. ’Twas said
she made the match. ’Tis quite certain she recommended the young
lady at Court. She must be vastly sorry on both these accounts now.
Princess Augusta was to go to the wedding (the bride being her own
Maid-of-Honour); and altogether it is an odd, unpleasant business, as
you will hear. Last night, then, Lady Selina attended the Royals to
the Opera House. ’Twas to be her last duty of the kind, and she was
ablaze, my dear, they tell me, with Sir Jasper’s jewels. The poor man
was infatuated. I cannot but pity him. She stood behind the Princess
Augusta in the box as usual, and no one knows the exact moment of her
disappearance. ’Tis positive she was present at the beginning of the
third act. Then all attention was turned to the stage, and at the end
of it she was nowhere to be found! Conceive it, my dearest Susan, to
choose such a manner and such company, for such a proceeding! To me
it is beyond imagination; but, from the letter she left behind her,
there can be, alas! no mistake. The young gentleman for whom she has
shown her preference in so singular a fashion, is, it seems, a person
of no note at all; a mere officer of the Marines, by name Simpson,
with scarce any fortune beside his pay. The whole affair leaves one
in a state of amaze, and I verily believe the world is going mad._”
On the morning following the fatal evening just described, my Lady
Kilcroney was awakened from very agreeable slumbers by the urgency of
Miss Lydia Pounce, who, placing a letter on the bed, begged in a tone
so important that her ladyship should wake up and read it at once, that
Kitty, omitting to scold, forthwith proceeded to obey.
“Lady Selina’s woman also brought a large case, my Lady. I’ve left it
in the ante-chamber.”
Kitty was in Hertford Street, making ready in sweet security for the
wedding festivities; yet not so secure but that her heart misgave her
from the first moment of the matutinal summons; it hardly needed the
mention of Lady Selina’s name to confirm her instant suspicions. Yet
she was ill-prepared, as she herself averred to all and sundry later,
for such a revelation of mixed baseness, ingratitude and idiocy.
“_You have taken so kind an interest in my affairs, my dear Lady
Kilcroney_,” wrote the Maid-of-Honour, “_that I wish you to be the
first to hear that by the time this reaches you I shall have become
the wife of Lieutenant Simpson of the Royal Marines. ’Tis no sort of
match for me, I am well aware, but I prefer him so infinitely to Sir
Jasper Standish that, seeing no other way out of it, I have yielded
to his solicitations. You may perhaps remember that when we were with
Their Majesties at Brighton last month, there was a young man who
used to stand on the Parade and stare as we went by. That was Mr.
Simpson. From the moment I had accepted Sir Jasper--and indeed, it
was scarce fair to put such pressure on me, and me so young--I knew I
had made a great mistake. And oh, Heaven knows, how I tried to induce
him to break it off! When I had succeeded at last--for ’twas I who
wrote the anonymous letter about the roses, and ’twas I placed the
billet-doux inside the rose (I still think ’twas a very ingenious
trick), if it had not been for you all would have gone well. No one
would have blamed me, as you told Sir Jasper yourself, but you would
interfere, my Lady, and you brought it on again. And now, if you
please, will you explain matters to Sir Jasper? I am sending the
jewels to you that you may give them back. And oh, I am so glad to be
free of him, and of them, and of Court I can’t tell you! Oh, pray do
not try your hand at match-making again, my Lady, for indeed you have
no talent for it._
“_Your obedient servant,_
“_Selina Soon-to-be-Simpson_.
“_I am sorry to treat my fat, good-natured Royal so. She was a kind
piece. But ’tis a vile life._”
“And oh, oh, ’tis she is a vile piece! Simpson! Let her be Simpson to
the end and die an old woman!”
Kitty was more outraged, more incensed, more profoundly disturbed
than she had ever known herself. Why, indeed, had she meddled with
match-making, and who would be looked on coldly over such scandal at
Court, but she? all innocence, kind heart and good nature! She had half
a mind to send in her resignation and have done with it.
As for Sir Jasper, he was well served, for an odious, bullying, stupid
fellow, who couldn’t make himself agreeable when he had the chance of
his life! _She_ put herself out any more for him? _She_ expose herself
to the unpleasantness of breaking the news to him? Not Kitty, not my
Lady Kilcroney.
The little woman made up her mind in a minute. She would go out of
town. It was fine April weather. Bath would be at its best. She
preferred it out of the season.
She would pass on the jilt’s letter to Sir Jasper. Lydia should call a
hackney coach and go round with it and the jewels at once.
“And I shall add a line,” thought Kitty, “that will prevent him from
coming to seek sympathy from me!”
“_When you have perused the letter of Lady Selina, by this time
Simpson, dear Sir Jasper_,” she wrote, “_perhaps you will feel as
I do, that what has plucked you apart has not been either your
indelicate behaviour or the young lady’s capriciousness, but the hand
of your sainted Julia_.”
It was fortunate that there was no one in the room to hear the awful
words that escaped Sir Jasper’s lips when he came to this. What fell
from them was the blasphemy: “Damn Julia!”