The King's Men Part 6

"I should think that a young man with the world before him might find something better to do than to mope in a porter's lodge, looking mournfully at the lands which were his father's. What does he intend to do in the world?"

"Oh, he said nothing of his plan of life," said Miss Windsor; "but he seemed blue and restless. I think that there is something on his mind."

"These aristocrats, fallen from their high estate, are really in a pitiable condition," said Windsor. "I feel like a cad to have made the arrangement which I have with Jawkins. I wish that I were scot free from the whole business. Poor people, how they must hate me in advance, and what a vulgarian they must think me to be."

"Jawkins says that it is a recognized system, papa, you remember,"

answered Maggie. "After all, if you wish a great tenor or a violin-player at your parties, you pay them for it. If you wish a duke to awe or a beauty to charm your guests, why should you not hire them?

This is a commercial age. The poor people must live, and if they can only awe or charm, there is no harm in their receiving pay for their sole merits."

"You should have been bred to the bar, Maggie," laughed her father. "You are an eloquent advocate."

There was a rattling of wheels up the driveway, and the great hall doors were heard to open.

"Some of our guests have arrived," remarked Mr. Windsor. "I hope that Jawkins has made all his arrangements for their reception."

Just then the door opened and Mr. Jawkins entered carefully dressed. His manner was quiet and his voice subdued, as if he were whispering in a cathedral, as he said:

"Their Graces the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess have done you the honor of coming under your roof, Mr. Windsor. They are very much fatigued by their journey, and have retired to their apartments."

"We shall meet them at Philippi before the action, shall we not?" asked Miss Windsor.

"Yes, and meanwhile I shall do everything that I can for the comfort of your guests and the arrangement of the house. Believe me, I deeply feel the gravity of the situation," he continued, as he bowed himself out of the room.

"And so do I," said Mr. Windsor to his daughter. "I would rather face an army of irate stockholders than our guests this evening."

CHAPTER V.

"JAWKINS'S JOLLITIES."

When Geoffrey entered that evening the great drawing-rooms of his old home he found that they had been transformed from shabby and musty apartments into beautiful modern salons, which had the air of having been long lived in by people of refinement. There was even a certain feminine touch about the disposition of the bric-a-brac. The handsome pieces of old furniture, which seemed like friends of his boyhood, were still there, retained by the true artistic sense of Jawkins, who knew that no modern cabinetmaker could produce their like; still everything seemed brightened, as if the old rooms had been touched with sunshine.

The walls were hung with good modern paintings and old tapestries; the tables and mantelpieces were covered thick with curios. To fill a great house with the rare objects of art and luxury that are found in the abodes of those families which have held wealth for generations is an impossibility to the newly rich. Their brand-new mansions, left to upholsterers, resemble great caravansaries, bare, gilded and raw with primary colors. But Jawkins was an artist; he not only made the houses which he arranged beautiful, but he gave them the air of having been lived in for years, so that the strangers within the gates, who had been taught to judge of men's characters by their dwellings and surroundings, could not but be pleasantly impressed. Miss Windsor was standing alone, in a corner of the room, by a little round-backed sofa, and smiled a greeting at Geoffrey. After exchanging a few words with his host he walked over to her, and she stretched out her pretty gloved hand in welcome.

"Well met again, Lord Brompton; but you are not wearing your sword."

"'The Knights are dust,' I fear," he quoted with a smile. "I was loath to wear it with modern evening dress. I crave your forgiveness, fair lady."

"As long as you do not have it turned into a ploughshare, or a railway share, which would be more modern," laughed Maggie, "I will forgive you."

"Have all your guests arrived?"

"Of course; you are the last one, as usual. It has been rather an ordeal you may believe. Papa was in a dreadful state about it. The Duke and the d.u.c.h.ess of Bayswater he was especially in awe of. Dear old souls! You see them over there, looking like Mr. and Mrs. Marius in the ruins of Carthage."

Geoffrey, turning, saw a fine-looking old couple. The Duke still wore the blue ribbon of the Garter across his breast. He was a mild-looking gentleman, who seemed to be plunged in deep melancholy. His head was bald and highly polished, his gray side-whiskers were brushed carefully forward, and his nose was aquiline. Her Grace the d.u.c.h.ess surveyed the company with a haughty stare, which seemed to be a matter of habit rather than of present feeling.

"They were very kind to me when I was a boy," said Geoffrey, with a sigh. "But it is so long since they have seen me that they must have forgotten me. You have a large party."

"Oh, yes; they have been coming in all the afternoon. I think that it will be very pleasant when we get well shaken together. You see your old friend, Sir John Dacre, over there, do you not? away over at the end of the other rooms. The fine-looking girl to whom he is talking is Richard Lincoln's daughter."

Geoffrey looked in the direction, and saw the back of Sir John Dacre's head as he bent over to speak to Miss Lincoln.

He made a little start to go over to greet his friend. Miss Windsor saw it, and said: "You will see Sir John after dinner, Lord Brompton; you would interrupt a pleasant conversation now by being that wretched third who makes a 'company' a crowd; and at the same time, you would destroy all the proportion of the party by leaving me alone. You must sit on the sofa here by my side, and I will point out all the people to you. You will not sit anywhere near me, you know, at dinner, as you will take in Mrs. Oswald Carey, as I told you this morning."

Geoffrey sat down on the sofa by her and looked about the room.

"I do not see the great professional beauty in this room, Miss Windsor,"

he said, after he had finished his inspection of the people present, who seemed plunged in the depths of that gloom which always hangs over a party before a dinner.

Richard Lincoln, who had been touched by her Grace's melancholy, stood talking to her. In the opposite corner of the room sat Mr. James Sydney, the celebrated wit, his pasty face wearing an air of settled melancholy, while he gazed vacantly at a curious old Turner, which glowed like an American sunset against the stamped-leather hangings of the room.

"Poor fellow, he looks like the clown before he is painted," whispered Miss Windsor.

Mr. Prouty, the _Sat.u.r.day Reviewer_, sat on a "conversazione" with Lady Carringford, a commonplace, faded-out-looking woman of forty, with bleached hair. She did not seem much pleased by the conversation of the journalist, and looked furtively across the room as if to hint that she ought to be relieved, but Herr Diddlej and Sydney did not see her signals of distress.

Lord Carringford, her husband, a tall, keen-faced man with blue-black side-whiskers and a furtive eye, was talking with Mr. Windsor, and though he saw his wife's signals, of course, did not pay any attention to them. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in rusty clerical garb, smiled benignly at the whole company.

"Mrs. Oswald Carey is far too clever to stay in the glare of a great room like this," said Miss Windsor to Geoffrey. "She is one of those women who seek a corner and quiet and flourish there--not, however, alone. She is in the smaller room beyond, with Colonel Featherstone, who must have nearly pulled his great mustaches out by this time. You know how he twirls and twitches them when he thinks he is being quite irresistible, just as you are doing now, Lord Brompton."

Geoffrey dropped his hand from his mustache impatiently.

"Ah, you are always chaffing me, Miss Windsor," he pleaded.

"I knew very well what you were thinking, sir. That you could cut Colonel Featherstone out in no time. Now, were you not?"

"Not at all. I was thinking of you. Were not my languishing glances turned toward you?"

"Yes, but the languish was all for Mrs. Oswald, and not for me. But it is time to go to dinner now, Lord Brompton. You are permitted to disturb the _tete-a-tete_ and Mrs. Carey's peace of mind."

"If you send me away, I suppose that I must obey. A hostess is a despot whom no one may defy."

Miss Windsor smiled pleasantly at the Duke of Bayswater, who just then offered her his arm with great solemnity. Geoffrey bowed to her and the Duke, and walked slowly into the adjoining room.

In a dimly-lighted corner he saw a tall, heavily-built man, with a long red mustache, talking to a remarkably beautiful woman.

"Mrs. Carey and old Charlie Featherstone?" he said to himself, as he stopped to look at them and to await a pause in their conversation before he interrupted them.

"Why, it is Eleanor Leigh!" he exclaimed a moment later, as she turned her head from the shadow of a great j.a.panese screen, behind which the pair had sought shelter from prying eyes.

"Eleanor Leigh, my old sweetheart, to whom I bade farewell in the dark library of my old tutor's home, seven years ago."

She did not look in his direction, and he had a few moments to observe her carefully.

The slender girl whom he remembered had grown into a superb woman. Her head was poised upon her shoulders like that of a Greek G.o.ddess, and around her white throat gleamed a collar of brilliants. A tightly-fitting black gown made by contrast her bosom and arms dazzling in whiteness. Her hair was rolled into a large round knot at the back of her head, and its coils shone red-brown in the soft glow of the candles.

Her face seemed cold and calm to him as he looked at her, a faint, mocking smile played upon her full, red lips, and her delicate eyebrows were slightly raised. All of a sudden she turned toward him, and their eyes met in a flash of recognition. He remembered those eyes well, but here was something in them which was not there when his brain last thrilled with their magnetic glances--a something which he could not understand, but which repelled him. She raised her hand and seemed to beckon to him, and he obeyed her command.