IN WHICH MY LADY KILCRONEY MAKES AN INDELICATE FUSS
My Lord Kilcroney had none of your nasty prudish minds that think
harm of a kiss. To salute a rosy cheek, or clasp a trim waist came as
natural to him as to toss off a tankard of brown ale, or light his
long clay, or sit in the sunshine. And indeed, my Lady, knowing him,
had as a rule an indulgence for such peccadilloes; the merest shrug of
the shoulders or a “Fie for shame, my Lord!” in a voice scarce more
indignant than that in which she chid the littler Denis for putting his
fingers in the sugar bowl. But the mischief was in it, this summer at
Weymouth, Kitty being in attendance on her Royals, that such a change
should come over the whole spirit of the whilom sensible spouse.
Such a hullaballoo over a kiss! If ever there was anything likely to
drive a really faithful husband to desperate courses, it was this
unexpected, undeserved, severity.
Unfortunately he had been unlucky in his choice of partner for the
peccadillo. Molly Lafone’s smooth cheek, fine grained as a geranium
leaf, and as delicately rouged as a miniature, Molly Lafone’s cheek,
ethereally tinted, had the quality of pitch in the eyes of the other
ladies, and the touch of it defiled.
My Lord, puffing at his clay in the County Club at Weymouth, with an
air half humorous, half defiant, and thinking back on that same cheek
with a certain complacence, might perhaps have altered his opinion on
the whole matter had he been aware how neatly Mrs. Lafone had timed
the episode for the passage of the Queen’s equipage.
They had met, quite accidentally, on the parade.
“Oh, my Lord Kilcroney,” quoth she. “Is it indeed you?”
Her victim as good-humoured and devil-may-care as you please, brought
himself up with a wheel and a flourish.
Molly was clasping her hands. It was her trick to go like a snowdrop in
the dawn, when the rest of womanhood flared carnation on the cheek. Her
small faintly tinted face was absolutely irradiated.
“Is it indeed you, Denis Kilcroney? I declare ’tis like meeting the sun
in a fog to see you! Oh, your kind look, my Lord, and your good smile!
This place----” She broke off.
“How now!” said he, gallantly saluting a pearl-like inch of wrist
between rumpled glove and race ruffle. “What’s wrong with the place,
Mrs. Lafone? Troth, and I thought it was the St. James’s over again,
for every ten steps don’t I come across a friend! And this is the
best meeting of all,” he added, with another bow, another kiss, and
a still broader smile, for--deuce take him!--the little thing had
been monstrous glad to see him, there was no mistake about that, and
he was nothing if not responsive. “And as for the sun,” he went on,
straightening himself, and gazing down at her rather fatuously. “Isn’t
the great orb of Royalty shining on Weymouth this minute?”
Now Molly Lafone knew how to play such an one as Denis Kilcroney, as
a skilful angler plays a fish. She had hooked him with that glance of
innocent joy: now she drove the crochets in more firmly by an air of
flutter which would have melted any masculine temperament.
(“Oh, I have betrayed myself,” her tremor, her shy butterfly glance,
her sigh, her shaken laughter proclaimed.)
“Oh, the Royal orb,” she murmured. “Oh, my Lord!” Then, “Aye, true,
indeed. Oh, as you say! The orb and sceptre. George----” here a gleam
of mischief came like April sunshine to drive the shadows from her
pretty, abashed countenance. Her faltering voice took a saucy note.
“George and his Dragon,” she whispered, tittered, put her finger to
her lip. “Oh, the mortal dullness of it! I’m a Parson’s daughter, as
your Lordship knows, and brought up prodigious proper, but I vow and
declare that if anything could make me wish--want to shake off my sense
of piety and virtue--what am I saying? Good heavens, my Lord Kilcroney!
You are but just arrived; but if Windsor is pompous and dull, Weymouth
is--Oh!” she yawned.
Kilcroney was eyeing her, his sides shaking with mirth, but at the
words pompous the laughter left his lips, he scratched his chin.
“Well, now that you mention it, my dear,” he murmured, “it struck me
there was a certain tedium in the air.”
“Oh, tedium!” cried Molly, and went off on another yawn.
As she yawned, he reflected. Pompous, she had said. There had
distinctly been a shade of pomposity about his Kitty, as, just landed
from the coach, he had hurried to embrace her, scarce eighteen hours
ago.
“Heavens, Denis, not in full view of the window. The Princesses are
fond of an evening walk. And good gracious, my Lord, what a coat to
travel in, and the King’s gentlemen always point-device! And pray, dear
Denis, let me send for the hairdresser, for if Her Majesty was to see
you, such a show, down the parade, and she so set against the Irish, I
scarcely know how I could bear myself in her Presence.”
This was the welcome Denis had had the day before; and it had somewhat
clouded his morning thought. It had taken all the comfort of his recent
passage through the hands of a first-class barber, and of as good a
tankard of burnt Sherry as ever he had tasted at the County Club, to
restore him to the good humour in which Mistress Lafone had found him.
He now thought back upon his grievance, and as is often the case, with
an increased sense of injury.
“’Pon me soul, you’re in the right of it! And what in the world my Lady
and the rest of them want to be hanging on the Court for, this way,
passes me. Glory be to God, doesn’t weariness ooze out of them all?
It’s sodden they are with it.”
“Weariness,” echoed she again. She glanced up at the black-faced clock
with the white figures on the church tower across the way. The sea was
on the other side of them; the foam-capped waves tossing and furling
and pursuing each other in playful frolic like myriads of lambs on a
deep blue field. There was a gay sky to match, and a gay wind, full
of an intoxicating tang, and it blew Mistress Lafone’s shot green
taffety into balloons, and silvery liquifactions, and fluttered her
light curls, and set the long amber streamers of her rustic hat flying
like pennons. She glanced back from the clock to my Lord’s face, and
her eyes danced and flickered as if the sea were in them, and suddenly
filled with huge tears.
“’Tis not the weariness, I mind,” she exclaimed with a sob. “’Tis the
cruelty!”
“Why, you poor little bird,” quoth he, tenderly compassionate. “Could
anyone be cruel to you?”
“Oh, indeed, they are, my Lord, and I can’t think how I have offended
them! Oh, the slights, the unkindnesses! And my Lady Kilcroney, your
own dear lovely lady, my Lord, what hath she against me.... Oh, I do
assure you,” cried Mrs. Lafone, raising her voice piteously, as the
measured trot of royal horses beat upon her ear. “I’ve cried myself to
sleep, night after night. And when I saw your face, ‘here’s one,’ I
said to myself, ‘who will be a little kind to me!’”
The wind--it certainly was a naughty wind, as if it, too, were a rebel
against the decorum imposed by the presence of Royalty--came rushing
up from the wide ocean and caught Mistress Lafone in a positive whirl,
seizing her with a great beat of invisible pennons as if about to fly
away with her.
“Oh! oh!” she cried. Her light figure swayed and seemed to lift. She
flung out her arms. What could my Lord do but catch her? And holding
her, what could he do, but kiss her? For there were tears on her
delicate face which melted him, and sparkles behind them which dared
him; and what’s a kiss when all is said and done?
The Royal carriage wheeled by them, and Kitty, sitting bolt upright
opposite the Queen, had a good view of her erring spouse and his
infamous companion for the whole length of the parade. It can scarcely
be credited: the culprits, as they gazed back at her, were laughing.
The matrimonial course of the Kilcroneys had been fond, but as anyone
who knew my Lady might guess, it had been variegated. She had a quick
temper, an impatient spirit, and a detestation of monotony; withal
the soundest heart in the world. So that never did couple so often
fall out, or so fervently make it up, as they. My Lord, who was of an
easy-going temperament, who loved and admired his Kitty in all her
moods, rather enjoyed these connubial storms.
“Begad,” he would say, “there never was anything to equal a dash of red
pepper for making a man enjoy the taste of the wine afterwards.”
But now my Lady’s wrath took an unpleasant form; one which, in
its turn, aroused his resentment. It drove him even to a certain
bitterness, as he sat in the bow-window of the County Club, pulling at
his long clay. It drove the complacent memory of Molly Lafone’s smooth,
pert cheek from his mind as with a sting.
“’Pon me word,” he said, swinging his leg. “A man would think it was
the leper I’d made of myself! Split me, Verney, if me Lady doesn’t
whisk away her skirts as she crosses me path! And never a word out of
her since she first had at me--Bejabers! I’m not like to forget that in
a hurry! But it’s pinched lips and dropped eyes and turn away with her
till I’m crazy.”
Squire Day and my Lord Verney gazed with compassion on the sinner, the
compassion that is the worst kind of condemnation. Then Squire Day
said, a little drily:
“’Tis a pity that the occasion should have been quite so public.”
And my Lord Verney, drawing in his turn the clay from his lips, burst
out:
“Susan says--My Lady Verney hath it that ’twas Mistress Lafone’s very
plan, to show you up before their gracious Majesties and shame Kitty.”
Kilcroney stared a moment with widening eyes and dropping jaw at the
speaker. Then the crimson rose in his handsome dissipated face.
“Ah! God help you!” he exclaimed, “if that isn’t the ladies all over.
’Tis the down of the world they have on that poor little creature. And
what in the name o’ God should she want to be playing such a thrick
for? And sure, oughtn’t I to know, ’twas the innocentest----” he broke
off, for Squire Day’s laugh was loud.
“Innocent?” he repeated. “My dear Kil, ’tis you who are as innocent
as Adam! But I’m with you on one point. The ladies have treated that
little Lafone monstrous cruel. I doubt if they have as much as let her
nibble a macaroon with them since they came down here. And your Kitty
has given the lead.”
“My Kitty!” exclaimed her spouse in a generous heat. “Why, man, she’s
picked that same Molly out of a hundred scrapes. Sure, Lafone’s no more
sense than a child. Why, she owes my Lady----”
“Ah,” said Squire Day, quietly, “she’s one who pays back with interest.”
Kilcroney stared again.
“I’ll be hanged if I know what you’re driving at, men,” he began, but
suddenly fell silent with fixed eyes.
His arm-chair was opposite the door, which had now been quietly opened;
a fine portly gentleman walked in as if the place belonged to him.
“Tare and ’ounds, lads,” cried the Irishman, under his breath. “Here’s
His Royal Highness!” and sprang to his feet.
The next instant the club-room rang with shouts of mirth.
“By the Holy Father! Stafford! Ned, me boy, I took you for the Prince
of Wales. ’Pon me living soul, I did. Oh, Ned, Ned! ’tis the fill of
your waistcoat you are, and no mistake.”
“His Highness ought to be flattered,” said Mr. Stafford, who was not.
* * * * *
Miss Pamela Pounce was deposited at The White Hart, Weymouth, by the
midday coach, having slept at Dorchester.
She looked as crisp and modish as one of her own hats, as she tripped
along the parade towards my Lady Kilcroney’s lodgings, followed by a
porter who moved in a perfect grove of bandboxes.
Miss Pounce had travelled to Weymouth with a selection of hats and
heads for the tempting of her fashionable clientele. Born business
woman as she was, she carried her unerring instinct into every detail,
such as that very halt at Dorchester, which enabled her to impress
at once by her appetising freshness and her air of not having lost a
minute in providing an esteemed customer with the very latest; “piping
hot,” as she herself expressed it.
She had no hesitation in the choice of her first patroness. My Lady
Kilcroney gave the lead and Madame Mirabel’s partner only spoke the
truth when she averred that she had rather have my Lady’s custom than
that of Queen Charlotte and all the Princesses.
Softly signalling to the burthened porter to wait in the hall, Miss
Pounce nipped two special bandboxes from his grasp and herself mounted
the stairs behind Kitty’s black boy. Her Ladyship was in her bedroom.
That suited Pamela very well; in fact she had timed herself to find
Kitty in her _négligé_, perfumed from her toilet, restored by her
morning chocolate, just planning the pleasures of the day. Miss Pounce
smiled, as bending her ear she caught the sound of feminine voices and
laughter within. A discreet play of nails upon the panels remaining
unanswered, she gave one authoritative tap and entered.
Kitty, in a cloud of lace, with lavender ribbons, occupied the centre
of the apartment, throned in a high winged arm-chair. Her elbows were
on the table before her, on which were strewn divers coloured prints
and an immense heap of light-hued patterns of silk and satin. On
either side of her sat her two special cronies: Lady Anne Day and Lady
Flora Dare-Stamer. All three heads were bent together; no conspirators
planning the downfall of the Crown, could have seemed more wrapped
in mysterious colloquy. Pamela had to “hem” before her presence was
noticed. Then the faces were lifted with a start, and Miss Pounce had
no reason to complain of the effect of her unexpected appearance.
Kitty clapped her hands.
“What good wind has driven you hither, child, to-day of all days?”
“And I who was thinking,” cried Nan Day, “that I hadn’t a head to my
curls, fit to appear at Kitty’s party, for my country slut has packed
your rose tulle turban, and the Paris toque, Miss Pounce, I do assure
you, as if she was stuffing a goose!”
“As for me,” said Lady Flora, “I haven’t paid Madame Mirabel’s account
this goodness knows how long. But there--I think she knows I’m no bad
customer after all”--with her fat laugh. “And I’m sure she’ll let me
have a mode to set off my poor countenance, or I shall be lost indeed,
amid so much youth and beauty!”
Miss Pounce put down her bandboxes, to give them admirably
differentiated curtsies, and drew in her breath with that sucking sound
which meant the excess of enjoyment.
My Lady Kilcroney was about to give an entertainment; an entertainment
before which every other effort of hers should pale. It was to be
honoured with the presence of the King and Queen and the Princesses;
that went without saying. But it was to be more distinguished even
than this. His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, was expected for
three days at Weymouth, on a kind of reconciliation visit to Their
Majesties--there had been one of those too frequent ruptures between
them--and my Lady’s party was the only one which he had signified his
pleasure to attend. Never in all her triumphant days had Kitty reached
such a triumph. It was no wonder that her eyes sparkled, and her hands
trembled, as she turned over patterns, and discussed minuets.
Five violins from the Opera were coming, and the famous lady harpist.
Only the select of the select were to be admitted to the sacred
circle. The supper was to beat every feast that Kitty’s chef, with the
assistance of several club friends, had ever before accomplished, and
Kitty’s costume (carmine brocade powdered with silver rosebuds), was to
outshine anything that that leader of fashion had previously donned.
“I declare I was about to post an express to Madame Mirabel to get you
down, my dear,” said Kitty when the first clatter of conversation had
something died away.
Pamela pinched her lips.
“Well, if it isn’t Providence! I’ve got in that bandbox a head!--a
head, I say, my Lady, roses dew-dropped with Strass, and just a twist
of silver net illusion--if it ain’t Providence!”
Perhaps Miss Lydia Pounce had assisted Providence in this matter. That
admirable abigail had her wits all about her.
The three charming ladies held their breath while the nimble young
milliner went down on one knee and began to unfasten the cordings of
the larger bandbox. Scarcely had her fingers reached the palpitating
stage of tissue paper, when the door was flung violently open, and
Lord Kilcroney marched into the room. He came in with a great swing of
coat-tails and stamp of high boots, and it was plain to see, by other
tokens--his flaming eye, his dilated nostril, his clenched jaw--that he
was in a towering rage.
The ladies fell apart, with the movement of scared birds under the dash
of the hawk. Even Kitty cowered in her chair, though only for a second.
Before the gathering wrath exploded, she had reared her pretty head in
defiance, and was ready to meet him with a temper-flash as stormy as
his own.
He flung on the table an open letter--a fragrant, pink sheet it was,
with coquettish wafer still attached--and pinning it with his finger,
asked in a voice, hoarse and trembling from his efforts to control it:
“Is this a forgery, my Lady, or is it a bad joke?”
Kitty glanced down at the scrap of paper, marked with her own
delicate caligraphy, in the latest thing in violet inks; then, her
hotly-resentful gaze contradicting the ice-cold mockery of her accents:
“I marvel, my Lord, that you can find a joke in what is to me so
monstrous sad.”
“I say it’s a bad joke, a blanked, ill-bred, devilish bit of cattiness!”
“Oh, pray, pray!” tittered my Lady on the edge of hysterical fury.
“Remember you are not in the bosom of your family, Denis. Here are
witnesses----”
“Witnesses, is it? I’ve nothing to hide, I’d have it called by the town
crier. The letter which a wife was not ashamed to send to her husband
may be sung up and down the parade, for all I care! Listen to this, Nan
Day: you led your husband a pretty dance once upon a time, but split
me, you stopped short of public insult! Listen, Lady Flora. All the
world knows what a treasure Dare-Stamer has in you and how ’tis the
good humour of the world you have with him, and the patience! Here’s a
message for a wife to write to her husband:
“_My dear Denis, Her Majesty has most graciously condoned the
dreadful Act of Disrespect by which you made an exhibition of
yourself and of another person who shall be nameless, at a moment,
when the Horrid Spectacle could not fail to meet her August Glance,
in so far as not to withdraw her condescending promise to be present
at my Ball to-morrow night. She has, nevertheless, given me to
understand with Her own incomparable Tact and Kindness that should
you find it convenient to be absent on business on that occasion it
would considerably add to the harmony of the evening. I am sure I
need only convey this expression of her Royal pleasure to you, that
you are not so altogether lost to decency and good feeling as not
instantly to take steps to meet it. Pray believe me, my Lord, to
remain your attached and dutiful Wife----_”
Denis’s voice shook and broke with a sound that approached a snarl, on
the last words.
“What do you think of that? What do you think of it?” he shouted,
shaking the letter, first under Lady Flora’s, then under Nan Day’s nose.
Both ladies looked scared.
“Dear! dear!” said Lady Flora, “I’m sure ’tis vastly disagreeable all
round, but--well, there, my good soul, wouldn’t it help matters if you
was just to do as the Queen asks? La! she’s so prodigious stiff-backed.
And who should know it but me! Didn’t I nearly die of being Lady of
the Bedchamber for three mortal months. Oh, I’m too fat and soft for
Her Majesty, but sure, it’ll all blow over, and you so good-natured
yourself, and so obliging!”
“I’m sure,” said Nan, stepping up to Kitty, and turning a fierce blue
eye on my Lord, “I don’t know what you mean about leading my Philip a
dance, my Lord Kilcroney. Whatever points of difference there may have
been between us, they’ve been private ones, and my husband, sir, is a
gentleman of high principles and good conduct, and if I were not all a
wife should be to him, I should be, indeed, the basest of women; but
were I----” she suddenly began to shake and tremble upon tears--“were I
wedded to one who outraged my tenderest feelings, offended my dignity
in public, made a mock of the most solemn vows, and--and----” she flung
her arms round Kitty and clasped her, sobbing.
Her emotion was contagious. Kitty burst into tears on the spot.
“May you never know what it means, my sweet Nan. May your heart never
be broken!”
The two clung together, sobbing as for a wager, and Lady Flora,
whisking out a capable handkerchief, sniffed and begged them, with
reddening eyelids, to stop for mercy’s sake.
“Don’t, Kilcroney! Don’t, Nan! I’m so soft! You’ll have me off too. I
never could bear to see anyone cry.”
Even Pamela, kneeling beside her bandbox, flung a gaze of deep reproach
upon the sinner. She knew something of the story: her aunt was one who
liked to retail a bit of spicy gossip when it came her way.
The weight of this feminine condemnation was too much for the unhappy
Denis, but his wrath was unabated.
“Vastly well, my Lady. Vastly well,” he cried, thrusting the crumpled
note into his pocket. “I’ll off with myself, aye, and I’ll take this
love token with me. I’ll not pollute your party, never fear; but
whatever you hear of me, now, remember, you drove me to it.”
Denis Kilcroney fulfilled his dark threat by going straight to the
confectioner’s shop, over which Mrs. Lafone had taken modest lodgings.
He found her in company with her brother-in-law, Ned Stafford. That
gentleman was lying, as much at his ease as he could in the only
arm-chair, which was, however, hard and slippery, being covered with
horsehair. His hands were joined by the finger-tips, his eyes were
closed. With a resigned lift of eyebrow he was listening to the little
lady’s shrill and voluble harangue.
Mistress Molly, in a white muslin morning wrapper tied round her
slim waist by an azure blue ribbon, with silver fair hair, scarcely
powdered, all unbound, save for where a knot of the same blue caught
the curls at the nape of her neck, looked perhaps only the more
attractive because her eyes and cheeks blazed with anger. And it was,
my Lord Kilcroney saw with relief, a dry anger; for his Kitty, playing
the victim while exercising such--yes! dash it, the only word was
spite!--had added exasperation to his sense of injury.
“Come in, come in, my Lord,” Mistress Molly wheeled upon him with a
laugh, if Denis could only have recognised the fact, more full of spite
than his Lady’s utmost petulance. “Pray have you heard what I’ve been
saying? Oh, you needn’t blink at me like that, Brother Stafford, I’ll
say it all over again. I’ll say that my Lady Kilcroney is the most
jealous cat in the whole of England. She has left me out of her royal
ball, has she? I’m not virtuous enough! What, my Lord, you kissed my
wrist on the parade--and if I say it was my wrist, Tom Stafford? I
ought to know! and Kitty--oh, the virtuous Kitty!--and her old cross
Royal thought to see the kind of shocking spectacle your virtuous
people are fond of thinking they see. My Lady was always jealous of
poor little me! I don’t care who hears me. I say--hold your tongue,
Tom!--’tis a conspiracy, ’tis a scandal. I’ll make Mr. Lafone tell
His Royal Highness all about it. I’ll go to law on it. There can’t be
more scandal about me than there will be for being the only one of the
ladies at Weymouth left out to-morrow night!”
Mr. Stafford, who had been glinting at Denis between his bored eyelids,
now opened them a fraction wider.
“For Heaven’s sake, good lad,” said he, “get her a ticket.”
“Get her one yourself.”
“My good Kil, your Lady does not even know that I’m in Weymouth.”
“Why then, you’ve but got to show yourself. You’re not her husband,”
added Kilcroney bitterly.
“Not at all!” cried Mr. Stafford, with some energy. “It shall never
be said that I have set myself to curry favour with Kitty Kilcroney,
more especially since ’tis my own sister-in-law that she’s treating so
uncivil. Nay, Kil, I’ll keep out of it. I’m only giving you a bit of
advice for your own sake. Get her a ticket. ’Twill save a lot of bother
in the end. And I do assure you,” as Denis laughed hollowly, “’Twill
have an excellent effect on society generally. There has been far too
much fuss about an incident which should have been--ahem!--passed over!”
Lord Kilcroney dropped upon the horsehair sofa, which creaked dismally.
“And pray,” said he, in a tone of sarcasm, “when you had dealings with
my Lady yourself--and you had a few, one way and another--did you find
her so easy to manage?”
Now Mr. Stafford had somewhere hidden away an old grudge against
Lady Kilcroney, who had not only jilted him, but had scored off him
notably on more than one occasion. Mr. Stafford was far from approving
of Molly, whom, indeed, it may be said, he heartily disliked, but
to find a close relative pilloried on your arrival at a fashionable
watering-place was a set down to a beau’s pride. He was inclined to
champion her. Under his languid airs he was very wroth with my Lady
Kilcroney; she was making an indelicate fuss; she had lost her usual
tactful grasp of the situation through ridiculous jealousy. After all,
as Kilcroney himself represented, there couldn’t have been much harm
in a kiss bestowed on the open parade in a high wind; between wrist or
cheek like enough there was a confusion by one or other of the parties.
But Kilcroney’s next remark made him jump to his feet.
“As for a ticket for the show, me lad, I’m not to have one, either.”
“Kil!”
“My Lord!”
Molly broke into shriller laughter, and beat her palms together.
“And His Royal Highness coming and all!”
“Aye, and by the same token I saw that august personage driving his
curricle along the sea road on my way here,” said Mr. Stafford,
relapsing into his usual rather insolent serenity. Your fine gentleman
will not let himself be betrayed into emotion if he can help it.
“And I was less flattered than ever at your taking me for him
yesterday, Kil.”
His sister-in-law looked at him curiously. “But my Lord Kilcroney is
right!” she cried maliciously. “Since you’ve grown so prodigious fat,
brother-in-law.”
Then, having planted the pin-prick which she never allowed to escape
her, she returned to the real subject of interest.
“Not to be present at your own wife’s entertainment? Oh come, my
Lord, this is an Irish way of evading the question. You must think us
monstrous simple to credit----”
It was a morning of interruptions, for here Miss Pounce and the
bandboxes marched unexpectedly in upon them. She was breathing quickly
and speaking with volubility.
My Lady Verney’s own woman had informed her of Mrs. Lafone’s address
in the town, and she had ventured to present herself with the very
latest, positively the very latest, to show to her most esteemed
customers. Miss Pounce was quite sure that Mistress Lafone and Mistress
Stafford--“Is your lady here, sir?” she curtsied to the Beau, who was
ogling her jocosely. “Not till next week? Oh, dear, what a pity! I’d
have been honoured, sir, to supply a hat or a head for the beautiful
Mrs. Stafford. But as I was saying, I am quite sure that you, Madam,
and your sister, being such kind patrons of the establishment, Madame
Mirabel would have taken it very bad of me, very bad of me indeed, had
I failed to seek you out.”
Denis Kilcroney was sitting erect upon the sofa, with his arms folded,
and a stern glance upon the glib Pamela. This young person avoided
meeting the glance in question. She felt that her swift appearance at
Mrs. Lafone’s lodgings on the heels of my Lord’s stormy exit was, for
all her clever patter, a little too obvious a coincidence.
“I’ve a head here,” went on Miss Pounce, beginning to set down her
bandboxes, and making the most theatrical effects with the undoing of
strings and rustling of tissue paper. “Well, _really_, the Duchess
of Hampshire wanted, right or wrong, to have it for her ball last
week when she entertained the Prince, as you may have seen by the
news-sheet, Madam. But I says to her, ‘No, your Grace,’ I says, ‘’tis
too elfin for your Grace. Your Grace wants, so to speak, the Goddess
effect.’ And as I says it, if you’ll believe me, I thought of you,
ma’am.”
Mrs. Lafone did not believe her, but she stood, hesitating a little,
over the bandboxes, torn between a pettish desire to dismiss with
obloquy the wretch who had come to turn the dagger in the wound,
and the budding hope that Mr. Stafford, who had plenty of money,
might be moved to do the generous for once, and present his injured
sister-in-law with a token of his esteem.
Miss Pounce drew out what was indeed a fairy-like wreath of pale blue
convolvulus, and Molly exclaimed in rapture. In a wink Miss Pounce had
placed it on the fair, dishevelled head.
“Oh, Madam, if ever there was a perfect vision! Look, Mr. Stafford,
Sir! Look, my Lord, if I may make so bold; isn’t Mrs. Lafone fitted, so
to speak, like a--like a----” She faltered on the simile, for neither
gentlemen showed any disposition to rise to the occasion.
My Lord cast another glance upon the milliner, which said as plain
as words: “Don’t think you can take me in, my good girl,” and then,
with a formal bow to the syren and a wave of the hand to Stafford, he
sauntered out of the room.
Mr. Stafford flung a glance of mocking pity after him, whistling a
ballad tune under his breath; then he put his hand into his pocket,
but it was only to produce a snuffbox, from which he proceeded to
inhale.
Molly pettishly tore the wreath from her curls, declaring in her most
acrid accents:
“Really, Miss Pounce, this is a great liberty. I can order my hats
for myself when I require them, and then I usually write to Madame
Eglantine, in Paris. And anyhow, I am not going into society by
doctor’s orders. I am here for my health. Pray, Mr. Stafford, will you
pull the bell rope, that Madame Mirabel’s assistant may be shown to the
door.”
Miss Pounce started to re-pack the wreath, with further extraordinary
manipulations of tissue paper. She was all bland apology. She craved a
hundred pardons. She had made so sure that Mrs. Lafone would be going
to my Lady Kilcroney’s ball at the Assembly Rooms to-morrow night. She
hoped and trusted it would be as great a success as the Duchess of
Hampshire’s last week, and that His Royal Highness would be equally
delighted with his entertainment. “Though of course----” here the
milliner genteelly tittered, “it was not likely he would be equally
demonstrative to his hostess. Was it possible Madame had not heard how
His Royal Highness, saying ‘It is a Sovereign’s privilege to salute
another Sovereign, and you are Queen of Beauty,’ had kissed her Grace
of Hampshire on the cheek after the minuet--Oh, indeed, she had danced
like an angel, and looked exceedingly well--before the whole assembly?”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Stafford, with humorous meaning.
“And I’m sure, I hope,” cried acrid Molly, “that His Royal Highness
may be as prodigal of caress to my Lady Kilcroney. Oh!” she cried,
clasping her hands, “if that is the kind of fit that’s on him, and he
was to kiss my sweetest Kitty before his Royal Mamma and the lovely
Princesses, what a monstrous joke it would be.”
Here Mr. Stafford stepped forward and opened the door.
“Allow me, my dear,” said he, and with what Pamela thought an
insufferable free-and-easiness, lifted her bandboxes one after the
other into the passage, and literally bowed her out.
She stood, snapping her fingers and biting her nails, to linger and
listen as long as she dared. Up to this she had after all but poor
gleanings to bring back to her Aunt Lydia for the retailing into her
patroness’s ear, save, indeed, the sad verification of my Lord’s
presence in the Minx’s lodgings. But she saw that she was suspected
by one, if not both, of the gentlemen, and however necessary it is
for a young milliner to make quite certain that the cords of her
boxes are properly tied, it is not an operation that can be prolonged
indefinitely. Some phrases she did catch.
“The joke of it is that the Prince,” Mr. Stafford was observing.
The rest of the remark was lost; it was followed by a crow from Molly
Lafone.
“Not to be there, after all? Serve her right!” Then in another tone.
“Oh, I have the drollest inspiration!”
“Hush!”
Pounce pricked her ear to its utmost alertness.
“I have the drollest inspiration,” said Mrs. Lafone. “Since you say,
Tom, you’re poz that His Royal Highness don’t mean to attend my Lady’s
ball--and I say it serves her right--why should you not go in his
stead?”
“Go in his stead?” Mr. Stafford blankly repeated then. “You’re crazy,
Molly!”
“And not at all! Oh, it can be managed, I do assure you! Oh, it would
be too droll, too delightful! And it would be better than droll, for
’twould be a certain way to heal the breach, the sad, sad breach
between our poor Kil and that same jealous Kitty. Pray, Brother-in-law,
before you interrupt, let me speak one word! Kitty’s Royals, King,
Queen and Princesses, will but pass through the Assembly Rooms.
’Tis the way of Royalty. ’Tis all anyone would expect of them, more
especially as His Majesty is so out of health. What is to prevent
the Prince changing his mind, and popping in for late supper? By the
Prince, I mean you, Tom. Come now, you know ’tis a thing he might
do very well. People would only say he could not bear the tedium of
dancing at his Royal parents’ heels. Come now, Mr. Stafford, sir. I see
it in your eye. You know ’tis a trick could be played on my Lady with
perfect success? Oh, you need not present yourself on the scene till
every one should have departed, save the select little circle, those
sweet, dear, charming ladies and their stupid husbands, who won’t have
anything to say to poor little me! And then, oh, Mr. Stafford, you must
be monstrous charmed, and monstrous gallant, and--well, monstrous tipsy
if you like, and you will but the closer ape our dear future Sovereign!
And then (oh, how you gape!) don’t you see? You must kiss my Lady, and
if she don’t have to forgive my Lord afterwards----”
“Foh!” said Mr. Stafford. “’Tis the rankest nonsense. And I’m not so
prodigious like the Prince as all that.”
“Oh, but you are, Mr. Stafford! Didn’t my Lord Kilcroney take you for
him but yesterday? With one of those new white chokers, and a frill
to the shirt, and a bit of blue ribbon across it and a new wig with a
top-knot to it, and a fine brocade waistcoat on your fine figure--you
were always so clever at the acting, Brother-in-law!--I’d defy even
your Prue to find you out!”
Mr. Stafford was apparently unconvinced, for Molly Lafone’s accents
changed from wheedling to taunting.
“And indeed, Tom, I thought you’d more spirit. Here I give you such a
chance as never was of paying my Lady out for the trick she played on
you. Why, she made you the laughing-stock of Bath. Oh, I have heard
such droll tales--how, rather than marry you, she made my Lord--Denis
O’Hara, as he was then--dress up as a woman and pretend to be your
previous wife at the altar steps. Are you so mean-spirited as to
forget? And ’tisn’t as if it wouldn’t be the best turn in the world for
my Lord, and him so good-natured, and treated so shameful! I thought
gentlemen stood by each other. For a wife to insult her husband so!”
“It mightn’t put me in such very good odour with His Royal Highness,”
said Mr. Stafford, and Pamela knew by his tone that he was faltering.
“As if anyone was likely to tell him. However, if you’re afraid,
Brother-in-law----”
“You’re a little devil,” said Mr. Stafford.
And Pamela picked up her boxes and flew. She had heard enough, and she
knew that Mistress Lafone had carried her point.