Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

On the occasion of the tenth biennial visit of the Carlo Da Capo Grand Opera Combination to the musical, if murky, city of Smutchester, the principal members of the company pitched their tents, as was their wont, at the Crown Diamonds Hotel, occupying an entire floor of that capacious caravanserie, whose _chef_, to the grief of many honest British stomachs and the unrestrained joy of these artless children of song, was of cosmopolitan gifts, being an Italian-Spanish-Swiss-German. Here _prime donne_, tenors, and bassos could revel in national dishes from which their palates had long been divorced, and steaming masses of yellow polenta, _knüdels_, and _borsch_, heaped dishes of sausages and red cabbage, ragouts of cockscombs and chicken-livers, veal stewed with tomatoes, frittura of artichokes, with other culinary delicacies strange of aspect and garlicky as to smell, loaded the common board at each meal, only to vanish like the summer snow, so seldom seen but so constantly referred to by the poetical fictionist, amidst a Babel of conversation which might only find its parallel in the parrot-house at the Zoo. Ringed hands plunged into salad-bowls; the smoke of cigarettes went up in the intervals between the courses; the meerschaum-colored lager of Munich, the yellow beer of Bass, the purple Chianti, or the vintage of Epernay brimmed the glasses; and the coffee that crowned the banquet was black and thick and bitter as the soul of a singer who has witnessed the triumph of a rival.

For singers can be jealous: and the advice of Dr. Watts is more at discount behind the operatic scenes, perhaps, than elsewhere. For women may be, and are, jealous of other women; and men may be, and are, jealous of men, off the stage; but it is reserved for the hero and heroine of the stage to be jealous of one another. The glare of the footlights, held by so many virtuous persons to be inimical to the rosebud of innocence, has a curiously wilting and shriveling effect upon the fine flower of chivalry. Signor Alberto Fumaroli, _primo uomo_, and possessor of a glorious tenor, was possessed by the idea that the chief soprano, De Melzi, the enchanting Teresa—still in the splendor of her youth, with ebony tresses, eyes of jet, skin of ivory, an almost imperceptible mustache, and a figure of the most seductive, doomed ere long to expand into a pronounced _embonpoint_—had adorned her classic temples with laurels which should by rights have decked his own. The press-cuttings of the previous weeks certainly balanced in her favor. Feeble-minded musical critics, of what the indignant tenor termed “provincial rags,” lauded the Signora to the skies. She was termed a “springing fountain of crystal song,” a “human bulbul in the rose-garden of melody.” Eulogy had exhausted itself upon her; while he, Alberto Fumaroli, the admired of empresses, master of the emotions of myriads of American millionairesses, he was fobbed off with half a dozen patronizing lines. Glancing over the paper in the saloon carriage, he had seen the impertinent upper lip of the De Melzi, tipped with the faintest line of shadow, curl with delight as she scanned each accursed column in turn, and handed the paper to her aunt (a vast person invariably clad in the tightest and shiniest of black satins, and crowned with a towering hat of violet velvet adorned with once snowy plumes and crushed crimson roses), who went everywhere with her niece, and mounted guard over the exchequer. Outwardly calm as Vesuvius, and cool as a Neapolitan ice on a hot day, the outraged Alberto endured the triumph of the women, marked the subterranean chuckles of the stout Signora, the mischievous enjoyment of Teresa; pulled his Austrian-Tyrolese hat over his Corsican brows, and vowed a wily _vendetta_. His opportunity for wreaking retribution would come at Smutchester, he knew. Wagner was to be given at the Opera House, and as great as the previous triumph of Teresa de Melzi in the rôle of Elsa—newly added by the soprano to her _repertoire_—should be her fall. _Evviva!_ Down with that fatally fascinating face, smiling so provokingly under its laurels! She should taste the consequences of having insulted a Neapolitan. And the tenor smiled so diabolically that Zamboni, the basso, sarcastically inquired whether Fumaroli was rehearsing _Mephistofole_?

“Not so, dear friend,” Fumaroli responded, with a dazzling show of ivories. “In that part I should make a _bel fiasco_; I have no desire to emulate a basso or a bull.... But in this—the rôle in which I am studying to perfect myself—I predict that I shall achieve a dazzling success.” He drew out a green Russia-leather cigarette case, adorned with a monogram in diamonds. “It is permitted that one smokes?” he added, and immediately lighted up.

“It is permitted, if I am to have one also.”

The De Melzi stretched a white, bejeweled hand out, and the seething Alberto, under pain of appearing openly impolite, was forced to comply. “No, I will not take the cigarette you point out,” said the saucy _prima donna_, as the tenor extended the open case. “It might disagree with me, who knows? and I have predicted that in the part of Elsa to-morrow night at Smutchester _I_ shall achieve a ‘dazzling success.’” And she smiled with brilliant malice upon Alberto Fumaroli, who played Lohengrin. “They are discriminating—the audiences of that big, black, melancholy place—they never mistake geese for swans.”

“_Ach_, no!” said the Impresario, looking up from his tatting—he was engaged upon a green silk purse for Madame Da Capo, a wrinkled little doll of an old lady with whom he was romantically in love. “They will not take a _dournure_, some declamation, and half a dozen notes in the upper register _bour dout botage_. Sing to them well, they will be ready to give you their heads. But sing to them badly, and they will be ready to pelt yours. Twenty years ago they did. I remember a graceless impostor, a _ragazzo_ (foisted upon me for a season by a villain of an agent), who annoyed them in _Almaviva_.... _Ebbene_! the elections were in progress—there was a _dimonstranza_. I can smell those antique eggs, those decomposed oranges, now.”

“Heart’s dearest, thou must not excite thyself,” interrupted Madame; “it is so bad for thee. Play at the poker-game, _mes enfants_,” she continued, “and leave my good child, my beloved little one, alone!” Saying this, Madame drew from her vast under-pocket a neat case containing an ivory comb, and, removing the fearfully and wonderfully braided traveling cap of the Impresario, fell to combing his few remaining hairs until, soothed by the process, Carlo, who had been christened Karl, fell asleep with his head on Madame’s shoulder; snoring peacefully, despite the screams, shrieks, howls, and maledictions which were the invariable accompaniment of the poker-game.

The train bundled into Smutchester some hours later; a string of cabs conveyed the Impresario, his wife, and the principal members of his company to the Crown Diamonds Hotel. Before he sought his couch that night the revengeful Alberto Fumaroli had interviewed the _chef_ and bribed him with the gift of a box of regalias from the cedar smoking-cabinet of a King, to aid in the carrying-out of the _vendetta_. Josebattista Funkmuller was not a regal judge of cigars; but these were black, rank, and oily enough to have made an Emperor most imperially sick. Besides, the De Melzi had, or so he declared, once ascribed an indigestion which had ruined, or so she swore, one of her grandest _scenas_, to an omelette of his making, and the cook was not unwilling that the haughty spirit of the _cantatrice_ should be crushed. His complex nature, his cosmopolitan origin, showed in the plan Josebattista Funkmuller now evolved and placed before the revengeful tenor, who clasped him to his bosom in an ecstasy of delight, planting at the same time a huge, resounding kiss upon both his cheeks.

“It is perfection!” Fumaroli cried. “My friend, it can scarcely fail! If it should, _per Bacco_! the Fiend himself is upon that insolent creature’s side! But I never heard yet of his helping a woman to resist temptation—_oh, mai!_ it is he who spreads the board and invites Eve.”

And the tenor retired exultant. His sleeping-chamber was next door to that of the hated _cantatrice_. He dressed upon the succeeding morning to the accompaniment of _roulades_ trilled by the owner of the lovely throat to which Fumaroli would so willingly have given the fatal squeeze. And as Fumaroli, completing his frugal morning ablutions by wiping his beautiful eyes and classic temples very gingerly with a damp towel, paused to listen, a smile of peculiar malignancy was only partly obscured by the folds of the towel. But when the tenor and the soprano encountered at the twelve o’clock _déjeuner_, Fumaroli’s politeness was excessive, and his large, dark, brilliant eyes responded to every glance of the gleaming black orbs of De Melzi with a languorous, melting significance which almost caused her heart to palpitate beneath her Parisian corsets. Concealed passion lay, it might be, behind an affectation of enmity and ill-will.

“_Mai santo cielo!_” exclaimed the stout aunt, to whom the _cantatrice_ subsequently revealed her suspicions, “thou guessest always as I myself have thought. The unhappy man is devoured by a grand passion for my Teresa. He grinds his teeth, he calls upon the saints, he grows more bilious every day, and thou more beautiful. One day he will declare himself——”

“And I shall lose an entertaining enemy, to find a stupid lover,” gurgled Teresa. She was looking divine, her dark beauty glowing like a gem in the setting of an Eastern silk of shot turquoise and purple, fifty yards of which an enamored noble of the Ukraine had thrown upon the stage of the Opera House, St. Petersburg, wound round the stem of a costly bouquet. She glanced in the mirror as she kissed the black nose of her Japanese pug. “Every man becomes stupid after a while,” she went on. “Even Josebattista is in love with me. He sends me a little note written on _papier jambon_ to entreat an interview.”

“My soul!” cried the stout aunt, “thou wilt not deny him?”

The saucy singer shook her head as Funkmuller tapped at the door. One need not give in detail the interview that eventuated. It is enough that the intended treachery of Fumaroli was laid bare. His intended victim laughed madly.

“But it is a _cerotto_—what the English call a nincompoop,” she gasped, pressing a laced handkerchief to her streaming eyes. “If the heavens were to fall, then one could catch larks; but the proverb says nothing about nightingales.”

She tossed her brilliant head and took a turn or two upon the hotel sitting-room carpet, considering.

“I will keep this appointment,” said she.

“_Dio!_ And risk thy precious reputation?” shrieked the aunt.

“Chi sa? Chi sa?
Evviva l’opportunita!”

hummed the provoking beauty. And she dealt the cook a sparkling glance of such intelligence that he felt Signor Alberto would never triumph. Relieved in mind, Josebattista Funkmuller took his leave.

“I will return the King’s cigars,” he said, as he pressed his garlic-scented mustache to the pearly knuckles of the lady.

“Bah!” said she, “they were won in a raffle at Vienna.”

The door closed upon the disgusted _chef_, and reopened ten minutes later to admit a waiter carrying upon a salver a pretty three-cornered pink note with a gold monogram in the corner. The writer entreated the inestimable privilege of three minutes’ conversation with Madame de Melzi in a private apartment in the basement of the hotel. He did not propose to visit the _prima donna_ in her own rooms, even under the wing of her aunt, for it was of supreme importance that tongues should not be set wagging. Delicacy and respect prevented him from suggesting an interview in the apartments occupied by himself. On the neutral ground of an office in the basement the interview might take place without comment or interruption. He was, in fact, waiting there for an answer.

The answer came in the person of the singer herself, charmingly dressed and radiant with loveliness.

“Fie! What an underground hole! The window barred, the blank wall of an area beyond it!” Her beautiful nostrils quivered. “_Caro mio_, you have in that covered dish upon the table there something that smells good. What is under the cover?”

“Look and see!” said the cunning tenor, with a provoking smile.

“I am not curious,” responded Teresa, putting both hands behind her and leaning her back against the door. “Come, hurry up! One of your three minutes has gone by, the other two will follow, and I shall be obliged to take myself off without having heard this mysterious revelation. What is it?” She showed a double row of pearl-hued teeth in a mischievous smile. “Shall I guess? You have, by chance, fallen in love with me, and wish to tell me so? How dull and unoriginal! A vivacious, interesting enemy is to be preferred a million times before a stupid friend or a commonplace adorer.”

“_Grazie a Dio!_” said the tenor, “I am not in love with you.” But at that moment he was actually upon the verge; and the dull, dampish little basement room, floored with kamptulicon warmed by a grudging little gas-stove, its walls adorned with a few obsolete and hideous prints, its oilcloth-covered table, on which stood the mysterious dish, closely covered, bubbling over a spirit lamp and flanked by a spoon, fork, and plate—that little room might have been the scene of a declaration instead of a punishment had it not been for the De Melzi’s amazing nonchalance. It would have been pleasant to have seen the spiteful little arrow pierce that lovely bosom. But instead of frowning or biting her lips, Teresa laughed with the frankest grace in the world.

“Dear Signor Alberto, Heaven has spared you much. Besides, you are of those who esteem quantity above quality—and, for a certain thing, I should be torn to pieces by the ladies of the Chorus.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, what is this mysterious communication? The three minutes are up, the fumes of a gas fire are bad for the throat—and I presume you of all people would not wish me to sing ‘Elsa’ with a veiled voice, and disappoint the dear people of Smutchester, and Messieurs the critics, who say such kind things.”

Alberto Fumaroli’s brain spun round. Quick as thought his supple hand went out; the wrist of the coquettish _prima donna_ was imprisoned as in a vise of steel.

“_Ragazza!_” he gnashed out, “you shall pay for your cursed insolence.” He swung the _cantatrice_ from the door, and Teresa, noting the convulsed workings of his Corsican features, and devoured by the almost scorching glare of his fierce eyes, felt a thrill of alarm.

“_Oimè!_ Signor,” she faltered, “what do you mean by this violence? Recollect that we are not now upon the stage.”

A harsh laugh came from the bull throat of the tenor.

“By mystic Love
Brought from the distance
In thy hour of need.
Behold me, O Elsa!
Loveliest, purest—
Thine own
Unknown!”

he hummed. But his Elsa did not entreat to flow about his feet like the river, or kiss them like the flowers blooming amidst the grasses he trod. Struggling in vain for release from the rude, unchivalrous grasp, an idea came to her; she stooped her beautiful head and bit Lohengrin smartly on the wrist, evoking, instead of further music, a torrent of curses; and as Alberto danced and yelled in agony, she darted from the room. With the key she had previously extracted she locked the door; and as her light footsteps and crisping draperies retreated along the passage, the tenor realized that he was caught in his own trap. Winding his handkerchief about his smarting wrist, he bestowed a few more hearty curses upon Teresa, and sat down upon a horsehair-covered chair to wait for deliverance. They could not possibly give “Lohengrin” without him—there was no understudy for the part. For her own sake, therefore, the De Melzi would see him released in time to assume the armor of the Knight of the Swan. _Ebbene!_ There was nothing to do but wait. He looked at his watch, a superb timepiece encrusted with brilliants. Two o’clock! And the opera did not commence until eight. Six hours to spend in this underground hole, if no one came to let him out. Patience! He would smoke. He got over half an hour with the aid of the green cigarette-case. Then he did a little pounding at the door. This bruised his tender hands, and he soon left off and took to shouting. To the utmost efforts of his magnificent voice no response was made; the part of the hotel basement in which his prison happened to be situated was, in the daytime, when all the servants were engaged in their various departments, almost deserted. Therefore, after an hour of shouting, Fumaroli abandoned his efforts.

What was to be done? He could take a _siesta_, and did, extended upon two of the grim horsehair chairs with which the apartment was furnished. He slept excellently for an hour, and woke hungry.

Hungry! _Diavolo!_ with what a raging hunger—an appetite of Gargantuan proportions, sharpened to the pitch of famine by the bubbling gushes of savory steam that jetted from underneath the cover of the mysterious dish still simmering over its spirit-lamp upon the table! He knew what that dish contained—his revenge, in fact. Well, it had missed fire, the _vendetta_. He who had devised the ordeal of temptation for Teresa found himself helpless, exposed to its fiendish seductions. Not that he would be likely to yield, _oh mai!_ was it probable? He banished the idea with a gesture full of superb scorn and a haughty smile. Never, a thousand times never! The cunning Teresa should be disappointed. That evening’s performance should be attacked by him as ever, fasting, the voice of melody, the sonorous lungs, supported by an empty frame. _Cospetto!_ how savory the smell that came from that covered dish! The unhappy tenor moved to the table, snuffed it up in nosefuls, thought of flinging the dish and its contents out of window—would have done so had not the window been barred.

“After all, perhaps she means to keep me here all night,” he thought, and rashly lifted the dish-cover, revealing a vast and heaving plain of macaroni, over which little rills of liquid butter wandered. Parmesan cheese was not lacking to the dish, nor the bland juices of the sliced tomato, and, like the violet by the wayside, the modest garlic added its perfume to the distracting bouquet. Fumaroli was only human, though, as a tenor, divine. He had been shut up for four hours, fasting, in company with a dish of macaroni.... Ah, Heaven! he could endure no longer.... He drew up a chair, grasped fork and spoon—fell to. In the act of finishing the dish, he started, fancying that the silvery tinkle of a feminine laugh sounded at the keyhole. But his faculties were dulled by vast feeding; his anger, like his appetite, had lost its edge. With an effort he disposed of the last shreds of macaroni, the last trickle of butter; and at seven o’clock a waiter, who accidentally unlocked the door of the basement room, awakened a plethoric sleeper from heavy dreams.

“To the Opera House,” was the listless direction he gave the driver of his hired brougham; as one in a dream he entered by the stage-door, and strode to his room.

The curtain had already risen upon grassy lowlands in the neighborhood of Antwerp. Henry, King of Germany, seated under a spreading canvas oak, held court with military pomp. Frederic of Telramond, wizard husband of Ortrud, the witch, had stepped forward to accuse Elsa of the murder of her brother, Gottlieb; the King had cried, “Summon the maid!” and in answer to the command, amidst the blare of brass and the clashing of swords, the De Melzi, draped in pure white, followed by her ladies, and looking the picture of virginal innocence, moved dreamily into view:

“How like an angel!
He who accuses her
Must surely prove
This maiden’s guilt.”

Ah! had those who listened to the thrilling strains that poured from those exquisite lips but guessed, as Elsa described the appearance of her dream-defender, her shining Knight, and sank upon her knees in an ecstasy of passionate prayer, that the celestial deliverer was at that moment gasping in the agonies of indigestion!

“Let me behold
That form of light!”

entreated the maiden; and amidst the exclamations of the eight-part chorus the swan-drawn bark approached the bank; the noble, if somewhat fleshy, form of Alberto Fumaroli, clad from head to foot in silvery mail, stepped from it.... With lofty grace he waved his adieu to the swan, he launched upon his opening strain of unaccompanied melody.... Alas! how muffled, how farinaceous those once clarion tones!... In labored accents, amid the growing disappointment of the Smutchester audience, Lohengrin announced his mission to the King. As he folded the entranced Elsa to his oppressed bosom, crying:

“Elsa, I love thee!”

“She-devil, you have ruined me!” he hissed in the De Melzi’s ear.

“My hope, my solace,
My hero, I am thine!”

Teresa trilled in answer. And raising her love-illumined, mischievously dancing eyes to her deliverer, breathed in his ear: “Try pepsin!”

“FREDDY & C^{IE}”

It is always a perplexing question how to provide for younger sons, and the immediate relatives of the Honorable Freddy Foulkes had forfeited a considerable amount of beauty sleep in connection with the problem.

“My poor darling!” the Marchioness of Glanmire sighed one day, more in sorrow than in anger, when the Honorable Freddy brought his charming smile and his graceful but unemployed person into her morning-room. “If you could only find some congenial and at the same time lucrative post that would take up your time and absorb your spare energy, how grateful I should be!”

“I have found it,” said the Honorable Freddy, with his cherubic smile. He possessed the blonde curling hair and artless expression that may be symbolical of guilelessness or the admirable mask of guile.

“Thank Heaven!” breathed his mother. Then, with a sense that the thanksgiving might, after all, be premature, she inquired: “But of what nature is this post? Before it can be seriously considered, one must be certain that it entails no loss of caste, demands nothing derogatory in the nature of service from one who—I need not remind you of your position, or of the fact that your family must be considered.”

She smoothed her darling’s silky hair, which exhaled the choicest perfume of Bond Street, and kissed his brow, as pure and shadowless as a slice of cream cheese, as the young man replied:

“Dearest mother, you certainly need not.”

“Then tell me of this post. Is it anything,” the Marchioness asked, “in the Diplomatic line?”

“Without a good deal of diplomacy a man would be no good for the shop,” admitted Freddy; “but otherwise, your guess is out.”

Doubt darkened his mother’s eyes.

“Don’t say,” she exclaimed, “that you have accepted a Club Secretaryship? To me it seems the last resource of the unsuccessful man.”

“It will never be mine,” said Freddy, “because I can’t keep accounts, and they wouldn’t have me. Try again.”

“I trust it has nothing to do with Art,” breathed the Marchioness, who loathed the children of canvas and palette with an unreasonable loathing.

“In a way it has,” replied her son, “and in another way it hasn’t. Come! I’ll give you a lead. There is a good deal of straw in the business for one thing.”

“You cannot contemplate casting in your lot with the agricultural classes? No! I knew the example of your unhappy cousin Reginald would prevent you from adopting so wild a course ... but you spoke of straw.”

“Of straw. And flowers. And tulles.”

“Flowers and tools! Gardening is a craze which has become fashionable of late. But I cannot calmly see you in an apron, potting plants.”

“It is not a question of potting plants, but of potting customers,” said Freddy, showing his white teeth in a charming smile.

A shudder convulsed Freddy’s mother. Freddy went on, filially patting her handsome hand:

“You see, I have decided, and gone into trade. If I were a wealthy cad, I should keep a bucket-shop. Being a poor gentleman, I am going to make a bonnet-shop keep me. And, what is more—I intend to trim all the bonnets myself!”

There was no heart disease upon the maternal side of the house. The Marchioness did not become pale blue, and sink backwards, clutching at her corsage. She rose to her feet and boxed her son’s right ear. He calmly offered the left one for similar treatment.

“Don’t send me out looking uneven,” he said simply. “If I pride myself upon anything, it is a well-balanced appearance. And I have to put in an hour or so at the shop by-and-by.” He glanced in the mantel-mirror as he spoke, and observing with gratification that his immaculate necktie had escaped disarrangement, he twisted his little mustache, smiled, and knew himself irresistible.

“The shop! Degenerate boy!” cried his mother. “Who is your partner in this—this enterprise?”

“You know her by sight, I think,” returned the cherub coolly. “Mrs. Vivianson, widow of the man who led the Doncaster Fusiliers to the top of Mealie Kop and got shot there. Awfully fetching, and as clever as they make them!”

“That woman one sees everywhere with a positive _procession_ of young men at her heels!”

“That woman, and no other.”

“She is hardly——”

“She is awfully _chic_, especially in mourning.”

“I will admit she has some style.”

“_Admit_, when you and all the other women have copied the color of her hair and the cut of her sleeves for three seasons past! I like that!”

Freddy was growing warm.

“When you accuse me of imitating the appearance of a person of that kind,” said Lady Glanmire, in a cold fury, “you insult your mother. And when you ally yourself with her in the face of Society, as you are about to do, you are going too far. As to this millinery establishment, it shall not open.”

“My dear mother,” said Freddy, “it has been open for a week.”

He drew a card from an exquisite case mounted in gold. On the pasteboard appeared the following inscription in neat characters of copperplate:—

FREDDY & C^{IE}
COURT MILLINERS,
11, CONDOVER STREET, W.

“Freddy and Company!” murmured the stricken parent, as she perused the announcement.

“Mrs. V. is company,” observed the son, with a spice of vulgarity; “and uncommonly good company, too. As for myself, my talents have at last found scope, and millinery is my _métier_. How often haven’t you said that no one has such exquisite taste in the arrangement of flowers——”

“As you, Freddy! It is true! But——”

“Haven’t you declared, over and over again, that you have never had a maid who could put on a mantle, adjust a fold of lace, or pin on a toque as skillfully as your own son?”

“My boy, I own it. Still, millinery as a profession? Can you call it _quite_ manly for a man?”

“To spend one’s life in arranging combinations to set off other women’s complexions. Can you call that womanly for a woman? To my mind,” pursued Freddy, “it is the only occupation for a man of real refinement. To crown Beauty with beauty! To dream exquisite confections, which shall add the one touch wanting to exquisite youth or magnificent middle-age! To build up with deft touches a creation which shall betray in every detail, in every effect, the hand of a genius united to the soul of a lover, and reap not only gold, but glory! Would this not be Fame?”

“Ah! I no longer recognize you. You do not talk like your dear old self!” cried the Marchioness.

“I am glad of it,” replied Freddy, “for, frankly, I was beginning to find my dear old self a bore.” He drew out a watch, and his monogram and crest in diamonds scintillated upon the case. His eye gleamed with proud triumph as he said: “Ten to twelve. At twelve I am due at Condover Street. Come, not as my mother, if you are ashamed of my profession, but as a customer ashamed of that bonnet” (Lady Glanmire was dressed for walking), “which you ought to have given to your cook long ago. Unless you would prefer your own brougham, mine is at the door.”

The vehicle in question bore the smartest appearance. The Marchioness entered it without a murmur, and was whirled to Condover Street. The name of Freddy & Cie. appeared in a delicate flourish of golden letters above the chastely-decorated portals of the establishment, and the plate-glass window contained nothing but an assortment of plumes, ribbons, chiffons, and shapes of the latest mode, but not a single completed article of head apparel.

The street was already blocked with carriages, the vestibule packed, the shop thronged with a vast and ever-increasing assemblage of women, amongst whom Lady Glanmire recognized several of her dearest friends. She wished she had not come, and looked for Freddy. Freddy had vanished. His partner, Mrs. Vivianson, a vividly-tinted, elegant brunette of some thirty summers, assisted by three or four charming girls, modestly attired and elegantly _coiffée_, was busily engaged with those would-be customers, not a few, who sought admission to the inner room, whose pale green _portière_ bore in gold letters of embroidery the word _atelier_.

“You see,” she was saying, “to the outer shop admission is _quite_ free. We are charmed to see everybody who likes to come, don’t you know? and show them the latest shades and shapes and things. But consultation with Monsieur Freddy—we charge five shillings for that. Unusual? Perhaps. But Monsieur Freddy is Monsieur Freddy!” And her shrug was worthy of a Parisienne. “Why do you ask? ‘Is it true that he is the younger son of the Duke of Deershire?’ Dear Madame, to _us_ he is Monsieur Freddy; and we seek no more.”

“A born tradeswoman!” thought Lady Glanmire, as the silver coins were exchanged for little colored silk tickets bearing mystic numbers. She moved forward and tendered two half-crowns; and Freddy’s partner and Freddy’s mother looked one another in the face. But Mrs. Vivianson maintained an admirable composure.

And then the curtains of the _atelier_ parted, and a young and pretty woman came out quickly. She was charmingly dressed, and wore the most exquisite of hats, and a murmur went up at sight of it. She stretched out her hands to a friend who rushed impulsively to meet her, and her voice broke in a sob of rapture.

“Did you ever see anything so _sweet_? And he did it like magic—one scarcely saw his fingers move!” she cried; and her friend burst into exclamations of delight, and a chorus rose up about them.

“_Wonderful!_”

“_Extraordinary!_”

“_He does it while you wait!_”

“_Just for curiosity, I really must!_”

And a wave of eager women surged towards the green _portière_. Three went in, being previously deprived of their headgear by the respectful attendants, who averred that it put Monsieur Freddy’s taste out of gear for the day to be compelled to gaze upon any creation other than his own. And then it came to the turn of Lady Glanmire.

She, disbonneted, entered the sanctum. A pale, clear, golden light illumined it from above; the walls were hung with draperies of delicate pink, the carpet was moss-green. In the center of the apartment, upon a broad, low divan, reclined the figure of a slender young man. He wore a black satin mask, concealing the upper part of his face, a loose, lounging suit of black velvet, and slippers of the same with the embroidered initial “F.” Round him stood, mute and attentive as slaves, some half-dozen pretty young women, bearing trays of trimmings of every conceivable kind. In the background rose a grove of stands supporting hat-shapes, bonnet-shapes, toque-foundations, the skeletons of every conceivable kind of headgear.

Silent, the Marchioness stood before her disguised son.

He gently put up his eyeglass, to accommodate which aid to vision his mask had been specially designed, and motioned her to the sitter’s chair, so constructed that with a touch of Monsieur Freddy’s foot upon a lever it would revolve, presenting the customer from every point of view. He touched the lever now, and chair and Marchioness spun slowly around. But for the presence of the young ladies with their trays of flowers, plumes, gauzes, and ribbons, Freddy’s mother could have screamed. All the while Freddy remained silent, absorbed in contemplation, as though trying to fix upon his memory features seen for the first time. At last he spoke.

“Tall,” he said, “and inclined to a becoming _embonpoint_. The eyes blue-gray, the hair of auburn touched with silver, the features, of the Anglo-Roman type, somewhat severe in outline, the chin——A hat to suit this client”—he spoke in a sad, sweet, mournful voice—“would cost five guineas. A Marquise shape, of broadtail”—one of the young lady attendants placed the shape required in the artist’s hands—“the brim lined with a rich drapery of chenille and silk.... Needle and thread, Miss Banks. Thank you....” His fingers moved like white lightning as he deftly wielded the feminine implement and snatched his materials from the boxes proffered in succession by the girls. “Black and white tips of ostrich falling over one side from a ring of cut steel,” he continued in the same dreamy tone. “A knot of point d’Irlande, with a heart of Neapolitan violets, and”—he rose from the divan and lightly placed the beautiful completed fabric upon the Marchioness’s head—“here is your hat, Madame. Five guineas. Good-morning. Next, please!”

Emotion choked his mother’s utterance. At the same moment she saw herself in the glass silently swung towards her by one of the attendants, and knew that she was suited to a marvel. She made her exit, paid her five guineas, and returned home, embarrassed by the discovery that there was an artist in the family.

One thing was clear, no more was to be said. The _Maison Freddy_ became the morning resort of the smart world; it was considered the thing to have hats made while Society waited. True, they came to pieces easily, not being copper-nailed and riveted, so to speak; but what poems they were! The charming conversation of Monsieur Freddy, the half-mystery that veiled his identity, as his semi-mask partially concealed his fair and smiling countenance, added to the attractions of the Condover Street _atelier_.

Money rolled in; the banking account of the partners grew plethoric; and then Mrs. Vivianson, in spite of the claims of the business upon her time, in spite of the Platonic standpoint she had up to the present maintained in her relations with Freddy, began to be jealous.

“Or—no! I will not admit that such a thing is possible!” she said, as she looked through some recent entries in the day-book of the firm. “But that American millionairess girl comes too often. She has bought a hat every day for three weeks past. Good for business in one way, but bad for it in another. If he should marry, what becomes of the _Maison Freddy_?”

She sighed and passed between the curtains. It was the slack time after luncheon, and Freddy was enjoying a moment’s interval. Stretched on his divan, his embroidered slippers elevated in the air, he smoked a perfumed cigarette surrounded by the materials of his craft. He smiled at Mrs. Vivianson as she entered, and then raised his aristocratic eyebrows in surprise.

“Has anything gone wrong? You swept in as tragically as my mother when she comes to disown me. She does it regularly every week, and as regularly takes me on again.” He exhaled a scented cloud, and smiled once more.

“Freddy,” said Mrs. Vivianson, going direct to the point, “this little speculation of ours has turned out very well, hasn’t it?”

“Beyond dreams!” acquiesced Freddy. She went on:

“You came to me a penniless detrimental, with a talent of which nobody guessed that anything could be made. I gave this gift a chance to develop. I set you on your legs, and——”

“_Me voici!_ You don’t want me to rise up and bless you, do you?” said Freddy, with half-closed eyes. “Thanks awfully, you know, all the same!”

“I don’t know that I want thanks, quite,” said Mrs. Vivianson. “I’ve had back every penny that I invested, and pulled off a bouncing profit. Your share amounts to a handsome sum. In a little while you’ll be able to pay your debts.”

“I shall never do that!” said Freddy, with feeling.

“Marry, and leave me—perhaps,” went on Mrs. Vivianson. A shade swept over her face, her dark eyes glowed somberly, the lines of her mouth hardened.

“Keep as you are!” cried Freddy, rebounding to a sitting position on the divan.

“Where’s that new Medici shape in gold rice-straw and the amber _crêpe chiffon_, and the orange roses with crimson hearts?” His nimble fingers darted hither and thither, his eyes shone, and his cheeks were flushed with the enthusiasm of the artist. “A tuft of black and yellow cock’s feathers, _à la Mephistophele_,” he cried, “a topaz buckle, and it is finished. You must wear with it a _jabot_ of yellow _point d’Alençon_. It is the hat of hats for a jealous woman!”

“How dare you!” cried Mrs. Vivianson. But Freddy did not seem to hear her—he was rapt in the contemplation of the new masterpiece; and as he rose and gracefully placed it on his partner’s head, Miss Cornelia Vanderdecken was ushered in. She was superbly beautiful in the ivory-skinned, jetty-locked, slender American style, and she wore a hat that Freddy had made the day before, which set off her charms to admiration.

She occupied the sitter’s chair as Mrs. Vivianson glided from the room, and Freddy’s blue eyes dwelt upon her worshipingly. To do him justice, he had lost his heart before he learned that Cornelia was an heiress. Now words escaped him that brought a faint pink stain to her ivory cheek.

“Ah!” he cried impulsively, “you are ruining my business.”

“Oh, why, Monsieur Freddy? Please tell me!” asked Miss Vanderdecken, with naïve curiosity.

“Because,” said Freddy, while a bright blush showed beyond the limits of his black satin mask, “you are so beautiful that it is torture to make hats for other women—since I have seen you.”

There was a pause. Then Miss Cornelia’s silk foundations rustled as she turned resolutely toward the divan.

“I can’t return the compliment,” she said, “by telling you that it is torture to me to wear hats made by any other man since I have seen you, for other men don’t make hats, and I can’t really see you through that thing you wear over your face. But——”

Her voice faltered, and Freddy, with a gesture, dismissed his lady assistants. Then he removed his mask. Their eyes met, and Cornelia uttered a faint exclamation.

“Oh my! You’re just like him!”

“Who is he?” asked Freddy.

“I can’t quite say, because I don’t know,” returned Cornelia; “but all girls have their ideals, from the time they wear Swiss pinafores to the time they wear forty-eight inch corsets; and I won’t deny”—her voice trembled—“but what you fill the bill. My! What _are_ you doing?”

For Freddy had grasped his materials and was making a hat. It was of palest blush tulle, with a crown of pink roses, and an aigrette of flamingo plumes was fastened with a Cupid’s bow in pink topaz.

“Love’s first confession,” the young man murmured as he bit off the last thread, “should be whispered beneath a hat like this.” And he gracefully placed it on Cornelia’s raven hair.

Mrs. Vivianson, her ear to the keyhole of a side door, quivered from head to foot with rage and jealousy. Time was when he, a penniless, high-bred boy, had implored her to marry him. Now—her blood boiled at the remembrance of the half hint, the veiled suggestion she had made, that they should unite in a more intimate partnership than that already consolidated. With her jealousy was mingled despair. As long as Freddy and his hats remained the fashion, the shop would pay, and pay royally. There had as yet occurred no abatement in the onflow of aristocratic patronage. To avow his identity—never really doubted—to become an engaged man, meant ruin to the business. The blood hummed in her head. She clung to the door-handle and entered, as Freddy, with real grace and eloquence, pleaded his suit.

“And you are really a Marquis’s second son, though you make hats for money?” she heard Cornelia say. “I always guessed you had real old English blood in you, from the tone of your voice and the shape of your finger-nails, even when you wore a mask. And it seemed as though I couldn’t do anything but buy hats. I surmised it was vanity at the time, but now I guess it was—love!”

“My dearest!” said Freddy, bending his blonde head over her jeweled hands. “My Cornelia! I will make you a hat every day when you are married. Ah! I have it! You shall wear one of mine to go away in upon the day we are wed, the inspiration of a bridegroom, thought out and achieved between the church door and the chancel. What an idea for a lover! What an advertisement for the shop!” His blue eyes beamed at the thought.

But Cornelia’s face fell.

“I don’t know how to say it, dear, but we shall never be married. Poppa is perfectly rocky on one point, and that is that the man I hitch up with shall never have dabbled as much as his little finger in trade. ‘You have dollars enough to buy one of the real high-toned sort,’ he keeps saying, ‘and if blood royal is to be got for money, Silas P. Vanderdecken is the man to get it. So run along and play, little girl, till the right man comes along.’ And I know he’ll say you’re the wrong one!”

Freddy’s complexion, grown transparent from excess of emotion and lack of exercise, paled to an ivory hue. His sedentary life had softened his condition and unstrung his nerves. He adored Cornelia, and had looked forward to a lifetime spent in adorning her beauty with bonnets of the most becoming shapes and designs. Now that a coarse Transatlantic millionaire with soft shirt-fronts and broad-leaved felt hats might step in and shatter for ever his beautiful dream of union, bitter revulsion seized him. He feared his fate. What was he? The second son of a poor Marquis, with a particularly healthy elder brother. He looked upon the chiffons, the flowers and the feathers that surrounded him, and felt that the hopes of a heart reared upon so frail a basis were insecure indeed. Then his old blood rallied to his heart, and he rose from the divan and clasped the now tearful Cornelia to his breast.

“Go, my dearest,” he said, “tell all to your father—plead for me. Do not write or wire—bring me his verdict to-morrow. Meanwhile I will compose two hats. Each shall be a masterpiece—a swan-song of my Art. One is to be worn if”—his voice broke—“if I am to be happy; the other if I am fated to despair. Go now, for I must be alone to carry out my inspiration.”

And Cornelia went. Then Freddy, sternly refusing to receive any more customers that day, set himself to the completion of his task. Before very long both hats were actualities. Hat Number One was an Empire shape of dead-leaf beaver, the crown draped with dove-colored silk, a spray of sere oak-leaves and rue in front, a fine scarf of black lace, partly to veil the face of the wearer, thrown back over one side of the brim and caught with a clasp of black pearls set in oxidized silver. It breathed of chastened woe and temperate sadness, and was to be worn if Papa Vanderdecken persisted in refusing to accept Freddy as a suitor.

But Hat Number Two! It was of the palest blue guipure straw, draped with coral silk and Cluny lace. In front was a spray of moss rosebuds and forget-me-nots, dove’s wings of burnished hues were set at either side. It was the very hat to be worn by a bringer of joyful news, the ideal hat under which might be appropriately exchanged the first kiss of plighted passion. Upon it Freddy pinned a fairy-like card, white and gold-edged.

“If I am to be happy, wear this,” was written upon it; and upon a buff card attached to the hat of rejection he inscribed: “Wear this, if I am to be unhappy.” Then he closed the large double bandbox in which he had packed the hats, breathed a kiss into the folds of the silver paper, and, ringing the bell, bade a messenger carry the box to the hotel at which Cornelia Vanderdecken was staying, and where, millionairess though she was, she was still content to dress with the help of a deft maid and the adoration of a devoted companion. Then the exhausted artist fell back on the divan. Cornelia was to come at twelve upon the morrow.

“Then I shall learn my fate,” said Freddy. He drove home in his brougham, and passed a sleepless night. The fateful hour found him again upon his divan, surrounded by the materials of his craft, waiting feverishly for Cornelia.

The curtains parted. He started up at the rustling of her gown and the jingling of her bangles. Horror! she wore the somber hat of sorrow, though under its shadow her face was curiously bright.

She advanced toward Freddy. He reeled and staggered backward, raised his white hand to his delicate throat, and fell fainting amongst his cushions. Cornelia screamed. Mrs. Vivianson and her young ladies came hurrying in. As the stylish widow noted Cornelia’s headgear, her eyes flashed and joy was in her face. Then it clouded over, for she knew that Papa Vanderdecken had been coaxed over, and Freddy was an accepted man. My reader, being exceptionally acute, will realize that the jealous woman had changed the tickets on the hats.

“Not that it was much use,” she avowed to herself, as she entered with smelling-salts and burnt feathers to restore Freddy’s consciousness. “When he revives, she will tell him the truth.” But Freddy only regained consciousness to lose it in the ravings of delirium. He had an attack of brain fever, in which he wandered through groves of bonnet shops, looking unavailingly for Cornelia. And then came the crisis, and he woke up with an ice-bandage on, to find himself in his bedroom at Glanmire House, with the Marchioness leaning over him.

“Mother, my heart is broken,” said the boy—he was really little more. “The world exists no more for me. Let me make my last hat—and leave it.”

“Oh, Freddy, don’t you know me?” gasped Cornelia in the background; but the repentant woman who had brought about all this trouble drew the girl away.

“Even good news broken suddenly to him in his weak state,” said Mrs. Vivianson in a rapid whisper, “may prove fatal. I have a plan which may gradually enlighten him.”

“I trust you,” said Cornelia. “You have saved his life with your nursing. Now give him back to me!”

“Hush!” said Mrs. Vivianson.

She had rapidly dispatched a messenger to Condover Street, and now, as Freddy again opened his eyes and repeated his piteous request, the messenger returned. Then all present gathered about the bed, whose inmate had been raised upon supporting pillows. It was a queer scene as the shaded electric light above the bed played upon Freddy’s pallid features, showing the ravages of sickness there. “Now!” said Mrs. Vivianson. She placed the milliner’s box upon the bed, and Freddy’s feeble fingers, diving into it, drew forth a spray of orange blossoms and a diaphanous cloud of filmy lace.

“Black—not white!” Freddy gasped brokenly. “It is a mourning toque that I must make. Let Cornelia wear it at my funeral.”

“Cornelia will not wear it at your funeral, Freddy,” said Mrs. Vivianson, bending over him; “for she is going to marry you, not to bury you.” And, drawing the tearful girl to Freddy’s side, she flung over her beautiful head the bridal veil, and crowned her with a wreath of orange blossoms. And as, with a feeble cry, Freddy opened his wasted arms and Cornelia fell into them, Mrs. Vivianson, her work of atonement completed, pressed the offered hand of Freddy’s mother, and hurried out of the room and out of the story. Which ends, as stories ought, happily for the lovers, who are now honeymooning in the Riviera.

UNDER THE ELECTRICS
A SHOW-LADY IS ELOQUENT

“Really, my dear, I think the man has gone a bit too far. Writes a play with a fast young lady in the Profession for the heroine—and where he got his model from I can’t imagine—and then writes to the papers to explain, accounting for her past being a bit off color—_twiggez-vous?_—by saying she isn’t a Chorus-lady, only a Show-lady.

“Gracious! I’m short of a bit of wig-paste, my pet complexion-color No. 2. Any lady present got half a stick to lend? I want to look my special best to-night: _somebody in the stalls_, don’tcherknow! Chuck it over!—mind that bottle of Bass! I’m aware beer is bad for the liver, but such a nourishing tonic, isn’t it? When I get back to the theater, tired after a sixty-mile ride in somebody’s 20 h.p. Gohard—_twiggez?_—a tumbler with a good head to it makes my dear old self again in a twink.

“Half-hour? That new call-boy must be spoke to on the quiet, dears. Such manners, putting his nasty little head right into the show-ladies’ dressing-room when he calls. I suggest, girlies, that when we’re all running down for the general entrance in the First Act—and that staircase on the prompt side is the narrowest I ever struck—I suggest that when we meet that little brute—he’s always coming up to give the principals the last call—I suggest that each girl bumps his head against the wall as she goes by! That’ll make twenty bumps, and do him lots of good, too!

“Miss de la Regy, dear, I lent you my blue pencil last night. Hand it over, there’s a good old sort, when you’ve given the customary languish to your eyes, love. What are you saying? Stage-Manager’s order that we’re not to grease-black our eyelashes so much, as some people say it looks fair hideous from the front? Tell him to consume his own smoke next time he’s in a beast of a cooker. Why don’t he tell _her_ to mind her own business?—I’m sure she’s old enough! What I say is, I’ve always been accustomed to put lots on mine, and I don’t see myself altering my usual make-up at this time o’ day. Do you? Not much?—I rather thought so. What else does he say?—he’ll be obliged if we’ll wear the chin-strap of our Hussar busbies down instead of tucked up inside ’em? What I say is—and I’m sure you’ll agree with me, girls—that it’s bad enough to have to wear a fur hat with a red bag hangin’ over the top, without marking a young lady’s face in an unbecoming way with a chin-strap. Also he insists—what price him?—he _insists_ on our leavin’ our Bridgehands down in the dressing-room, and not coming on the stage with ’em stuck in the fronts of our tunics, in defiance of the Army Regulations? Rot the Regulations, and bother the Stage-Manager! How _she_ must have been nagging at him, mustn’t she?—because he _can_ be quite too frightfully nice and gentlemanly when he likes. I will speak up for him that much. Not that I ever was a special favorite—I keep myself to myself too much. Different to some people not so far off. _Twiggez?_ I’ve my pride, that’s what I say, if I am a Show-girl!

“Thirty-five shillings a week, with _matinées_—you can’t say it’s much to look like a lady on, can you now? No, but what a girl with taste and clever fingers, and a knack of getting what she wants at a remnant sale—and the things those forward creatures in black cashmere _Princess_ robes try to shove down a lady-customer’s throat are generally the things she could buy elsewhere new for less money—not but that a girl with her head screwed on the right way can turn out in first-class style for less than some people would think, and get credit in _some quarters we know of_—this is a beastly, spiteful world, my dear—for taking presents right and left.

“Now, who has been and hung my wig on the electric light? If the person considers that a practical joke, it shows—that’s what I say!—it shows that she’s descended from the lowest circles. I won’t pretend I don’t suspect who has been up to her little games again, and, though I should, _as a lady_, be sorry to behave otherwise, I must caution her, unless she wishes to find her military boots full of prepared chalk one o’ these nights, to quit and chuck ’em.