Part 13

June, who had felt some awe for the high-collar pride of little Londoners, seeing this triumph of geniality, this evidence of the lessening of two-penny vanity, sang joy-songs, and encouraged her comrades. They followed her lead with whoo-whooping! What a time!

Then the newspapers and the pulpits began to speak. A great project was evolved and set in being. There must be in every district--the press panjandrums declared with elf-induced unanimity a Christmas supper, after the good old jolly style. Funds were started to save any call upon the rates. Gifts of edibles, drinkables, and current coin rolled in.

Mayors and councillors, workers in churches, chapels, conventicles of all sorts, and of no sort; political women and plodding housewives; dukes' sons, cooks' sons, sons of belted earls with their sisters and their cousins and their aunts; my Lady Bountiful and my lady who scrubs--these with all and sundry came together in a spirit of splendid camaraderie to consider ways and means of establishing the Christmas joy-feasts.

Town-halls, village rooms, and other suitable places in all parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were made ready for the great celebration. Mountains of food and rivers of delectable liquid were prepared. Chefs, professional, amateur and very amateur, went to work with a will. Localities bragged of their poultry and puddings. Small boys walked about with glistening eyes; small girls, telling their evening toll of fairy stories, got into the habit of ending their "happy ever afterwards" with the assurance that not a year passed without the wedded prince and princess having a Christmas supper with their people.

'Twas bliss to be alive. Scrooges a thousand-fold were converted wholesale. The fairies, all were working during the entire twenty-four hours of the day; and somehow--somehow they actually managed to squeeze into that ordered period of time an additional twenty minutes. How it was done they only know. Really, they are wonderful--those fairies!

Nevertheless, despite this general agreement of feeling, and unprecedented flow of goodwill, a few exalted persons and their imitators had managed to keep apart from it. They were but a few here and there, but the fact of their silent opposition was painful. There were blots on the jollity.

The Duke of Armingham was not one of them. His Grace, during that period of preparation, seemed to return to youth. His energy was wonderful. He became adept at hammering tacks, and probably nailed up more Goodwill mottoes than anyone else of his years. It was he who devised the plan of plastering dead walls with red and green cartoons, representing prominent men and women of all parties, sects, and classes united in the goodwill of Christmas.

His posters added considerably to the brightness and humour of the streets. But the Duke went just a little too far; though, in the Pepysian phrase, it did one's heart good to see him scuttle round a corner, after having pasted a picture to the front-door of a leading militant suffragist.

He used to come home after the midnight hour, as trembling and wide-eyed as the triumphant Brer Rabbit; his hands and clothing a-muck with bill-stickery. No mischievous bad boy could have been more happily guilty than he; and the way he put on his pince-nez to brazen it out before the Duchess, would have been a picture for Keene.

Certainly the Duke was not of the ungracious elect; but, alas, just as assuredly his Duchess was! Mrs. Barnett Q. Moss and her glistering circle of human dross also remained significantly apart from the general rejoicing and good-fellowship.

June determined to concentrate her attentions on the Duchess.

It was the week before Christmas. The fairy preened herself carefully, for who would conquer must wear nice clothes. Bim placed the crown upon her head and then clambered to the tip-top chimney-pot above Paradise Court to watch her, as a flash of flower-light, journeying towards the vanquishing of that opponent.

As June flew, she rejoiced at the sights beneath her. London was now rich with areas of sweetness and light--the reward of her influence. Old blemishes and ugliness were for ever removed; colour and beauty reigned. It was a sight for tired fairy eyes. The great metropolis was positively handsome.

One by one, fairies who felt they deserved a holiday flew up and followed her, so that by the time she arrived at Armingham House a train of twenty attended her. The more the merrier! They were a jovial company.

The fairies settled on the steps by the great closed door. June opened it. One touch of wand and it swung back obediently. The Armingham butler, then coming down the inside stairs, gaped with amazement.

"My gracious!" he exclaimed. "Them fastenings are done for."

He shut the door with a slam, reopened it and examined the lock. All seemed in trim. He tugged at his left whisker--sign of wine-cellar perplexity. "The world nowadays is getting that rummy," he soliloquized. "I dunno! Those bloomin' fairies, I suppose."

So it was. Many a true word is spoken in bewilderment. The elves--delighted to hear this tribute, however involuntary, to their effectiveness--joined hands, raced and sang in a ring about him. They were mad with happiness, jollier far than legendary grigs and sandboys.

The butler stood in the centre of the marble hall in a maze of indecision, yet at the same time strangely pleased, till their romp was ended. Then with a shriek of joy, which his clay ears were incapable of hearing, the fairies clambered about him. From his waist upwards they clung to him; made him their vehicle. June sat enthroned on his baldness. He was an honoured man.

As he went upstairs, Sparks, the Duchess's maid, happened to pass down them. She saw his smiling face, and crowsfeet of kindliness, not often visible, about his eyes.

"La! Mr. Gootle, what's this?" she asked.

"Company for her Grace, Sparks," he answered, pompously.

The lady's-maid stared, then ran on giggling. "Gootle's got 'em!" she murmured, not untruthfully. She saw possibility for sniggering gossip when she reached the housekeeper's room.

The Duchess was in the library going through her visitors' list, deciding on the guests to be invited to her next dinner-party, writing the names of the selected on a large half-sheet.

The butler entered the library. At once the fairies descended from him and clustered about the Duchess and the writing-table.

Gootle was suddenly aware of the fact that his entrance was purposeless. The object that had taken him there had departed. He struggled with his brains to think of a reasonable excuse for the intrusion.

"Yes, Gootle?" the Duchess inquired.

"Ahem, your Grace, the--front-door flew open."

The Duchess laid down her pen and--looked.

"Really, Gootle! Should I have been troubled with that?" Her glance was ominous.

"Very sorry, your Grace, very sorry," he mumbled, fluttering his hands like flappers, and withdrew. He felt slapped. He wanted to kick himself. "Mass! hass! hass!" he soliloquized. "What did I do that for?" He paused on the stairs. "Them bloomin' fairies!" he said again.

June and her companions were ripe for their form of usefulness. They did nothing for the time, but sat silently, perched picturesquely on the table, mantelpiece, chandeliers and bookcases, while the Duchess continued the selection and completed her list.

She drew a line to indicate that it was ended.

June touched the pen. The Duchess scrawled through the line, in effect deleting it, and wrote an additional name.

"Mrs. Barnett Q. Moss." Then she drew a second line.

She frowned and wondered at herself. She ran her pen along the intrusive name to cancel it, but made no mark; the ink was dry. Her frown was repeated.

The Duchess jabbed her pen into the inkpot, dipping viciously; and then, instead of using it to complete the cancelling of the offending name, wrote a letter. She did not even use the form of the third person.

"DEAR MRS. MOSS,

"I have not exactly the pleasure of your acquaintance, but my son Geoffrey has on more than one occasion enjoyed your hospitality, and has spoken to me about your kindness to him. Will you give me the pleasure of knowing you? If you could spare the time to take tea with me here to-morrow at four o'clock, I should be very glad.

"I shall look forward to seeing you then, unless I receive a note or telephone-message to the contrary.

"Yours sincerely, "EDITH ARMINGHAM."

She found the address in the Red Book, sealed the envelope, rang for Gootle, and despatched the invitation.

Then she rustled to the fireplace and looked at the flames.

"Now why--why did I do that?"

There was no answer. The fairies looked at each other and laughed. Then they made slides on the lid of the piano.

The Duchess was angry.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*A COMPACT*

The brougham which bore the delighted but highly nervous Mrs. Barnett Moss to Armingham House set her down before the door at two minutes to the hour. To be two minutes better than punctual was one of the iron rules of the millionaire; his wife remembered it when paying an advantageous call. As the clock in the boudoir struck four she entered the presence.

June also was there. Her companions of yesterday had returned at dawn to their posts of duty, the pillar-boxes; but Bim she had fetched, in measure to supply their places.

The elves had made a night of it, and what a night!

Every room, corner and cranny in the great establishment had been visited and explored. The butler's pantry they exulted in--to this day Gootle does not know who put the salad-dressing into his particular whisky. The conservatory was for a time transformed. The flowers within it lost their lethargy, and knew again gladness of life. The fairies played hide-and-seek among the shelves and statuary of the library. The dining-table, whereon June had danced on the night of her debut at Armingham House, was in the evening used for many series of fairy rounds--the full score of princely people tracing triumphant dances around and about their leader and lady.

Only Geoffrey Season and his mother were dining at home that night, so there was ample room for the elves to disport in. The butler and his footmen four, looking solemnly at the damask emptiness, were puzzled by--they knew not what! There seemed to be things there, filling the emptiness, that never were there. O dear! A strange world!

Geoffrey was the person most strongly impressed by the atmosphere of enchantment. His conversation shone with unusual brightness, it bubbled with happiest effervescence; but the Duchess, conscious of the amazing invitation to, and certain coming on the morrow of, the millionaire's wife, was far down in the glooms, weighed down with the dumps. She could not bring herself to tell even her son of that incomprehensible accident; and went to bed early, giving Sparks an unheavenly time.

The hours of Faerie came. When the moon was throwing a silver bar over the blue silk coverlet; when stars peeped through the windows; when the night-light's tiny flame was modestly gleaming; when her Grace's breathing made music in the room; then fairies, a score and one, might have been seen flitting about the bed and before the mirrors, swinging on silver fittings, clinging to tapestry hangings, sleeping placidly, sharing the laced pillow with the Duchess of Armingham.

And so for the night we leave that company of immortals and their quarry, and come to the important to-morrow.

The Duchess woke with a light heart; and, when Sparks brought the morning tasse, was inclined to carol.

The maid saw the unwonted gleam of geniality, precisely at the moment when her mistress remembered Mrs. Moss. Sparks watched the glow of kindness fade, die, and the Duchess become herself again.

The state of high-born sulkiness did not last long. June, except for the hour of siesta wherein she returned to Paradise Court to fetch Bim, was constantly beside the Duchess. She spent the whole of that day in preparing the atmosphere for a great conversion. Her magic permeated every part of and person in the great house--from boudoir to boot-boy. Her influence, so real and sweetly haunting, affected the Duchess deeply. She still kept a proud face, but inwardly was sorely inclined to surrender and give herself to the fairies. Her heart was converted already, but still she steadily resisted the new tendencies.

The Duchess was one of the obstinate company who insist on dying in the last ditch.

Acute dislike at having to entertain Mrs. Moss was the obstacle which blocked the fulfilment of her good intentions. Yet that involuntary act of hospitality was an essential step in the progress of Fairydom. It was necessary for June to govern the will of the Duchess in an affair that mattered, and to conquer a great prejudice; but at this stage of progress the prospect seemed retarding the march. Her Grace fought hard against the better inclinations. She was afraid of vulgarity. That was the principal fear. She had heard so much of Liberty Hall and its parties--though not in an unkind way--from Geoffrey.

Mrs. Moss, for her part, also was fighting a battle--against strange nervousness. Ushered in by Gootle, she smiled painfully, mournfully shook her head, and said "How-do!" The Duchess received her with icy graciousness.

The tea in the beginning was a commonplace festival; June knew better than to make her puppets talk seriously during its earlier stages. It was necessary for the Duchess to thaw somewhat; for Mrs. Moss to recover confidence. They must have pause.

They had it, and discussed nonentities and silken politics.

At last June felt the opportune time for action had come. She popped her crown upon the Duchess's head, while Bim, armed with the wand, made himself comfortable in Mrs. Moss's narrow lap.

December was suddenly turned to May. Awkwardness went, geniality prevailed. The Duchess no longer wondered at having given the invitation, or spent suspicious thoughts on her visitor. Everything was natural, kind, and proper. June had won at last.

"I am very glad you came, Mrs. Moss," she said heartily; "there is so much I want to talk to you about."

"It's very good of you to say so, dear Duchess," was the enthusiastic answer.

Bim flourished the wand to stem a current of gush. Mrs. Moss pursed lips and waited.

The Duchess in her brain was wondering what next her tongue would say.

"Have you ever wondered," she asked, "how strange it is that people should go through life, and wilfully refuse to become better acquainted? Why should there be barriers between us or any people? Caste, class-distinctions, are merely artificial. 'The rank is but the guinea stamp,' said Mr. Burns, the poet--it was quoted by the _Morning Post_ yesterday, in a striking article on 'The Aristocracy of Elfdom.'"

"Was it?" said Mrs. Moss, who was puzzled at this line of talk.

"Yes, and it is true."

"Oh, Duchess, if--if a Duchess says so; but I shouldn't have thought----" was the stammering reply.

The poor lady was bewildered. Armingham's Duchess had been in good report and ill, especially ill, the proudest of the proud; fair game and a favourite target for the derision and admiring envy of the merely smart. A thousand stories, increasing with piquancy as they aged, had been set afloat in illustration of her arrogance. Thousand-leaved fictions had blossomed about her. Her origin and upbringing were the kernels of many pretty tales. If rancour wished--as rancour frequently did wish--to hurl epithets at the coroneted caste, five to one the Duchess of Armingham was its pet Aunt Sally. No one in Society had been more pilloried, abused, and envied. The spite and verisimilitude of the attacks were quickened and strengthened by the supreme, unaffected indifference with which her Grace had disregarded them.

Mrs. Moss, although she made social use of Geoffrey, had taken her share in throwing the garbage of scandal. She had often seen the Duchess on her drives through the Parks, and would have given much for a bowing acquaintance with her; but as that was not to be, she, in sheer chagrin, helped to increase the yellow stream of disparagement.

And now the longed-for impossible was happening--this great lady, this enviable aristocrat, this butt for the diatribes of the little, this queen of the exclusive few, was seated familiarly with her, entertaining her, talking easily of democracy, aristocracy, equality.

No wonder Mrs. Moss was bewildered. She pinched herself to be sure it was not one of her dazzling dreams. Bim, to fortify the reality, pinched her too. Yes, there could be no doubt. She could feel it was true.

"A Duchess, you say?" and the hostess smiled sadly. "The world is mistaken when it thinks a woman of rank is to be envied."

"But the privileges!"

"The privileges, Mrs. Moss? The responsibilities of station, I assure you, outweigh them far. Familiarity is apt to render them mere nuisances. What privileges do you particularly refer to?"

The guest in her turn smiled. It was something of a pitying smile--ah, the wisdom of the worldlings! How much the dear Duchess must have been misunderstood!

"Why, the entry everywhere. I guess the folk who shut their doors on a Duchess would soon be inmates of Bedlam. You can talk as a partner with any of the people at the top, can't you? The wealthiest, proudest houses welcome you."

"Is that a great privilege?" she was answered. "I confess I find the social round dull--unutterably dull, with its receptions and dinners, when you must attend them."

"I wish you and the Duke would honour my house one evening," Mrs. Moss ventured to say. "I warrant you wouldn't find our parties dull."

"Ah, my son Geoffrey"--she remembered only the milder stories about Liberty Hall--"has told me of some pleasant little parties at your house."

A pang went through the lady of Liberty Hall.

"So that is how he described them!" thought she. Praise so comparative stabbed her. She was aggrieved and nearly brought to angry tears. Only a few days earlier a weekly paper without a circulation had--for a consideration--filled two columns with an illustrated description of her latest affair, giving a long list of invited guests with swollen names, and now--now--now! to have it referred to as a "pleasant little party"! It was galling!

Bim, thinking she needed it, pinched her again.

Meanwhile, the Duchess was calmly talking pure democratics, to the much amusement of June. The crown was working with a vengeance. Its impotence in that particular case was ended. Six months of incomplete success, commencing with absolute failure, had ended with this result. No wonder the fairy and the gnome were feeling cock-a-whoop! Victory--absolute Victory--was advancing.

The Duchess became serious. She arrived at the fairy's purpose, and believed it to be her own.

"Are you a democrat, Mrs. Moss?" she asked, and put her lorgnette to her eyes in order to see, as well as to hear, the answer.

Every nerve and atom of the vain and selfish lady quivered in protest at such a question.

"No, madam, that I am not," was the decided answer.

"Dear, dear!" sighed the Duchess.

"I left all pretty fancies over yonder. Mr. Barnett Q. Moss and I are emphatically not anything so silly!"

"You left them over yonder?"

"Yes, we did!"

"In the United States?"

"In the U-nited States of America!"

"Dear, dear!" said her Grace again.

June was now on the Duchess's shoulder, nestling in soft folds of Irish lace. She sat up eagerly, the better to hear the discourse.

"I am a democrat, Mrs. Moss!" the remark came sharply, like a shot.

"No, no, Duchess! Impossible!" The poor lady, in sheer amazement, nearly shrieked the protest. Her appeal made the teacups shiver. In her mind's eye she saw the Duchess waving a red flag, and bawling for rights for somebody.

"Yes, a democrat!"

Mrs. Moss shuddered, and squeezed her mimic handkerchief into a ball. She pressed her lips tightly together, and listened with horror.

"Yes, a democrat--one who believes that all human beings should endeavour to give each other equal opportunities. I did not always think this. Dear me, let me confess, I did not think it even yesterday. Something has happened, something is always happening. The world seems getting topsy-turvy; no, not that; but certainly nearer the stars, without being farther from the flowers. Mrs. Moss, I was a proud and unkind woman until yesterday. But from the instant I penned my invitation to you, my old pride, my old--yes, I must say it--arrogance, obstinacy, emptiness of heart, gradually went from me. It is like a conversion. I am changed, and--a humbler woman. I recognize now, as I have not done hitherto, my personal limitations, and the wrong I do my fellow-creatures when I enjoy great good fortune without making any return to mankind for it."

The Duchess was dreamily silent for a little while. A mist was before her eyes. It seemed as if a cold mist had been removed from about her heart. She was no less the great lady for having discovered her older isolation to have been a condition poorer far than this realization of sisterhood with the rest of mankind.

Mrs. Moss did not venture on any answer. She was in a curious condition of mixed emotions. Now and then, while her hostess had been talking she had wondered whether some of the words used were intentionally barbed and edged. Why had the Duchess's old pride begun to diminish when she penned the invitation to her? Was that Miching Malecho? Did it mean mischief?

Mrs. Moss fell into a brown study pondering this littleness. She was no fool; her personality was not quite all vanity, joy in wealth, and greed for pleasure. She had a methodical brain, and possibly a heart somewhere under her corsets. The words addressed to her were effectual.

"You have not been negligent," at last she remarked gently. "Your name and the Duke's are on all charity lists. You help good objects with what they ask for--money."

The Duchess shook her head.

"It was always a proud giving. That charity did not come from kindness, it came from pride."

"No, Duchess; you are taking an unfair advantage of yourself."

"I think not, Mrs. Moss. But I need not talk penitence now. If this--this tendency holds me to-morrow, as I can truly say I hope it will, I shall do better by expressing it in deeds. I want now, if you please, to speak with you on a more serious question, and to invite your co-operation."

Mrs. Moss wriggled. "It is coming!" she told herself. This sounded so like the familiar prelude to a begging appeal.

She was agreeably disappointed. The Duchess did not even look the word purse-strings, but still required something that involved sacrifice.

"You have, of course, heard of these municipal Christmas festivities?" she asked.

"Only vaguely!" was the airy answer.

"But the papers have been full of them!"

"I only read certain pages of certain papers--in Society one must be careful; but, yes, I have heard something about them--sufficient to know that they are amusements for the many, not for the few. I belong to the few."

"They are for all," murmured the Duchess.

"Then I fear I can take but little interest in them."

Bim raised the wand vindictively; June motioned him to wait. He obeyed.

"I am sorry to hear you say so!" The Duchess was shocked at this amazing indifference, being herself possessed of the convert's earnestness.

"Oh!"