by Grant Allen
He poured her out another thimbleful, and handed it across with conspicuous gallantry.
‘Toss that off, my dear,’ he said, smiling his ugly smile. ‘That’ll do you good. Nothing on earth so fine for the blue devils. I shall keep you at home for another twelvemonth, till you’ve got over this bout. Quiet does it. By the end of that time you’ll be eating your head off to get to work again. You’ll be pawing the ground and longing for action. You ain’t one of those that like to lie still and hide your light under a bushel. That’s where it is; you must be up and doing, and exercising your talents. You’ll have forgotten all about the mother and the babby long before then, and you’ll be fresh for work, like a farmer’s mare after a jolly good feed of bruised oats. You see if you don’t, Bess.’
CHAPTER XX.
A DUCHESS ON THE HORIZON.
Time passed on — summer and winter, summer and winter, and summer again; but Douglas Harrison heard no more of his lost Linda. She had vanished into space, like an unknown comet, and that was the end of her. Over and over again he made inquiries from people who knew New York well; but what’s the use of asking aristocratic New York about a stray young woman from Europe, of the lower middle class, or hardly that? Fifth Avenue turned up its eminently respectable nose, and replied with scorn (through the same medium) that it didn’t associate with the sisters of mechanics. For frank snobbery, commend me to your American. We clothe ours in Europe with a decent veil of social pretence, but the descendant of the Puritans parades his own variety, like our first parents in Paradise, naked and not ashamed. So Douglas Harrison nursed his regret in secret, and wondered much that Linda herself, after this long lapse of time, should never even have written a line to him.
He and Basil continued still in the self-same lodgings. The butler and his wife made them tolerably comfortable, as chambers go; and Basil Maclaine, for his part, was by no means inclined to quarrel with the constitution of the universe. He had forgotten Linda and the wrong done her in the manifold delights of the Best Society. He had youth, health, strength, and vigour on his side, as well as the joyous, unthinking selfishness that comes of their union; and what with rowing on the river, tennis at the club, an occasional mount in the shires, and dances and flirtations in the West End, the young man about town had but little time to remember or regret his late lodging-house landlady. Moreover, his father’s death had left him independent, and enabled him to count upon a secure livelihood apart from the office.
But things had not gone so well, meanwhile, with Douglas Harrison. Few briefs dropped in, and those few unimportant. Whatever he tried somehow seemed to fail. ‘If I were to turn baker,’ he said despondently one day, ‘I really believe bread would go out of fashion.’ Basil Maclaine was of opinion that Harrison didn’t push himself in Society enough. He wanted Go; and Go is, above all things, indispensable to a barrister. If only he would make up to the solicitors, now, something might be done. But then Harrison had always so just a sense of his own deficiencies!
Nor had Hubert and Sabine made much progress, for their part, during those two or three years in their matrimonial projects. Maclaine declared, indeed, that Miss Venables was growing into a confirmed old maid — she’d devoted herself entirely to the infantile ailments of that precious baby. ‘The girl’s a mere head nurse,’ he said, ‘for all Society ever sees of her.’ Not that Sabine was in love with the baby even now for his own sake — she could never forget how Arthur had supplanted and dethroned her — but she had promised Woodbine on her death-bed to be a mother to her boy; and so far as a certain dry mechanical routine of maternity went she kept her promise well and faithfully. No baby on this earth was ever better cared for than little Arthur Venables. The faculty debated on his tiniest finger-ache, and a household held its breath when he refused his bottle. Sabine never pretended, indeed, to love him as a sister; but she watched over him like a mother in Woodbine’s place through all the endless dangers and trials of speechless babyhood.
This vicarious maternity told upon Sabine. Her care for Woodbine’s child turned her before her time from a gay coquette into something very like a staid and sober matron. She became a keen critic of the various brands of condensed milk, and an authority on the rival merits of Mellin’s and Mortimer’s Food for Infants. She had views of her own upon the treatment of thrush, and held strong opinions as to the proper period for short-coating a baby. In fact, she was a mother among mothers in everything but the name; and Arthur was almost like her own child — except in the one small particular that she never loved him.
It was some two years or more after Woodbine’s death that Basil Maclaine dropped into the club one afternoon, big with the latest gossip of fashionable Society.
‘Heard the news about Powysland?’ he asked of Charlie Simmons, whom he ran up against in the billiard-room. ‘Sur-prising, isn’t it?’
‘Why, I thought he was in America,’ Charlie Simmons answered, with the natural anxiety of his kind to be thoroughly informed as to the movements of the Truly Great. ‘Lady Southwater told me so.’
‘Well, so he is,’ Basil responded. ‘That’s just where it is, don’t you see? He’s been looking about him any time this three years for a big enough heiress for him to bestow his heart and hand and funded debt upon, and he’s never yet till now been able to find an investment to suit him. He was on upon Sabine Venables to start with, you recollect, before Old Affability took it into his bald pate to marry that poor little animated broomstick that went and died at last with her first baby; but as soon as Powysland found there was a chance of an heir in that quarter to cut out Miss Sabine — and one’s come since, of course, a puling bit of an infant — he saw that was no go, and he dismissed the Venables with a polite “No thank you.” Well, then he tried that Irish distilling girl, with the auburn hair and the rich Dublin brogue; but she didn’t suit him, somehow, whether it was her temper, or whether it was her laugh, or whether it was the settlements, nobody knows, but a hitch came in, any way. So after that he had a nibble at a Birmingham indiarubber woman with a vulcanized nose; and some Sheffield cutlery; and the Glasgow shipping trade; and a South Welsh colliery girl; and half a dozen more assorted heiresses. But none of ’em suited. They say the old Duchess wanted too much money, and Powysland himself wanted too much looks — he was fastidious for his part on the matter of appearance — and between them both they never could hit upon the exact thing they stuck out for — a girl who exhibited the ideal combination of youth, position, beauty, accomplishments, the very best education, and a good round figure to her credit at Coutts’s.’
‘So he went over to America, like all the rest of them, I suppose, on a hunt after the dollars?’ Charlie Simmons suggested.
‘That’s just what he did. Small blame to him too, say I. And he’s got them at last, after many days. Lighted on the precise good thing he wanted. He’s going to marry Miss Amberley, the sister of this Amberley motor, you know, that they’re making such a fuss about.’
‘What! not that electric light fellow that’s going to cut out Edison on his own ground. You don’t mean to say so.’
‘Yes, I do, though. The very man. He’s rolling in wealth. Syndicates or something. Piled it all up, Yankee fashion, with a sudden spurt, in the last four or five years. But there it is, all the same; realized, realized, as safe as houses. It’s not the light only, Colonel Quackenboss tells me — that’s a drop in the bucket — though that alone must bring him in thousands. There’s the motor, as well, that they’re introducing now on all the tramways in America. And there’s the telephone improvements that the Post Office here has just signed a contract for. And there’s a mine in the West somewhere, Arizona or Colorado, or the Lord knows where; and there’s oil wells, natural gas, and the Lord knows what. You understand how it is. Founders’ shares, they call ’em. When these fellows in America once begin to pile it up, they’ve so many irons in the fire before six months are out they can’t tell you themselves exactly how rich they are.’
‘Talking ab
out Powysland?’ an acquaintance asked, breaking in upon the colloquy with a knowing air. ‘Well, he’s booked this time.’
‘Yes, and he needn’t regret it,’ Basil Maclaine replied, conscious of standing in the very swim of news about the Best People. ‘She’s enormously wealthy.’
‘So I hear. She’s a partner in all Amberley’s concerns, they say. It’s quite a little romance. It seems she risked her all in it. These Yankee women are born gamblers, you know; they’ve the regular American passion for enterprise and speculation. They’re death on contangoes. I’m told in Chicago there’s hardly a lady in Society who doesn’t dabble on the Stock Exchange and do a thing or two in futures. It’s the instinct of the race. They must make money.’
‘And this Amberley woman of Powysland’s gambled like all the rest?’ Charlie Simmons suggested tentatively.
‘She gambled like all the rest,’ the well-informed person responded with cheerful ease. ‘She put her bottom dollar into Amberley’s ventures, and went it blind; and, by Jove! at the end of a year or two she turned up trumps and came out a millionairess.’
‘Amberley himself’s a self-made man,’ Basil Maclaine put in, not to be left behind in the purveyance of authentic news. ‘He’s a Westerner, I believe — what they call a Hoosier.’
‘Oh, indeed!’ Charlie Simmons responded with a very wise look; though whether Hoosier was a name derived from a trade, a locality, or a religions persuasion, he hadn’t the faintest idea; so he thought it best to look wise and adventure nothing.
‘Yes,’ Basil continued pensively. ‘A very rough diamond. Rode into St. Louis on a Mexican mustang, with his inventions in his pocket, and nothing else. Not a red cent to bless himself with, that amusing Colonel Quackenboss told me last night; so he had nothing to fear from the bunco-steerers, any way. And now he’s worth fourteen million dollars.’
‘And his sister the same,’ the well-informed person added parenthetically.
‘Not a bad haul for Powysland,’ Charlie Simmons observed with a gloating expression, looking round him and smiling. ‘It’s something to talk about money in the millions, don’t you know, even if you do it only on a nodding acquaintance.’
‘The girl’s good-looking, I’m told,’ the new-comer remarked, just to keep the ball rolling. ‘George, black coffee.’
‘If she wasn’t, Powysland wouldn’t take her at any price,’ Basil Maclaine replied, hastily selecting a cue from the rack and chalking it with minute care. ‘He stands out for that. He’s a stickler for beauty. Have a game with me, Simmons? Fifty up! The Venables girl would have suited him down to the ground, if it hadn’t been for that unfortunate mistake of poor Old Affability’s in marrying the broomstick. But after he was off with the Venables — ha, good shot! — he could never find anybody to fit his book exactly. “I’ll tell you what it is, Maclaine,” he said to me one evening at the Die and Hazard — by the same token, I lost to him heavily that night— “I wouldn’t give you twopence for a girl if she don’t look thoroughbred. I must have the very best, or nothing at all; if I can’t, I’d rather go without them altogether.” Put me up two, marker! And they tell me this Amberley woman’s a regular stunner. American style, you know. Tall, thin, and high-toned. That’s what Colonel Quackenboss calls her; extremely high-toned.’
‘It’s about time Powysland raised some tin somewhere,’ Charlie Simmons observed with a confidential air, eyeing his ball sideways. ‘How he’s managed to hold on so long as he has done without anything to back him up beats me quite. He’s been living on the Semitic interest ever since he came into his title, and even they were beginning to get tired of supplying him. Bother it. Too much side on! I always miss when I talk as I’m playing.’
And so the conversation wagged on indefinitely, with the usual delightful amplifications of billiard-room gossip.
To be sure, some of these various details, thus glibly vouchsafed on every hand, were, no doubt, as the French newspapers would phrase it, ‘inexact’; but they gave so much pleasure to their respective recounters that nobody could grudge them so inexpensive an enjoyment. Not one of them knew the Duke except in the most casual way, but all felt so delighted at imparting to the rest their speculations and opinions on his minute psychology that the veriest cynic on earth would have shrunk from the cruel task of shattering their idol by asking them point-blank the exact extent of their acquaintance with the subject of their conversation. From the familiar way they all alluded to ‘Powysland,’ indeed, a stray passer-by might readily have imagined him the most intimate friend of all the trio.
‘When’s it going to come off?’ Charlie Simmons asked at last, after some further gossip as to the Amberley antecedents.
‘Oh, almost immediately,’ Basil answered with importance. ‘No legs; yes, it’ll do it — kiss, kiss; ha! cannon! We shall see the new Duchess in London this autumn.’
‘What an acquisition to our society!’ a voice from behind exclaimed with just a faint undercurrent of satire.
Basil turned to look — and missed his stroke. It was Douglas Harrison, who had that moment come in. Basil hardly knew why, but if there was a man on earth whom he would have wished not to overhear the subject of their conversation just then it was his fellow-lodger. Harrison was always so down upon a fellow, don’t you know, for wanting to learn all about what was going on among the Best People.
He stifled his wrath, however, and pretended not to notice the sarcastic aim in Harrison’s well-directed shot; so he merely answered, in a very dry and matter-of-fact way:
‘Yes, these American heiresses are always good fun. And this one, I believe, is a particularly fine and racy specimen. Your stroke, Simmons!’
But he felt as he spoke, that, come what might now, it was a point of honour, since Harrison had cast the gauntlet in his teeth, as it were, that by hook or by crook he must somehow scrape acquaintance with the new Duchess of Powysland as soon as ever she reached the shores of England.
It’s no light task, you may be sure, to compass the siege of a real live Duchess, even when her husband, the Duke, has owed you three tenners for three long years; but, high as the quarry might be, Basil meant to attain it. Come one, come all, he must redeem his character and assert his position. He would move heaven and earth for an invitation to meet the newly-married Duchess, sooner than that Harrison should thus have the laugh at him.
He was hardly gone, however, when a sober-looking man, who sat reading his Punch in the corner unobserved through all this colloquy, turned to Douglas Harrison with a quiet air of amusement, and remarked:
‘What rot! That’s the sort of nonsense a man will talk to make himself look knowing. I happen to have heard on the best authority that Miss Amberley’s a lady of a good old New York family, in the highest circles, a grand-daughter of President Martin van Buren, and related to the Adamses and all that set. Which shows how people will say anything on earth for the sake of gossip.’
CHAPTER XXI.
OH, WHAT A SURPRISE!
Whenever a man devotes himself wholly and solely with all his energies to one object in life, it must go hard with him indeed if he doesn’t attain it. Basil Maclaine had devoted himself for some years with a single mind to the task of mixing with the Best People, and he was beginning now to reap his due reward. Still, ’twas a proud moment indeed when he opened the envelope that contained that magical card, inscribed on its face:— ‘Lady Simpson at home, Wednesday, Feb. 12th, 10.30 p.m.,’ with down in the far corner those inspiring little words, ‘To meet the Duke and Duchess of Powysland.’
For, by using Mrs. Bouverie-Barton as the thin edge of the wedge, with himself as the thick one, Basil had dexterously succeeded in getting to know Sir Theodore Simpson. And now, by using Lady Simpson in turn in the self-same well-known mechanical fashion, he was the happy recipient of an invitation to meet a real live Duchess.
All London in those days was ringing with the name and the fame of the great American heiress who had just come over. She was the most beautiful woman
in the whole range of the peerage, so gossip averred; and her electric thousands would enable the Duke to restore the tarnished glories of the Powysland title. The society papers had endless paragraphs, more or less true, about the Duchess’s belongings, the Duchess’s trousseau, the Duchess’s intentions, the Duchess’s plans, the way she had been received by her mother-in-law, the Dowager, the kiss impressed upon her grace’s cheek by the sacred lips of royalty in person. Basil Maclaine devoured all these choice items of fashionable intelligence with an epicure’s gusto. He wanted to know all he could about the Duchess at secondhand before being actually ushered, an expectant neophyte, into her august presence.
Authorities differed, however, as to certain minor points in the heiress’s history, appearance, and manners. Mrs. Bouverie-Barton simply raved about her beauty. ‘Ears like a shell, Mr. Maclaine,’ she said enthusiastically; ‘delicate hands and fingers, with long almond nails; a most aristocratic face; a charming figure; but I didn’t hear her talk, though I’m told her wit is positively refreshing.’ Mrs. Bouverie-Barton, however, had a habit of always speaking in the superlative degree. More sober critics gave conflicting notes. Some said she was ‘divinely tall and most divinely fair’; some that she walked in beauty like the night, with raven locks and eyes of a correspondingly dusky description. According to one veracious scribe in a fashionable journal, she spoke the purest and most beautiful Bostonian English; according to another, in an equally recognised print, her accent at once betrayed her Iowan origin, while her idiom was marked by all the familiar freedom and raciness of those who dwell beside the setting sun on the boundless prairies beyond the Mississippi. The Cockroach would have it that she was raised on molasses and corn-dodger in a log shanty on the shore of Lake Superior; the Kite declared its contemporary misinformed as to the facts of her grace’s early days, the truth being that her happy childhood had been passed among the babies on Our Block in a New York tenement house, while her education had been picked up in a Bowery beer saloon, where she sang every night as a popular comique in ‘It’s English, you know, quite English,’ till her brother ‘struck ile’ with the Amberley motor. On three points alone was all the world agreed — first, that the Duchess’s manners were queenly graciousness itself; second, that she had lived in Madison Square, at the famed Amberley mansion; and, third, that she meant to pass this winter in Onslow Gardens, pending the thorough redecoration and rehabilitation of Powysland House, to meet the needs and requirements of that most exacting member of our species, an American heiress.
