by Ouida
Fanshawe, who has come out of his house, which is near to the French Embassy, fixes his eyeglass on the retreating figure of the unconscious Annie. He is of a supernatural quickness of observation.
Bertram, to his vexation, feels extreme embarrassment. He knows he ought to repeat to Fanshawe the confession just made to Marlow, but he cannot; it sticks in his throat like a fish bone. The eyes of the potent editor are malicious and inexorable.
“I saw you from my bedroom window sitting with that young daughter of the sovereign people,” remarks Fanshawe. “I wished for a Kodak. The Torch should have had an illustrated Easter number.”
“You are fifty minutes late,” says Bertram, irritably.
“My dressing-gown and chocolate pot are dear to me.”
“You always turn night into day.”
“Night is day in London, as coal and electricity are its summer. Well, sha’n’t we take a hansom to Folliott’s?”
“Wait a moment, Fanshawe. Sit down here.”
Fanshawe complies reluctantly. “Why waste time? Let’s go and settle your inheritance.”
“Please go instead of me and say that I refuse. It is very simple.”
“It is simple indeed! So was the remark of ‘Tom’s a’ cold’; and just about as reasonable. My dear Bertram! La nuit forte conseil, and yet you still wish to refuse?”
“Yes, I refuse; and—”
He pauses, then swallows the fish bone desperately.
“And — I am going to marry yonder daughter of the people!”
“Ah! Rumour for once is correct, then?” says the gentleman, to whom the amplification and publication of Rumour brings in £40,000 per annum.
“Yes, I marry the young woman you saw when you wished for a Kodak.”
For once Fanshawe has not a syllable to say: he is dumb.
“You look astonished,” remarks Bertram. “Yet with your principles—”
“Principles be damned!” says Fanshawe. “They must go to the wall when they trample on common sense.”
“But surely for you no class divisions exist?” says Bertram, with some maliciousness. “Therefore of course you will congratulate me as warmly as if my future wife were that abominable thing a duke’s daughter.”
“There ought to be no racehorses, but while there are we put our money on them,” replied Fanshawe. “We must take the world as it is, or cut our throats in it. You are cutting yours with a bowie knife. I will return to my chocolate pot.”
At that instant Mrs. Brown comes down the road out of breath. Annie is out of sight.
“I am come after my daughter, Mr. Bertram, if you please. Soon as I told her ye was here I was that mad with myself, for it flashed across me she’d come and—”
“And why not, madam?” says Fanshawe. “It is, it seems, all en tout bien, tout honneur.”
“I don’t understand gibberish, sir, but girls should be circumspec.”
Fanshawe gazes at her through his eyeglass.
“Your mother - in - law to be?” he murmurs.
Mrs. Brown, not hearing, goes on in a rather shrill tone:— “I don’t mean my daughter to walk along with you, sir, till she’s a right to take your arm afore everybody.”
Bertram shudders.
Fanshawe lifts his hat to Mrs. Brown approvingly.
“These sentiments, madam, do you the highest honour. The quality, as you would call them, are not so severe. Their young ladies sit out on the staircases, and flirt in corners with their young men, and meet them in these sylvan groves with a groom as chaperon, without any certainty that matrimony will ever follow. But then the demi-vierge is probably confined to the Upper Ten.”
“I don’t know about the ways o’ the gentry, sir,” says Mrs. Brown; “in our street we’re respectable though we are back o’ Portman Square.”
“Madam! Juvenal himself never implied anything so crushing! Bertram, I ask again, is this good lady about to be your mother-in-law?”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Well, dear madam, it is but right that, standing in this future relation to my friend, you should know this fact: Mr. Bertram has had a very large property left him.”
“Lawk a mussy, sir!”
“But he is inclined to refuse it on account of his social principles, with which, no doubt, you are acquainted. Now, dear madam, tell us freely your opinion as a person of sound common sense, and one who is about to be closely allied to him. Should he refuse it, or should he accept it?”
“Dearie, dearie, sir! How can anybody hev left good money to such a gawk!”
Fanshawe laughs aloud: “When Truth comes out of her well she is seldom polite! Never mind, Mrs. Brown, you can make your peace with your son-in-law some other time. Only tell us now, for we are going to the lawyers on this momentous errand. Ought he to accept or to refuse?”
Annie’s mother is flattered at the deference to her opinion.
“Well, sir, it ain’t for the like o’ me to judge for the likes o’ you. But, if ye want my plain opinion, it is this ‘un: if he take the proputty he’ll look silly. But if he don’t take it he’ll be silly; and he’ll be sorry all his life.”
“Mrs. Brown,” says Bertram, “your daughter would not say so.”
“Likely not, sir. She’s a slim snippet of a girl as haven’t felt any o’ the weight o’ livin’ yet. When she hev she’ll know a full money-box is the softest pillar one can lay a tired head on any night.”
“Mrs. Brown, the classic form of Socrates dwindles before yours! I place you immediately upon the staff of the Torch.” Mrs. Brown is puzzled. “I don’t hold with torches, sir. Sam’s link-boy, last week in the great fog, flourishing one about like a fool, set fire to all the straw — such a piece o’ work — and Sam warn’t hinsured.”
“I wince under the moral lesson which you convey by your apologue to my journal, but—”
“How much longer are you going to waste in chaffing this woman?” says Bertram, very angrily. “There’s an empty hansom passing. Take it.”
“Take it yourself. Mrs. Brown, your lips drop pearls of wisdom. Yet you are servile, Mrs. Brown. Are we not all equal before the great Bona Dea of Nature?”
“Equal, sir?” repeats Mrs. Brown, with fine scorn. “That’s his rot; yet when he come to our place one day, and we was eatin’ good Dutch cheese and ‘errings, he well-nigh fainted at the stink on ’em!”
Fanshawe laughs delightedly. “He live on peaches and pinehapples, he do,” she continued, with a snort; “and he’s spoilt a good seasonable chance o’ settlin’ herself as my daughter had with the young man round the corner—”
“Shut up that jaw, Fanshawe!” cries Bertram, falling into low language in his wrath. “Will you go to Folliott and Hake’s or not?” asks his friend.
“I will go to Satan’s self to stop you chaffing this woman. Look how those people are laughing.”
Bertram calls the passing hansom and gets into it; Fanshawe follows him, and waves his hand to Mrs. Brown.
“You must come and dine with me at Richmond, Mrs. Socrates!”
Cicely and her cousin are sitting under a tree near the end of the Ladies’ Mile with some men standing before them and talking to them, when Marlow again approaches, diffident, but in ill-concealed triumph.
“Oh, Lady Jane,” he says eagerly, not venturing to address Cicely directly, “I’ve come back ‘cos I’ve such a bit of news; am authorised to tell it; may put it in the Morning Post to-morrow. I’ve seen ‘the penny bunch of violets,’ and by all that’s awful, she’s a washerwoman’s daughter, and Bertram’s going to marry her. It’s Annieism you see, not Altruism.”
Much pleased with his own wit and humour he laughs gleefully, whilst his eyes are trying to read Cicely’s face; it gives no sign of any feeling or of having even heard what he has said.
“What nonsense you talk, Lord Marlow!” says Lady Jane. “Bertram may be silly, but he is not so utterly out of his mind as that.”
“Isn’t he? Why, he’s just told m
e the news himself! The young woman was with him down yonder. She sells flowers, and had got two skips full of primroses; and she’s not a good feature in her face. I’ll offer to be best man; shall I send ’em a set of saucepans or a sewing-machine?”
Cicely casts a look of supreme contempt upon him.
“The perfection to which you bring your jokes must have cost you a long apprenticeship on Bank Holidays, Lord Marlow.”
Marlow’s mirth is a little subdued.
“You can’t be speaking seriously,” says one of the men present. “Bertram is not quite such an ass as that.”
“I am, though,” replies Marlow, sulkily. “I’ve seen the girl, and Bertram’s just told me to tell everybody.”
“What is her name?”
“She’s Annie Brown; we heard that yesterday. Mother takes in washing. Oh, Lord, it’ll kill me, the fun of it.”
Doubled up with silent laughter he leans upon his cane and furtively watches Cicely’s face.
“Why should you be surprised that Mr. Bertram puts his theories into practice?” she says, coldly. “It is only like Count Tolstoi’s ploughing.”
“Goodness, Cicely!” says Lady Jane, with much irritation. “You surely can’t defend such an insanity as this? It is very much worse than any plough. I thought his manner very odd yesterday about those violets; for he is not, you know, a man à bonnes fortunes.”
“You would approve him more if he were!”
“Well, they are less serious,” answers Lady Jane. “You can get rid of them; but an Annie Brown when you have once married her—”
“At all events,” says Cicely, “whatever it may be, it is certainly only the business of those concerned in it, and none of ours. Why are you not already on your way to the newspaper offices, Lord Marlow? I believe they give a guinea for first news.”
“Bertram may be so happy as to interest you, Miss Seymour,” says Marlow, sullenly, “but he’s an unknown quantity to the world in general. Nobody’d give twopence for any news of him.”
“Certainly he is not chronicled as the winner at pigeon shooting and polo matches, which is your distinction, Lord Marlow, and I believe your only one.”
“Why will you be so unkind to Marlow?” asks Lady Jane, as, having shaken off their admirers, they walk back alone.
“I grant,” she continues, as poor Marlow, mortified, falls behind, “that he is not an extraordinarily brilliant person; he will not head the Cabinet or be President of the Royal Society, but his temper is kind and his character blameless.”
“One would think you were recommending a groom! You may safely add that his hand is light and his seat is sure, for riding is his solitary accomplishment!”
“My dear child, how remarkably severe you are! Will you tell me what use to Wilfrid Bertram are the incontestable talents with which he was born? What does he do with them? Write in such a manner that if he were a native of any other country than England he would have been lodged in prison years ago.”
Cicely Seymour is silent.
She has read some numbers of the Age to Comey and she cannot honestly say that she approves of its subversive tendencies. She looks straight before her with a heightened colour, and the rose-leaves of her lips are pressed together in irritation.
“I suppose you will offer to be bridesmaid to Miss Annie Brown,” says Lady Jane, irritably.
“Why not?” says Cicely, very coldly. “One attends many weddings brought about by more ignoble motives.”
“You will not see me at the ceremony,” replies Lady Jane, more and more incensed.
“I know I shall not, nor any of his relatives. But I do not admire the class prejudice which will keep you all away.”
And she leans over the rail of the Ride and pats the mane of a child’s pony.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Brown, resting her empty basket and her rheumatic limbs for a few minutes on a bench, ponders vainly on the name Mr. Fanshawe gave her. “Mrs Sockatees,” she repeats to herself. “He can’t think as I’m one to marry agen at my time o’ life. If it hadn’t bin for the children there were a tallow chandler, a warm man too, he was, who would hev bin ready as ready —— —”
She muses pensively a moment on the charms of the lost tallow chandler who had been sacrificed to her maternal scruples, whilst Cicely Seymour and Lady Jane are walking towards her.
“Let’s sit down here a moment, Cicely,” says Lady Jane. “The children will be back again directly.”
Mrs. Brown rises and curtsies, taking up her basket.
“Don’t get up, my good woman, there’s room enough.”
“Your ‘umble servant, ma’am,” says Mrs. Brown, standing erect, her empty basket held before her like a shield of Boadicea; she does not know them by name, but they are possible clients for the wash-tub.
“Why should you stand?” says Cicely. “These seats are free to all.”
“Thanks, miss, but I know my duty.” Then she adds, insinuatingly, “If you should be wanting a laundress, ma’am, you’d be doin’ a charity to remember me — Eliza Brown, o’ 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square; no acids used, miss, and no machine-work.”
Cicely looks at her, and with some hesitation asks:
“Are you — are you — the mother of a young person called Annie Brown? She has just gone past here with some primroses.”
“Yes, miss, I be.”
“Of Mr. Bertram’s heroine!” adds Lady Jane, with a laugh.
“Please ‘m, don’t call her names, ma’am,” says Annie’s mother, quickly. “She’s a good girl, though I say it as shouldn’t say it, and there’s nought to laugh at, unless it be the gentleman’s rubbish.”
“You don’t seem to be grateful for the compliment he pays to your family,” says Lady Jane, much amused.
“Compliment is it, my lady? The gentleman’s a crank, that’s what he is; he won’t never marry her, and there’s a good young man round the corner as is left out in the cold. He’s in the greengrocery line, and hev got a good bit o’ money put by, and the match ‘ud be suitable in every way, for my daughter’s a good judge o’ green stuff.”
“Mrs. Brown,” says Cicely, “I should like to have the pleasure of knowing your daughter. Will you bring her to see me? I am staying with Mr. Bertram’s aunt, Lady Southwold.”
Mrs. Brown stares hard.
“You do my girl a great honour, miss, but her head’s turned too crazy as ’tis. Poor folks, miss, ain’t got no place with rich ‘uns.”
“That is a rather narrow feeling, Mrs. Brown,” says Cicely;— “and surely your daughter ought to begin to know Mr. Bertram’s friends and relatives?”
“She won’t never be nought to Mr. Bertram, miss,” replies Mrs. Brown, very confidently. “’Tis a pack of stuff their thinkin’ on it. Lord, my lady, if you only see his shirts, that fine as cobwebs is coarse to em!
Lady Jane is much diverted. “She evidently does not believe in the seriousness of Bertram’s intentions, Cicely.”
Mrs. Brown tucks her basket under her arm.
“You’ll excuse me, my ladies, if I don’t stay to prate. Us poor folks ‘even’t got time to lose in gossip; and if you can give me work, ‘m, I’ll be truly thankful to you, ma’am — Eliza Brown, 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square. Your servant, ladies.”
With that she bobs a curtsey and departs.
“A nice honest woman,” says Cicely.
Lady Jane laughs.
“She doesn’t appreciate Bertram or his shirts. What right has he, with his principles, to wear lawn shirts? He ought to wear hemp.”
Cicely traces patterns on the gravel with her sunshade.
“I should like to see the girl.”
“Why? You may be sure she is a little horror.”
“I am sure she is a very good girl,” says Cicely. “I am sure she is a very good girl.
A person must be good that lives amongst flowers.”
“Florists are not all saints,” replies Lady Jane, out of patienc
e;— “and it does not seem an exalted mission to make button-holes for mashers. There is not even the excuse of good looks for Bertram’s aberration. She is quite a plain little thing, Marlow says.”
“Let us take another turn,” says Cicely. “We shall see the children again.”
Bertram returns from his visit to Folliott and Hake at two o’clock that day. He intended going down into the country to a friend’s house — a friend who buys Whistlers, adores Mallarmé and Verlaine, writes studies on the pointillistes, and has published a volume of five hundred pages on Strindberg — but he feels indisposed for even that sympathetic society. He sends a telegram to excuse himself, and opens his own door with his latch-key.
His rooms are en suite, one out of another, and from the door-mat he can see through all four of them, between the curtains of Eastern stuffs which he had brought home years before from Tiflis. He cannot believe in the sight which meets his eyes in the third room, which is his study.
There is in that room a large Florentine cabinet of tortoiseshell and brass-work; the key of the drawers thereof is on his watch-chain; yet he perceives that the drawers are all open, their contents are strewn about, and stooping down over them is Critchett.
Critchett’s back is unmistakable; it has as much character An Altruist in it as the profile of Cæsar or Napoleon.
Bertram walks noiselessly over the thick carpets, and touches him on the shoulder.
“You! — a common thief!”
Critchett stumbles to his feet, pulls himself erect rather nervously, and faces his employer. In his right hand is a pearl necklace.
“I beg pardon, sir,” he murmurs. “I thought you had gone to Mr. Domville’s. I was coming down with the valise.”
Bertram takes the pearls out of his grasp; he has grown much paler than his nefarious valet. He is cut to the heart.
“A common thief — you!” he repeats. The Et tu Brute had not more pathetic reproval in it.
Critchett in the interval has recovered his self-possession, and what more vulgar persons would call his cheek.
“Excuse me, sir. There aren’t such a thing as theft. What is called theft is only an over-violent readjustment of unfairly divided values. I’ve read it in the Age to Come.”