Cousin Cinderella

by Sara Jeanette Duncan

  I looked at her with amazement. “Your mother!” I cried.

  Barbara laughed. “Dear me, yes. Mother often says things one wouldn’t expect her to. You don’t know mother.”

  “I couldn’t conceive it—could you, Graham?”

  “Lady Doleford smoking? No,” said Graham.

  “Nor me?” Barbara asked him.

  “Nor you,” he told her.

  “Well, I have no old-fashioned prejudices,” she said; and as Graham to this made no response, the silence threatened to be a little awkward. Unnecessarily so, seeing that we were only considering the idea of such a thing. I filled it up by telling Barbara about what he. insisted on doing with the sham antiques.

  “There was an octagonal table of the time of Charles the First,” I said. “At least, there was the drawer of an octagonal table of the times of Charles the First. That was the only part that was genuine. He let me keep that; I’ve got it still. But it isn’t much use without the table.”

  “Do let me see it,” said Barbara; and I went into the kitchen and got it from Towse, who had been keeping receipted bills in it. Any drawer is rather a forlorn object, divorced from its surroundings, and this one was pathetically small and black and worm-eaten as well. Barbara looked at it gravely for a moment, and then went off into a peal of laughter.

  “Was this really all that was left of the original table?” she asked.

  “I suppose so. It was all that was original of the table that was left,” said Graham; at which we all laughed. It was a ridiculous object.

  “But what—but what are you going to do with it?” demanded Barbara.

  “I don’t know,” I said disconsolately; “but I did like it so, with those funny little Gothic windows running across the front of it. I had to save it.”

  “And you burned all the rest of it?” she asked Graham.

  “What else could I do?” he replied. “It was a forgery.”

  “One word was genuine,” I complained.

  “That made it worse,” said he—“much worse! Without the drawer it would have been a fraud. With the drawer it was a criminal fraud.”

  “Why didn’t you make the dealer take it back?” asked Barbara.

  “I preferred to buy my experience,” said Graham. “Besides, I can’t imagine that he would. I had paid for the thing.”

  “Then I should have got rid of it,” said Barbara practically.

  “No, you wouldn’t really—when you thought about it,” said Graham.

  “One would sell it for what it was, of course,” said Barbara, flushing a little.

  “That wouldn’t prevent its getting into circulation again.”

  “Like bad money. And, of course, that can’t be even given away,” reflected Barbara.

  “It’s a question,” said Graham, “whether one wouldn’t rather cheat a man commercially than æsthetically—he would mind it less, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, but there’s a law against passing counterfeit money!” said Barbara. “One might be put in gaol. So it would be worse. Have you burned many things?” she asked curiously.

  “Oh, no—only two or three. It’s my rage at being taken in,” he said.

  “It’s nothing of the kind; it’s his tribute to sincerity!” I protested. “He thinks sincerity’s about the biggest thing there is, and he loves sacrificing to it. Don’t you, Graham?”

  “I think it’s a pretty big tiling,” said Graham, with a half-tone of boredom, “of course. And I’m not original in that view. There’s a moral efficacy as well as a moral charm about the real thing, isn’t there?” he asked Barbara. “And one comes in for such a lot of it over here. It’s what one likes so in England.”

  Barbara said nothing, and I picked up the little black drawer.

  “Suppose we burn this too,” I said. “It’s absurd not to!” but she seized my hand.

  “No, please!” she said. “Give it to me—I’ll find a use for it. It will be like a text,” she added simply, “to remind me of sincerity. And I can keep my bird-seed in it.”

  So Barbara was not at all devoid of sentiment. I already knew that she wished to do right, and loved her birds. She had been taught to do very right indeed, and to love all animals. She had been taught everything, in the primary moral sense, that could, I think, be imparted. There was just perhaps room for the suspicion that with Barbara the primary morals were the only ones that counted; but that was immediately qualified by the assurance that the secondary ones had only to be perceived. How much she did perceive was just the problem of Barbara. She certainly, even then, perceived my brother Graham, but how far and how fully, it was difficult to make up one’s mind.

  “Oh, please do tell me,” she said presently, “what are the chances of Margot and Amherst Lippington getting that Canadian post? We are all dying to know. Do you think it is likely?”

  “Quite likely, I should imagine,” said Graham.

  “I am so glad. And if you can say any little word to help, you will, won’t you? I know you will. We’re asking everyone we know who is at all likely to have influence. Margot has simply set her heart on it, you see.”

  “I’m afraid I am the last person whose views would carry weight,” said Graham, smiling.

  “Oh, we don’t think so! We think it might do a great deal if you just mentioned to Lord Watchett that you thought they were the right sort of people,” said Barbara. “That is, of course, if you do think so. We hear they are so anxious this time to make an appointment that will be agreeable to the Canadians. They would do beautifully for it, wouldn’t they?”

  “Beautifully!” assented Graham.

  “And now that odious Lord Hemingwall is mentioned everywhere as quite in the running for it!” Barbara went on. “And he is a bachelor. How can a bachelor do the social part?”

  “Lady Lippington is certainly one of her husband’s most obvious qualifications,” said Graham.

  “Oh, that is nice of you! Margot will love to hear that. She just slaves for Amherst, you know. And he’s a dear in himself, don’t you think?”

  “A regular dear!” said Graham.

  “You see, Margot comes of a family who have always done such things,” continued Barbara, “and Amherst’s father was Governor of two or three different places. Margot would be simply lost without anything to govern. And you couldn’t have anyone more conscientious.”

  “I’m sure we couldn’t,” said Graham.

  “In little things as well as in big ones. She’s one of the busiest people, and yet do you know she is putting in two hours at Prince’s every morning improving her skating, because she saw in the Times the other day that Lady Coddis’s proficiency in the national pastime won the Canadian heart. Did it?”

  Graham laughed. “I saw that in the Times too,” he said.

  “We did think it rather nice of Lady Coddis to skate so well,” I put in. “You see she learned in Canada.”

  “Oh, I must tell Margot that!” said Barbara intelligently. “She has learned already, unfortunately; but she could easily put off improving till she got there, if that would do any good.”

  “I’m sure it would appeal,” said Graham.

  I asked him afterwards whether there was any likelihood of an opportunity for the little word Barbara requested, and found it had already been spoken, as far as it went; which could only, Graham insisted, be the shortest possible distance.

  “Watchett did ask me,” he said. “In the vaguest way, of course. I gathered he was collecting hints for Somerset upon the subject.”

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I said I thought the Lippingtons would be very popular indeed. So they would. She knows a lot about ‘Colonials’ as they call us, and would be very keen on making it a success; and he’s as nice a chap as ever stepped, and no silly initiative. He wouldn’t want to come nosing into things he didn’t understand, and things he did understand he’d show us like a gentleman. Oh, yes, I backed up Lippington! I hope we may get him. We might go further a
nd fare a lot worse.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Barbara?” I said.

  “I didn’t think it was any of dear Barbara’s business,” he replied equably.

  But everything, we soon found, was Barbara’s business that had to do with friends and relations. Friends and relations were her warp and woof of life. She lived solidly among them, entrenched on every hand. It would be impossible, I thought, to be very sorry for a person so secured, whatever might otherwise befall her or not befall her. Her own existence was filled and complicated with what they had done, were doing, were going to do; the world turned round for that. And the important thing was that everybody’s plans should be carried out. The idea of Lord Lippington’s appointment having a public significance to the Empire which ought to obscure its private one to Barbara was absurd; and so I told Graham. His little word, his little friendly word, was a matter of course to her. Everybody, in her experience, who had little friendly words to say, said them, and why not he? It was nice to think that he had said one, as it were, in spite of himself.

  We had naturally, she and I, a long talk in my room that night, when among other things it was settled that I should call her Barbara and she should call me Mary.

  “I never can bear the other thing for ever and ever,” she said. “Can you? I’ve gone on with it with you much longer than with most people. I don’t know why.”

  “When I’m affectionate I’m always shy,” I said. “I’ve been affectionate to you, and wanted to call you Barbara, ever since dinner-time. But I’m afraid if you hadn’t I never would have.”

  “Then I’m very glad I did,” said she heartily, and approached her lovely cool cheek for me to kiss. I kissed it, thinking, “Now after this, whatever happens, I can never be altogether against Barbara.”

  “It is nice, isn’t it?” said she, taking down her hair.

  “What is?”

  “Our liking each other.”

  “It’s always nice to like anybody,” I said cautiously.

  “Yes, isn’t it? I like a fearful lot of people, I’m thankful to say. And in such different ways. You and Evelyn, for example. I like you quite differently.”

  “Do tell me how,” I said, “and why? I should like particularly to know, because—well, because Evelyn is an American, you know.” I stopped, wondering whether that was entirely why.

  “What has that to do with it?” asked Barbara.

  “Woll, I don’t know that I can explain exactly, but Americans do seem to come in on rather special terms, don’t they, over here? Under a sort of most-favoured-nation clause, as they say. And one would so much rather be liked for one’s—I mean for not being an American, I suppose. It’s because we do get so mixed up with them,” I apologised.

  “Now that I know you apart,” said Barbara, “I should never mix you up again. And do you know, I sometimes think I should like Evelyn better if she were not an American.”

  “How nice of you,” I said, not meaning anything whatever.

  “And I’m sure Peter would.”

  “Would he?” I said. “But I thought ”

  “Yes, I know; everybody thinks that. But it isn’t so—at all events, not yet. And I think it’s just because she’s an American. She’s awfully nice, you know, otherwise.”

  “But I thought—in such cases—it was almost essential?” I ventured.

  “So it is. And I believe that’s why Peter dislikes it so—because it is essential,” said Barbara luminously. “Just as if somebody said to one ‘You shall wear only velvet and diamonds,’ one would at once be inclined to pick holes in velvet and diamonds. Peter does nothing but pick holes in Americans.”

  “It does seem such a pity,” I murmured, ‘when Evelyn is such a charming one!”

  “Yes, isn’t she? An awfully good sort! Oh, I’m very fond of old Evelyn. And, you know, Mary, it would be such a—such a useful marriage.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Mother’s dreadfully harassed about it. You know, mother is funny in some ways, and she has a way of thinking that the thing that’s—well, that’s usual and proper, is bound to come off. And she’s always perfectly certain that Providence will be on her side. When Evelyn turned up—we don’t know many Americans—mother thought she came straight from Providence, and was awfully grateful, and just about adopted her—took her as a gift from above. Which makes it more awkward than ever.”

  “Poor Lady Doleford!” I said.

  “The worst of it is we believe Aunt Agnes is backing Peter up,” Barbara went on. “There’s just a chance, you see, that he’ll succeed to my uncle’s title some day, and Aunt Agnes has horrid nightmares of being made a dowager of by an American. She behaves as if Peter ought to live on the possibility—I don’t know how she thinks things are to be managed in the meantime. It’s extremely unreasonable of Aunt Agnes, for there’s a very good life between.”

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Scansby, our Uncle Christopher. He’s a queer old thing and has never married, but of course he will; they always do, don’t they? He will be with us in February; you will probably meet him. I’m sure you’ll think him a character—I say he ought to be put in a book,” said Barbara, with a vast yawn. “But isn’t. Peter an old silly—about Evelyn? I wonder—if you could say any little word to him; I wish you would.”

  “I’m afraid I have kept you awake talking,” I said. “It’s too bad of me. Good-night, dear Barbara.”

  CHAPTER XV

  EVELYN was now staying at the American Ambassador’s, and from that point of flight was exploring London more thoroughly than ever. Nothing seemed to interfere with her power to do that—nothing, I mean, that one could think of as a check, or a state of suspense. We thought ourselves most happy and most lucky, in the way of social experience; but Evelyn, if happiness and luck can be so multiplied, was twice as happy and three times as lucky. Of course they can’t; but one must have some figure of speech to express the houses at which Evelyn arrived, the circles in which she managed so gaily to float. There is a shibboleth of London; it resides in an expression, in a manner, in things taken for granted as possible and things tacitly acknowledged as impossible, in the lift of an eye-lid, in the angle of salutation, in I don’t know what, but Evelyn did, and demonstrated it to perfection. It was the flower of the thing she seized, so securely yet so deftly, with one hand, as it were, holding up her skirts with the other, the thing she was born to seize. Graham and I could point it out, dwell on it, enjoy it, but adorn ourselves with it, never. Evelyn wore it, of course, with a difference, but she did wear it, and it was infinitely becoming to her.

  I think there was something of the true spirit of adventure about Evelyn; she was really one of the old Elizabethans cruising back again, with this difference, that she knew precisely where the treasure was, and her voyage was all charted. And she took possession of vast tracts, in the name of her Republic. Her own name was constantly in those chatty little paragraphs that are so prominent a feature of the London Daily, as being one of the most effectively “gowned” or most happily amused guests at some smart party at the Ritz or the Carlton, discerned as the charming right hand of some Duchess in her stall at a charitable bazaar, as being “brought” to some notable gathering by some notable lady, when she was alluded to, as if she were one of the public’s oldest acquaintances, as “that delightful American, Miss Evelyn Dicey.” She could not even take a walk in the Park, after a time, without being distinguished there.

  “That delightful American, Miss Evelyn Dicey, who was saying that she would not have believed such weather possible in England, was among the most hardy.”

  When Mrs. Willie Walker included her in a house-party to meet Royalty, I read it aloud to Graham, as a final proof of our friend’s extraordinary cleverness.

  “They just love her, don’t they?” I demanded.

  “Oh, she amuses them!” said Graham; “and presently they are going to gobble her up. It’s only decent of them to give her an innings first.”
<
br />   “Well,” I said, “she gets it all back again, we may be sure. They amuse her.”

  “Very differently,” said Graham. “They are her Chief Good. You’re not amused with your chief good. No—Evelyn gets it back, if she does get it back, in another way, I think.”

  “What way?”

  “Oh, in getting round them the way she does, in being so much cleverer, and just bagging the dear innocents, for all the things that are so valuable in them, that they don’t see themselves. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Not particularly,” I said.

  “Well, in the gentlest and most honeyed sense, I see them her prey.”

  “But you said just now they were going to gobble her up! And now you say ”

  “And so they are, in one sense. In one sense, of course, Evelyn’s their prey. But it’s a much more bodily, ingenuous sense. It’s a great deal worse to be a prey in your temperamental parts,” Graham insisted. “And it makes a more poignant spectacle.”

  “That is one of the things which I don’t know what you mean,” I said. One can’t always wait to be grammatical in talking with one’s brother. “And I think they know very well, the English, how fine they are.”

  “No,” said Graham; “they only know how fine they want to be. It’s what we love them for. And the more you see how fine you want to be the less you can possibly see how fine you are, and the more likely you are to be the quarry of those who—well, who appreciate you. Is it clear now, Marykin?”

  “No,” I said; “it isn’t. Though I’m not quite sure that I don’t see what you think you mean. It’s to Evelyn’s credit, anyhow, that she does appreciate them. And I’d just as soon you didn’t call me ‘Marykin.’”

  “Why not, Sis?”

  “Because Evelyn does,” I said.

  “Well, as long as she doesn’t want to gobble you up!” Graham laughed.

  “We are on the best of terms,” I said indignantly, and so we were. I saw far more to admire in Evelyn than Graham did, at all events, far less not to admire, and in her present position, applauded as it might seem, I saw reasons to be exceedingly sorry for her. Evelyn wasn’t a reticent person; and one could not imagine that her legion of friends had been kept quite in ignorance—given no hint at all—of the delightful arrangement that Lady Doleford, in her closet, had been putting up with Providence. Lady Doleford wasn’t reticent, either, when she could trace heavenly origin and depend on heavenly support; one could quite see her taking Evelyn into her arms and indicating, by all the signs of the zodiac, the direction in which hope and promise and fulfilment lay—could imagine her letting dear Evelyn, as far as was consistent with delicacy, into her wonderful scheme before Peter had even sailed. Evelyn would, no doubt, be able to give some sign that she understood, would even find some way of conveying that, barring a hump back or a cloven foot she hadn’t been told about, she assented. One could see it end in an embrace which poor Lady Doleford would try to make as little contingent as she could. Barbara would be even less discreet—Barbara would be one exclamation mark of joy and hope. And with all this one had to count Evelyn’s own unblinking expectation, so clear and so complete that non-fulfilment seemed almost impossible to it. It was the historic view, backed by numberless precedents; it was the personal view, based on a justified self-confidence; it was, above all, the practical view, with every circumstance to endorse it. It seemed an anomalous and a distressing thing that one might find oneself before the eyes of a world all ready to applaud commercial sagacity, the victim of one’s business instinct; and that fate, as things happened and happened and didn’t happen, seemed really to threaten Evelyn. It was excellent to see her spirits, under the shadow of it, so unflaggingly advertised in the London Daily.