Chapter VII
It is possible that Penelope never enjoyed herself so much as she did at this period. She was so busy that she had no time to worry; her team took all her time. She was young, she was beautiful, she was adored, she was popular, she was even notorious. A dozen reporters dogged her footsteps, and when they lost her they followed her lovers. They haunted her door-step armed with kodaks; they invented paragraphs; they hunted her men and her maids. They made love to the girls, and seduced the men into neighbouring bars. One newspaper man, who belonged to the Mayfair Daily, got into her establishment as a footman, and was discovered by the butler drawing Penelope at dinner when he should have been drawing corks. A search in his clothes revealed some pencils and a note-book and another book of drawings. They were of such a character that the reporter was put outside into the street. The butler could have forgiven the sketch of his mistress: there was one of himself that no man could forgive.
The great desire of all these men was to spot the winner. Penelope’s maid, Harriet Weekes, who was more or less engaged to Timothy Bunting, the groom (a sad mésalliance, by the way), found it impossible to go out without being accosted respectfully by a new admirer, who tried to lead the conversation around to her mistress.
“If you please, my lady, another of them spoke to me to-day. I hope, my lady, you don’t think it my fault,” said Weekes.
“What do they say?” asked Penelope, curiously. She took great interest in the manners and customs of other classes, perhaps with a view of altering them when she got time.
“Oh, my lady, they always say the same thing. I think men are very much the same all over the world. They say ‘It’s a fine day,’ even if it’s raining, and of course it is, and they say they want to walk a little way with me (begging your pardon), and that I am very beautiful, and that they have long loved me, if you please, my lady, and have been trying to speak about it for years. And I tell ’em I don’t want ’em, and I don’t, to be sure, though one (he’s on the Piccadilly Circus Gazette) is a very handsome man with a heagle’s glance, dressed in gray tweeds. And they won’t be put off, I assure you, my lady. Men on newspapers are hextremely persevering with a fine flow of language. And if, being persuaded to take a little walk, for they are difficult to put off by trade, I do take one, they begin to ask, begging your pardon, I’m sure, my lady, if I am your sister, and I’m sure I’m as like you as a butterfly is to a beetle, as Mr. Bunting says, though he adores the ground I walk on, if he’s to be believed, which I’m not sure of yet, and the butler is very angry with me about the whole affair. And one, who said he was the editor of the Times, which I don’t believe in the least, because it doesn’t seem likely, does it, my lady, that the editor of the Times would do such things himself? said he wanted to marry me and put me on the staff as his lovely bride. I must say he spoke most beautifully, and he said he knew Captain Goby, and also Mr. Gordon, and he said they were getting thin he thought. And another, quite the gentleman, though by his trousers poor and careful, said he owned most of the Daily Telegraph. And I couldn’t help looking at his clothes. He was very quick, and said that was owing to the competition of the half-penny papers. Would I save the Daily Telegraph from himpending ruin by telling him which it would be, he said. And I said flatly that I wouldn’t. I never saw such wicked impudence. Oh, yes, my lady, your hair’s done now, and it’s as lovely as a dream.”
And, as Miss Weekes finished, she wondered, quite as much as any of the newspaper men, who it was to be.
“It’s my belief,” she said to Timothy, a little later, “that my lady is beginning to incline to one of ’em. I’ve noticed she’s quieter like and more gentle. And there’s a soft sadness in her eye and a colour that comes and goes.”
“There ain’t one of the biling worthy of her,” said Timothy, bitterly. “But there, Miss Weekes, there ain’t no man worthy of a real beautiful, good lidy. A fair wonder how I dares to hope that some day far off, when motor-cars has killed every ’orse, you’ll be Mrs. Bunting.”
“It’s a great come down, Tim,” said Harriet. “Mr. Gubbles says he wonders, too.”
“If he wasn’t the butler, and old, I’d plug ’im,” said Timothy, crossly. “It’s all right for me to wonder, but he ain’t in it.”
“Ah, but class distinctions is hard to get over, Mr. Bunting,” said Harriet. “You must pardon a butler’s feelings. Even Mr. Gubbles has his feelings. And he agrees with you that there’s no one but a duke ought to marry our dear lady. And she demeaning herself (if I dare say so) with Academicians and war correspondencies and Jew men; not but what Mr. Gordon is very gentlemanly and generous. Only yesterday, Mr. Bunting, he says to me when he met me outside, ‘Do you read?’ And I says, ‘Yes, sir,’ being some flustered, and he says, ‘You read that.’ And it was a five-pound note. And he adds something about ‘your vote and hinfluence.’ But I can’t do it, Mr. Bunting, I can’t. If it was Captain Goby, I might, and if it was young Lord Bramber I might more so, and even if it was Mr. de Vere, with a duke remote in his family, but for a Jewish man I can’t. So I said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ and he went off. But some one is beginnin’ to rise up in my lady’s mind, I saw it plainly when I was dressing her. It would be worth more than five pounds to know who is risin’.”
“Yes,” said Timothy. “’Ow much would it run to, do you think?”
“I believe it would be worth a public ’ouse.”
“Beer and spirits?” asked Timothy, eagerly.
“And a corner ’ouse at that,” replied Harriet, nodding her head.
“Oh, ’Arriet,” said Timothy, with a gasp, “you fairly dazzle me.”
The newspaper men had dazzled Harriet.
But indeed what she said seemed true to her. And it seemed true to Lord Bradstock, who had, like the man of the Circus Gazette, an eagle’s glance.
“She has been playing fair,” said Bradstock, “but one of them is drawing ahead, Titania.”
“Good heavens, who is he, and how do you know?” asked Titania.
“It’s intuition,” said Bradstock, “intuition combined with, or founded on, a little observation. She’s different, Titania. She takes no interest in the London County Council.”
“You don’t say so!” cried the duchess, in alarm.
Bradstock nodded.
“It’s a fact. I asked her if she had read the last debate, and she hadn’t, and when I mentioned the Deceased Wife’s Sister she yawned.”
“That looks bad,” said Titania, “for only a week ago she raved about her, and Goring said he’d vote for her if she insisted on it. And she did insist, and tears came in her eyes about the poor thing.”
“Well, I told you so,” said Bradstock, “and I do hope it isn’t Williams. I’m afraid of Williams. He’s capable of knocking her down and carrying her off on his shoulder. Do you remember with what joy she read us the account of the savage tribe somewhere (was it the east of London?) where they do that?”
“It made me shiver with apprehension,” said Titania. “Oh, if she was only married safely to a good duke, one not like Goring! Is there a good duke, Augustin?”
“Several, so I’m informed,” replied Bradstock, “and there are quite a number of good earls, some quite admirable. But I wish you’d get hold of Chloe Cadwallader, and find out something.”
Titania bristled like a porcupine.
“There is no need to find out anything about Mrs. Cadwallader,” she said. “If Penelope wasn’t too dangerously innocent to be single, she would not have anything to do with her.”
“I’m sure the poor woman was only silly,” said Bradstock. “Haven’t we all been silly in our time, Titania? Didn’t I marry twice? And you married once.”
“I’ll speak to her,” said the duchess, hastily. “If we can only find out who it is, we can, I’m sure, prevent her doing as she says and making a secret marriage of it. The scandal would be horrid. Oh, Augustin, suppose she did it, and had a large family suddenly. I should die of it.”
“Good heavens,” said Bradstock, “you alarm me, Titania, you are so gloomy. She would surely acknowledge her marriage then?”
Titania threw up her hands.
“Augustin, I’m sure of nothing with Penelope. I cannot answer for her. She will bring my gray hairs with sorrow—”
“To cremation,” said Bradstock. “She has invested money in a crematorium.”
“I thought it was dairy-farming,” cried Titania. “Oh, but think, Augustin, of the horror of the situation as it might be! What would her Royal Highness say to me? Imagine her marrying and keeping it dark, and having, as I say, a large family suddenly without a husband producible on the moment to answer natural inquiries! Imagine her saying then that her marriage was her own business, and her certificate of marriage firmly withheld by a young and obstinate mother in a safe! She has a safe. She has a safe, Augustin, with many keys. I wish I could get at it, and find things out that are in it. I wish I knew a burglar, a good honest and reliable burglar, married and trustworthy, that I could send in to break it open. Most girls have a desk with an ordinary key, easy to open, but Penelope has a Lord Milner’s safe with patent things to keep it shut. It’s not natural, it’s wicked. Oh, I did hope, when I found out what the duke was like and what his ways were, that I knew the extent of my troubles, but there is no end to them, and Penelope begins where Goring leaves off.”
“Is it as bad as that?” asked Bradstock.
“And then there’s Bob—”
“By Jove,” said Augustin, “I believe Bob’s the key to the safe! Titania, he’s more likely to find something out than any one.”
Titania nodded solemnly.
“Augustin, you are right. I’ll speak to Bob.”
“Let me do it.”
“No, no, Augustin. He is very quick and suspicious, and he loves her, he adores her. This requires a feminine intelligence. I will work upon him quietly.”
And she went away to work upon Bob quietly.