IN WHICH MY LADY KILCRONEY HAS THE LAST WORD
The best-tempered of women are apt to be a trifle peevish after a
wedding, especially if they are responsible for the event, and have had
most of the trouble of the bridal preparations.
My Lady Kilcroney had had two reasons for patronising the marriage
between Mr. Jocelyn Bellairs and Miss Pamela Pounce.
In the first place she flattered herself that she had made it. It
pleased her sense of rectitude to know that it was an heroic decision.
Jocelyn, the rascal, had gone too far, and Pamela was a first-class
good girl. ’Twas but justice.
Then my Lady Kilcroney was a woman of the world, to her finger-tips.
The alliance, which she could not have prevented if she would, was a
strange, foolish, unequal business. To silence ill-natured gossip and
the malicious tattle of dear, intimate enemies, there was nothing for
it but for her to take a firm stand of championship. ’Twas the only
attitude to ensure respect, from Royalty downwards. To tell the truth,
Kitty was getting a bit sick of Royalty, and would not have cared had
she followed my Lady Flo’s example, but not upon this crisis. She knew
how to take the Queen by this time, not being a born fool, and, indeed,
had emerged more triumphantly than ever from a situation which might
have lost her her place at Court.
“I thought of you, ma’am,” she had said, turning up her eyes, “how you
would have wished me to act, you that sets virtue before everything.”
If the Queen had gathered a lower opinion of Pamela Pounce’s moral
stamina from the interview than was justified by facts, she had gained
a vastly higher one of my Lady Kilcroney’s. So the incident was closed
to Kitty’s advantage.
And now Pamela was wed, and my Lady Kilcroney had made quite a droll,
pretty feast of it.
Farmer Pounce, in blue cloth and brass buttons, Mrs. Pounce, in a
lovely new bonnet trimmed for the occasion by her daughter, followed by
a rosy progeny, had been really such honest, simple dears that Kitty
quite loved them; and Pamela (sensible, excellent creature that she
was, who had chosen to be married in a snowy muslin and a white chip),
had looked so sweet and wholesome and happy, and withal remained so
respectfully in her place, was so pleasantly unassuming, that my Lady
very genuinely considered old Bellairs’s nephew to be more lucky than
he deserved.
She had convened her special circle to witness the ceremony, which was
performed in her own drawing-room at Hertford Street; not omitting
Mistress Lafone, for Kitty would not put it into the minx’s power to
say that she was afraid of her tongue.
There was a brisk passage between these two ladies, out of which Kitty,
she flattered herself, emerged victorious.
“Dear, to be sure,” had said Molly, with her most tart-sweet air, “how
monstrous strange it will be to be ordering hats from your own niece,
my Lady Kilcroney!”
And my Lady had responded: she trusted to Heaven that Pamela would be
more particular than ever, now, whom she served.
Madame Mirabel had had the good sense to excuse herself on the ground
of age and infirmity; a piece of tact which, coupled with the handsome
present she bestowed on her esteemed partner, was as clever a stroke
of business as the astute old lady had ever contrived.
Miss Clara Smithson and Miss Polly Popple, on the other hand, who were,
as the whole of the Bond Street establishment knew, that devoted to
their dear, darling Miss Pounce that they were as glad of her happiness
in the depths of their feeling hearts as if it had been their own,
could not, of course, be omitted from the list of guests; and indeed,
it may be said that Lydia’s only consolation on a day, which was
otherwise unmitigatedly displeasing to her, was the opportunity which
the presence of these females gave her of discharging her bosom of some
of its accumulated gall.
When all her company had departed, my Lady owned that she was tired,
and Lydia was very plainly given to understand that she must not
presume upon a relationship, which was, to say the least of it,
ridiculous.
Lydia had made herself far finer than the bride, and Kitty thought it
prodigious bad taste in her to be so ruffled and flounced and panniered.
“And the shade of lavender you’ve chosen, Lydia, positive sets my teeth
on edge, and I should have thought you’d have known better than to
rouge yourself up, till anyone would take my own woman for an actress,
and a low one at that.”
“Well, then, I’m sure, your Ladyship,” retorted Lydia with spirit, “not
having any acquaintance with such females, save your Ladyship’s own
dear friend, my Lady Mandeville (who would have looked better for a bit
of colour to-day), it wouldn’t become me to set myself up against your
Ladyship’s opinion in the matter; but considering the practice I’ve had
on your Ladyship it’s to be hoped I’d know how to put on the rouge, if
I don’t show it off as well as your Ladyship, not being so full in the
face. And I’m sorry your Ladyship ain’t satisfied with the hue of my
gown, it being one of her own presents to me, Christmas five years that
was. And indeed,” went on Lydia, “I never could abide it myself, but
since it was when your Ladyship went sudden out of mourning for old
Mr. Bellairs, and she didn’t know what to do with the eight yards of
taffety, I couldn’t be so disobliging as not to make the best of them.
And indeed, considering the occasion to-day I thought they fitted in
uncommon apt.”
“Dear, to be sure!” cried Kitty, sinking into a chair. “What a tongue
you have! ’Tis to be hoped it isn’t a family failing or else my poor
dear Bellairs’s nephew, the last of his name, will have a sad time of
it.”
“Dear, to be sure!” echoed Lydia, with frightful acrimony, “I could
find it in my heart to pity that pore young gentleman myself. No one
can ever say I wanted that there owdacious marriage.” (Which was
certainly true. Lydia would infinitely have preferred to see her niece
bloom unplucked on her maiden stem.) “Of all the unpleasant situations,
I says, him to have a wife a milliner as is born to another class, and
spend his days torn, so to speak, between the high and the low. He’ll
never make a fine lady of Pamela, what’s a work-woman in the bone, and
he can’t,” pursued Lydia, moved by her own eloquence almost to tears,
“strip his own gentility off of himself like a coat and sit as it were
in his shirt-sleeves, common, for the rest of his life.”
Seeing angry retort leaping in her mistress’s eye, Lydia proceeded in
a great hurry, to get out the next most disagreeable remark she could
think of: “And as to him being the last of his name, your Ladyship
can’t go counting on that. Mrs. Jocelyn Bellairs,” Lydia tittered,
“will have a long family like her mother before her, and before we know
where we are we’ll have little Bellairses a-running about all over the
place like spiders----”
She broke off. Intimately acquainted with her mistress as she was,
there were sides to her character which Miss Lydia Pounce had as yet
failed to grasp. She had thought to pay out my Lady for her odious
unkindness, but her shaft had singularly missed the mark. All the
ill-humour vanished from Kitty Kilcroney’s charming countenance. She
clasped her hands with a genuine cry of delight.
“Why, Lydia, I’ll be godmother to the first girl, I will indeed! It
ought to be a charming creature, they so handsome and so happy! I’ll
be godmother, and ’twill be a vast of pleasure to me, child, to think
there’ll be another Kitty Bellairs!”
THE END
_Printed in Great Britain by Wyman & Sons Ltd., London, Reading and
Fakenham_
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.