Читать книгу Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels - Mrs. Charles Bryce - Страница 5

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A carriage was driving up to the steps of Fianti’s.

To allow it to approach, a waiting motor was obliged to move away, and in the short interval that elapsed while this was being wound up and started off the carriage paused almost immediately opposite the window of Mrs. Vanderstein’s bedroom; she had thus a better view of its occupants than it had ever previously been her fortune to obtain.

On the right of the barouche sat an elderly lady, with grey hair piled high under a very small black hat. She sat very upright and stiff, giving a little nervous start when the horses moved forward impatiently and were drawn up with a jerk by the coachman.

“That is the Princess,” said Barbara, whose head was touching Mrs. Vanderstein’s.

Prince Felipe sat beside his mother, a middle-aged young man of forty with a black upturned moustache and an eyeglass. He had a cigarette in his hand and, as they looked, he turned round and gazed after a smartly dressed woman who was driving by.

On the back seat of the carriage sat two other men—gentlemen in waiting, no doubt.

Mrs. Vanderstein’s eyes were, however, fully occupied with the Princess and her son.

“Isn’t he handsome?” she whispered to Barbara, as if there were a danger of being overheard above the rattle and din of the busy roadway.

But it almost seemed as if the words reached the ears of the man she was watching, for, the motor in the portico having at last got under way and left the road clear for Their Highnesses, the Prince threw back his head as the carriage moved on, and looking up met Mrs. Vanderstein’s eyes fixed admiringly on him.

She drew back her head in some confusion, but the Prince was still looking up when the barouche disappeared in the shade of the portico.

“Madame! Son Altesse vous a reconnue!” cried Madame Querterot, her face wreathed in smiles.

“He never saw me before,” replied Mrs. Vanderstein, retreating into the room. “How odd that he should have looked up just then! What a charming face he has.” And she subsided once more on the sofa, her own face aglow with excitement and pleasure.

“Don’t move from the window, Barbara, whatever you do,” she said. “Just think if we had missed them!”

As Madame Querterot resumed her rubbing, a knock came at the door, and Mrs. Vanderstein’s maid entered bearing the jewels her mistress intended wearing that night at the opera. As she set the cases down on the dressing-table and busied herself in laying out the various garments of her mistress’ evening toilet, she cast from time to time disapproving glances in the direction of Madame Querterot, whom, although a compatriot, she disliked very heartily, considering that in the privacy of Mrs. Vanderstein’s chamber any ministrations besides her own were unnecessary, and having altogether a strong tendency to look upon her countrywoman as an interloper, who had possibly an eye to a share in various perquisites for which Amélie preferred to see no other candidate in the field.

She took an elaborate gown from the wardrobe and spread it out upon the bed together with divers other articles of attire. She placed a jug of hot water in the basin and a jar of aromatic salts beside it.

She straightened several objects on the dressing-table, which had no need of being made straight; tilted the looking-glass forward and tilted it back again; lifted up a chair and set it down with a thud; and finally, despairing of ever witnessing the departure of her dreaded rival, was about to leave the room when her mistress’ voice called her back.

“Amélie,” she said, “just show me what necklace you have brought up for me to-night. Is it the one with the flower pendants or the stone drops?”

Amélie carried all the cases over to the sofa; and Madame Querterot left off rubbing while Mrs. Vanderstein sat up and opened them one by one.

In the largest a magnificent diamond necklace, imitating a garland of wild roses and their leaves, glistened against its blue velvet background. The other cases, when opened, displayed bracelets and a diamond tiara, as well as rings and a pair of ear-rings formed of immense single stones.

Mrs. Vanderstein shut them all up again and handed them back to Amélie.

“Take them down again to Blake,” she said, “and tell him I have changed my mind and will wear the emeralds instead. They go better with that dress.”

“Ah, madame,” sighed Madame Querterot, as Amélie departed with the jewels, “what marvellous diamonds! Wherever one goes one hears the jewels of Mrs. Vanderstein spoken of.”

“It is true,” said Mrs. Vanderstein, “that my jewels are very good. My dear husband had a passion for them and collected stones as another man collects bric-à-brac. He never made a mistake, they say, and my ornaments are rather out of the way in consequence. For myself I feel it an extravagance to lock up such a vast amount of capital in mere gewgaws.”

“My poor Eugène,” said Madame Querterot, “had also this same enthusiasm for precious stones. He loved so to adorn his wife with diamonds, that dear soul! But with him it was, alas, more than an extravagance. It was our ruin; for he was not a connoisseur, like monsieur votre mari, and when the crisis came and we would have turned my jewellery back into money, behold, we were told that we had been cheated in our purchases, and that, for the most part, the stones were without value. Ah, the sad day! As you know, madame, bankruptcy followed, and we had to give up our beautiful établissement in Bond Street. It broke the heart of that poor Eugène. He never recovered from the blow and soon left me, I trust for a happier world, by way, it goes without saying, of purgatory,” added the masseuse, crossing herself like a good Catholic. “Since that day I have faced the troubles of this life alone, without friendship, without sympathy.”

Here her emotion overcame Madame Querterot, and she turned away for a moment with a display of her handkerchief. She had omitted from her affecting narrative the fact that “that poor Eugène” had perished by his own hand, on discovering the state of his affairs; and she slightly trifled with the truth when she asserted that it was his unfortunate craze for covering his wife with jewels which had brought about such a disastrous state of things. It was Madame Querterot’s own passion for the adornment of her person that had resulted in the dissipation of Eugène’s savings, and brought him, at the last, to see with despair the total disappearance of the business, which she had neglected and ruined.

Mrs. Vanderstein’s kind heart was touched.

She had heard vaguely the reason of the Querterots’ removal from their gorgeous Bond Street rooms after the death of Eugène, the incomparable hairdresser, and it was from a creditable desire not to desert the unfortunate that she continued to employ the little Frenchwoman since the day of the catastrophe. But no details of the affair had reached her, and she now heard for the first time, and not without being sincerely moved, the sad story of a man who, having spent his all in lavishing tokens of affection on his wife, had in the end reduced her to a state of poverty bordering on want, and even left her to confront this terror in solitude, as a result of his misdirected tenderness.

Considerably affected, she tried to speak words of comfort to the poor woman.

“It is dreadfully sad,” she murmured. “Poor Madame Justine, how sorry I am. Your poor husband, I see well how he must have adored you and that what he did was all for the best. But you are not absolutely alone in the world, are you? Have you not a daughter?”

“Yes, it is true, madame, that I have a daughter,” replied Madame Querterot, wiping her eyes and resuming her work.

“And she is no doubt a great comfort to you?”

“Children, madame, are at once a joy and a trouble,” returned the masseuse evasively.

“I hope your daughter has not caused you much trouble.”

“She has given me nothing but worry since the day she was born. Her childhood, her education, her illnesses! Measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, mumps, scarlet fever; she has had them all one after the other.”

“But not while you have been coming to see me!” cried Mrs. Vanderstein, alarmed.

“Ah no, madame, all that is long finished,” replied Madame Querterot, “but since then I have been obliged to provide for her education, and every year she has become more expensive. Now she is eighteen, and you would imagine her anxious to repay some of the expense and ennuis she has caused me during all these years.”

“Yes, no doubt,” agreed Mrs. Vanderstein, “she will be a great help to you now.”

“So one would think. But figure to yourself, madame, what this young girl proposes to me to do with her life. She desires to enter a convent and to spend her days in good works rather than be of assistance to her mother!” and Madame Querterot laughed bitterly.

“I think she ought not to take such a decisive step at present,” said Mrs. Vanderstein; “at the age of eighteen she can hardly know if a religious life is really her vocation.”

“She is obstinate like a donkey, madame. Just think of it, a young girl, healthy, not ugly; already she has had offers of marriage. There is a young man, very bien, very comme il faut, who demands her hand and who thinks of nothing but her. But will she take him? No. Not at all. We prefer to be a religious; and voilà!”

Madame Querterot, having finished her massaging, was repacking the brown bag in which she had brought her apparatus.

“I hope that you will amuse yourself at the opera, madame,” she went on, folding her apron and laying it on top of the other things in the bag, the lock of which clicked as she shut it down with an impatient snap.

“A demain, mesdames,” she concluded, taking up the bag by the handle and giving it a shake as if she only wished she could so shake her unsatisfactory child. “A cette heure-ci, n’est-ce pas?”

And with that she bowed herself from the room.