The Earl of Chesterfield, entering his apartments one afternoon, was
informed by the porter that a young person, lately arrived, waited on
his convenience in the audience-room, to which she had been shown--not
ushered. Thus Mrs. Moll, to the menial instinct, be it observed, was
still subtly, and in spite of all her fine new trappings, the
unclassified “young person.” She might impose on the master, but never
on the man.
His lordship demanded tartly why his lady had not been informed. He
was told that she was out. The stranger, it appeared, had entered with
an assured air, stating that she was expected on a visit. Expected by
whom? She had bridled, but in a manner twinkling-like, to the
question. By whom did he, the porter, suppose? By one of the servants,
curse his impudence? And so he had admitted her, with her smart
baggage, assuming that, if she was the invited guest of either his
master or mistress, it must be of the former. Why? O! for only the
reason that she looked most like a gentleman’s lady.
“A gentleman’s lady”! My lord grinned, then looked serious.
“Did she give no name?”
“The name of Davis, please your lordship. Mrs. Moll Davis she called
herself.”
Chesterfield’s brow went up; he whistled. Of course, now, he
remembered, this must be Kate’s young country friend of whom he had
been advised, and her manners, no doubt, were to be accounted to mere
rustic gaucherie. He had better see her at once in his wife’s absence,
and judge of her suitability, from his point of view, for the part for
which Hamilton had cast her. She might prove, after all, an impossible
instrument to play on. And yet the rogue had seemed confident.
He turned on the porter harshly. “Why did you not say so before? Mrs.
Davis is her ladyship’s friend and guest, and as such is to be lodged
fitly. See to it, fellow, and that you keep that free tongue of yours
out of your cheek.”
He went on, and at the door of the audience chamber was received by a
couple of lackeys, who, throwing wide the oak, announced him in form--
“My lord Chesterfield, for Mrs. Davis!”
She had been peering into costly nooks and corners, and was taken by
surprise. But that did not matter. The blush with which she whisked
about from contemplating herself in a remote stand-glass became her
mightily, and seemed offered to his lordship like a flower gathered
from the mirror to propitiate him for the liberty she had been caught
taking. He accepted and pinned it over his heart, so to speak. If this
was rusticity, he was quite willing, it appeared to him, to become a
country Strephon on the spot. The danger, he foresaw at once, was of
falling in love with his own pretence.
And, indeed, Mrs. Davis, with her pert young face and forget-me-not
eyes, made an alluring figure, and one seeming admirably efficient to
the part she was dressed to play. As to that, Hamilton had advised
with taste and discretion; so that, in her plain bodice and pannier,
with her slim arms bared to the elbow and tied above with favours of
ribbon, and the curls shaken over her bright cheeks from under a
coquettish hat-brim, she might have passed for the very sweet moral of
a provincial nymph, conceived in the happiest vein between homeliness
and fashion. She curtsied, as she had been taught to curtsey on the
stage--latterly, for her sex had only quite recently won its way to
the footlights--and boldly, with a little musical laugh, accepted the
situation.
“Sure,” she said, “if you hadn’t caught me at it, my cheeks ’ud betray
me. I was looking in the glass--so there!”
It put him at his ease at once. With no rustic coyness to conquer, he
was already half way to the end. It mattered little, he felt
confident, what he might venture to say; and so he gave his tongue
full rein.
“So there!” said he; “and faith, Mistress Davis, if I were you, I
could look till my eyes went blind.”
“_Could_ you?” she said. “Then you’d be a blind donkey for your
pains.” She came up and stood before him, her chin raised, her hands
clasped behind her back. “So you’re Lord Chesterfield,” she said. “How
do you like it?”
“How do you?” he asked, grinning.
“H’m!” she said critically, bringing one hand forward to fondle her
baby chin. “’Tis early days to say. But, on the face of you, you look
very much like any other man. But perhaps you’re different
underneath--made of gold, like the boys in the folk-tale.”
“O! I’m not made of gold, I can assure you.”
“Aren’t you, now? I’ve heard of some that are said to be.”
“I’m made just like anybody else.”
“There, now! What a disappointment! And you call yourself a lord!”
“Why, how would you have me?”
“I wouldn’t have you at all. What a question from a married man!”
He was a little vexed; he made that sound of impatience between tongue
and palate which cannot be rendered in spelling.
“I see you’re a literal soul,” said he. “I must be careful how I put
things.”
“You’d better,” she said. “Now I come to look at you, you’ve got a
sinful eye.”
“And now I come to look at you, I don’t wonder at it.”
“Don’t you? Well, for all you’re like to get, you may put it in there
and see none the worse.”
He laughed, a little astounded. “Troth!” thought he; “this is a
strange acquaintance for Kate to have made!”
“Why,” he said, “what have I asked or expected but the right of every
man to see and admire?”
“O! you may admire as much as you like,” quoth she. “I wouldn’t
deprive you of that gratification.”
“Or yourself, perhaps?”
“No!” she said, with indifference; “you needn’t consider me. I’ve more
than I can do with already.”
“What!” he said, “but not of the town quality? ’Tis only sheep’s-eyes
they make at you in the country.”
“All’s fish, for that, that comes to a woman’s net. ’Tis a question
with her more of quantity than quality.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you love the country?”
“Sure,” she said. “I love the pigs and the cows and the horses, and
the ducks and the geese; but, after all, there’s no goose like a
lord.”
He laughed, but a little uneasily. He was not quite so confident as he
had been of the simple nature of his task. He would just like, for an
experiment, to eschew badinage, and insinuate a thought more feeling
into the conversation.
“I think I agree with you,” he said. “A lord is a goose.”
“Unless he’s a gander,” said she.
“You called him a goose,” he answered with asperity; “and a goose he
shall be.”
“Well, don’t quarrel about it,” she protested. “Goose and gander and
gosling, they say, are three sounds but one thing. Why is a
lord--whichever he is?”
“Well, what was _your_ reason for calling him a goose?”
“I never did. I said there was no goose like him.”
“That was to flatter the goose, I think.”
“Was it, now? And I meant it to flatter the lord.”
He raised appealing hands. “No, I prithee! Flattery--the very mess of
pottage for which he sold his birthright as a man! A lord, Mrs. Davis,
from the very moment he becomes one, hath parted with sincerity.”
“No, sure?”
“Yes, indeed; and for it exchanged the eternal adulation of the
hypocrite, paid not to his merits but his title. The base thenceforth
surround him; the worthy keep their distance, lest old friendships,
once frankly mutual, be suspected of self-interest. He knows no truth
but such as he may read in its withholding; he knows no love but such
as loves his rank before himself. Was he not a goose to be a lord--to
part with truth and love--to give himself to be devoured by parasites
in a hundred forms?”
He smiled, appealing and a little melancholy. The lady lifted her
brows.
“Lud!” she said. “And to think we in the country only know but
two--the one that hops and the one that doesn’t!”
His lordship gave a slight start and cough.
“Exactly,” he said: “yes, exactly.” He stiffened, clearing his throat,
then smiled again, but painfully. “So flatter me not,” he said. “Be
your sweet, candid self, to earn my gratitude. You cannot know what it
would mean to me to win at last a woman’s unaffected sympathy. Will
you not extend to me the friendship which is already, I understand, my
wife’s?”
Her eyes twinkled, her mouth twitched, as she stood before him.
“What is the matter?” he asked, in mild surprise.
“You--you do look so droll,” she said, and burst into a fit of
laughter.
He was inclined to be very incensed, but with good sense made a moral
vault of it, and landed lightly the other side of his own temper. Once
there, he could afford to echo the hussy’s merriment.
“You are a bad girl,” he said, grinning, and shaking a finger; “but I
can see we are going to be great friends. Hist, though!”
He looked about him cautiously, and then approached her.
“Stand and deliver,” said she, and backed a little.
“No, no,” he said; “on my honour, I only wish a word in confidence.”
“O, I know that word!” she said. “I’m not so young but I’ve learned to
crack nuts with my own teeth.”
“Here it is, then,” he said, coming no farther. “There’s this
difficulty in the way of our good understanding--that it can owe no
encouragement to my lady, your friend.”
“Why not, now?”
“Why, the truth is, we’re--we’re not on speaking terms.”
“Lord-a-mussy! What’s the matter?”
“O, these little domestic differences; they will occur! Unsuited, I
suppose. It was her suggestion; but it makes things somewhat awkward
for the moment.” He heaved a profound sigh. “Alone--always alone, you
see! What a goose to be a lord!”
She eyed him roguishly.
“She’s been finding out things about you: don’t tell me!”
He sighed again. “What a goose, what a goose!” and then started, as if
remembering something. “O! and there’s another secret.”
“Another?” said she, thrilled; and irresistibly she leaned her ear
towards him.
“Listen!” he said, and, with a single step, had dived and snatched a
kiss.
“You devil!” she cried, starting away. “If I don’t pay you for
that----”
The word died on her lips. They were both simultaneously aware that
the young Countess had come unnoticed into the room, and was standing
regarding them with stony eyes.
My lord, coughing and feeling at his cravat, tried to hum a little
nonchalant air, failed conspicuously, and, hesitating a moment,
yielded incontinent to the better part of valour, and swaggered out by
the door, with a little run at the last as if he felt behind him the
invisible persuasion of a boot. Some minutes of pregnant silence
succeeded his departure. Mrs. Davis was the first to break it.
“I’m--I’m glad to see your ladyship looking so bonny.”
As if it had needed but the sound of this voice to galvanize her into
life, to assure her of the incarnate reality of the insult with which
she had been threatened, the young wife started, and, advancing a few
hurried paces, paused, recollected herself, and went on deliberately
to a table, on which she proceeded to deposit the gloves which she
stripped leisurely from her hands. She was just come in from riding,
and, in her dove-grey habit, with the soft-plumed hat on her
head--steeple-crowned, but coaxed into that picturesque shapelessness
which only a woman can contrive--looked a figure sweet enough to set
Mrs. Davis wondering over the criminal blindness of husbands. Mr.
George Hamilton, you see, had let her into only so much of the truth;
a half-knowledge which his lordship’s behaviour had certainly done
nothing to rectify.
My lady, whose fingers had gripped a silvered riding-switch, put down
that weapon, as if reluctantly, and drew off her gloves. If this woman
was what she supposed, there could be no course for her to adopt more
contemptuous than that of overlooking her as if she did not exist for
her.
“Sure, it must have been a surprise for you,” said Moll, after waiting
vainly for some response, “to find me come, unbeknown to you, on a
visit to my kinsman. But la! we never know what’s going to happen
next--now, do we?” (_No answer._) “‘Look in any time you’re in the
neighbourhood,’ he says to me, ‘and there’s always bed and board for
you at Whitehall.’” (_No answer._) “You’ve a pretty place here, my
lady. We’ve got none such in the country, saving it’s the Manor House
where Squire Bucksey lives; and him but half a gentleman, having lost
a leg and an arm at Worcester fight.” (_My lady takes up a book, which
she affects to read in._) “Well,” said Moll, “if you’ve nothing to
say, I think I’d better be following his lordship.”
She moved as if to go. The book slapped down. My lady turned upon her
peremptorily, with crimson cheeks.
“Stay! Too intolerable an insolence! This affectation of rustic
artlessness! I had thought to be silent, but it transcends my
endurance. I had been warned of your coming, and I know who you are.
Your name is Davis; deny it not.”
Impudence was not offended; but her sauce was up. She turned to
counter, and the two faced one another.
“Deny it? Not I,” she said. “What if it is?”
“What? How dare you speak to me? Is not your presence here offence
enough?”
“What have I done now?”
“Done? No wonder your right cheek flushes for its shame.”
“He kissed it--not I. Another moment, if you hadn’t come in, and I’d
have clouted his ears for him.”
“What made him kiss you?”
“That’s for him to say. You can ask him if you like.”
“_I!_”
“Old acquaintance’ sake, he’ll tell you, perhaps.”
“Ah!”
“What are you ‘ahing’ about? Did it look like a habit between us? Take
my word, if you care, that he’s never kissed me in his life before.”
“Care? Not I.”
“I thought you looked as if you didn’t.”
“His kisses and his fancies are subjects of supreme indifference to
me.”
“What’s the matter, then?”
“My self-respect is the matter--a thing beyond your comprehension. To
have to sit and suffer such a guest--in silence--as though I seemed to
countenance her presence! That is the matter.”
Mrs. Davis, half-whimpering, put her knuckles to her eyes.
“Why don’t you speak to him, then,” she said, “and have me turned out?
O, dear, O, dear! A nice way this to treat a harmless visitor!”
Harmless! For the first time a wonder seized her little ladyship. Was
she really maligning in her heart a rustic simpleton? No, there was
something here _adroite_, practised, something indescribable, which
precluded the idea. And yet the thought had come to puzzle and disturb
her. Though she could not believe, her tone was less uncompromising
when she spoke again.
“I speak to him? It is not for such as you to understand. To answer to
an insult is to flatter it. Let him answer for his own, so it be one,
to himself and you. Never fear that I shall complain.” She turned away
and back again. “I ask no questions about you,” she said. “I desire to
hear and know nothing. Your conduct, if you speak truth, need be your
only voucher.”
She took up her gloves, preparing to leave the room, then stopped, as
if on a resistless impulse, and looked into the slut’s eyes.
“You have a pretty face, child,” she said. “I know not whence it
comes, or what designs; but I would fain think no evil of it.”
And she gathered up her things and went, without another word.
It had been a brief interview, but a stupefying. For some moments
after she was left alone Moll stood motionless, as if afraid to stir.
Then, gradually, expression came back to her face, and she gave a soft
whistle.
“Lud! the first is over,” she murmured; “and I would I could think the
worst. I stand to have my eyes scratched out, seemeth to me. But,
never mind. George must be accommodated, and the fool lord caught in
the snare of his own laying. We’ve not, for that matter, begun so
badly.”
She rubbed her cheek viciously, then, executing a little noiseless
_pas-seul_, shivered to a stop, and looked about her inquiringly. She
was as light on her feet as a kitten, as graceful and as pretty.
“What next?” She tittered. “Will nobody fetch me or tell me? And
O!”--she pressed a hand to the seat of suffering--“_when_ do great
folks dine!”
She stiffened on the word, like a soldier to “attention.” A liveried
gentleman who had come into the room stood bent and bowing before
her--and kicking a furtive heel to another, who stood sniggering in
the shadow of the door.
“Will your ladyship,” said the first, speaking from the root of his
nose, “condescend to be pleased to be shown your ladyship’s chamber?”
Moll whisked about, her cheek on fire. “Yes, she will, turnip-head,
when you’ve got over that stomach-ache of yours.”