Glaring most offensively at them, nor that they even allowed me
to sit upon their green bench and witness their chaste salutes, but
it was that they did fail to perceive me at all! There is a kind of
superb finish and completeness about their indifference to the
public gaze which removes it from ordinary immodesty, and gives it a
certain scientific value.
Chapter VII. A ducal tea-party.
Among all my English experiences, none occupies so important a place
as my forced meeting with the Duke of Cimicifugas. (There can be no
harm in my telling the incident, so long as I do not give the right
names, which are very well known to fame.) The Duchess of
Cimicifugas, who is charming, unaffected, and lovable, so report
says, has among her chosen friends an untitled woman whom we will
call Mrs. Apis Mellifica. I met her only daughter, Hilda, in
America, and we became quite intimate. It seems that Mrs. Apis
Mellifica, who has an income of 20,000 pounds a year, often
exchanges presents with the duchess, and at this time she had
brought with her from the Continent some rare old tapestries with
which to adorn a new morning-room at Cimicifugas House. These
tapestries were to be hung during the absence of the duchess in
Homburg, and were to greet her as a birthday surprise on her return.
Hilda Mellifica, who is one of the most talented amateur artists in
London, and who has exquisite taste in all matters of decoration,
was to go down to the ducal residence to inspect the work, and she
obtained permission from Lady Veratrum (the confidential companion
of the duchess) to bring me with her. I started on this journey to
the country with all possible delight, little surmising the agonies
that lay in store for me in the mercifully hidden future.
The tapestries were perfect, and Lady Veratrum was most amiable and
affable, though the blue blood of the Belladonnas courses in her
veins, and her great-grandfather was the celebrated Earl of Rhus
Tox, who rendered such notable service to his sovereign. We roamed
through the splendid apartments, inspected the superb picture-
gallery, where scores of dead-and-gone Cimicifugases (most of them
very plain) were glorified by the art of Van Dyck, Sir Joshua, or
Gainsborough, and admired the priceless collections of marbles and
cameos and bronzes. It was about four o'clock when we were
conducted to a magnificent apartment for a brief rest, as we were to
return to London at half-past six. As Lady Veratrum left us, she
remarked casually, 'His Grace will join us at tea.'
The door closed, and at the same moment I fell upon the brocaded
satin state bed and tore off my hat and gloves like one distraught.
"Hilda," I gasped, "you brought me here, and you must rescue me, for
I absolutely decline to drink tea with a duke."
"Nonsense, Penelope, don't be absurd," she replied. "I have never
happened to see him myself, and I am a trifle nervous, but it cannot
be very terrible, I should think."
"Not to you, perhaps, but to me impossible," I said. "I thought he
was in Homburg, or I would never have entered this place. It is not
that I fear nobility. I could meet Her Majesty the Queen at the
Court of St. James without the slightest flutter of embarrassment,
because I know I could trust her not to presume on my
defencelessness to enter into conversation with me. But this duke,
whose dukedom very likely dates back to the hour of the Norman
Conquest, is a very different person, and is to be met under very
different circumstances. He may ask me my politics. Of course I
can tell him that I am a Mugwump, but what if he asks me why I am a
Mugwump?"
"He will not," Hilda answered. "Englishmen are not wholly devoid of
feeling!"
"And how shall I address him?" I went on. "Does one call him 'your
Grace,' or 'your Royal Highness'? Oh for a thousandth-part of the
unblushing impertinence of that countrywoman of mine who called your
future king 'Tummy'! but she was a beauty, and I am not pretty
enough to be anything but discreetly well-mannered. Shall you sit
in his presence, or stand and grovel alternately? Does one have to
curtsy? Very well, then, make any excuses you like for me, Hilda:
say I'm eccentric, say I'm deranged, say I'm a Nihilist. I will
hide under the scullery table, fling myself in the moat, lock myself
in the keep, let the portcullis fall on me, die any appropriate
early English death, - anything rather than curtsy in a tailor-made
gown; I can kneel beautifully, Hilda, if that will do: you
remember my ancestors were brought up on kneeling, and yours on
curtsying, and it makes a great difference in the muscles."
Hilda smiled benignantly as she wound the coil of russet hair round
her shapely head. "He will think whatever you do charming, and
whatever you say brilliant," she said; "that is the advantage in
being an American woman."
Just at this moment Lady Veratrum sent a haughty maid to ask us if
we would meet her under the trees in the park which surrounds the
house. I hailed this as a welcome reprieve to the dreaded function
of tea with the duke, and made up my mind, while descending the
marble staircase, that I would slip away and lose myself
accidentally in the grounds, appearing only in time for the London
train. This happy mode of issue from my difficulties lent a
springiness to my step, as we followed a waxwork footman over the
velvet sward to a nook under a group of copper beeches.
