Cousin Cinderella

by Sara Jeanette Duncan

“That’s a pity. But do try to pay us a visit. It would be real nice to have you, Billy.”

  A clever beam came into Billy’s eyes. “Now I’m going to ask you a simple question,” he said. “D’you mean that?”

  “Do I mean what?”

  “That it would be real nice to have me?”

  “I used the language of metaphor—of common politeness,” I said coldly. “Didn’t you recognise it?”

  “There’s only one thing I seem to recognise,” said Billy, “and that is ”

  “Yes?”

  “That you’re not on.”

  “But how did you guess?” I cried with admiration. Unfortunately we had reached the door, and Billy was unable to tell me. I never thought to refuse anybody in these terms; but as I had seen it hanging over me for some time I was in no mood to be particular. Billy was equally inclined, I think, to congratulate himself that the matter had come to an end of some sort. He must have been thoroughly tired, poor Billy, of leading up to it.

  “Well,” he said with gloomy relief, as he opened the door, “I can tell you one person that will be fearfully disappointed, and that’s my mother.”

  But neither Billy nor I, I am thankful to say, suffered a pang. If we had, it would have been impossible, I am sure, to write about it in this callous manner. I should have been obliged to hint and to dissemble. The question finally came up just, as Mrs. Jerome was so fond of saying, in the day’s work, and was disposed of without any tiresome formalities, for which, in connection with a person like Billy, life is, of course, altogether too short. The emotions in Billy’s world have become so conventional that I thought it showed great common sense in him to be so superior to them; and on my own part, too, I felt the little episode to have been something of a performance. It belonged, anyway, to the whole remarkable and delightful experience; it helped in its small way to qualify one for that degree in worldly wisdom that is so attractive to the simple mind; and I hope I was right in deciding that it ought to be mentioned here.

  We had just finished breakfast and were engaged with prayers when the snort of an approaching motor sounded upon the drive, which the French windows of the dining-room commanded, and I also, since I was kneeling beside one of them. I recognised it from afar to be Evelyn’s, but as it came grunting up I saw that the single figure in it was not Evelyn’s, but the spare and dejected silhouette of Lady Doleford, who always seemed, in a motor car, more in mourning for life than anywhere else. Lady Doleford also perceived me through the window, and I drew from her glance a queer little chilly ineffectual arrow of antagonism, as if shot by a person who was not in the habit of falling out with the world. I, of course, had a refuge; I could drop my head again in my hands and even convey by doing so that it was rather wrong to cherish animosities towards people preoccupied as I was, a suggestion of which dear Lady Doleford would feel the full force. I had never, I am afraid, been very fortunate with Peter’s mother; we had never quite got on. I had thought dreadfully the wrong thing about religious teaching in the schools; upon that essential point I had not been lucky like Evelyn. Lady Doleford and I never had a conversation which failed, it seemed to me, to give her a worse opinion of me. I had shown without meaning to a kind of perversity in seeing where the rocks were with her and running directly upon them. It was as if I must, for my own satisfaction, be at my very worst with her, so that she could at all events make no mistakes about me, with all her unlimited capacity for it, should by no chance be taken in by me. I felt defiant, that was what I felt, towards Lady Doleford and her preferences; and she did not like me one little bit.

  None of us saw her but Margot Lippington, with whom she was shut up somewhere for an hour, but she passed the drawing-room door, where I was sitting with Mrs. Jerome, with her handkerchief in her hand, and I was torn by the wildest misgivings. Lady Lippington joined us almost immediately with all the appearance of a person who has been administering words of sympathy and consolation. And yet the misfortune she announced did not seem, at the first glance, of such a desperate character.

  “Peter,” she said, “has gone over to Ireland.”

  “For long?” asked Mrs. Jerome.

  “Cecilia hasn’t an idea.”

  There was a full, round moment, a good sixty seconds, of extraordinarily portentous silence. When it was over one thing stood clear. Mrs. Jerome gave it a voice.

  “And no announcement ” she began.

  “To be made. Oh, no!” said Lady Lippington.

  “You have been so much in dear Evelyn’s secrets,” she went on, turning to me, “that I am sure you realised that we all hoped—she, too, I am afraid, poor child—that something in the nature of an attachment might grow up there. Evelyn is such a charming creature—such verve, such spirit, and so sweet to look at. But that naughty Peter has shown all too plainly, I am afraid. It’s a real blow to Lady Doleford.”

  I said nothing. I felt unworthy to sympathise.

  “How long,” asked Mrs. Jarvis again, who was so happily in a position to ask questions, “is Peter going to stay in Ireland?”

  “Nobody knows—least of all his poor mother,” said Lady Lippington. “But I am convinced in my own mind that we shall not see him again until after ”

  “She has sailed for New York,” agreed Mrs. Jarvis. “But what a triumph for the Duchess!”

  “You may well say so. She and Barbara only are to dine here to-night. Cecilia is too upset. Evelyn—well, Evelyn ”

  Mrs. Jerome nodded with tense intelligence.

  “One can understand it. And Scansby has a cold. I must rearrange the table immediately, and tell Wimble. Poor dear Cecilia—it’s really pathetic, Janice. So extraordinarily loyal to Evelyn through it all. Says she feels as if she personally had treated her dreadfully, which is absurd, you know.”

  “Perfectly absurd!” said Mrs. Jarvis. “I could have told her that there was very little dependence to be placed upon Peter. Far too like his father, in a different way. So unlike my Billy.”

  “Billy is a dear love,” said Lady Lippington; “and Cecilia—you know really, Janice, I think it’s a little foolish—still clings to the idea. Doesn’t in the least give up hope. Says she means to leave it now entirely to a Higher Power. She believes they were designed for one another, and says she is quite willing to trust Providence to remove whatever cause is keeping them asunder.”

  Mrs. Jerome laughed as if this were the best joke in the world.

  “How like her that sounds!” she said. “But it’s only Peter, isn’t it, who is being kept asunder. Evelyn hasn’t been divided for a single minute, I understand.”

  Lady Lippington looked dignified and serious.

  “I am afraid things may have had a little that appearance,” she said, “although we in the family have never for a moment taken it for granted that dear Evelyn ” But Mrs. Jarvis was quite immoderately laughing again.

  As soon as I could I took this deeply interesting piece of news to my room for undisturbed reflection. What I wished to remember was whether Lord Doleford had said anything in the course of the long day previous about starting immediately for Ireland; but I could recall nothing whatever. Even when he asked me for the violets back again, which one would have thought a suitable opportunity, he had said nothing about going so far, and at such short notice. There was an estate there, I knew, from which the rents would very nearly pay his travelling expenses if he did not go too often; he had gone to have a look at the estate, to see, I suppose, if it was worth it. I remembered having been told by Barbara that this place in Ireland would be the refuge of her mother and herself when they were finally compelled to resign Pavis Court. It might be, then, that Peter, recognising this eventuality as close at hand, had gone to mend some of the holes in the roof. It seemed, under the circumstances, the least he could do.

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE Duchess certainly had a great look of elation that evening. She wore an Elizabethan ruff and a feather in her hair, which seemed to accentuate it; and Barbara followed her i
nto the room like some meek Circassian slave. Barbara was plainly depressed; I suppose she was drawing near to the coasts of Ireland in imagination, as her brother was in fact. I panted to know what her feeling was about her brother, and tried to think what mine would be about Graham under similar circumstances—whether I could possibly consider him a monster of callous selfishness for being unwilling to save the family fortunes, and so much more than the family fortunes, at such a delightful price as marrying Evelyn Dicey. I put the case for the family fortunes, for dear, lovely old Pavis Court, for Barbara’s future and her mother’s past, for the Pavisay place in the history of England, for everybody and everything I could think of, arguing it with the greatest eloquence, and decided, after all I could say, that it would be quite wrong and impossible, and abominably unreasonable, to expect one’s brother—especially when he had a prejudice against Anglo-American marriages—to do anything of the kind. What I wanted, however, was to hear this from Barbara’s own lips, and I found her afflicted demeanour extremely trying. It wasn’t as if she did not appreciate Peter. She had the very highest estimate of him. Yet she wished and expected a person of whom she had the highest estimate to do a thing like that—at least, I had every reason to suppose so. It seemed, to my untutored eye, the defect of the system upon which Barbara was brought up.

  There had been other arrivals during the day, and various people in the neighbourhood had been asked; it was quite a large dinner-party, a freshcoloured, clear-eyed, trenchant dinner-party with direct manners and decided views, beside whom the London people looked like exotics. Among the guests was a fellow-Canadian, a gentleman with a stubbly white beard about whom we knew only that he was sent to the Dominion Parliament by the very youngest of the North-West Provinces; he sat next to the Duchess on the other side. Barbara bad been taken in by Captain Pedlington, and Graham was next on the other side of her. I had a curate, whom I found particularly intelligent and agreeable, the curate of Little Gorse. There is a great tendency to misapprehend and undervalue curates. They are not exacting and they often have delightful minds. Looking up and down the table I was convinced that I would as soon be taken in by the curate as anybody; it was quite the same to me.

  I believed I knew the exact moment at which Graham learned from Lady Barbara that her brother Peter had left that morning for Ireland. I saw him suddenly look very seriously and meditatively at the tablecloth, as if he were possessed for the first time by a full sense of all that was involved, and ask her one or two brief questions. Then it seemed to me that he grew silent and reflective; and I recognised in him a look I knew very well, of having at last a fair field for making up his mind.

  “Yes,” he thought, “so long as there was any probability that poor Peter would marry Evelyn, you felt, Graham darling, that the situation had no urgency at all—you could see that if you did propose to Barbara it would be for no reason whatever except that it would be a more or less unique and interesting sort of thing to do. But now, with the hammer actually raised, and no succour from Peter, matters wear another aspect, and you can’t help seeing a definite opportunity that ought to be heavenly, but is only heroic. …”

  “No, none at all now. But my grandfather could remember having been chased by wolves in the winter,” I told my curate.

  “How exciting for him! I have a brother in British Columbia,” my curate told me, “but I don’t suppose you ever met him. Canada is a big place—on the map anyway,” and my curate laughed.

  “Canada is a big place anywhere,” I was obliged to say gently; and he begged me not to be severe, as if anyone would willingly hurt a curate.

  Besides, I was occupied in asking myself which of those alternatives, if they lay with me, I would bring myself to choose—that Peter should agree with his mother and Providence about Evelyn, or that Graham should follow the promptings of his passion for the beautiful towards Pavis Court, as the opportunity offered itself in Barbara. After all—considering the second—Barbara was really a dear; we had long ago found that out, a warmhearted dear, with nice ideas about nearly everything. And beautifully typical, to look at, of her chances and her caste. Somehow, if she had been insignificant and rather plain like me, it would have been easier to see Graham in love with her—he liked a sketch always better than a finished picture; and Barbara was the finished picture, that left the imagination nothing at all to do. One is dazzled for a moment, but one is bored for all time.

  But then there was Pavis Court, and no question of dazzlement or boredom there. Only a long and lovely office of keeping the lamp trimmed and replenishing the vessel. Was it or wasn’t it enough—for a person like Graham? It wouldn’t have been at all enough for me; but then I, compared with Graham, was singularly unworthy to entertain such an idea. Only one thing I hoped he wouldn’t remember, and that was that he was only, as Evelyn had pointed out, a simple Canuck, whom the world would probably, when it came to hear of the matter, think an extremely lucky fellow. It was a view that was only too likely to occur to him, and except in the eyes of the world I could not see that it had any pertinence whatever.

  Again I asked myself—I almost asked the curate—whether it was quite unimaginable that Pavis Court, and Barbara’s future, and her mother’s past, and the Pavisay place in the history of England, and everybody and everything attached to it should just—go? I must say a dreadful gulf yawned with the idea, and I turned, with a kind of fascination, to the spectacle of my Roman brother plunging in.

  I do not know whether our fellow-countryman from Alberta—his name was Short, Mr. Mackenzie Short—was unaware of Lady Lippington’s ambition towards Canada, or whether he simply wished to show himself uninfluenced by it; but presently we heard him disposing of the Governor Generalship in quite another way.

  “What I ask,” he said, “when I come over here, and business calls me pretty frequently—what I ask is, what does the Royal Family cost this country? What’s the bill? There’s one sure thing, you can never know where you are with it. They increase, Royalties do, like—well, I won’t say what they increase like, but they do increase.”

  “For which we all thank God,” said the Duchess.

  “I suppose there is a feeling of that sort—I suppose there is. But what I say is—why not make them do a little more for it?”

  “My good sir, the King works like a navvy,” said the Duchess.

  “I daresay he does, ma’am—I’m not in a position to deny it. And I may say that over with us the opinion is pretty general that Edward the Seventh is no slouch. But he’s got a good many young relatives. They keep coming along, all ready to be photographed, every year; and they all, so to speak, board at home. Now what I say is why not distribute those young relatives among what Edward calls his dominions over the seas? Why not find some sphere of remunerative employment for them and at the same time give us something we can call our own?”

  “I don’t know what the Waleses would say,” observed the Duchess thoughtfully.

  “We could certainly cut and come again there,” remarked Lord Lippington pleasantly.

  “The trouble is, from our point of view,” said Graham, “that you’re always cutting and never coming again. Isn’t it, Mr. Short?”

  “My young friend opposite—if I were at home I should say ‘the honourable Member opposite,’” said Mr. Short jocularly, “has hit the nail exactly, to mix my metaphor a little, where we feel it most. There’s no sort of permanence about the immediate object, if you understand me, of our loyal affections. Suppose, now, instead of sending over a member of the aristocracy whose time is all taken up trying not to be supercilious while he’s putting in his five years, you gave us a king to keep?”

  “I shouldn’t have thought,” said Lord Lippington, “that any fellow who was lucky enough to get the job would have much difficulty in finding the necessary modesty.”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Short confidentially, “personally nobody has any sort of fault to find with them. Personally they’re all right and a bit more. What we
have no sort of use for is the flunkies some of them bring over with them to run the show. I could tell you a story ”

  “Then tell us,” said the Duchess, “perhaps it will be good for us.”

  “Well, I won’t name any names, and then perhaps I won’t get into trouble. And maybe it won’t strike you as much of a story. But not so very long ago we had a Royal visit, and the mayors of the different towns—they’re quite plain people as a rule, but they’re the best we have for the purpose—presented the usual loyal addresses. There was one special mayor of one special town that was sort of special plain, very ordinary indeed, just a working man; and when it came to be his turn—well, you can imagine what he thought about it and whether he didn’t treat himself to a new suit—why, it was the day of his life. And, just before the ceremony, what should one of these young Jack Dandies on the Staff do but suggest to this special mayor that he, being such a specially plain man, should allow somebody more, as you might say, in society, to read the address! That’s so—I happen to know about it.”

  “What an ass!” remarked Lord Lippington. “I hope we may take it for granted that a thing like that doesn’t happen often?”

  “Oh, I daresay it doesn’t!” said our friend from Alberta; “but it isn’t hardly safe, under the present system, to take anything for granted. What I say is give us a King to keep, and we’ll know how to take care of him. And it seems to me if you can spare female members of the Royal Family to be Queens of Norway and Spain, you can spare a male member to be King of Canada. What do you say, Mr. Trent?”

  “Why, I say,” said Graham, smiling, “that if monarchy isn’t too old a tree to transplant, it would be an ideal arrangement.”

  “Then I give you a toast,” said dear Lord Lippington. “The future King of Canada, coupled with the name of the nursery at Sandringham!”

  “A branch of your Royal House to be grafted on to our Canadian maple!” cried the Member from Alberta with enthusiasm, and waved his glass.