by Grant Allen
From the very first moment of Paul’s return from Hillborough, however, it began to strike him with vague surprise and wonder what an immense difference in people’s treatment and conception of him was implied by his possession of that empty little prefix of a barren Sir before the name bestowed upon him by his sponsors at his baptism. When he took the dingy lodgings in the by-way off Gower Street, and handed the landlady’s daughter one of the cards Mr. Solomons had so vainly provided for him, with “Sir Paul Gascoyne” written in very neat copperplate upon their face, he was amused and surprised at the instantaneous impression his title produced upon the manners and address of that glib young lady. The shrill voice in which she had loudly proclaimed to him the advantages of the rooms, the cheap price of coals per scuttle, the immediate proximity of the Wesleyan chapel, and the excellence of the goods purveyed by appointment at the neighboring beef and ham shop, sank down at once to an awe-struck “Yes, Sir; I’m sure we’ll do everything we can to make you comfortable, Sir,” the moment her eyes lighted on the talismanic prefix that adorned his name on that enchanted pasteboard.
A few days later Paul decided with regret, after many observations upon his scanty wardrobe, that he really couldn’t do without a new coat for Faith’s wedding. But when he presented himself in due course at the little tailor’s shop in the city (“specially recommended by Mr. Solomons”), where he had dealt ever since his first appearance at Oxford, he noticed that the news of his acquisition of dignity had already preceded him into the cutting and fitting room by the unwonted obsequiousness of both master and assistants as they displayed their patterns. “Yes, Sir Paul; no, Sir Paul,” greeted every remark that fell from his lips with unvarying servility. It was the same everywhere. Paul was astonished to find in what another world he seemed to live now from that which had voted him a scallywag at Mentone.
To himself he was still the same simple, shy, timid, sensitive person as ever; but to everyone else he appeared suddenly transfigured into the resplendent image of Sir Paul Gascoyne, Fifteenth Baronet.
Strangest of all, a day or two before the date announced for the wedding in the Morning Post (for Mr. Thistleton, senior, had insisted upon conveying information of the forthcoming fashionable event to the world at large through the medium of that highly respected journal), Paul was astonished at receiving a neatly written note on a sheet of paper with the embossed address, “Gascoyne Manor, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire.” It was a polite intimation from the present owner of the Gascoyne estates that, having heard of St. Paul’s accession to the baronetcy, and of his sister’s approaching marriage to Mr. G. E. Thistleton of Christ Church, Oxford, he would esteem it a pleasure if he might be permitted to heal the family breach by representing the other branch of the Gascoyne house in his own proper person at the approaching ceremony. Paul looked at the envelope; it had been readdressed from Christ Church. For the first time in his life he smiled to himself a cynical smile. It was evident that Gascoyne of Gascoyne Manor, while indisposed to admit his natural relationship to the Hillborough cabman, was not unalive to the advantages of keeping up his dormant connection with Sir Paul Gascoyne, of Christ Church, Oxford, Fifteenth Baronet.
However, it appeared to Paul on two accounts desirable to accept the olive branch thus tardily held out to him by the other division of the Gascoyne family. In the first place, he did not desire to be on bad terms with anyone, including even his own relations. In the second place, he wished for the Thistletons’ sake that some elder representative of the Gascoyne stock should be present, if possible, at his sister’s wedding. His mother absolutely refused to attend, and neither Paul nor Faith had the courage to urge her to reconsider this determination. Their recent loss was sufficient excuse in itself to explain her absence. But Paul was not sorry that this other Gascoyne should thus luckily interpose to represent before the eyes of assembled Sheffield the senior branches of the bride’s family.
Nay, what was even more remarkable, Paul fancied the very editors themselves were more polite in their demeanor, and more ready to accept his proffered manuscripts, now that the perfect purity of his English style was further guaranteed by his accession to the baronetcy. Who, indeed, when one comes to consider seriously, should write our mother-tongue with elegance and correctness if not the hereditary guardians of the Queen’s English? And was it astonishing, therefore, if even the stern editorial mouth relaxed slightly when office-boys brought up the modest pasteboard which announced that Sir Paul Gascoyne, Baronet, desired the honor of a ten minutes’ interview? It sounds well in conversation, you know, “Sir Paul Gascoyne, one of our younger contributors — he writes those crisp little occasional reviews on the fourth page upon books of travel.” For the wise editor, who knows the world he lives in, will not despise such minor methods of indirectly establishing public confidence in the “good form” and thorough society tone of his own particular bantling of a journal.
Well, at last the wedding-day itself arrived, and Faith, who had come up from Hillborough the night before to stop at Paul’s lodgings, set out with her brother from that humble street, in the regulation coach, looking as pretty and dainty in her simple white dress as even Thistleton himself had ever seen her. They drove alone as far as the church; but when they entered, Paul was immensely surprised to see how large a crowd of acquaintances and friends the announcement in the papers had gathered together. Armitage was there, fresh back from Italy, where he had been spending the winter at Florence in the pursuit of Art; and Paul couldn’t help noticing the friendly way in which that arbiter of reputations nodded and smiled as Faith and he walked, tremulous, up the aisle together. The Douglases from Oxford were there, of course, and a dozen or two of undergraduates or contemporaries of Paul’s, who had rather despised the scallywag, than otherwise, while they were at college in his company. Isabel Boyton and her mamma occupied front seats, and smiled benignly upon poor trembling Faith as she entered. The kinsman Gascoyne, of Gascoyne Manor, met them in the chancel, and shook hands warmly — a large-built, well-dressed man of military bearing and most squirearchical proportions, sufficient to strike awe by his frock-coat alone into the admiring breasts of all beholders. The Sheffield detachment was well to the fore, also strong and eager; a throng of wealthy folk, with the cutlery stamp on face and figure, craning anxiously forward when the bride appeared, and whispering loud to one another in theatrical undertones, “That’s Sir Paul that’s leading her; oh, isn’t he just nice-looking!” Thistleton himself was there before them, very manly and modest in his wedding garment, and regarding Faith, as she faltered up the aisle, with a profound gaze of most unfeigned admiration. And everybody was pleased and good-humored and satisfied, even Mrs. Thistleton, senior, being fully set at rest, the moment she set eyes on Paul’s slim figure, as to the Fifteenth Baronet’s perfect affability.
It is much more important in life always what you’re called than what you are. He was just the very selfsame Paul Gascoyne as ever, but how differently now all the world regarded him!
As for Faith, when she saw the simple eager curiosity of the Sheffield folk, and their evident anxiety to catch her eye and attract her attention, her heart melted toward them at once within her. She saw in a moment they were not “nasty rich people,” but good honest kindly folk like herself, with real human hearts beating hard in their bosoms.
So Faith and Thistleton were duly proclaimed man and wife by the Reverend the Rector, assisted in his arduous task by the Reverend Henry Edward Thistleton, cousin of the bridegroom. And after the ceremony was finally finished, and the books signed, and the signatures witnessed, the bridal party drove away to the hotel where Mr. Thistleton, senior, had commanded lunch; and there they all fraternized in unwonted style, the Master Cutler proposing the bride’s health in a speech of the usual neatness and appropriateness, while Mr. Gascoyne, of Gascoyne Manor, performed the same good office for the bridegroom’s constitution. And the elder Thistletons rejoiced exceedingly in the quiet dignity of the whole proceedings; and even Faith
(for a woman will always be a woman still) was glad in her heart that Mr. Gascoyne, of Gascoyne Manor, had lent them for the day the countenance of his greatness, and not left them to bear alone in their orphaned poverty the burden of the baronetcy. And in the afternoon, as the Morning Post next day succinctly remarked, “the bride and bridegroom left for Dover, en route for Paris, Rome, and Naples,” while Sir Paul Gascoyne, Fifteenth Baronet, returned by himself, feeling lonely indeed, to his solitary little lodgings in the road off Gower Street.
But it had been a very bright and happy day on the whole for the national schoolmistress. And when Mrs. Douglas kissed her on both her cheeks, and whispered, “My dear, I’m so glad you’ve married him!” Faith felt she had never before been so proud, and that Charlie was a man any girl in the world might well be proud of.
CHAPTER XXXV.
A PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.
MME. CERIOLO had passed the winter in Italy — or, to be more precise, at Florence. Her dear friend (she wrote to Lionel Solomons), the Countess Spinelli-Feroni, had asked her to come out and stay with her as companion at her beautiful villa on the Viale dei Colli, so as to assume the place of chaperon to her accomplished daughter, Fede, now just of an age to take part as a débutante in the world’s frivolities. The poor dear countess herself had been paraylzed last year, and was unable to accompany that charming girl of hers, who couldn’t, of course, be allowed to go out alone into the wicked world of modern Florence. So she bethought her at once of her dear old friend, Maria Agnese Ceriolo. As a matter of fact, as everybody knows, the Spinelli-Feroni family became totally extinct about a hundred years ago; and Mme. Ceriolo had been made aware of their distinguished name only by the fact that their former Palazzo, near the Ponte Santa Trinità, is at present occupied by Vieusseux’s English Circulating Library. The title, however, is a sufficiently high-sounding one to command respect, and doubtless answered Mme. Ceriolo’s purpose quite as well as any other she could possibly have hit upon of more strictly modern and practical exactitude.
It may be acutely conjectured that a more genuine reason for the little lady’s selection of her winter abode might have been found in the fact that Armitage happened to be spending that season at an hotel on the Lungarno. And madame did not intend to lose sight of Armitage. She was thoroughly aware of that profound paradox that a professed cynic and man of the world is the safest of all marks for the matrimonial aim of the cosmopolitan adventuress. True to her principle, however, of keeping always more than one string to her bow, she had not forgotten to dispatch at the New Year a neat little card to Mr. Lionel Solomons, with the Duomo and Campanile embossed in pale monochrome in the upper left-hand corner, and “Sinceri auguri” written across its face in breezy gold letters of most Italianesque freedom. The card was inclosed in one of Mme. Ceriolo’s own famous little society envelopes, with the coronet on the flap in silver and gray; and Mr. Lionel was, indeed, a proud and happy man when he read on its back in a neat feminine hand, “Molti anni felice. — M. A. CERIOLO.”
To be sure, Mr. Lionel knew no Italian; but it flattered his vanity that Mme. Ceriolo should take it for granted he did. Indeed, Mme. Ceriolo, with her usual acuteness, had chosen to word her little message in a foreign tongue for that very reason — so accurately had she gauged Mr. Lionel’s human peculiarities.
Early in March, however, Armitage had been suddenly recalled to England on unexpected business, reaching London by mere chance in time to be present at Thistleton’s marriage with Faith Gascoyne. So Mme. Ceriolo, having nothing further to detain her now in Italy, and being anxious not to let Mr. Lionel languish too long uncheered by her sunny presence — for man is fickle and London is large — decided to return with the first April swallows, after Browning’s receipt, to dear, dingy Old England. She stopped for a night or two on her way in Brussels, to be sure, with a member of her distinguished aristocratic family (just then engaged as a scene-shifter at the Théâtre Royal); but by the morning of the 5th she was confortably settled once more at the Hôtel de l’Univers, and had made Mr. Lionel aware of her serene presence by a short little note couched in the simplest terms:
“Back in London at last. This minute arrived. When may I hope to see you? Toute à vous de cœur.
“M. A. CERIOLO.”
Mr. Lionel read that admirably worded note ten times over to himself — it said so much because it said so little; then he folded it up with his fat, short fingers and placed it next his heart, in his bank-note pocket. He was a man of sentiment in his way, as well as of business, was Mr. Lionel Solomons, and the Ceriolo was undoubtedly a devilish fine woman. It was not nothing that a countess should write to him thus on her own initialed and coroneted note-paper. A countess in distress is still always a countess. And “Toute à vous de cœur,” too! Mr. Lionel was not learned in foreign tongues, but so much at least of the French language his Ollendorffian studies permitted him readily to translate. He hugged himself with delight as he rolled those dainty words on his mind’s tongue once more. “Toute à vous de cœur” she wrote to him; a devlish fine woman, and a born countess.
It was with infinite impatience that Mr. Lionel endured the routine work of the office in the City that day. His interest in the wobbling of Consols flagged visibly, and even the thrilling news that Portuguese Threes had declined one-eighth, to 53 3/4 - 5/8 for the account, failed to rouse for the moment his languid enthusiasm. He bore with equanimity the boom in Argentines, and seemed hardly inclined to attach sufficient importance to the probable effect of the Servian crisis on the doubtful value of Roumanian and Bulgarian securities. All day long, in fact, he was moody and preoccupied; and more than once, when nobody else was looking, he drew from the pocket nearest his heart a tiny square of cream-laid note, on which he once more devoured those intoxicating words, “Toute à vous de cœur. — M. A. CERIOLO.”
In the evening, as soon as the office closed, Mr. Lionel indulged himself in the unwonted luxury of a hansom cab — he more usually swelled the dividends of the Metropolitan Railway — and hurried home post-haste to his own rooms to make himself beautiful with hair oil and a sprig of Roman hyacinth. (Roman hyacinth, relieved with two sprays of pink bouvardia, suited Mr. Lionel’s complexion to a T, and could be purchased cheap toward nightfall, to prevent loss by fading, from the florist’s round the corner.) He was anxious to let no delay stand in the way of his visit to Mme. Ceriolo’s salon. Had not madame herself written to him, “This minute arrived”? and should he, the happy swain thus honored by the fair, show himself unworthy of her marked empressement?
So soon as he had arrayed his rotund person in its most expensive and becoming apparel (as advertised, four and a half guineas) he hastened down, by hansom once more, to the Hôtel de l’Univers. —
Mme. Ceriolo received him, metaphorically speaking, with open arms. To have clone so literally would, in madame’s opinion, have been bad play. Her policy was to encourage attentions in not too liberal or generous a spirit. By holding off a little at first in the expression of your emotion you draw them on in the end all the more ardently and surely.
And Mme. Ceriolo felt decidedly now the necessity for coming to the point with Lionel Solomons. The testimony of her mirror compelled her to admit that she was no longer so young as she had been twenty years ago. To be sure, she was well preserved — remarkably well preserved — and even almost without making up (for Mme. Ceriolo relied as little as possible, after all, upon the dangerous and doubtful aid of cosmetics) she was still an undeniably fresh and handsome little woman. Her easygoing life, and the zest with which she entered into all amusements, had combined with a naturally strong and lively constitution to keep the wrinkles from her brow, the color in her cheeks, and the agreeable roundness in her well-turned figure. Nevertheless, Mme. Ceriolo was fully aware that all this could not last forever. Her exchequer was low — uncomfortably low: she had succeeded in making but little at Florence out of play or bets — the latter arranged on the simple principle of accepting when she won, and smiling when s
he lost, in full discharge of all obligations. Armitage had circled round her like a moth round the candle, but had managed to get away in the end without singeing his wings. Mme. Ceriolo sighed a solemn sigh of pensive regret as she concluded that she must decline for the present, at least, upon Lionel Solomons.
Not that she had the very slightest idea of passing the whole remainder of her earthly pilgrimage in that engaging young person’s intimate society. Folly of such magnitude would never even have occurred in her wildest moment to Mme. Ceriolo’s well-balanced and well-regulated intellect. Her plan was merely to suck Mr. Lionel quite dry, and then fling him away under circumstances where he could be of no further possible inconvenience or annoyance to her. And to this intent, Mme. Ceriolo had gradually concocted at Florence — in the intervals of extracting five-franc pieces by slow doles from some impoverished Tuscan Count or Marchese — a notable scheme which she was now in course of putting into actual execution. She had returned to London resolved to “fetch” Mr. Lionel Solomons or to perish in the attempt, and she proceeded forthwith in characteristic style to the task of “fetching” him.
