The City of Masks Part 20

She hesitated. "Of course, it is all very quixotic,--and most unselfish of you, Lord Temple. Not every man would do as much for a girl who--well, I'll not say a girl who is going to be married before long, because I'd only be speculating,--but for a girl, at any rate, who can never be expected to repay. I take it, of course, that Lady Jane is never, under any circ.u.mstances to know that you are the real paymaster."

"She must never know," he gasped, turning a shade paler. "She would hate me, and--well, I couldn't stand that, you know."

"And you will not repent when the time comes for her to marry?"

"I'll--I'll be miserably unhappy, but--but, you will not hear a whimper out of me," he said, his face very long.

"Spoken like a hero," she said, and again she laughed, apparently without reason. "Some one is coming. Will you stay?"

"No; I'll be off, Marchioness. You don't know how relieved I am. I'll drop in tomorrow some time to see what she says,--and to arrange with you about the money. Good night!" He kissed her hand, and turned to McFaddan, who had entered the room. "Call a taxi for me, McFaddan."

"Very good, sir."

"Wait! Never mind. I'll walk or take a street car." To the Marchioness: "I'm beginning right now," he said, with his gayest smile.

In the foyer he encountered Cricklewick.

"Pleasant evening, Cricklewick," he said.

"It is, your lords.h.i.+p. Most agreeable change, sir."

"A bit soft under foot."

"Slushy, sir," said Cricklewick, obsequiously.

CHAPTER XI

WINNING BY A NOSE

MRS. SMITH-PARVIS, having received the annual spring announcement from Juneo & Co., repaired, on an empty Thursday, to the show-rooms and galleries of the little Italian dealer in antiques.

Twice a year she disdainfully,--and somewhat hastily,--went through his stock, always proclaiming at the outset that she was merely "looking around"; she'd come in later if she saw anything really worth having. It was her habit to demand the services of Mr. Juneo himself on these profitless visits to his establishment. She looked holes through the presumptuous underlings who politely adventured to inquire if she was looking for anything in particular. It would seem that the only thing in particular that she was looking for was the head of the house, and if he happened to be out she made it very plain that she didn't see how he ever did any business if he wasn't there to look after it.

And if little Mr. Juneo was in, she swiftly conducted him through the various departments of his own shop, questioning the genuineness of everything, denouncing his prices, and departing at last with the announcement that she could always find what she wanted at Pickett's.

At Pickett's she invariably encountered coldly punctilious gentlemen in "frockaway" coats, who were never quite sure, without inquiring, whether Mr. Moody was at liberty. Would she kindly take a seat and wait, or would she prefer to have a look about the galleries while some one went off to see if he could see her at once or a little later on? She liked all this. And she would wander about the luxurious rooms of the establishment of Pickett, Inc., content to stare languidly at other and less influential patrons who had to be satisfied with the smug attentions of ordinary salesmen.

And Moody, being acutely English, laid it on very thick when it came to dealing with persons of the type of Mrs. Smith-Parvis. Somehow he had learned that in dealing with sn.o.bs one must transcend even in sn.o.bbishness. The only way to command the respect of a sn.o.b is to go him a little better,--indeed, according to Moody, it isn't altogether out of place to go him a great deal better. The loftier the sn.o.b, the higher you must shoot to get over his head (to quote Moody, whose training as a footman in one of the oldest houses in England had prepared him against almost any emergency). He a.s.sumed on occasion a polite, bored indifference that seldom failed to have the desired effect. In fact, he frequently went so far as to pretend to stifle a yawn while face to face with the most exalted of patrons,--a revelation of courage which, being carefully timed, usually put the patron in a corner from which she could escape only by paying a heavy ransom.

He sometimes had a way of implying,--by his manner, of course,--that he would rather not sell the treasure at all than to have it go into _your_ mansion, where it would be manifestly alone in its splendour, notwithstanding the priceless articles you had picked up elsewhere in previous efforts to inhabit the place with glory. On the other hand, if you happened to be n.o.body at all and therefore likely to resent being squelched, he could sell you a ten-dollar candlestick quite as amiably as the humblest clerk in the place. Indeed, he was quite capable of giving it to you for nine dollars if he found he had not quite correctly sized you up in the beginning.

As he never erred in sizing up people of the Smith-Parvis ilk, however, his profits were sublime. Accident, and nothing less, brought him into contact with the common people looking for bargains: such as the faulty adjustment of his monocle, or a similarity in backs, or the perverseness of the telephone, or a sudden shower. Sudden showers always remind pedestrians without umbrellas that they've been meaning for a long time to stop in and price things, and they clutter up the place so.

Mrs. Smith-Parvis was bent on discovering something cheap and unusual for the twins, whose joint birthday anniversary was but two days off. It occurred to her that it would be wise to give them another heirloom apiece. Something English, of course, in view of the fact that her husband's forebears had come over from England with the twenty or thirty thousand voyagers who stuffed the _Mayflower_ from stem to stern on her historic maiden trip across the Atlantic.

Secretly, she had never got over being annoyed with the twins for having come regardless, so to speak. She had prayed for another boy like Stuyvesant, and along came the twins--no doubt as a sort of sop in the form of good measure. If there had to be twins, why under heaven couldn't she have been blessed with them on Stuyvesant's natal day? She couldn't have had too many Stuyvesants.

Still, she considered it her duty to be as nice as possible to the twins, now that she had them; and besides, they were growing up to be surprisingly pretty girls, with a pleasantly increasing resemblance to Stuyvesant.

Always, a day or two prior to the anniversary, she went surrept.i.tiously into the antique shops and picked out for each of them a piece of jewellery, or a bit of china, or a strip of lace, or anything else that bore evidence of having once been in a very nice sort of family. On the glad morning she delivered her gifts, with sweet impressiveness, into the keeping of these remote little descendants of her beloved ancestors!

Invariably something English, heirlooms that she had kept under lock and key since the day they came to Mr. Smith-Parvis under the terms of his great-grandmother's will. Up to the time Stuyvesant was sixteen he had been getting heirlooms from a long-departed great-grandfather, but on reaching that vital age, he declared that he preferred cash.

The twins had a rare a.s.sortment of family heirlooms in the little gla.s.s cabinets upstairs.

"You must cherish them for ever," said their mother, without compunction. "They represent a great deal more than mere money, my dears. They are the intrinsic bonds that connect you with a glorious past."

When they were ten she gave them a pair of beautiful miniatures,--a most alluring and imperial looking young lady with powdered hair, and a gallant young gentleman with orders pinned all over his bright red coat.

It appears that the lady of the miniature was a great personage at court a great many years before the misguided Colonists revolted against King George the Third, and they--her darling twins--were directly descended from her. The gentleman was her husband.

"He was awfully handsome," one of the twins had said, being romantic.

"Are we descended from him too, mamma?" she inquired innocently.

"Certainly," said Mrs. Smith-Parvis severely.

A predecessor of Miss Emsdale's got her walking papers for putting nonsense (as well as the truth) into the heads of the children. At least, she told them something that paved the way for a most embarra.s.sing disclosure by one of the twins when a visitor was complimenting them on being such nice, lovely little ladies.

"We ought to be," said Eudora proudly. "We are descended from Madam du Barry. We've got her picture upstairs."

Mrs. Smith-Parvis took Miss Emsdale with her on this particular Thursday afternoon. This was at the suggestion of Stuyvesant, who held forth that an English governess was in every way qualified to pa.s.s upon English wares, new or old, and there wasn't any sense in getting "stung" when there was a way to protect oneself, and all that sort of thing.

Stuyvesant also joined the hunt.

"Rather a lark, eh, what?" he whispered in Miss Emsdale's ear as they followed his stately mother into the shop of Juneo & Co. She jerked her arm away.

The proprietor was haled forth. Courteous, suave and polished though he was, Signor Juneo had the misfortune to be a trifle shabby, and sartorially remiss. Mrs. Smith-Parvis eyed him from a peak,--a very lofty peak.

Ten minutes sufficed to convince her that he had nothing in his place that she could think of buying.

"My dear sir," she said haughtily, "I know just what I want, so don't try to palm off any of this jewellery on me. Miss Emsdale knows the Queen Anne period quite as well as I do, I've no doubt. Queen Anne never laid eyes on that wristlet, Mr. Juneo."

"Pardon me, Mrs. Smith-Parvis, I fear you misunderstood me," said the little dealer politely. "I think I said that it was of Queen Anne's period--"

"What time is it, Stuyvesant?" broke in the lady, turning her back on the merchant. "We must be getting on to Pickett's. It is really a waste of time, coming to places like this. One should go to Pickett's in the first--"

"There are a lot of ripping things here, mater," said Stuyvesant, his eyes resting on a comfortable couch in a somewhat secluded corner of the shop. "Take a look around. Miss Emsdale and I will take a back seat, so that you may go about it with an open mind. I daresay we confuse you frightfully, tagging at your heels all the time, what? Come along, Miss Emsdale. You look f.a.gged and--"

"Thank you, I am quite all right," said Miss Emsdale, the red spots in her cheeks darkening.

"Oh, be a sport," he urged, under his voice. "I've just got to have a few words with you. It's been days since we've had a good talk. Looks as though you were deliberately avoiding me."

"I am," said she succinctly.

Mrs. Smith-Parvis had gone on ahead with Signor Juneo, and was loudly criticizing a beautiful old Venetian mirror which he had the temerity to point out to her.

"Well, I don't like it," Stuyvesant said roughly. "That sort of thing doesn't go with me, Miss Emsdale. And, hang it all, why haven't you had the decency to answer the two notes I stuck under your door last night and the night before?"