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.”
45“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!”
46There 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.”
47“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 & CIE
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?”
48“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 49who 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, 50golden 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 51with 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 52millionairess 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.
53“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’Alen?on. 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 na?ve 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.
54“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 55identity—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 56bonnets 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 57joyful 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.
58“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 59is 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.