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Page 10
"The desert," she whispered. "The pyramids--the
bazaar--life--adventure. How _wonderful_!" There came a long, long
pause, and then she added, as she turned towards a coloured picture of
the Sphinx upon the wall, "And who cares if the nail is a tin-tack or a
screw?"
As it happened, it was destined to be the jewel-hilted, double-edged,
unsheathed dagger of love.
And Fate, having mislaid her glasses, worked her shuttle at hazard in
and out of that picture of intricate pattern called Life, and having
tangled and knotted together the crimson thread of passion, the golden
thread of youth and the honest brown of a deep, undemonstrative love,
she left the disentanglement of the muddle in the hands of Olivia,
Duchess of Longacres.
Her Grace was over eighty.
Of a line of yeomen ancestors ranging back down the centuries to the
William Carew who had fought for Harold, she had been, about sixty-five
years ago, the belle of Devon. Against the warnings of her heart and
to the delight of her friends and family, she had married the Duke of
Longacres, whose roving eye had been arrested by her beauty at a meet
of the Devon and Somerset, and his equally roving heart temporarily
captured by the indifference of her demeanour towards his autocratic
self.
She had lost him, to all intents and purposes, two years after the
marriage, but blinding her eyes and stuffing her ears, had held high
her beautiful head and high her honour, filling her empty heart with
the love of her son and the esteem of her legion of real friends;
showing the bravest of beautiful faces to the world, until a happy
widowhood had set her free.
Some years of absolute happiness of the simplest kind had followed; the
marriage of her son and birth of her grandson, who had cost his mother
her life. Then the following year had come the Boer War, and the
heroic tragedy of Spion Kop, which left her childless; after that, many
years of utter devotion, to her grandson, who adored her; then the
Great War and the Battle of the Falkland Islands, which left her
absolutely bereft, with the care of the boy's greatest treasure, even
the grey parrot, Quarter-Deck, Dekko for short.
Methuselah of birds, it was possessed of an uncanny gift of human
speech and understanding, and had been promoted through generation to
generation, from sailing-vessel _via_ Merchant Service to British Navy.
As time and tragedy worked hard together to silver her hair and line
her face, so did a veritable imp of mischief, bred of her desolation,
seem to possess the old darling. She cared not a brass farthing for
the opinion of her neighbours, so that after the death of the great
Queen, who had been her staunchest friend, she had instructed Maria
Hobson, her maid and also staunchest friend, to revive the faded roses
of her cheeks with the aid of cosmetics. Things had gone from bad to
worse in that respect, until her pretty snow-white hair had been
covered by a flagrant golden perruque and the dear old face with a mask
of pink and white enamel. Her eyes were blue, and keen as a hawk's,
undimmed by the tears shed in secret during her tumultuous and tragic
life; her teeth, each one in a perfect and pearly state of
preservation, were her own, for which asset she was never given the
benefit of the doubt; her tongue was vitriolic; her heart of pure gold,
and she owned a right hand which said nothing to the left of the spaces
between its fingers through which, daily ran deeds of kindness and
streams of love towards the unfortunate ones of the earth.
Her dress was invariably of grey taffeta or brocade, bunched at the
back and trailing on the ground; there were ruffles, of priceless lace
at the elbow-sleeves and V-shaped neck; a plain straw poke-bonnet
served for all outdoor functions, and an ebony stick, called "the wand"
by the denizens of the slums, who adored her, completed her picturesque
toilette.
The majority feared this _grande dame_, a minority, if they had had the
chance, would have fawned upon her in public and laughed at or
caricatured her in private; those who really knew her, and they lived
principally east of London town, would willingly have laid themselves
down and allowed her ridiculously small feet, invariably shod in
crimson, buckled, outrageously high-heeled shoes, to trample upon their
prostrate bodies, if it would have given her pleasure so to do.
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