The City of Masks/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
LADY JANE GOES ABOUT IT PROMPTLY
A FEW minutes before six o'clock that same afternoon, Mr. James Cricklewick, senior member of the firm of Cricklewick, Stackable & Co., linen merchants, got up from his desk in the crowded little compartment labelled "Private," and peered out of the second-floor window into the busy street below. Thousands of people were scurrying along the pavements in the direction of the brilliantly lighted Fifth Avenue, a few rods away; vague, dusky, unrecognizable forms in the darkness that comes so early and so abruptly to the cross-town streets at the end of a young March day. The middle of the street presented a serried line of snow heaps, piled up by the shovellers the day before,—symmetrical little mountains that formed an impassable range over which no chauffeur had the temerity to bolt in his senseless ambition to pass the car ahead.
Mr. James Cricklewick sighed. He knew from past experience that the Rock of Ages was but little more enduring than the snow-capped range in front of him. Time and a persistent sun inevitably would do the work of man, but in the meantime Mr. Cricklewick's wagons and trucks were a day and a half behind with deliveries, and that was worth sighing about. As he stood looking down the street, he sighed again. For more than forty years Mr. Cricklewick had made constant use of the phrase: "It's always something." If there was no one to say it to, he satisfied himself by condensing the lament into a strictly personal sigh.
He first resorted to the remark far back in the days when he was in the service of the Marquis of Camelford. If it wasn't one thing that was going wrong it was another; in any event it was "always something."
Prosperity and environment had not succeeded in bringing him to the point where he could snap his fingers and lightly say in the face of annoyances: "It's really nothing."
The fact that he was, after twenty-five years of ceaseless climbing, at the head of the well-known and thoroughly responsible house of Cricklewick, Stackable & Co., Linen Merchants and Drapers,—(he insisted on attaching the London word, not through sentiment, but for the sake of isolation),—operated not at all in bringing about a becalmed state of mind. Habitually he was disturbed by little things, which should not be in the least surprising when one stops to think of the multitudinous annoyances he must have experienced while managing the staff of under-servants in the extensive establishment of the late Marquis of Camelford.
He had never quite outgrown the temperament which makes for a good and dependable butler,—and that, in a way, accounts for the contention that "it is always something," and also for the excellent credit of the house he headed. Mr. Cricklewick made no effort to deceive himself. He occasionally deceived his wife in a mild and innocuous fashion by secretly reverting to form, but not for an instant did he deceive himself. He was a butler and he always would be a butler, despite the fact that the business and a certain section of the social world looked upon him as a very fine type of English gentleman, with a crest in his shop window and a popularly accepted record of having enjoyed a speaking acquaintance with Edward, the late King of England. Indeed, the late king appears to have enjoyed the same privilege claimed and exercised by the clerks, stenographers and floorwalkers in his employ, although His Majesty had a slight advantage over them in being free to call him "Cricky "to his face instead of behind his back.
Mr. Cricklewick, falling into a snug fortune when he was forty-five and at a time when the Marquis felt it to be necessary to curtail expenses by not only reducing his staff of servants but also the salaries of those who remained, married very nicely into a draper's family, and soon afterward voyaged to America to open and operate a branch of the concern in New York City. His fortune, including the savings of twenty years, amounted to something like thirty thousand pounds, most of which had been accumulated by a sheep-raising brother who had gone to and died in Australia. He put quite a bit of this into the business and became a partner, making himself doubly welcome to a family that had suffered considerably through competition in business and a complete lack of it in respect to the matrimonial possibilities of five fully matured daughters.
Mr. Cricklewick had the further good sense to marry the youngest, prettiest and most ambitious of the quintette, and thereby paved the way for satisfactory though wholly unexpected social achievements in the City of New York. His wife, with the customary British scorn for Americans, developed snobbish tendencies that rather alarmed Mr. Cricklewick at the outset of his business career in New York, but which ultimately produced the most remarkable results.
Almost before he was safely out of the habit of saying "thank you" when it wasn't at all necessary to say it, his wife had him down at Hot Springs, Virginia, for a month in the fall season, where, because of his exceptionally mellifluous English accent and a stateliness he had never been able to overcome, he was looked upon by certain Anglo-maniacs as a real and unmistakable "toff."
Cricklewick had been brought up in, or on, the very best of society. From his earliest days as third groom in the Camelford ménage to the end of his reign as major-domo, he had been in a position to observe and assimilate the manners of the elect. No one knew better than he how to go about being a gentleman. He had had his lessons, not to say examples, from the first gentlemen of England. Having been brought up on dukes and earls,—and all that sort of thing,—to say nothing of quite a majority in the House of Lords, he was in a fair way of knowing "what's what," to use his own far from original expression.
You couldn't fool Cricklewick to save your life. The instant he looked upon you he could put you where you belonged, and, so far as he was concerned, that was where you would have to stay.
It is doubtful if there was ever a more discerning, more discriminating butler in all England. It was his rather astonishing contention that one could be quite at one's ease with dukes and duchesses and absolutely ill-at-ease with ordinary people. That was his way of making the distinction. It wasn't possible to be on terms of intimacy with the people who didn't belong. They never seemed to know their place.
The next thing he knew, after the Hot Springs visit, his name began to appear in the newspapers in columns next to advertising matter instead of the other way round. Up to this time it had been a struggle to get it in next to reading matter on account of the exorbitant rates demanded by the newspapers.
He protested to his wife. "Oh, I say, my dear, this is cutting it a bit thick, you know. You can't really be in earnest about it. I shouldn't know how to act sitting down at a dinner table like that, you know. I am informed that these people are regarded as real swells over 'ere,—here, I should say. You must sit down and drop 'em a line saying we can't come. Say we've suddenly been called out of town, or had bad news from home, or—"
"Rubbish! It will do them no end of good to see how you act at table. Haven't you had the very best of training? All you have to do—"
"But I had it standing, my dear."
"Just the same, I shall accept the invitation. They are very excellent people, and I see no reason why we shouldn't know the best while we're about it."
"But they've got millions," he expostulated.
"Well," said she, "you musn't believe everything you hear about people with millions. I must say that I've not seen anything especially vulgar about them. So don't let that stand in your way, old dear." It was unconscious irony.
"It hasn't been a great while since I was a butler, my love; don't forget that. A matter of a little over seven years."
"Pray do not forget," said she coldly, "that it hasn't been so very long since all these people over here were Indians."
Mr. Cricklewick, being more or less hazy concerning overseas history, took heart. They went to the dinner and he, remembering just how certain noblemen of his acquaintance deported themselves, got on famously. And although his wife never had seen a duchess eat, except by proxy in the theatre, she left nothing to be desired,—except, perhaps, in the way of food, of which she was so fond that it was rather a bore to nibble as duchesses do.
Being a sensible and far-seeing woman, she did not resent it when he mildly protested that Lady So-and-So wouldn't have done this, and the Duchess of You-Know wouldn't have done that. She looked upon him as a master in the School of Manners. It was not long before she was able not only to hold her own with the élite, but also to hold her lorgnette with them. If she did not care to see you in a crowd she could overlook you in the very smartest way.
And so, after twenty or twenty-five years, we find the Cricklewicks,—mother, father and daughter,—substantially settled in the City of Masks, occupying an enviable position in society, and seldom, if ever,—even in the bosom of the family,—referring to the days of long ago,—a precaution no doubt inspired by the fear that they might be overheard and misunderstood by their own well-trained and admirable butler, whose respect they could not afford to lose.
Once a week, on Wednesday nights, Mr. Cricklewick took off his mask. It was, in a sense, his way of going to confession. He told his wife, however, that he was going to the club.
He sighed a little more briskly as he turned away from the window and crossed over to the closet in which his fur-lined coat and silk hat were hanging. It had taken time and a great deal of persuasion on the part of his wife to prove to him that it wasn't quite the thing to wear a silk hat with a sack coat in New York; he had grudgingly compromised with the barbaric demands of fashion by dispensing with the sack coat in favour of a cutaway. The silk hat was a fixture.
"A lady asking to see you, sir," said his office-boy, after knocking on the door marked "Private."
"Hold my coat for me, Thomas," said Mr. Cricklewick.
"Yes, sir," said Thomas. "But she says you will see her, sir, just as soon as you gets a look at her."
"Obviously," said Mr. Cricklewick, shaking himself down into the great coat. "Don't rub it the wrong way, you simpleton. You should always brush a silk hat with the nap and not—"
"May I have a few words with you, Mr. Cricklewick?" inquired a sweet, clear voice from the doorway.
The head of the house opened his lips to say something sharp to the office-boy, but the words died as he obeyed a magnetic influence and hazarded a glance at the intruder's face.
"Bless my soul!" said he, staring. An instant later he had recovered himself. "Take my coat, Thomas. Come in, Lady—er—Miss Emsdale. Thank you. Run along, Thomas. This is—ah—a most unexpected pleasure." The door closed behind Thomas. "Pray have a chair, Miss Emsdale. Still quite cold, isn't it?"
"I sha'n't detain you for more than five or ten minutes," said Miss Emsdale, sinking into a chair.
"At your service,—quite at your service," said Mr. Cricklewick, dissolving in the presence of nobility. He could not have helped himself to save his life.
Miss Emsdale came to the point at once. To save her life she could not think of Cricklewick as anything but an upper servant.
"Please see if we are quite alone, Mr. Cricklewick," she said, laying aside her little fur neck-piece.
Mr. Cricklewick started. Like a flash there shot into his brain the voiceless groan: "It's always something." However, he made haste to assure her that they would not be disturbed. "It is closing time, you see," he concluded, not without hope.
"I could not get here any earlier," she explained. "I stopped in to ask a little favour of you, Mr. Cricklewick."
"You have only to mention it," said he, and then abruptly looked at his watch. The thought struck him that perhaps he did not have enough in his bill-folder; if not, it would be necessary to catch the cashier before the safe was closed for the day.
"Lord Temple is in trouble, Mr. Cricklewick," she said, a queer little catch in her voice.
"I—I am sorry to hear that," said he.
"And I do not know of any one who is in a better position to help him than you," she went on coolly.
"I shall be happy to be of service to Lord Temple," said Mr. Cricklewick, but not very heartily. Observation had taught him that young noblemen seldom if ever get into trouble half way; they make a practice of going in clean over their heads.
"Owing to an unpleasant misunderstanding with Mr. Stuyvesant Smith-Parvis, he has lost his situation as chauffeur for Mr. Carpenter," said she.
"I hope he has not—ahem!—thumped him," said Mr. Cricklewick, in such dismay that he allowed the extremely undignified word to slip out.
She smiled faintly. "I said unpleasant, Mr. Cricklewick,—not pleasant."
"Bless my soul," said Mr. Cricklewick, blinking.
"Mr. Smith-Parvis has prevailed upon Mr. Carpenter to dismiss him, and I fear, between them, they are planning to drive him out of the city in disgrace."
"Bless me! This is too bad."
Without divulging the cause of Smith-Parvis's animosity, she went briefly into the result thereof.
"It is really infamous," she concluded, her eyes flashing. "Don't you agree with me?"
Having it put to him so abruptly as that, Mr. Cricklewick agreed with her.
"Well, then, we must put our heads together, Mr. Cricklewick," she said, with decision.
"Quite so," said he, a little vaguely.
"He is not to be driven out of the city," said she. "Nor is he to be unjustly acccused of—of wrongdoing. We must see to that."
Mr. Cricklewick cleared his throat. "He can avoid all that sort of thing, Lady—er—Miss Emsdale, by simply announcing that he is Lord Temple, heir to one of the—"
"Oh, he wouldn't think of doing such a thing," said she quickly.
"People would fall over themselves trying to put laurels on his head," he urged. "And, unless I am greatly mistaken, the first to rush up would be the—er—the Smith-Parvises, headed by Stuyvesant."
"No one knows the Smith-Parvises better than you, Mr. Cricklewick," she said, and for some reason he turned quite pink.
"Mrs. Cricklewick and I have seen a great deal of them in the past few years," he said, almost apologetically.
"And that encourages me to repeat that no one knows them better than you," she said coolly.
"We are to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Smith-Parvis to-night," said Mr. Cricklewick.
"Splendid!" she cried, eagerly. "That works in very nicely with the plan I have in mind. You must manage in some way to remark—quite casually, of course,—that you are very much interested in the affairs of a young fellow-countryman,—omitting the name, if you please,—who has been dismissed from service as a chauffeur, and who has been threatened—"
"But my dear Miss Emsdale, I—"
"—threatened with all sorts of things by his late employer. You may also add that you have communicated with our Ambassador at Washington, and that it is your intention to see your fellow-countryman through if it takes a—may I say leg, Mr. Cricklewick? Young Mr. Smith-Parvis will be there to hear you, so you may bluster as much as you please about Great Britain protecting her subjects to the very last shot. The entire machinery of the Foreign Office may be called into action, if necessary, to—but I leave all that to you. You might mention, modestly, that it's pretty ticklish business trying to twist the British lion's tail. Do you see what I mean?"
Mr. Cricklewick may have had an inward conviction that this was hardly what you would call asking a favour of a person, but if he had he kept it pretty well to himself. It did not occur to him that his present position in the world, as opposed to hers, justified a rather stiff reluctance on his part to take orders, or even suggestions, from this penniless young person,—especially in his own sacred lair. On the contrary, he was possessed by the instant and enduring realization that it was the last thing he could bring himself to the point of doing. His father, a butler before him, had gone to considerable pains to convince him, at the outset of his career, that insolence is by far the greatest of vices.
Still, in this emergency, he felt constrained to argue,—another vice sometimes modified by circumstances and the forbearance of one's betters.
"But I haven't communicated with our Ambassador at Washington," he said. "And as for the Foreign Office taking the matter up—"
"But, don't you see, they couldn't possibly know that, Mr. Cricklewick," she interrupted, frowning slightly.
"Quite true,—but I should be telling a falsehood if I said anything of the sort."
"Knowing you to be an absolutely truthful and reliable man, Mr. Cricklewick," she said mendaciously, "they would not even dream of questioning your veracity. They do not believe you capable of telling a falsehood. Can't you see how splendidly it would all work out?"
Mr. Cricklewick couldn't see, and said so.
"Besides," he went on, "suppose that it should get to the ears of the Ambassador."
"In that event, you could run over to Washington and tell him in private just who Thomas Trotter is, and then everything would be quite all right. You see," she went on earnestly, "all you have to do is to drop a few words for the benefit of young Mr. Smith-Parvis. He looks upon you as one of the most powerful and influential men in the city, and he wouldn't have you discover that he is in anyway connected with such a vile, underhanded—"
"How am I to lead up to the subject of chauffeurs?" broke in Mr. Cricklewick weakly. "I can hardly begin talking about chauffeurs—er—out of a clear sky, you might say."
"Don't begin by talking about chauffeurs," she counselled. "Lead up to the issue by speaking of the friendly relations that exist between England and America, and proceed with the hope that nothing may ever transpire to sever the bond of blood—and so on. You know what I mean. It is quite simple. And then look a little serious and distressed,—that ought to be easy, Mr. Cricklewick. You must see how naturally it all leads up to the unfortunate affair of your young countryman, whom you are bound to defend,—and we are bound to defend,—no matter what the consequences may be."
Two minutes later she arose triumphant, and put on her stole. Her eyes were sparkling.
"I knew you couldn't stand by and see this outrageous thing done to Eric Temple. Thank you. I—goodness gracious, I quite forgot a most important thing. In the event that our little scheme does not have the desired result, and they persist in persecuting him, we must have something to fall back upon. I know McFaddan very slightly. (She did not speak of the ex-footman as Mr. McFaddan, nor did Cricklewick take account of the omission). He is, I am informed, one of the most influential men in New York,—one of the political bosses, Mr. Smith-Parvis says. He says he is a most unprincipled person. Well, don't you see, he is just the sort of person to fall back upon if all honest measures fail?"
Mr. Cricklewick rather blankly murmured something about "honest measures," and then mopped his brow. Miss Emsdale's enthusiam, while acutely ingenuous, had him "sweating blood," as he afterwards put it during a calm and lucid period of retrospection.
"I—I assure you I have no influence with McFaddan," he began, looking at his handkerchief,—and being relieved, no doubt, to find no crimson stains,—applied it to his neck with some confidence and vigour. "In fact, we differ vastly in—"
"McFaddan, being in a position to dictate to the police and, if it should come to the worst, to the magistrates, is a most valuable man to have on our side, Mr. Cricklewick. If you could see him tomorrow morning,—I suppose it is too late to see him this evening,—and tell him just what you want him to do, I'm sure—"
"But, Miss Emsdale, you must allow me to say that McFaddan will absolutely refuse to take orders from me. He is no longer what you might say—er—in a position to be—er—you see what I mean, I hope."
"Nonsense!" she said, dismissing his objection with a word. "McFaddan is an Irishman and therefore eternally committed to the under dog, right or wrong. When you explain the circumstances to him, he will come to our assistance like a flash. And don't overlook the fact, Mr. Cricklewick, that McFaddan will never see the day when he can ignore a—a request from you." She had almost said command, but caught the word in time. "By the way, poor Trotter is out of a situation, and I may as well confess to you that he can ill afford to be without one. It has just occurred to me that you may know of some one among your wealthy friends, Mr. Cricklewick, who is in need of a good man. Please rack your brain. Some one to whom you can recommend him as a safe, skilful and competent chauffeur."
"I am glad you mention it," said he, brightening perceptibly in the light of something tangible. "This afternooon I was called up on the telephone by a party—by some one, I mean to say,—asking for information concerning Klausen, the man who used to drive for me. I was obliged to say that his habits were bad, and that I could not recommend him. It was Mrs. Ellicott Millidew who inquired."
"The young one or the old one?" inquired Miss Emsdale quickly.
"The elder Mrs. Millidew," said Mr. Cricklewick, in a tone that implied deference to a lady who was entitled to it, even when she was not within earshot. "Not the pretty young widow," he added, risking a smile.
"That's all right, then," said Miss Emsdale briskly. "I am sure it would be a most satisfactory place for him."
"But she is a very exacting old lady," said he, "and will require references."
"I am sure you can give him the very best of references," said she. "She couldn't ask for anything better than your word that he is a splendid man in every particular. Thank you so much, Mr. Cricklewick. And Lord Temple will be ever so grateful to you too, I'm sure. Oh, you cannot possibly imagine how relieved I am—about everything. We are very great friends. Lord Temple and I."
He watched the faint hint of the rose steal into her cheeks and a velvety softness come into her eyes.
"Nothing could be more perfect," he said, irrelevantly, but with real feeling, and the glow of the rose deepened.
"Thank you again,—and good-bye," she said, turning toward the door.
It was then that the punctilious Cricklewick forgot himself, and in his desire to be courteous, committed a most unpardonable offence.
"My motor is waiting. Lady Jane," he said, the words falling out unwittingly. "May I not drop you at Mr. Smith-Parvis's door?"
"No, thank you," she said graciously. "You are very good, but the stages go directly past the door."
As the door closed behind her, Mr. Cricklewick sat down rather suddenly, overcome by his presumption. Think of it! He had had the brass to invite Lady Jane Thorne to accept a ride in his automobile! He might just as well have had the effrontery to ask her to dine at his house!