Читать книгу Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels - Bryce Charles - Страница 1

The room looked very cool in the afternoon light. A few bowls of white roses that were arranged about it seemed to lend it an aspect of more than usual specklessness.

To Madame Querterot, a person of no taste, who made no pretension of being fastidious, and who had, moreover, little sympathy with a passion for cleanliness when this was carried to exaggeration, the airy lightness of the place suggested the convent school of her youthful days; and, bringing again before her the figure of a stern sister superior who had been accustomed in those vanished times to deal out severe penalties to the youthful but constantly erring Justine, caused her invariably to enter Mrs. Vanderstein’s bedroom after a quick intake of the breath on the threshold, as if she were about to plunge into an icy bath.

Mrs. Vanderstein, ever the essence of punctuality, was ready for her on this particular evening, as she always was.

Wrapped in some diaphanous white garment, which she would perhaps have called a dressing-gown, she lay on a silk covered sofa and lazily watched Madame Querterot unpacking the little bag in which she carried the accessories of her profession, that of a hairdresser and beauty specialist.

“You must make me very beautiful to-night, Madame Justine,” she said, with a smile. “We are going to hear La Bohème, and the Queen will be there. My box is nearly opposite the Royal box, and in case Her Majesty’s eyes fall in my direction I wish to look my best.”

“All eyes will not fail to be directed to your side of the theatre, madame,” replied Madame Querterot, taking out her collection of pomade pots, powder boxes and washes, and arranging them in a semicircle upon a Louis XVI table. “Royalties know the use of opera glasses as well as any citizen. As for making you beautiful, the good God has occupied Himself with that! I can only preserve what I find. I can make your beauty endure, madame. More than that one must not ask of me. I am not the good God, me!” and Madame Querterot’s plump shoulders shook with easy merriment.

Mrs. Vanderstein, too, smiled. She did not suffer from any affectation of modesty as far as her obvious good looks were concerned. But she was obliged to own regretfully – though only to herself – that she was no longer as young as she had been; and the masseuse’s assurances that her youthful appearance could be indefinitely preserved fell on her ears as melodiously as if they were indeed a prelude to the magic strains that would presently rise to charm her through the envied, if stuffy atmosphere of Covent Garden.

“You are a flatterer, Madame Justine,” she murmured. Then, before she laid her head back against the cushions and gave herself up to Madame Querterot’s ministrations, she called to a figure that was seated in the window, half hidden among the muslin curtains that fluttered before it: “Barbara, be sure and tell me if you see anything interesting.”

Barbara Turner answered without looking round:

“Nothing has come yet, but I am keeping a good look-out.”

Mrs. Vanderstein closed her eyes, and Madame Querterot, after turning up her sleeves and arraying herself in an apron, began to pass her short fingers over the placid features and smooth skin of the lady’s face. For a time nothing else stirred in the big room.

A ray of sunlight passed very slowly across a portion of the grey panelled walls, and coming to a gilded mirror climbed cautiously over the carved frame, only to be caught and held a while on the flashing surface of the looking-glass.

On every side the subdued gold of ancient frames, surrounding priceless pictures that had been acquired by the help of the excellent judgment and long purse of the late Mr. Vanderstein, shone softly and pleasantly.

The furniture, of the best period of the reign of Louis XVI – as was the case all over the house – had been collected by the same unerring connoisseur, and each piece would have been welcomed with tears of joy by many an eager director of museums.

The thick carpet that covered the floor exactly matched the pale grey tone of the walls and upholstery, and the extreme lightness of these imparted that air of great luxury which the lavish use of fragile colours, in a town as dirty as London, does more to convey than any more ostentatious sign of extravagance.

Through the open casements many noises rose from the street, for the bedroom was at the front of the house, which stood in a street in Mayfair immediately opposite to a great hotel where the overflow of foreign Royalty is frequently sheltered at times of Court festivals, when the hospitable walls of the Palace are filled to bursting point.

The coming and going of these distinguished guests was always a source of the most unquenchable interest to Mrs. Vanderstein, to whom every trivial action, if it were performed by any sort of a Highness, was brimming with thrilling suggestion.

At the period of which I speak, London was astir with preparations for a great function, and representatives of the Courts of Europe were arriving by every train from the Continent.

Mrs. Vanderstein could hear the sounds of a constant stream of carriages and motors stopping or starting below her window, and knew that it was not to her door that they crowded, but across the road under the magnificent stucco portico of Fianti’s Hotel.

“Barbara, has no one interesting appeared?” she called again after a few minutes.

“Not yet,” was the reply. “There’s a victoria driving along the street now, though, which looks something like a Royal turnout. Rather a nice looking pair in it.”

“Is it a pair of foreign looking gentlemen?” asked Mrs. Vanderstein excitedly.

“No, a pair of Cleveland bays. I hate them as a rule, but from here they don’t look bad. All back, though, of course.”

“My dear girl, do tell me about the people. I don’t want to hear about your horrid horses. I believe all sorts of celebrities go in and out of Fianti’s while I am lying here, and you never even notice them.”

“Yes, yes, I do,” said Barbara. “I will call you directly any one passes who looks as if he might be accustomed to wield the sceptre, or who is wearing a crown over his top hat.”

Mrs. Vanderstein made a little impatient movement. It annoyed her that her companion did not take her duties more seriously – did not, in fact, seem to understand how much more important was this task of keeping a good look-out in the wide bow of the window than any of the others that she was apt to approach in a quite admirable spirit of thoroughness. Why, wondered Mrs. Vanderstein, could the girl not do as she was asked in this matter, without making those attempts to be facetious which appeared so ill-advised, and which fell so extremely flat, as a moment’s observation would have made apparent to her? She did not make jokes about the flowers while she arranged them, nor about Mrs. Vanderstein’s correspondence, to which it was her business to attend. She was able to answer the telephone or order the carriage without indulging in unseemly giggles. Why then, in heaven’s name, couldn’t she take up her post of observation at the window without finding in it an excuse for pleasantries as dull as they were pointless?

Mrs. Vanderstein sighed deeply and wriggled her head deeper in the cushions.

Madame Querterot saw the cloud and guessed very easily what had caused it: she had often noticed similar disturbances of her customer’s otherwise easy-going temper. Knowing with remarkable accuracy on which side of her bread the butter was applied, she at once set herself to calm the troubled waters.

“You did not see me to-day, madame,” she began, “but me, I have already seen you. I passed in Piccadilly where your auto was stopped in a block before the Ritz.”

“Yes, we were kept there quite a long time, but I did not see you, Madame Justine,” said Mrs. Vanderstein indifferently.

“How should you have seen me? I was in a bus. It’s not there that you would look for your acquaintances. That understands itself! But I was not the only one to see you, and what I heard said of you then will make you smile. I said to myself at the moment, ‘It is quite natural, Justine, but it will make her laugh all the same.’”

“What was it? Who can have said anything of me in an omnibus?”

“Ah, madame! Even in buses people do not cease to talk. One hears things to make one twist with laughter! But one hears the truth too, sometimes, and this young man, even if he made a mistake, one cannot surprise oneself at that!”

“But you do not tell me what you heard,” cried Mrs. Vanderstein.

“It was this young man of whom I speak to you. He was a nice smart looking young gentleman, and he had with him a lady, well dressed and very chic. What they did in that galère I know not, but as we passed the Ritz he touched his companion on the arm and pointed out of the window. ‘Look, Alice,’ said he, ‘you see the dark lady in that motor? It is the Russian Princess they talk so much about, Princess Sonia. Is she not handsome? She was pointed out to me last night at the Foreign Office reception.’ The lady he called Alice looked where he pointed and every one in the bus looked also. I, too, turned round and followed the eyes of the others. And who did I see, madame? Can you not guess? It was at you they looked, as you sat there in your beautiful car with Mademoiselle Turner beside you. You, with your flowers and your pretty hat with the long white feather, and your wonderful pearls. And your face, madame! But I must not permit myself to speak of that!”

“You talk great nonsense, and I do not believe a word you say,” said Mrs. Vanderstein gaily, her good-humour more than restored. “No one could mistake me for a moment for the beautiful Princess Sonia.”

“Nevertheless, madame, it happened as I say. And I see nothing strange about it. It was a very natural mistake, as anyone who has seen both you and the Princess will readily agree.”

Madame Querterot had not seen the Princess herself, but she had studied her photograph in the illustrated papers and devoutly hoped that Mrs. Vanderstein had not herself met the lady at closer quarters.

“The poor young man was not near enough to observe my wrinkles and my double chin, Madame Justine!”

“Bah! You will have forgotten the word wrinkle, which is not d’ailleurs a pretty one, by the time I have finished giving you my course of treatment. And as for a double chin, look at me, madame! I assure you that, in my time, I have developed no less than five double chins. And I have rubbed them all away. Do you suppose, then, that I shall allow you to have one?”

Mrs. Vanderstein looked as she was bidden. Indeed she lost no opportunity of studying the countenance of the little Frenchwoman, who, on her own admission, was at least ten years older than herself, but whose face was as smooth and unlined as that of a girl, though there was an indefinable something in the expression, an experienced glimmer, perhaps, in the eyes, that prevented her appearance from being entirely youthful.

Still, she might very well have been taken for Mrs. Vanderstein’s junior, even for her younger sister, possibly, if she had been as well dressed, for there was a certain resemblance between the two women. Both were short and plump, both had long oval faces and brown eyes set rather near together beneath arched, well-marked eyebrows, and, though Madame Querterot had not a drop of Jewish blood in her veins and her nose did not assume the Hebraic droop that in Mrs. Vanderstein betrayed her race, yet it was distinctly of the hooked variety and gave her a family likeness to the children of Israel, on which fact her relations and friends had frequently considered it entertaining to dwell. Her hair, however, was golden and fluffy, curling about her head with a juvenile abandon; while Mrs. Vanderstein’s dark, straight locks were simply and severely dressed at the back, and concealed on her forehead by a large, flat curled fringe in the manner affected by the English Royal ladies.

Mrs. Vanderstein at all events was sincere in her admirations.

“If you can make me look as young as you do,” she said now, “I ask nothing better. But indeed London in this hot weather is very wearing, and I see myself grow older every morning. To-day it was oppressive to drive even in an open motor.”

To drive? Ah! Madame Querterot was not imaginative, but a vision of the crowded bus in which she went about her business floated before her, side by side with one of a rushing motor car; and she paused in her work for a minute and looked around her.

An electric fan revolved tirelessly above the window, and on a table at the foot of the bed was placed a large block of ice, half hidden in flowers and ferns. She raised herself, inhaling the cool air in long, deep breaths.

“It has been hot, very hot, these last days,” she admitted. “It reminds me of our beautiful Paris, and of much in my young days that I would be content to forget,” she added, with a laugh. “Ah, the room in that city, in which as a girl I used to work; the little dark room where I learnt my trade! It was hot in that room in the summer. But, madame, I could not tell you how hot it was. I remember one of the girls who used to pray quite seriously to die, because, she explained to us, wherever she went in another world it could not fail to be more cool. It was over a baker’s kitchen and had no window except one which gave on to a sort of shaft that ran up the middle of the house, so that we had the gas always burning. Oh, la, la!”

“How dreadful!” murmured Mrs. Vanderstein comfortably. “I wonder it was allowed.”

“Allowed? Ah, madame, there are plenty of worse workrooms than that in Paris. I wonder what you would say if you could see your dresses made! We liked it very well in the winter, for there were no stairs, and it was agreeable then to shut the window and profit by the warmth from the kitchen. That was all long ago, before I married that poor Eugène and came to live in London. They were, all the same, not so bad, those days. Ah, la jeunesse, la belle jeunesse, which one does not know how to enjoy when one has it.”

Madame Querterot crossed over to the table and laid her hands on the block of ice, casting a glance over her shoulder to the window where Barbara sat at her sentry post. The motionless, silent figure annoyed Madame Querterot. To be conscious that all her chatter was overheard by that quiet listener got on her nerves and sometimes made her, as she said, feel as if her own words would suffocate her. There was so much she could have said to Mrs. Vanderstein from time to time if they had been alone – much that she instinctively felt would have been very acceptable to that lady – but in the presence of Miss Turner, even though nothing of her were visible except the back of her head, there were, it appeared, lengths of flattery to which Madame Querterot found herself incapable of proceeding. Thus did a feeling of awkwardness, some sense of restraint, cast a certain gloom over hours that should have been the brightest in the day.

“These roses, madame, how fine they are,” she murmured, bending towards a bowl that stood on the table, and unconsciously her voice took on a note of defiance as she faced the window. “They are as beautiful as if they were artificial. One would say they were made of silk!”

Mrs. Vanderstein laughed tolerantly, but Barbara, her face turned to the street, made a naughty face.

Madame Querterot, with hands ice cool, went back to her massage, and for a little while again no one spoke.

Suddenly Barbara turned.

“Here comes a Royal carriage,” she said. “I think it is Prince Felipe of Targona and his mother.”

“Oh I must see them,” cried Mrs. Vanderstein, jumping up, and brushing Madame Querterot unceremoniously aside. “Where are they?” She ran to the window.

The masseuse followed more slowly, and three heads were thrust out over the street.