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The Bird of Paradise

Chapter XVIII. Sir Roger Clifford and the Bird of Paradise. The Cotton-Balloon

Chapter XVIII. Sir Roger Clifford and the Bird of Paradise. The Cotton-Balloon.

Principal and most favoured amongst the dandies and the haute voiée of Edenhall was for years the interloper who had been confronted on the steam-boat quay by Eugene during the term of his wife's residence in the house at The Elms in Galveston. Calling out all his counterfeit aids to fascination, after the trial this vicious puppet vouchsafed in arrogance short sojourns In the gay halls into which the reconstituted bird of Paradise escaped from the hell in which she had for nine years lived when she was married to Eugene. He billeted himself upon Marvel's hospitality for weeks on end. Among all the guests at Edenhall this Roger Clifford was the most presumptuous. page 478Not content with the enchantment which as a paramour had in bye-gone days bestowed upon her during the term of her wedlock, he sought to enhance still further the magnetic power which he inwardly congratulated himself he was gaining over the paradisal and heliacal Marvel, whose illchosen paradoxical sobriquet had for many a charm in itself.

The aroma of the roses and the bouquet of the wine clung to the vases and goblets at Edenhall still. Not handicapped with a superabundance of brains, his mediocre abilities in the wool-merchant's office obtained for him, after four years' devotion to the service of a lenient and forgiving master, a wellmerited dismissal for general uselessness and unwarranted sly desertions of his post for the puppy-dog show at Rotojingolong, and the whirligig merry go-round of Edenhall. He had during the term of his apprenticeship and for two years subsequent to his discharge, so far succeeded in life as to obtain a certificate of paideutic efficiency from a school of music, entitling him to assist operatic singers in the mise en seène. There his successes found their quietus. None ever availed themselves of his canorous talents in modelling vocal chords and making them vibrate contrary to all the laws of nature in the subject. His sole source of sustenance and financial support was now supposed to be his widowed mother.

His parents, so the story went, had been very wealthy people. His father, who was the proprietor of an enormous brewery in Shropshire, and a man who must have done some good in his day and generation besides making beer, had provided well for his widow by making her his sole executrix and leaving behind him for her sole benefit the whole of his real and personal estate. The remittances from his mother proved adequate to enable him to keep himself stylishly dressed in a velveteen coat and coralline buttons, movable from one doublet to another, and to show the colour of some of his loose cash before his homogeneous companions at Edenhall, all of whom under the bane of envy and animosity this usher of the palace had routed in due course like jackdaws scared out of a tree. Furthermore, having to all intents and purposes abandoned the position of didactic professor of singing owing to his inefficiency in its uses and the general bad odour in which he was held in the city, he found himself in possession of an unearned increment to his fortune in the shape of loads of spare time. For years these loads of spare time had been spent at race-meetings, where be joined in quarter-dollar sweepstakes or sometimes went the length of a half-dollar wager. In the company of others, who were gamesters, Adonis would sit at the table watching them play. At faro-banks, lotteries and policy-shops he was often seen hankering after his betters, on the alert for what he could sponge without risking anything himself. The life of an exquisite—an indolent useless sybarite known in society as a gentleman—he affected to lead, and no man could ape the swell to greater perfection than Sir Roger Clifford, as he was called. He was not of Plantagenet or Tudor blood, either direct or on the distaff side. His father, it was said, had at one time in his life bequeathed to the uses of the public a park in the heart of the city of his birth, and page 479with some of the wealth which he had amassed from the sale of beer in England he had endowed one of the provincial universities with a scholarship, called the Clifford scholarship. In return for these distinguished services to his country, when the list of the Queen's birthday honours appeared in the court circular of the London Gazette was found the name of Sir Andrew Peregrine Clifford. On the death of Sir Andrew Peregrine of the brewery, the tide had for years, he declared, been worn by the eldest son, whose death, however, took place from floury typhus in the West Indies two years after the bird of Paradise had attained to the distinction of a divorcee.

Now the title was worn with paradisal ostentation by the second son upon whom the primogeniture devolved—the man who had played such a prominent part in the rencontre with Eugene on the Galveston quay, and the man who had been crowned with the laurel crown by the young ladies who applauded his agility in the Olympian games on the archery ground of the Indian warrior and gilliflower virtuoso at Rotojingolong.

The precious little laurel crown placed there by the paradisal hands of Marvel he had worn ever since. He had carried it through several campaigns to wear it still with all its blushing honours thick upon him, as he whisked around the merry-go-round on the hobby-horses at Edenhall. He inveigled Marvel into placing herself and her alto voice under the supervision and embellishment of his phonetic abilities. Possessed, as he indeed was, of deep baritone capacities, in course of time she attained to some reputation among her parasites as an amateur alto cantatrice, and together they accomplished abstruse duets and roundelays. He was a so-so, gilt-edged man, wanting in muscle but adorned with the regulation blonde moustache and languishing eyes, and his hair was parted in the middle.

Anxious to make good uses of her acquisition, he was encouraged to devote most of his time and capabilities to the service of Marvel in her whirling casino. No sooner had he discovered that his formerly bewitching grass-widow, but now his inamorata, was exempt from the clutches of the voracious multipartite firm of solicitors than he threw himself body and soul into the work of displaying little gradational caskets of the treasures of his heart to her gaze and snake-charming the remainder of the heart if Marvel ever had one) of the young heiress at the same time as he was pianofortetuning the paradisal vocal chords. Marvel reciprocated his overtures of honey-tongued amatorial play by outshining even herself on the semi-grand Holling and Spangenberg and the harpsichord.

In this second-hand emotional metabolism the nonagenarian auntie rallied around the flag of Marvel again. At the time of the trial as old as sin, she lived on to the age of Methuselah, and was predeceased by the doltish and ogreish anthropoid ape, Augustus, who died happy because the ducks knew their christian names. She streaked his eyes with the juice of her poppy and mandragora decoction, as in the days of old she had done for the edification of Eugene. He was a noble Lord!—very page 480Endymion! What more did Marvel want? it was a Lord she had wanted all along—alack-a-day! why did she not wait till now? Then there would have been no Pearly and no brusque rowdy boy to encumber her golden opportunity. They were only encumbrances on the chariot-wheels of Pleasure.

Most of the spare cash in the pockets of Sir Roger Clifford found its way to the music warehouse of Chappell and Co. of London, and in due course some of the newest and most difficult sheet-music found its way into the conservatorium of Edenhall. There came the finest songs for baritone voices and alto voices in the universe: the latest productions of the greatest composers, something like the selections from the opera of Die Götter dämmerung by the Bayreuth master; settings of Longfellow's "The Two Angels;" Handel's "Droop not young lover;" Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi;" and the "Prologue" from Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci." Marvel's favourites were "Thine is my heart" and "Drink to me only with thine eyes."

There they were essayed by the titled young lord and the isotonic accompaniments played by the juvenescent, evergreen, amaranthine Marvel in defiance of the front-gate opposition of the hurdygurdy, while the rugose old asthmatical auntie, who had left Sunnyside for the purpose, like an old Centaur or little Jack Horner sat in the corner acting propriety at Edenhall, although Yankee Doodle or some tune to which an old cow had succumbed would have suited her musical appetite much better, for she scarcely knew the difference between "Marching thro'Georgia" and "God save the Queen." After murdering pleasure till all hours of the night the performance invariably ended in voluptuous sensualism, butterfly-kisses and half-stifled screams in the petits appartments notwithstanding the propinquity of the old Pandora in a quiet corner of the room.

The private triangular animal magnetism of little Cupid in the drawingroom of Edenhall as soon as the rehearsals were completed burst into full bloom. It was no longer concealed from the large and frequent foregathering of guests, so that the liaisons between the bird of Paradise, who was rapidly attaining a pronounced rotundity of contour, and the fascinating young titled and belted Lochinvar became a favourite topic of conversation among the visitors and the country populace. Outside, the people had once been treated to an exhibition of the noble cavalier's attentions, insomuch they were seen riding together through the prairie. The old rumor which had got wind in the city soon after Marvel had obtained the precious divorce, again saw the light of day. In the prognostications of the ubiquitous busybodies among the peasantry and bourgeoisie the third and morganatic marriage of the bird of Paradise with the palatine lord and lap-dog was speedily on the tapis; it had been openly talked about in an interesting sort of way a year before, but nothing palpable had been mentioned as occurring until after the bill of her own law costs, amounting to some twenty-five thousand dollars, had been settled. It was since that page 481transaction that the overt amours of Sir Roger Clifford blossomed and showed themselves in their true colours.

Turning the matter over tactfully in his artful head and eliminating the fear of the disgrace from exogamy, especially with a divorced woman, attaching to his lordly name, his ratiocinations led him to the conclusion that Marvel's income would comfortably provide for herself and at the same time sustain him in the drifting life of indolence which he dearly loved. The potentiality of wealth was a great counterpoise to the socially indeterminate status of a divorced woman. There would be none of the resangusta domi and always plenty of loaves and fishes at Edenhall, and no outlay in domestic inauguration: the bird of Paradise was an inexhaustible money-bag. He had already worn the laurel crown for some years —why should he not carry the whole palm away? Although neither a millionaire in money nor a millionaire in intellect, he was a man wall versed in the petits soins towards women, and what was above all and through all and in him all, he was a lord—a very amalgamation of the purity of Sir Galahad, with the address of a Lord Chesterfield.

During the time the bill of costs was still unpaid to the solicitors, the expenses of the festive scenes at Edenhall had been provided for with money judiciously culled and misappropriated from the funds belonging, strictly speaking, to Pearly and Valentine. In many quarters it was hinted that Marvel's desire for the invalidation of her marriage emanated from a longing to retain in her own name the children's pittance, so that she might use or abuse it just as she chose herself.

The terms of the edict stated that she was to maintain and educate them to the satisfaction of the State-sheriff. The State-sheriff never saw the children in his life, while the man who chanted the threnodies during his reading of the will had his hands so full of work connected with a cotton plantation that he had not a moment to spare for inquiring Into their welfare and progress. He only saw them once in their lives. In any case, whether they interested themselves in the children or not, they were only too glad to leave the whole affair in the hands of Marvel, who relieved them of all responsibility with the uttermost bonhomie.

Her income, in order to pay the costs of Hallam, Brassy Bros, and Hoare and Craig, Clack, Carrick and Clark, was heavily mortgaged. All the loose money she received was the fund which should have been expended on Pearly and Valentine in toto. Instead of doing so, she sent them to a cheap, common weekly-boarding school kept by a man who had never passed a scholastic examination in his life. Marvel would have persisted in keeping them there had it not been for the exertions of their father from far-away in a strange country in instigating by proxy the Supreme Court, whose children as regards their maintenance and education they practically were more so than their mother's, to send them to an institution where they would be educated according to their expectations and their station in life.

As she grew into the rosebud of girlhood, Pearly frequently witnessed page 482the unabashed love-passages between her mother and the pretender, and had he waited a little longer Vallie might have thrown him out neck and crop "iv dat illie finger." So artfully were the more immediate interchanges of affection effected that in their innocence the children knew nothing about the affaires du caur at all Nor did they know that their rightful hereditaments were used as a small contribution to the expenses of Edenhall, both before and after the lawyers' bills had been paid, and that they were virtually being robbed to decorate the table with new-fangled kickshaws and to provide delicacies and luxuries for the cavalierly attaché.

Late into the night as they lay in a remote bedroom alone they were assailed with caterwauling nightmare sonatas and such songs as—"The Treasures of the Deep," "Queen of the Earth," or even Berlioz's "Benvenuto Cellini," and Lohengrin's "Erzählung," banishing sleep from their tired natures, or awakening them in fright at the baritone tones of the interloping pretender telling how he stood on a bridge at midnight, but a policeman could nowhere be found, and the maddening addios, arpeggios, and nocturnes of their mother, both together in the conservatorium of Edenhall alone late at night, for the privileged lord stayed after all others had gone and old Methuselah was in the land of Morpheus. Sometimes next morning they would meet a wolverine, edacious chawbacon at breakfast, or lounging about the rooms, and mostly it was the man who aspired to tread in their lost father's shoes, and who was scheming and plotting all he knew to supersede him; while resolnte in his determination to remain alone their father for ever the magnetism of the love for his little ones enthralled the inmost being of Eugene.

Great God in Heaven, how that man did love them! How he had looked forward to his re-union with them! praying for them, dreaming of them in the wilds of South Africa, longing for them, thinking of them as the very types of childlike innocence and simplicity, and revering their perfect purity, unapproachable to temptation, unassailable and sheltered under the shield of Artemis by the upbringing of their preceptress Guinevere, secure as their little brother in the home of the Vicar of God!

"Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young
Who loved thee so fondly as he
He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue,
And he joined in thine innocent glee."

In time the constant dropping of the poisonous affection wore away the rocky heart of their mother, whose fondness for changes and ostentation began to feel the hollowness and tedium of living and languishing in the morgue of stagnant widowhood; for a life of single blessedness was as impracticable to the bird of Paradise as the riding of a bicycle with a missing wheel. At times she would in contemplative moments of latent remorse bitterly rue the sorry day when the sword of Damocles had fallen. Now that Eugene was lost for ever, his failings seemed as nothing but dust and ashes after all, and his faults were now forgiven and forgotten, while all his good qualities and his unswerving devotion to her page 483while she harrowed his heart with her divaricating Indignities haunted like spectres her unquiet dreams. He was constant, unchangeable, certain and true, and like the base Indian she had thrown away a pearl richer than all the namby-pamby fawning tribe. The charges of intemperance would seem as flimsy, unsubstantial misty phantasms; die thoughts of adultery would vanish into thin air, and, while he had never shown the logomachial cruelty of pinking her with the sword or any cruelty at all, over all her reflections hovered the haunting ghost of remorse, ricochetting through her vitals amidst the maimed memorials of the past. These airy dreams, however, would assume only an ephemeral existence and end in nothing but idle and vain regrets. The phantasmagoria of her youthful reminiscences would melt away, while the kindled growing regard for the newly-declared knight and lover was bursting into flame in her bosom every hour.

Sitting in the drawingroom alone she would soliloquise that to live there unprotected and perhaps deserted by the children some day or other, were to live the life of a weed in the desert. Would she be censured for marrying again? what would any woman placed under her circumstances do but marry again and ignore the remembrances of the loved and lost? To remain the oubliette of Edenhall with the Abigail drabs Bloobumper and Knight when the children had gone to the boarding-school were to live the existence of a troglodite in a cave—to wither before the autumn of life into a stale, dried and mummified uncherished widow, whose erstwhile husband was flourishing and prosperous before the eyes of the world. She was not meant to live alone—she, the heaven-born bird of Paradise and the Sun, was designed by Nature for something higher; when the children were gone she would be beyond the pale of marriage; she would be left a lonely disconsolate woman in the shackles of widowhood, or, peradventure, one whose green interregnum would be a bye-word and a target for the shafts of traducers, no matter how prudently her chastity was guarded and preserved.

It was the voice of the spirit of Nature, the great mother warning her of things to come if she remained much longer single: the voice calling her out of the night of eternal self-monopoly while yet there was day: the voice that whispered in her ears his name—"Roger; Sir Roger my husband! my liege Lord! my own to be!" It was the longing of the parvenue for the haut ton of the exclusive and the aristocratic; the yearning of an underbred millionairess to be associated with those born in the purple, reared in the temple of Fortune, and enjoying ceremonious homage by right of birth.

Pondering over the dust and ashes of the expended three years of her life, whose days and nights she bad consecrated chiefly to the pleasures of others, she absent-mindedly would pause in long reveries during her exercises at the semi-grand Hölling and Spangenberg; or when basking in the rose-bowers of the luxuriating, well-tended garden, while the little choirs in the branches trilled joyously their responses to the songs he sang. page 484and the waving cornfield heralded his approach. Nothing else to do but practise in the drawingroom, and loll on the Oriental divans in the green conservatories, glancing listlessly at the children as they passed to and fro when home from school, the only relief to the monotonous days was the established attachment to the fin de siécle lord—the charming tempter. Before it was only the affection of the paramour pour passer le temps—the mere groundwork and protocols of a modus Vivendi—but now were opened the flood-gates of his lordly passion, pouring itself impetuously into the paradisal sluices while the little birds in the branches tore out their throats in passionate rivalry. Equipped with all his powers of beguiling the fair sex, and in his well-studied and most polished style, he broke the ice of the shallow lake of his affection and plunged headlong into the declaration of his prurient love with trite and unctuous collocations of factitious gibberish, dross and seductive slip-slop—twittering to the bird of Paradise and swearing that he loved her as man never loved woman before; more than Lysander loved Hero, or Romeo loved Juliet, or Isaac loved Rebecca; talking of hearts and darts, bows and arrows, Cupids, Psyches, and other mawkish simulacra of love, and worshipping Marvel on his bended knees. The knight-Crusader would indeed die for the bird of Paradise! 'Twas ever thus!

Listening to the music of his balsamic overtures, and ingesting the poppy and mandragora juice of his avowals, as in a transient dream she recalled beneath a sunset steeped in sentiment her oft-reiterated soliloquies in the oriel of the drawingroom, and artificially starting with a little quiver of passion, she laid her hand in the grasp of the young Lochinvar.

Mesmerised by the voice of the young Lochinvar she conjured up in her mind the title of Lady Clifford, as she lay with a love-sick novel on the eiderdown divan beneath the pink-berried bursting fruit of the branching arbutus, among the orchids, the veronicas and chrysanthemums one October morning when the children were away at school.

It was the goal to which her life-long ambition had goaded her. Had she not told the banished Eugene that she wanted to marry a lord? The prize was now within her grasp. A false step, a mistaken idea or word, the slightest hitch, and it might be gone for ever!—gone forever! The bird of Paradise was quite transported.

There was no romantic sentiment as in her early passion for Eugene in the flush and spring and bounding blood of her youth. The heyday in her blood was tame and waited upon the judgment. Nevertheless her sickish passion though sublimated was still at high pressure, albeit it was but an attempt to raise a fire from the ashes of a dead love. Nothing can replace the bloom on the blushing fruit, but she barkened to his perfumed tones leaning back on the divan in implied acceptance of his chivalrous and magnanimous offer while he assaulted her lips with poisonous kisses and filled her head with Utopian visions as of the opening heavens—elixirs of rank and state and splendour, gaiety and distinction, joyance beyond contemplation, and a life-long lolling amongst the rose-bowers in a never-page 485ending euthanasia of an Elysium here below, and the game which the interloper had been playing with varying fortunes for so many years was ended; the bird was bagged and it was all U.P. with the bird of Paradise.

The introsusception was indeed something upon which he might congratulate himself. Better, he thought—far better a wife like the bird of Paradise, et cetera, even if she is a divorced woman: better—far better the solid enjoyment which nearly eight thousand dollars a year could bring, than the monotonous, humdrum, drawling life of a professor of singing. The shekels and the potentiality of wealth and the auri sacri fames had decided the burning question and disguised the flavour of the skim-milk. Urging her to make haste for the wedding, she threw aside all her considerations and scruples concerning the children. The new broom swept the children out of her mind altogether, or induced her to regard them as mere ciphers. She deprecated on some finical superstitious ground the notion of an ostentatious wedding, and the soi-disant Sir knight was nothing loath. It was in fact just what he wanted. His means were very small, and he either suppressed his poverty or deceitfully aggrandised the meagre income of which he was in receipt.

Secretly, late in October, 1857, the bird of Paradise and the devoted lord arose at dayspring with the ants, having previously arranged that the children should be kept out of the way, as they were staying at home for a few days' holiday from the boarding-school. He met as it were accidentally la fiancée on the railway station. Entering the same compartment where she sat, they occupied it to the exclusion of all other passengers on their hegira to Nashville.

No merry-making bells rang for the wedding of the paradisal bird and her first husband; no merry-making bells rang for the wedding of the paradisal bird and her third—the elected knight of the garter,—and the sweet bells of old jangled and were out of tune. No gilt cards! No dazzling pageant! No archipelagoes of gifts to the bride! No costly equipages disgorged their living loads to the music of marriage bells at the gate of the village chapel. No Mendelssohn's epithalamium attuned the exit of the glorious Birdie. No Sardanapalian luxury regaled the townspeople as in the days of old. Secretly and quietly at the Occidental Hotel, Nashville, the douceur from the uxorious bridegroom to the marriage official, whose regular work was that of an auctioneer, amounting to a little dirty dollar, the bird of Paradise at the age of thirty-six was launched on the seas of matrimony again. The same night the happy couple attended a play. It was a play like the play of "East Lynne," and the mayfly honeymoon came to an end.

They returned the next morning to Edenhall—Sir Roger and Lady Clifford. There was no presentation in the presence-chamber, but he made his lady a present of a handkerchief with a coronet in the page 486corner—an article which he had in his advances thrown down as Ms gage; but it was all he had of the insignia of a peer of the realm. Not the least intimation had been sent to the friends of the parties, and all that was known for a positive fact was that the obtrusive man from the city had taken up his quarters with the titular Marvel for good, and that Pearly and Vallie were now altogether de trop at Edenhall since the conglutination.

"Lady Marvel, my lady dear," said the effervescent benedict, with an aromatic pastille in his mouth one morning soon after her re-incarnation: "I can't understand what can have happened to my dear old materfamilias; she hasn't sent my quarterly remittance since last year, my dear old materfamilias. I should be sorry in one way if anything happened to my dear old materfamilias; she has diabetes, my lady dear, has my dear old materfamilias, I paid a fee to a doctor once for the information that it is generally fatal in ten years, and she has had it over twelve years now, has my dear old materfamilias. I should have been as right as the bank if it hadn't been for firing off a gun at those elands and white gazelles on the estate of my dear old paterfamilias; he disinherited me for that, my lady dear, did my dear old paterfamilias; but the estate is not entailed, my lady dear, and there is nobody else but me if anything should happen to my dear old materfamilias. The bank's closed to-day, so lend me a dollar or so, my lady dear, and I'll send a notice of our marriage to the New York Herald and a telegram to the solicitor to see if I can find out if anything has happened to my dear old materfamilias." His manner and tone was so outré that it was a wonder he obtained possession of the paradisal purse, from which he abstracted all that was there—it was part of the children's money. Slinking away to the little "Laughing Water" posting-house on the wayside, he swallowed two glasses of brandy and curacoa. He never sent any notice away at all. Month followed month. Still no remittance arrived from the lady dowager for Sir Roger Clifford. His wife urged him to cable to his rich relation, and even provided him with sufficient money for the purpose. No message by cable or otherwise was ever sent. There was no anxious mother there to receive any news of him. His lordly title was assumed— there was no record of any such propinquity to the Clifford cult in Debrett and Burke's peerage. It was all a fraud! His mother was a Hottentot!

So bewitching did this hybrid husband of Marvel become that within a short space of time he had her completely en famille, like a puppet under his thumb, and a mere plastic item living in squeamish fealty to his seductive spell and suzerainty. He would perform extractions upon the celestial bird as cleverly and dexterously as upon his relatives could Brosie in the silver age. Marvel had been blinded by the lustre of the assumption with which her affianced lover had lorded it over the galley of frumps at Edenhall and his close knowledge of the little prejudices of women and the manner in which he adjured her and dangled after her and page 487"told his love" and finally gained complete supremacy over her affections.

With her money and part of the children's pittance he betook himself away by train to the city—hoodwinking his wife with a bogus letter-of-credit calling him away to interview the solicitors of his mother, who acted as agents for her mythical remittances. After spending a week of jollification, roystering and fornication in the city, he returned to Edenhall and propounded to Lady Clifford a mammoth scheme by which she could enhance her affluence fifty-fold.

When the knight returned to his ladye-love one wet night he entered the Elysium at Edenhall and Marvel helped him to get off his dripping waterproof and unfasten his furs, and with a vivid graceful little motion with her foot she pushed before him his boot-jack—so pleased she was to see him come back so soon. The children were playing about the room or learning their home-lessons. It was Saturday night.

"Clear out, you brats," said the lord, as "Lady Clifford" sank into her basket chair over a book at the fire: but neither of the "brats" appeared to take much notice. He advanced towards Vallie and striking him with a blackthorn cudgel he bundled him and little Pearly out through the door into the passage in the dark. The newly-bourgeoned titular lady sat in silence and manifest connivance or tacit approval of the ejection of the children, while he proceeded to broach to her the little scheme for putting more money in her purse.

Creaking the door and popping in his head from the passage, with Pearly barracking him well up behind and egging him on with cat calls, "Take that, pig!" exclaimed Vallie, throwing a bottle of ink at the gormandising mountebank as he sat before a mass of toothsome salmagundi or some other fantastical kickshaw and a bottle of thick claret at the table, and landing it on his nose to turn somersaults on itself and dye his embroidered shirt-front and his glaucous green gewgaw velveteen doublet and buckskins and spatter-dashes black. With a violent invective the cowardly poltroon rushed at the heroic Vallie, knocked him down and hustled him out of the room with his top-booted foot, while Pearly kicked the lordly shins and the choleric martinette complaisantly superintended the cruelty of her high-born husband and fell back recumbent in the basket-chair like some radiant being in a petunia tea-gown—some exquisite creature reared in the rarefied atmosphere of some unknown sphere in reticence desultorily fumbling the leaves of the yellow-back. She felt uneasy at what had kept her noble darling so long, and haply thought of the occasion when she had shown such passion and jealousy when the dissevered Eugene was away for a day visiting Moss Rose at the Old White Horse.

The children ran down the long dark passage to their bedroom, helping one another to undress, saying the little verses which they had learnt in the fairy nights at Summer Hill and the bijou Myamyn, discussing little enterprises to run away to Miriam and old Christopher at the ivy-mantled cottage by the sea, and longing for the day when their father would come page 488home they sank into dreams of Prince and the old wigwam summer-house again, and the rich sweet flowers and the sparkling shrubs and the waving trees and the flitting birds and the gleaming butterflies and the poppy shows and the funny little ladybirds and the humming bees and the cool green grots by the running water and the bushy knolls and the mossy hermitage by the whispering sea. The lives of Pearly and Valentine for months after the advent of the lord were no better than the lives of foundlings. Neglected, cursed and maltreated by the bullying cur who had wormed himself into the graces of their mother, they were regarded by her as now altogether an encumbrance. She sat wishing and wishing she had not been given their custodianship at all; she never knew what she wished.

"Mark my words, my lady dear," began the varicose eclairissement of the noble tactician, "there's a pot of money in the thing, as my dear old paterfamilias used to say. I have seen several agents in the city on your account, my lady dear, and they all say that in less than two years the property will be worth thirty times what is asked for it at present, or quite as much as the estate of my dear old materfamilias. It comprises quite half of the tenements in the block in West Broadway, New York. There are six shops, two hotels, and a bank. If that property is not worth two hundred thousand my name is not Sir Roger Clifford. I can get it cheaper than anyone else through a friend of my dear old paterfamilias, so I will buy it if you are willing to just write your name, my lady dear, down underneath mine on the papers and the whole concern can be yours. I'll make you a wedding present of the lot, my lady dear, as I had no time to get anything before except the coronet handkerchief which belonged to my dear old materfamilias. Think, my lady dear, in two years' time of thirty or fifty times two hundred thousand—that equals from six to ten million dollars spot cash. Behold! the charming bird of Paradise a millionairess and just as much a millionairess as my dear old materfamilias. This unearned increment, as it used to be called by my dear old paterfamilias, is a great thing in speculation, my lady dear, in no mistake. What a high old time we will have together in the 'playground of Europe,' climbing the peaks of the Matterhorn, the terraces of the Pineian Hills in the eternal city of emperors, Hadrian's tomb, Nero, Gregory the Great and the Borgias, Milan, Genoa, Venice in the moonlight, the glittering lights of Paris, and on a visit to the magnificoes of Merrie England and my dear old mater-familias! Those brats of yours will be right enough without their mater-familias when the court arranges to send them to a city boarding-school; so what do you say, my lady dear, and I will telegraph your reply to the agents in the morning. You have, mind, my lady dear, only till to-morrow to decide as to whether you shall remain here or whether you will become in a year or so one of the richest women on the face of God's earth and just as great a millionairess as my dear old materfamilias," and after deftly planting a dainty little butterfly kiss on her lips, "'oos 'ittte birdie is oo?"

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Despicably mean and selfish she had always shown herself towards the easy-going doctor; in the emollient whiphand grasp of the sleeky Sir Roger Clifford she was as "saft as the down o' the doo." Begrudging Eugene the money which he earned by his own exertions, and claiming the lion's share of it for bijoutry and fal-de-lals, her whole patrimony tout à fait the drawingroom ornament in the petunia tea-gown often proffered to her reigning lord and king. She had been converted by the reigning lord and king. In this gigantic proposal she readily acquiesced. A worldly woman generally looks after the main chance, and Marvel was conspicuous for her business abilities; but the gratification of the succedaneous husband and lord was a great make-weight to her shortsightedness. Conferring carte blanche warranty upon him to supervise the carrying out of this enterprise of great pith and moment, she agreed to sign the bills which he proposed to draw himself for the property, on condition that this penniless adventurer signed them first.

Next morning he telegraphed the good news to Lazarus and Lazarus, and obtaining another advance on the pretence that his remittance was to arrive in a few days, the chevalier d'industrie, with a final reassuring glance at the bird of Paradise, left Edenhall on his jaunt to the city and his voyage of discovery of the ingots and the spolia opima, with the bills endorsed by Marvel to the tune of nearly two hundred thousand dollars; promising a speedy return laden like the bees with treasures and a very Golgotha of riches. The title-deeds of the property were handed over to him to take to Craig, Clack, Carrick and Clark for examination and conveyancing functions, and he obtained a liberal commission from the brokers for deceiving his wife and effecting the sale of the property. This commission he represented to Marvel as only portion of the remittance which he had received from his mother in England, while the fiducial Marvel lived at last in the Paradise of the guile, the chicanery, and the witchcraft of a lawful husband deliberately plotting a commercial plant upon his wife.

In the previous year a large amount of Spanish capital had come to the cotton fields for the purpose of buying up all the properties in land and buildings for sale in the market at an exorbitant figure. It was the beginning of a prodigious swindle to place false appraisements on landed properties throughout the States on the pretext of a huge influx of cotton-planters from Spain. Agents were disseminated all over the city and the country towns of the whole of the Southern States with the object of rigging the land exchange just as the promoters of the swindle wanted it rigged. Properties of inconsiderable value would in a few days advance to prices beyond the dreams of avarice, and within three months from the alleged importation of the bogus capital the unearned increment in cotton and tobacco plantations was amazing. The estimated values of city properties followed suit with all the kinetic energy of a tidal wave or a balloon. Men rushed into the land-market delirious with feverish excitement to buy up with all they could lay their hands upon whatever property they could find page 490for sale. Problematical values were attached to every foot of land in the cities, which in some instances rose to the fictitious figure of eight thousand dollars for a spadeful. Still the balloon rose higher and higher. In the hopes of a rapid advance in the fabulous prices, a perfect furore and commercial riot was engendered throughout the length and breadth of the Southern States among the eager crowds who flocked around the land exchanges vying with one another in monstrous offers for comparatively worthless sites. One little tobacco plantation which twenty years before had been sold for nine hundred dollars fetched the tremendous price of forty thousand!

The block of the effete dingy fuliginous and dilapidated messuage which Sir Roger Clifford had bought with the bills, worthless as they were without the endorsement of Marvel, were at the time they were foisted upon "Lady Clifford" not worth ten thousand dollars. Her precipitant hopes that in two years, according to the rate at which during the first six months prices had risen, the few ungainly piles would realise the chimerical dream of ten millions predicted by "Sir Roger," enfettered her in the iron chains which he had forged around his wife—fetters from which with an irony of fate she had no desire to escape. His nuncupatory affectation of solidarity and overbearing deportment of patronage towards others stamped him in the eyes of the untravelled Marvel as the beau idéal of a warranted English lord, and when his bombastic cruelty vented itself on the children she had not the moral courage to make an attempt to restrain him.

Fast out of her mind the children were fading away under the whirling excitement of the great cotton-balloon, and their absence all the week at the boarding-school encouraged her maternal oblivion.

Within twelve months from the inauguration of the Spanish swindle, in commercial language the balloon was scuttled. The rotten fabric fell pell-mell with a ruinous crash to the ground. Thousands of homes were devastated, their little all having been invested in property of a supposititious value. They had refused to sell as its price increased in their ravenous greed for greater remuneration. The recoil in prices when once the balloon was pricked outpaced the rapid advance which had been the case in its infancy. Properties fell to less than one-fourth of their formerly current values. Mad rushes were made for the cancellation of liabilities, and the devil took the hindmost.

The fortune of Marvel, invested as it was chiefly in the City of New York Bank, maintained its uniform average of five per cent.: it could not be affected by the rise and fall of the land market. Now that the prices of land were so depreciated Lazarus and Lazarus and thousands of others besides Lazarus and Lazarus found their occupations, like Othello, gone. Farewell the tranquil mind! They entered their claims for payment of the promissory notes given by Sir Roger Clifford, who was only a man of straw. The paraclisal endorsement was quite satisfactory to everybody with the exception of the bird of Paradise, and Lazarus and Lazarus enforced payment to the bitter end. Lazarus and Lazarus well knew that the name page 491of Sir Roger Clifford was a rubbishy figment, but they had gone to the trouble of making a search for the will of the old coal-king in the Titles' office at the Law Courts and discovered that Marvel's income could be anticipated. They called upon Marvel, and after indulging in many coarse witticisms they coolly made an offer to her of five thousand dollars for the properties which she had purchased, and again the stultified docile and ductile Marvel was persuaded into accepting the offer of the Israelites in order that Sir Roger might reap another little harvest of commission.

Thousands of investors like Lady Clifford had been swindled out of almost all they possessed. The produce of life-long toil, distracting anxiety and unremitting solicitude vanished like a wraith, leaving not a shadow behind. Many of the strongest firms in the city were forced to close their doors and file their schedules. For years afterwards the law courts were as busy as beehives investigating embezzlements, specious schemes, defalcations and fraudulent insolvencies, and many a commercial syndicate found its way into the jails for conspiracy to defraud.

Following in the wake of the general crash came poverty into the homes of the formerly rich. Crime in its multiplex guises inundated the squalid and mephitic quagmires of the always destitute. Business was paralysed from the disestablishment of the medium of credit, and the spirit of mutual trust lay stunned on the roads. Society was convulsed to its very foundations, and the disastrous effects of the hydra-headed bubble of the cotton-balloon lasted till they sank into insignificance beneath the ravages of the bloodiest cavil war ever known to history. The lynchpin had tumbled out of the wheels of the razzle-dazzle coach at last, and Gloriana Bloobumper and Esmeralda Knight were sent away from the palace.

Her own and most of the children's pittance thrown away by the mercenary artifices of her villainous husband, the pseudo-lord whom she still for a time adored, the remnant of the life of the purse-proud bird of Paradise was spent under the cloud of humiliation. The hand of Nemesis was upon Marvel. She bemoaned the destiny that had led her to whistle down the winds the love of the upright, honest and genuine Eugene by the agencies of her turn-coat cowardice, her treachery, her querimonious dissimulation and her false testimony, when, soon after, she awoke to find herself deserted, and her hokey - pokey husband, her only deceiver, her whilom liege lord and master, living in a voluptuous kennel with wine-bibbing women of the town.

Old Jean Gould accepted the calamity as a judgment by retributive justice upon the internal dissensions in her own family, whereas for a long time Marvel had looked upon the trial as a harmless source of innocent mirth. Guinevere felt sorrow for Marvel, but Lillie Delaine rejoiced in her downfall. Revenge is sweet: spontaneous revenge is sweeter, and Marvel had tried to ruin Lillie Delaine without a stab of shame.

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