George Fenn - The Master of the Ceremonies

“Morton! my son! you grieve and pain me. How dare you speak like that of a leader of society – a lady of title, sir – of great wealth. Why, her diamonds are magnificent. I will be plain with you. You have only to play your cards well, and in due course others will be issued – Mr Morton Denville and the Countess of Drelincourt.”

“Why, father, all the fellows would laugh at me.”

“Sir, a man with horses, carriages, servants, a town mansion and country seat, and a large income can laugh at the world.”

“Oh, yes, of course, father; but she’s fifty or sixty, and I’m not twenty.”

“What has that to do with it, sir! How often do men of sixty marry girls of seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen?”

“But she paints, and wears false hair.”

“Matters of which every gentleman, sir, would be profoundly ignorant as regards a lady of title.”

“But, papa dear, surely you are not serious?” said Claire, who had listened with horror painted in every feature.

“I was never more serious in my life, child. Lady Drelincourt is not young, but she is a most amiable woman, with no other weakness than a love for play.”

“And little beasts of dogs,” said Morton contemptuously.

“Of course, because there is a void in her womanly heart. That void, my son, you must try and fill.”

“Oh, nonsense, father!”

“Nonsense! Morton, are you mad? Are you going to throw away a fortune, and a great position in society? Of course, I do not say that such an event will follow, but it is time you began to assert your position. You did well the other day on the pier.”

“Yes,” said Morton with a sneer. “I fished out a dog. Now Dick Linnell did something worth – ”

“Silence, sir! Do not mention his name in my presence, I beg,” said the old man sternly; and he left the house.

“Well, I tell you what it is, Sis,” said Morton, speaking from the window, where he had gone to see his father mince by, “the old dad hasn’t been right since that night. I think he’s going off his head.”

There was no reply, and, turning round, it was to find that he was alone, for Claire, unable to bear the strain longer, had glided from the room.

No one would have called Miss Clode pretty, “but there were traces,” as the Master of the Ceremonies said. She was thin and middle-aged now, but she had once been a very charming woman; and, though the proprietress of the circulating library at Saltinville, a keen observer would have said that she was a lady.

Richard Linnell entered her shop on the morning after the carriage accident, and a curious flush came into her little thin face. There was a light in her eye that seemed to make the worn, jaded face pleasanter to look upon, and it seemed as if something of the little faded woman’s true nature was peeping out.

She did not look like the little go-between in scores of flirtations and intrigues; but as if the natural love of her nature had come to the surface, from where it generally lay latent, and her eyes seemed to say:

“Ah, if I could have married, and had a son like that.”

It is the fashion, nowadays, for ladies to attempt a strong-minded rôle , and profess to despise the tyrant man; to take to college life and professorship; to cry aloud and shout for woman’s rights and independence; for votes and the entry to the school board, vestry, and the Parliamentary bench; when all the time Nature says in her gentle but inflexible way: “Foolish women; it was not for these things that you were made to tread the earth.”

Study! Yes, nothing is too abstruse, nowadays. The pretty maidens, who used to learn a little French with their music and drawing, now take to Greek and Latin and the higher mathematics, but they cannot stitch like their grandmothers.

“And,” says a strong-minded lady, “are they any worse companions now for men than they were then?”

“Opinions are various, madam.” I used to write that as a text-hand copy in a nicely-ruled book that I used to blot with inky fingers. You, madam, who claim your rights, surely will not deny me mine – to have my own opinion, which I will dare to give, and say:

“Yes; I think they have not improved. Somehow one likes softness and sweetness in a woman, and your classic young ladies are often very sharp and hard.

“If you combat my opinion upon the main idea of women’s purpose here, add this to your study – the aspect of a woman when she is most beautiful.

“And when is that? – in her ball dress? – in her wedding costume? – when she first says ‘yes?’

“Oh, no; none of these, but when she is alone with the child she loves, and that sweet – well, angelic look of satisfied maternity is on her face, and there is Nature’s own truth stamped indelibly as it has been from the first.

“Men never look like that. They never did, and one may say never will. It is not given to us, madam. Study that look; it is more convincing than all the speeches women ever spoke on woman’s rights.”

Just such a look was upon the face of little thin white-faced Miss Clode, as the frank, manly young fellow strode suddenly into her shop, making her start, change colour, and set down on the counter something she was holding, taking it up again directly with trembling hands.

“Ah, Miss Clode,” he said cheerfully, “here I am again. Is it the weather, or are your strings bad?”

“Do they break so, then?” she said, hurriedly producing a tin canister, which refused to give up its lid; and Richard had to take it, and wrench it off with his strong fingers, when a number of oily rings of transparent catgut flew out on to the glass case.

“How clumsy I am,” he said.

“No,” she said softly; “how strong and manly. How you have altered these last ten years!”

“Well, I suppose so,” he said, smiling down at the little thin, upturned, admiring face. “But you’ll ruin me in strings, Miss Clode.”

“I wish you would not pay for them,” she said plaintively. “I get the very best Roman strings. I send on purpose to a place in Covent Garden, London, and they ought to be good.”

“And so they are,” he said, taking up half a dozen rings on his fingers and examining them to see which were the clearest, smoothest, and most transparent.

“But they break so,” she sighed. “You really must not pay for these.”

“Then I shall not have any,” he said.

She gazed tenderly in his face, and her eyes were very intent as she watched him. Then, coughing slightly, and half turning away, she said gently:

“And your father – is he quite well?”

“Oh yes, thank you. Very well. Well as a man can be who has such a great idle, useless son.”

Miss Clode shook her little curls at him reproachfully, and there was something very tender in her way as she cried, “You should not say that.” Then, in a quiet apologetic manner, she lowered her tone and said:

“You can’t help being so tall and strong and manly, and – and – and – I’m only an old woman, Mr Linnell,” she said, smiling in a deprecating way, “and I’ve known you since you were such a boy, so I shall say it – you won’t be vain – so handsome.”

“Am I?” he said, laughing. “Ah well, handsome is that handsome does, Miss Clode.”

“Exactly,” she said, laying her hand upon his arm and speaking very earnestly, “and I have three – three notes here.”

“For me?” he said, blushing like a woman, and then frowning at his weakness.

“Yes, Mr Linnell, for you.”

“Tear them up, then,” he said sharply. “I don’t want them.”

Miss Clode gave vent to a sigh of relief.

“Or no,” he said firmly. “They were given to you to deliver. Give them to me.”