Delphi collected works o.., p.750
Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated), page 750
Fanshawe laughs delightedly.
“He live on peaches and pinehapples, he do,” she continued, with a snort; “and he’s spoilt a good seasonable chance o’ settlin’ herself as my daughter had with the young man round the corner — —”
“Shut up that jaw, Fanshawe!” cries Bertram, falling into low language in his wrath.
“Will you go to Folliott and Hake’s or not?” asks his friend.
“I will go to Satan’s self to stop you chaffing this woman. Look how those people are laughing.”
Bertram calls the passing hansom and gets into it; Fanshawe follows him, and waves his hand to Mrs. Brown.
“You must come and dine with me at Richmond, Mrs. Socrates!”
Cicely and her cousin are sitting under a tree near the end of the Ladies’ Mile with some men standing before them and talking to them, when Marlow again approaches, diffident, but in ill-concealed triumph.
“Oh, Lady Jane,” he says eagerly, not venturing to address Cicely directly, “I’ve come back ‘cos I’ve such a bit of news; am authorised to tell it; may put it in the Morning Post to-morrow. I’ve seen ‘the penny bunch of violets,’ and by all that’s awful, she’s a washerwoman’s daughter, and Bertram’s going to marry her. It’s Annieism you see, not Altruism.”
Much pleased with his own wit and humour he laughs gleefully, whilst his eyes are trying to read Cicely’s face; it gives no sign of any feeling or of having even heard what he has said.
“What nonsense you talk, Lord Marlow!” says Lady Jane. “Bertram may be silly, but he is not so utterly out of his mind as that.”
“Isn’t he? Why, he’s just told me the news himself! The young woman was with him down yonder. She sells flowers, and had got two skips full of primroses; and she’s not a good feature in her face. I’ll offer to be best man; shall I send ’em a set of saucepans or a sewing-machine?”
Cicely casts a look of supreme contempt upon him.
“The perfection to which you bring your jokes must have cost you a long apprenticeship on Bank Holidays, Lord Marlow.”
Marlow’s mirth is a little subdued.
“You can’t be speaking seriously,” says one of the men present. “Bertram is not quite such an ass as that.”
“I am, though,” replies Marlow, sulkily. “I’ve seen the girl, and Bertram’s just told me to tell everybody.”
“What is her name?”
“She’s Annie Brown; we heard that yesterday. Mother takes in washing. Oh, Lord, it’ll kill me, the fun of it.”
Doubled up with silent laughter he leans upon his cane and furtively watches Cicely’s face.
“Why should you be surprised that Mr. Bertram puts his theories into practice?” she says, coldly. “It is only like Count Tolstoi’s ploughing.”
“Goodness, Cicely!” says Lady Jane, with much irritation. “You surely can’t defend such an insanity as this? It is very much worse than any plough. I thought his manner very odd yesterday about those violets; for he is not, you know, a man à bonnes fortunes.”
“You would approve him more if he were!”
“Well, they are less serious,” answers Lady Jane. “You can get rid of them; but an Annie Brown when you have once married her — —”
“At all events,” says Cicely, “whatever it may be, it is certainly only the business of those concerned in it, and none of ours. Why are you not already on your way to the newspaper offices, Lord Marlow? I believe they give a guinea for first news.”
“Bertram may be so happy as to interest you, Miss Seymour,” says Marlow, sullenly, “but he’s an unknown quantity to the world in general. Nobody’d give twopence for any news of him.”
“Certainly he is not chronicled as the winner at pigeon-shooting and polo matches, which is your distinction, Lord Marlow, and I believe your only one.”
“Why will you be so unkind to Marlow?” asks Lady Jane, as, having shaken off their admirers, they walk back alone.
“I grant,” she continues, as poor Marlow, mortified, falls behind, “that he is not an extraordinarily brilliant person; he will not head the Cabinet or be President of the Royal Society, but his temper is kind and his character blameless.”
“One would think you were recommending a groom! You may safely add that his hand is light and his seat is sure, for riding is his solitary accomplishment!”
“My dear child, how remarkably severe you are! Will you tell me what use to Wilfrid Bertram are the incontestable talents with which he was born? What does he do with them? Write in such a manner that if he were a native of any other country than England he would have been lodged in prison years ago.”
Cicely Seymour is silent.
She has read some numbers of the Age to Come, and she cannot honestly say that she approves of its subversive tendencies. She looks straight before her with a heightened colour, and the rose-leaves of her lips are pressed together in irritation.
“I suppose you will offer to be bridesmaid to Miss Annie Brown,” says Lady Jane, irritably.
“Why not?” says Cicely, very coldly. “One attends many weddings brought about by more ignoble motives.”
“You will not see me at the ceremony,” replies Lady Jane, more and more incensed.
“I know I shall not, nor any of his relatives. But I do not admire the class prejudice which will keep you all away.”
And she leans over the rail of the Ride and pats the mane of a child’s pony.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Brown, resting her empty basket and her rheumatic limbs for a few minutes on a bench, ponders vainly on the name Mr. Fanshawe gave her. “Mrs. Sockatees,” she repeats to herself. “He can’t think as I’m one to marry agen at my time o’ life. If it hadn’t bin for the children there were a tallow chandler, a warm man too, he was, who would hev bin ready as ready — —”
She muses pensively a moment on the charms of the lost tallow chandler who had been sacrificed to her maternal scruples, whilst Cicely Seymour and Lady Jane are walking towards her.
“Let’s sit down here a moment, Cicely,” says Lady Jane. “The children will be back again directly.”
Mrs. Brown rises and curtsies, taking up her basket.
“Don’t get up, my good woman, there’s room enough.”
“Your ‘umble servant, ma’am,” says Mrs. Brown, standing erect, her empty basket held before her like a shield of Boadicea; she does not know them by name, but they are possible clients for the wash-tub.
“Why should you stand?” says Cicely. “These seats are free to all.”
“Thanks, miss, but I know my duty.” Then she adds, insinuatingly, “If you should be wanting a laundress, ma’am, you’d be doin’ a charity to remember me — Eliza Brown, o’ 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square; no acids used, miss, and no machine-work.”
Cicely looks at her, and with some hesitation asks:
“Are you — are you — the mother of a young person called Annie Brown? She has just gone past here with some primroses.”
“Yes, miss, I be.”
“Of Mr. Bertram’s heroine!” adds Lady Jane, with a laugh.
“Please ‘m, don’t call her names, ma’am,” says Annie’s mother, quickly. “She’s a good girl, though I say it as shouldn’t say it, and there’s nought to laugh at, unless it be the gentleman’s rubbish.”
“You don’t seem to be grateful for the compliment he pays to your family,” says Lady Jane, much amused.
“Compliment is it, my lady? The gentleman’s a crank, that’s what he is; he won’t never marry her, and there’s a good young man round the corner as is left out in the cold. He’s in the greengrocery line, and hev got a good bit o’ money put by, and the match ‘ud be suitable in every way, for my daughter’s a good judge o’ green stuff.”
“Mrs. Brown,” says Cicely, “I should like to have the pleasure of knowing your daughter. Will you bring her to see me? I am staying with Mr. Bertram’s aunt, Lady Southwold.”
Mrs. Brown stares hard.
“You do my girl a great honour, miss, but her head’s turned too crazy as ’tis. Poor folks, miss, ain’t got no place with rich ‘uns.”
“That is a rather narrow feeling, Mrs. Brown,” says Cicely; “and surely your daughter ought to begin to know Mr. Bertram’s friends and relatives?”
“She won’t never be nought to Mr. Bertram, miss,” replies Mrs. Brown, very confidently. “’Tis a pack of stuff their thinkin’ on it. Lord, my lady, if you only see his shirts, that fine as cobwebs is coarse to ’em!”
Lady Jane is much diverted.
“She evidently does not believe in the seriousness of Bertram’s intentions, Cicely.”
Mrs. Brown tucks her basket under her arm.
“You’ll excuse me, my ladies, if I don’t stay to prate. Us poor folks ‘even’t got time to lose in gossip; and if you can give me work, ‘m, I’ll be truly thankful to you, ma’am — Eliza Brown, 20, Little Double Street, back o’ Portman Square. Your servant, ladies.”
With that she bobs a curtsey and departs.
“A nice honest woman,” says Cicely.
Lady Jane laughs.
“She doesn’t appreciate Bertram or his shirts. What right has he, with his principles, to wear lawn shirts? He ought to wear hemp.”
Cicely traces patterns on the gravel with her sunshade.
“I should like to see the girl.”
“Why? You may be sure she is a little horror.”
“I am sure she is a very good girl,” says Cicely. “I am sure she is a very good girl. A person must be good that lives amongst flowers.”
“Florists are not all saints,” replies Lady Jane, out of patience; “and it does not seem an exalted mission to make button-holes for mashers. There is not even the excuse of good looks for Bertram’s aberration. She is quite a plain little thing, Marlow says.”
“Let us take another turn,” says Cicely. “We shall see the children again.”
Bertram returns from his visit to Folliott and Hake at two o’clock that day. He intended going down into the country to a friend’s house — a friend who buys Whistlers, adores Mallarme and Verlaine, writes studies on the pointillistes, and has published a volume of five hundred pages on Strindberg — but he feels indisposed for even that sympathetic society. He sends a telegram to excuse himself, and opens his own door with his latch-key.
His rooms are en suite, one out of another, and from the door-mat he can see through all four of them, between the curtains of Eastern stuffs which he had brought home years before from Tiflis. He cannot believe in the sight which meets his eyes in the third room, which is his study.
There is in that room a large Florentine cabinet of tortoise-shell and brass-work; the key of the drawers thereof is on his watch-chain; yet he perceives that the drawers are all open, their contents are strewn about, and stooping down over them is Critchett.
Critchett’s back is unmistakable; it has as much character in it as the profile of Cæsar or Napoleon.
Bertram walks noiselessly over the thick carpets, and touches him on the shoulder.
“You! — a common thief!”
Critchett stumbles to his feet, pulls himself erect rather nervously, and faces his employer. In his right hand is a pearl necklace.
“I beg pardon, sir,” he murmurs. “I thought you had gone to Mr. Domville’s. I was coming down with the valise.”
Bertram takes the pearls out of his grasp; he has grown much paler than his nefarious valet. He is cut to the heart.
“A common thief — you!” he repeats. The Et tu Brute had not more pathetic reproval in it.
Critchett in the interval has recovered his self-possession, and what more vulgar persons would call his cheek.
“Excuse me, sir. There aren’t such a thing as theft. What is called theft is only an over-violent readjustment of unfairly divided values. I’ve read it in the Age to Come.”
“You infernal scoundrel! These are my dead mother’s jewels!”
“I know they are, sir. They were doing no good here; and you told the ladies yesterday as all jewellery was an abomination.”
“This is probably not the first time by many that you have robbed me?”
“I let nobody else steal a farthing from you, sir.”
“Indeed! You like vicarious virtue! How could you open the cabinet? It has a Bramah lock.”
“And this here’s a Bramah pick-lock, sir,” says Critchett, displaying an elegant little tool.
“You infernal scoundrel!” repeats Bertram. “If I did my duty, I should give you to the police.”
“Oh, no, sir, you couldn’t do that to be consistent; and consistency is the first of virtues. I’ve heard you say, sir, that prevention is suggestion, and that if there was no constables there’d be no crime. In locking up this cabinet you put into my mind the idea of opening it. It is you, sir, who are to blame, not I.”
Critchett smiles demurely as he repeats these words.
“You have debased me, sir, by making me fill a servile office,” he adds. “No man should serve another. You’ve said so often.”
Bertram is silent, unspeakably annoyed, mortified, and distressed. He cannot discuss ethics with a treacherous valet.
“I believed in you, Critchett,” he says, after a pause.
Critchett smiles.
“I know you did, sir; you believe in a lot o’ things as won’t wash.”
“And you feel no remorse for having deceived me?”
“No, sir. Remorse aren’t seen outside the theatres, I think. ’Tis a word, sir. ’Tis only a word.”
Bertram is silent. The cheap cynicism of this man, who has lived beside him during a dozen years, is revolting.
“You are aware I could have you arrested?” he says, after a pause.
“No, sir, you couldn’t,” replies Critchett, calmly. “You’d be giving the lie to all your own theories. Try and look at it philosophic-like, sir.”
Bertram feels a violent longing to call up the policeman now passing by the rails of the Green Park. He puts a five-pound note on the table.
“Take your wage for the coming month, and begone.”
“It is usual, sir,” objects Critchett, “to give more than a month’s anticipatory honorarium on parting after such long association.”
This is the drop too much which makes the cup of Bertram’s patience overflow.
“You impudent villain,” he exclaims. “The only payment you deserve is the treadmill. Do not stretch my patience too far.”
Critchett perceives that his long docile victim is roused, and may become dangerous.
He retreats meekly.
“Would you wish to examine my portmanteau, sir?”
“No,” says Bertram. “Begone.”
Critchett bows very low.
“I have only put your theories into practice, sir,” he says, when he has reached a safe distance; “and you will be sorry if you send me away. You won’t find another Critchett very easily.”
Bertram turns his back on him; he feels again a great inclination to summon the constable who is walking in the street below.
The man having at last departed, he picks up the various objects and begins to replace them in the drawers of the cabinet. He is depressed and humiliated. For over twelve years he has implicitly trusted Critchett, believed in him, extolled him, and depended on him; taking his excellent service as a surety for moral excellence, as most of us do with our servants.
The cool impertinence with which the thief has quoted his own writings and sayings against him mortifies him; he is conscious that Critchett must have always considered him an ineffable idiot. It is not soothing to one’s self-respect to realise that for more than a dozen years one has been made a fool of successfully.
The sight of his mother’s jewels also saddens him; he had been her favourite son, and he had loved her tenderly.
“You will keep them for your wife, Wilfrid,” she had said to him, when she had given him the pearls and other ornaments on her death-bed.
What would his mother say, were she living, to such a wife for him as poor little Annie Brown? Poor Annie! Who said “as how” and “umberellar,” and who “liked to ‘ear the growlers come rattlin’ ‘ome o’ nights.”
“Mr. Bertram,” says the voice of Annie at that moment timidly. She has come through the anteroom of which Critchett has left the door open behind him. She wears the same clothes that she wore in the Park, but she carries no baskets on her arms.
Noticing Bertram’s preoccupied and distressed expression and the litter of objects on the floor, she is afraid she appears at an inopportune moment.
“Lord’s sakes, sir!” she murmurs, “what hev happened?”
“Critchett is a thief, Annie. I caught him in the act,” replies Bertram, with tragic force.
“Mother always knew as he was so, sir,” replies the girl, not astonished. “But she didn’t dare to tell you. You was that fond on him.”
“How could she possibly know?”
“Well, sir, he was allers a-boasting of ’ow he fleeced you. I believe all the gentlemen’s gentlemen in these ’ere parts o’ London know how he tricked ye. Law, sir, he even pawned your shirts!”
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Well, you see, sir, we didn’t like to lose a man his place.”
“You condoned a felony sooner?”
“Please, sir, I don’t know what that is. But poor folk don’t never take the bread out of each other’s mouths. And, besides, you wouldn’t have believed anybody against Critchett, sir. You were that wrapped up in him.”
“How cruelly one may be deceived!”
“’Tis easy to deceive you, sir, as instead of seeing people as they is, you see ’em as you fancies ’em to be.”
“Perhaps so. I fear I am a greater fool than I thought.”
“Oh, no, sir; only too trustin’ like.”
“Well, well,” says Bertram, much irritated, “Critchett is a thing of the past. We will never speak of him. But why have you come to my rooms, my dear girl? It is not — not quite — correct. Cæsar’s wife you know. But perhaps you never heard of her — —”
“No, sir. Who was the lady? I only came to say a word, Mr. Bertram. There aren’t no harm in it, though mother would be angry over the place.”
