Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  At last she opened the telegram and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

  “What in the world does it mean?” she cried, and gave it to Miss Skeat, who held it close to the firelight.

  The message was from Lord Fitzdoggin, Her British Majesty’s Ambassador at St. Petersburg, and was an informal statement to the effect that his Excellency was happy to communicate to the Countess Margaret the intelligence that, by the untiring efforts and great skill of a personal friend, the full payment of her jointure was now secured to her in perpetuity. It stated, moreover, that she would shortly receive official information of the fact through the usual channels.

  Miss Skeat beamed with pleasure; for though she had been willing to make any sacrifice for Margaret, it would not have been an agreeable thing to be so very poor again.

  “I never met Lord Fitzdoggin,” said Margaret, “and I do not understand in the least. Why should he, of all people, inform me of this, if it is really true?”

  “The Duke must have written to him,” said Miss Skeat, still beaming, and reading the message over again.

  Margaret paused a moment in thought, then lighting the gas herself, she wrote a note and despatched Vladimir in hot haste.

  “I have asked Mr. Bellingham to dine,” she said, in answer to Miss Skeat’s inquiring look. “He will go to the party with me afterwards, if he is free.”

  It chanced that Mr. Bellingham was in his rooms when Margaret’s note came, and he immediately threw over an engagement he had previously made, and sent word he would be at the Countess’s disposal. Punctual to the minute he appeared. Margaret showed him the telegram.

  “What does this mean, Mr. Bellingham?” she asked, smiling, but scrutinising his face closely.

  “My dear Countess,” cried the old gentleman, delighted beyond measure at the result of his policy, and corruscating with smiles and twinkles, “my dear Countess, allow me to congratulate you.”

  “But who is the ‘personal friend’ mentioned? Is it the Duke? He is in the far West at this moment.”

  “No,” answered Mr. Bellingham, “it is not the Duke. I am inclined to think it is a manifestation of some great cosmic force, working silently for your welfare. The lovely spirits,” continued the old gentleman, looking up from under his brows, and gesticulating as though he would call down the mystic presence he invoked— “the lovely spirits that guard you would be loth to allow anything so fair to suffer annoyance from the rude world. You are well taken care of, Countess, believe me.”

  Margaret smiled at Uncle Horace’s way of getting out of the difficulty, for she suspected him of knowing more than he would acknowledge. But all she could extract from him was that he knew Lord Fitzdoggin slightly, and that he believed the telegram to be perfectly genuine. He had played his part in the matter, and rubbed his hands as though washing them of any further responsibility. Indeed he had nothing to tell, save that he had advised Claudius to get an introduction from the Duke. He well knew that the letters he had given Claudius had been the real means of his success; but as Margaret only asked about the telegram, he was perfectly safe in denying any knowledge of it. Not that such a consideration would have prevented his meeting her question with a little fib, just to keep the secret.

  “Will you not go to this dance with me this evening?” asked Margaret after dinner, as they sat round the fireplace.

  “What ball is that?” inquired Mr. Bellingham.

  “I hardly know what it is. It is a party at the Van Sueindell’s and there is ‘dancing’ on the card. Please go with me; I should have to go alone.”

  “I detest the pomp and circumstance of pleasure,” said Uncle Horace, “the Persian appurtenances, as my favourite poet calls them; but I cannot resist so charming an invitation. It will give me the greatest pleasure. I will send word to put off another engagement.”

  “Do you really not mind at all?”

  “Not a bit of it. Only three or four old fogies at the club. Est mihi nonum superantis annum plenus Albani cadus,” continued Mr. Bellingham, who never quoted Horace once without quoting him again in the next five minutes. “I had sent a couple of bottles of my grandfather’s madeira to the club, 1796, but those old boys will enjoy it without me. They would talk me to death if I went.”

  “It is too bad,” said Margaret, “you must go to the club. I would not let you break an engagement on my account.”

  “No, no. Permit me to do a good deed without having to bear the infernal consequences in this life, at all events. The chatter of those people is like the diabolical screaming of the peacock on the terrace of the Emir’s chief wife, made memorable by Thackeray the prophet.” He paused a moment, and stroked his snowy pointed beard. “Forgive my strong language,” he added; “really, they are grand adjectives those, ‘diabolical’ and ‘infernal.’ They call up the whole of Dante to my mind.” Margaret laughed.

  “Are you fond of Dante?” asked she.

  “Very. I sometimes buy a cheap copy and substitute the names of my pet enemies all through the Inferno wherever they will suit the foot. In that way I get all the satisfaction the author got by putting his friends in hell, without the labour of writing, or the ability to compose, the poem.” The Countess laughed again.

  “Do you ever do the same thing with the Paradiso?”

  “No,” answered Uncle Horace, with a smile. “Purgatory belonged to an age when people were capable of being made better by suffering, and as for paradise, my heaven admits none but the fair sex. They are all beautiful, and many of them are young.”

  “Will you admit me, Mr. Bellingham?”

  “St. Margaret has forestalled me,” said he gallantly, “for she has a paradise of her own, it seems, to which she has admitted me.”

  And so they passed the evening pleasantly until the hour warned them that it was time to go to the great Van Sueindell house. That mansion, like all private houses in America, and the majority of modern dwellings in other parts of the world, is built in that depraved style of architecture which makes this age pre-eminent in the ugliness of brick and stone. There is no possibility of criticism for such monstrosity, as there also seems to be no immediate prospect of reform. Time, the iron-fisted Nihilist, will knock them all down some day and bid mankind begin anew. Meanwhile let us ignore what we cannot improve. Night, the all-merciful, sometimes hides these excrescences from our sight, and sometimes the moon, Nature’s bravest liar, paints and moulds them into a fugitive harmony. But in the broad day let us fix our eyes modestly on the pavement beneath us, or turn them boldly to the sky, for if we look to the right or the left we must see that which sickens the sense of sight.

  On the present occasion, however, nothing was to be seen of the house, for the long striped canvas tent, stretching from the door to the carriage, and lined with plants and servants, hid everything else from view. There is probably no city in the world where the business of “entertaining” is so thoroughly done as in New York. There are many places where it is more agreeable to be “entertained;” many where it is done on a larger scale, for there is nothing in America so imposing as the receptions at Embassies and other great houses in England and abroad. To bring the matter into business form, since it is a matter of business, let us say that nowhere do guests cost so much by the cubic foot as in New York. Abroad, owing to the peculiar conditions of court-life, many people are obliged to open their houses at stated intervals. In America no one is under this necessity. If people begin to “entertain” they do it because they have money, or because they have something to gain by it, and they do it with an absolute regardlessness of cost which is enough to startle the sober foreigner.

  It may be in bad taste, but if we are to define what is good taste in these days, and abide by it, we shall be terribly restricted. As an exhibition of power, this enormous expenditure is imposing in the extreme; though the imposing element, being strictly confined to the display of wealth, can never produce the impressions of durability, grandeur, and military pomp so dear to every European. Hence
the Englishman turns up his nose at the gilded shows of American society, and the American sniffs when he finds that the door-scraper of some great London house is only silverplated instead of being solid, and that the carpets are at least two years old. They regard things from opposite points of view, and need never expect to agree.

  Margaret, however, was not so new to American life, seeing she was American born, as to bestow a thought or a glance on the appointments of Mr. and Mrs. Van Sueindell’s establishment; and as for Mr. Bellingham, he had never cared much for what he called the pomp and circumstance of pleasure, for he carried pleasure with him in his brilliant conversation and his ready tact. All places were more or less alike to Mr. Bellingham. At the present moment, however, he was thinking principally of his fair charge, and was wondering inwardly what time he would get home, for he rose early and was fond of a nap in the late evening. He therefore gave Margaret his arm, and kept a lookout for some amusing man to introduce to her. He had really enjoyed his dinner and the pleasant chat afterwards, but the prospect of piloting this magnificent beauty about till morning, or till she should take it into her head to go home, was exhausting. Besides, he went little into society of this kind, and was not over-familiar with the faces he saw.

  He need not have been disturbed, however, for they had not been many minutes in the rooms before a score of men had applied for the “pleasure of a turn.” But still she held Mr. Bellingham’s arm, obdurately refusing to dance. As Barker came up a moment later, willing, perhaps, to show his triumph to the rejected suitors, Margaret thanked Mr. Bellingham, and offered to take him home if he would stay until one o’clock; then she glided away, not to dance but to sit in a quieter room, near the door of which couples would hover for a quarter of an hour at a time waiting to seize the next pair of vacant seats. Mr. Bellingham moved away, amused by the music and the crowd and the fair young faces, until he found a seat in a corner, shaded from the flare of light by an open door close by, and there, in five minutes, he was fast asleep in the midst of the gaiety and noise and heat — unnoticed, a gray old man amid so much youth.

  But Barker knew the house better than the most of the guests, and passing through the little room for which every one seemed fighting, he drew aside a heavy curtain and showed a small boudoir beyond, lighted with a solitary branch of candles, and occupied by a solitary couple. Barker had hoped to find this sanctum empty, and as he pushed two chairs together he eyed the other pair savagely.

  “What a charming little room,” said Margaret, sinking into the soft chair and glancing at the walls and ceiling, which were elaborately adorned in the Japanese fashion. The chairs also were framed of bamboo, and the table was of an unusual shape. It was the “Japanese parlour,” as Mrs. Van Sueindell would have called it. Every great house in New York has a Japanese or a Chinese room. The entire contents of the apartment having been brought direct from Yokohama, the effect was harmonious, and Margaret’s artistic sense was pleased.

  Parlour or parlor, American for “sitting-room.”

  “Is it not?” said Barker, glad to have brought her to a place she liked. “I thought you would like it, and I hoped,” lowering his voice, “that we should find it empty. Only people who come here a great deal know about it.”

  “Then you come here often?” asked Margaret, to say something. She was glad to be out of the din, for though she had anticipated some pleasure from the party, she discovered too late that she had made a mistake, and would rather be at home. She had so much to think of, since receiving that telegram; and so, forgetting Barker and everything else, she followed her own train of thought. Barker talked on, and Margaret seemed to be listening — but it was not the music, muffled through the heavy curtains, nor the small voice of Mr. Barker that she heard. It was the washing of the sea and the creaking of cordage that were in her ears — the rush of the ship that was to bring him back — that was perhaps bringing him back already. When would he come? How soon? If it could only be to-morrow, she would so like to — what in the world is Mr. Barker saying so earnestly? Really, she ought to listen. It was very rude. “Conscious of my many defects of character—” Oh yes, he was always talking about his defects; what next? “ — conscious of my many defects of character,” Mr. Barker was saying, in an even, determined voice, “and feeling deeply how far behind you I am in those cultivated pursuits you most enjoy, I would nevertheless scorn to enlarge upon my advantages, the more so as I believe you are acquainted with my circumstances.”

  Good gracious! thought Margaret, suddenly recovering the acutest use of her hearing, what is the man going to say? And she looked fixedly at him with an expression of some astonishment.

  “Considering, as I was saying,” he continued steadily, “those advantages upon which I will not enlarge, may I ask you to listen to what I am going to say?”

  Margaret, having lost the first part of Barker’s speech completely, in her fit of abstraction, had some vague idea that he was asking her advice about marrying some other woman.

  “Certainly,” she said indifferently; “pray go on.” At the moment of attack, however, Barker’s heart failed him for an instant. He thought he would make one more attempt to ascertain what position Claudius held towards Margaret.

  “Of course,” he said, smiling and looking down, “we all knew about Dr. Claudius on board the Streak.”

  “What did you know about him?” asked Margaret calmly, but her face flushed for an instant. That might have happened even if she had not cared for Claudius; she was so proud that the idea of being thought to care might well bring the colour to her cheek. Barker hardly noticed the blush, for he was getting into very deep water, and was on the point of losing his head.

  “That he proposed to you, and you refused him,” he said, still smiling.

  “Take care, sir,” she said quickly, “when Dr. Claudius comes back he—” Barker interrupted her with a laugh.

  “Claudius coming back?” he answered, “ha! ha! good indeed!”

  He looked at Margaret. She was very quiet, and she was naturally so dark that, in the shadow of the fan she held carelessly against the light, he could not see how pale she turned. She was intensely angry, and her anger took the form of a preternatural calm of manner, by no means indicative of indifferent reflection. She was simply unable to speak for the moment. Barker, however, whose reason was in abeyance for the moment, merely saw that she did not answer; and, taking her silence for consent to his slighting mention of Claudius, he at once proceeded with his main proposition. At this juncture the other couple slowly left the room, having arranged their own affairs to their satisfaction.

  “That being the case,” he said, “and now that I am assured that I have no rivals to dread, will you permit me to offer you my heart and my hand? Countess Margaret, will you marry me, and make me the happiest of men? Oh, do not be silent, do not look as if you did not hear! I have loved you since I first saw you — will you, will you marry me?” Here Mr. Barker, who was really as much in love as his nature allowed him to be, moved to the very edge of his chair and tried to take her hand.

  “Margaret!” he said, as he touched her fingers.

  At the touch she recovered her self-possession, too long lost for such a case. She had tried to control her anger, had tried to remember whether by any word she could have encouraged him to so much boldness. Now she rose to all her haughty height, and though she tried hard to control herself, there was scorn in her voice.

  “Mr. Barker,” she said, dropping her hands before her and standing straight as a statue, “you have made a mistake, and if through any carelessness I have led you into this error I am sorry for it. I cannot listen to you, I cannot marry you. As for Dr. Claudius, I will not permit you to use any slighting words about him. I hold in my possession documents that could prove his identity as well as any he can obtain in Germany. But I need not produce them, for I am sure it will be enough for you to know that I am engaged to be married to him — I am engaged to be married to Dr. Claudius,” she repeated
very distinctly in her deep musical tones; and before Barker could recover himself, she had passed from the room into the lights and the sound of music beyond.

  What do you think, reader? Was it not a brave and noble action of hers to vindicate Claudius by taking upon herself the whole responsibility of his love rather than by going home and sending Mr. Barker documentary evidence of the Doctor’s personality? Claudius had never asked her to marry him, the very word had never been mentioned. But he had told her he loved her and she had trusted him.

  Start not at the infinity of social crime that such a doubt defines. It is there. It is one thing for a woman to love a man at arm’s length conditionally; it is another for her to take him to her heart and trust him. Does every millionaire who makes love to a penniless widow mean to marry her? for Margaret was poor on that Tuesday in Newport. Or reverse the case; if Claudius were an adventurer, as Barker hinted, what were the consequences she assumed in declaring herself engaged to marry him?

  In spite of her excitement, Margaret was far too much a woman of the world to create a sensation by walking through the rooms alone. In a moment or two she saw a man she knew, and calling him to her by a look, took his arm. She chatted pleasantly to this young fellow, as proud as need be of being selected to conduct the beauty whither she would, and after some searching she discovered Mr. Bellingham, still asleep behind the swinging door.

  “Thanks,” she said to her escort. “I have promised to take Mr. Bellingham home.” And she dropped the young man’s arm with a nod and a smile.

  “But he is asleep,” objected the gallant.

  “I will wake him,” she answered. And laying her hand on Mr. Bellingham’s, she leaned down and spoke his name. Instantly he awoke, as fresh as from a night’s rest, for he had the Napoleonic faculty for catching naps.

  “Winter awaking to greet the spring,” he said without the slightest hesitation, as though he had prepared the little speech in his sleep. “Forgive me,” he said, “it is a habit of mine learned long ago.” He presented his arm and asked her what was her pleasure.