Thelma
Briggs laid down the paper he was perusing and surveyed her with a
superior air.
"What, Vi?" he exclaimed with a lazy wink. "Vi, of the Hopperer-Buff?
You've 'erd of 'er surely, Mamzelle? No? There's not a man (as is worth
calling a man) about town, as don't know _'er_! Dukes, Lords, an' Royal
'Ighnesses--she's the style for 'em! Mag-ni-ficent creetur! all legs and
arms! I won't deny but wot I 'ave an admiration for 'er myself--I bought
a 'arf-crown portrait of 'er quite recently." And Briggs rose slowly and
searched in a mysterious drawer which he invariably kept locked.
"'Ere she is, as large as life, Mamzelle," he continued, exhibiting a
"promenade" photograph of the actress in question. "There's a neck for
you! There's form! Vi, my dear, I saloot you!" and he pressed a sounding
kiss on the picture--"you're one in a million! Smokes and drinks like a
trooper, Mamzelle!" he added admiringly, as Louise Renaud studied the
portrait attentively. "But with all 'er advantages, you would not call
'er a lady. No--that term would be out of the question. She is wot we
men would call an enchantin' female!" And Briggs kissed the tips of his
fingers and waved them in the air as he had seen certain foreign
gentlemen do when enthusiastic.
"I comprehend," said the French maid, nodding emphatically. "Then, if
she is so, what makes that proud Seigneur Bruce-Errington visit her?"
Here she shook her finger at Briggs. "And leave his beautiful lady wife,
to go and see her?" Another shake. "And that _miserable_ Sieur Lennox to
go also? Tell me that!" She folded her arms, like Napoleon at St.
Helena, and smiled again that smile which was nothing but a sneer.
Briggs rubbed his nose contemplatively.
"Little Francis can go ennywheres," he said at last. "He's laid out a
good deal of tin on Vi and others of 'er purfession. You cannot make
enny-think of that young feller but a cad. I would not accept 'im for my
pussonal attendant. No! But Sir Philip Bruce-Errington--" He paused,
then continued, "Air you sure of your facts, Mamzelle?"
Mamzelle was so sure, that the bow on her cap threatened to come off
with the determined wagging of her head.
"Well," resumed Briggs, "Sir Philip may, like hothers, consider it 'the
thing' you know, to 'ang on as it were to Vi. But I _'ad_ thought 'im
superior to it. Ah! poor 'uman natur, as 'Uxley says!" and Briggs
sighed. "Lady Errington is a sweet creetur, Mamzelle--a _very_ sweet
creetur! _Has_ a rule I find the merest nod of my 'ed a sufficient
saloot to a woman of the aristocracy--but for _'er_, Mamzelle, I never
fail to show 'er up with a court bow!" And involuntarily Briggs bowed
then and there in his most elegant manner. Mamzelle tightened her thin
lips a little and waved her hand expressively.
"She is an angel of beauty!" she said, "and Miladi Winsleigh is
jealous--ah, _Dieu!_ jealous to death of her! She is innocent too--like
a baby--and she worships her husband. That is an error! To worship a man
is a great mistake--she will find it so. Men are not to be too much
loved--no, no!"
Briggs smiled in superb self-consciousness. "Well, well! I will not
deny, Mamzelle, that it spoils us," he said complacently. "It certainly
spoils us! 'When lovely woman stoops to folly,'--the hold, hold story!"
"You will r-r-r-emember," said Mamzelle, suddenly stepping up very close
to him and speaking with a strong accent, "what I have said to-night!
Monsieur Briggs, you will r-remember! There will be mees-cheef!
Yes--there will be mees-cheef to Sieur Bruce-Errington, and when there
is,--I--I, Louise Renaud--I know who ees at the bottom of eet!"
So saying, with a whirl of her black silk dress and a flash of her white
muslin apron, she disappeared. Briggs, left alone, sauntered to a
looking-glass hanging on the wall and studied with some solicitude a
pimple that had recently appeared on his clean-shaven face.
"Mischief!" he soliloquized. "I des-say! Whenever a lot of women gets
together, there's sure to be mischief. Dear creeturs! They love it like
the best Clicquot. Sprightly young pusson is Mamzelle. Knows who's at
the bottom of 'eet,' does she! Well--she's not the only one as knows the
same thing. As long as doors 'as cracks and key'oles, it ain't in the
least difficult to find out wot goes on inside boo-dwars and
drorin'-rooms. And 'ighly interestin' things one 'ears now and
then--'ighly interestin'!"
And Briggs leered suavely at his own reflection, and then resumed the
perusal of his paper. He was absorbed in the piquant, highly flavored
details of a particularly disgraceful divorce case, and he was by no
means likely to disturb himself from his refined enjoyment for any less
important reason than the summons of Lord Winsleigh's bell, which rang
so seldom that, when it did, he made it a point of honor to answer it
immediately, for, as he said--
"His lordship knows wot is due to me, and I knows wot is due to
'im--therefore it 'appens we are able to ekally respect each other!"
CHAPTER XXII.
"If thou wert honorable,
Thou would'st have told this tale for virtue, not
For such an end thou seek'st; as base, as strange.
Thou wrong'st a gentleman who is as far
From thy report, as thou from honor."
_Cymbeline._
Summer in Shakespeare Land! Summer in the heart of England--summer in
wooded Warwickshire,--a summer brilliant, warm, radiant with flowers,
melodious with the songs of the heaven--aspiring larks, and the sweet,
low trill of the forest-hidden nightingales. Wonderful and divine it is
to hear the wild chorus of nightingales that sing beside Como in the hot
languorous nights of an Italian July--wonderful to hear them maddening
themselves with love and music, and almost splitting their slender
throats with the bursting bubbles of burning song,--but there is
something, perhaps, more dreamily enchanting still,--to hear them
warbling less passionately but more plaintively, beneath the drooping
leafage of those grand old trees, some of which may have stretched their
branches in shadowy benediction over the sacred head of the grandest
poet in the world. Why travel to Athens,--why wander among the Ionian
Isles for love of the classic ground? Surely, though the clear-brained
old Greeks were the founders of all noble literature, they have reached
their fulminating point in the English Shakespeare,--and the
Warwickshire lanes, decked simply with hawthorn and sweet-briar roses,
through which Mary Arden walked leading her boy-angel by the hand, are
sacred as any portion of that earth once trodden by the feet of Homer
and Plato.
So, at least, Thelma thought, when, released from the bondage of London
social life, she found herself once more at Errington Manor, then
looking its loveliest, surrounded with a green girdle of oak and beech,
and set off by the beauty of velvety lawns and terraces, and
rose-gardens in full bloom. The depression from which she had suffered
fell away from her completely--she grew light-hearted as a child, and
flitted from room to room, singing to herself for pure gladness. Philip
was with her all day now, save for a couple of hours in the forenoon
which he devoted to letter-writing in connection with his Parliamentary
aspirations,--and Philip was tender, adoring and passionate as lovers
may be, but as husbands seldom are. They took long walks together
through the woods,--they often rambled across the fragrant fields to
Anne Hathaway's cottage, which was not very far away, and sitting down
in some sequestered nook, Philip would pull from his pocket a volume of
the immortal Plays, and read passages aloud in his fine mellow voice,
while Thelma, making posies of the meadow flowers, listened entranced.
Sometimes, when he was in a more business-like humor, he would bring out
Cicero's Orations, and after pondering over them for a while would talk
very grandly about the way in which he meant to speak in Parliament.
"They want dash and fire there," he said, "and these qualities must be
united with good common sense. In addressing the House, you see, Thelma,
one must rouse and interest the men--not bore them. You can't expect
fellows to pass a Bill if you've made them long for their beds all the
time you've been talking about it."
Thelma smiled and glanced over his shoulder at "Cicero's Orations."
"And do you wish to speak to them like Cicero, my boy?" she said gently.
"But I do not think you will find that possible. Because when Cicero
spoke it was in a different age and to very different people--people
who were glad to learn how to be wise and brave. But if you were Cicero
himself, do you think you would be able to impress the English
Parliament?"
"Why not, dear?" asked Errington with some fervor. "I believe that men,
taken as men, _pur et simple_, are the same in all ages, and are open to
the same impressions. Why should not modern Englishmen be capable of
receiving the same lofty ideas as the antique Romans, and acting upon
them?"
"Ah, do not ask _me_ why," said Thelma, with a plaintive little shake of
her head--"for _I_ cannot tell you! But remember how many members of
Parliament we did meet in London--and where were their lofty ideas?
Philip, had they any ideas at all, do you think? There was that very fat
gentleman who is a brewer,--well, to hear him talk, would you not think
all England was for the making of beer? And he does not care for the
country unless it continues to consume his beer! It was to that very man
I said something about _Hamlet_, and he told me he had no interest for
such nonsense as Shakespeare and play-going--his time was taken up at
the '_'Ouse_.' You see, he is a member of Parliament--yet it is evident
he neither knows the language nor the literature of his country! And
there must be many like him, otherwise so ignorant a person would not
hold such a position--and for such men, what would be the use of a
Cicero?"
Philip leaned back against the trunk of the tree under which they were
sitting, and laughed.
"You may be right, Thelma,--I dare say you are. There's certainly too
much beer represented in the House--I admit that. But, after all, trade
is the great moving-spring of national prosperity,--and it would hardly
be fair to refuse seats to the very men who help to keep the country
going."
"I do not see that," said Thelma gravely,--"if those men are ignorant,
why should they have a share in so important a thing as Government? They
may know all about beer, and wool, and iron,--but perhaps they can only
judge what is good for themselves, not what is best for the whole
country, with all its rich and poor. I do think that only the wisest
scholars and most intelligent persons should be allowed to help in the
ruling of a great nation."
"But the people choose their own rulers," remarked Errington
reflectively.
"Ah, the poor people!" sighed Thelma. "They know so very little,--and
they are taught so badly! I think they never do quite understand what
they do want,--they are the same in all histories,--like little
children, they get bewildered and frightened in any trouble, and the
wisest heads are needed to think for them. It is, indeed, most cruel to
make them puzzle out all difficulty for themselves!"
"What a little sage you are, my pet!" laughed Philip, taking her hand on
which the marriage-ring and its accompanying diamond circlet, glistened
brilliantly in the warm sunlight. "Do you mean to go in for politics?"
She shook her head. "No, indeed! That is not woman's work at all. The
only way in which I think about such things, is that I feel the people
cannot all be wise,--and that it seems a pity the wisest and greatest in
the land should not be chosen to lead them rightly."