VERITA’S STRATAGEM

BY ANNE WARNER[7]

Author of “Susan Clegg,” “Seeing France with Uncle John,” etc.

THERE were very many people who gave a good deal of time to wondering whether Lady Verita Veritas would really ever marry Captain Adair. Many were the opinions on the subject, and some fair-sized bets, one man even proposing to take out the risk at Lloyd’s that she would not. The general view was that marrying Captain Adair was about the only thing that her very original ladyship had not done so far; but on the heels of this undeniable proposition followed the query as to whether her very original ladyship would ever do anything that even the wildest imagination might have accidentally predicted. It was felt that the chances were all against this possibility, and good society was preparing to return to its old favorite topic of how very curiously the young lady treated the young man if she did mean to marry him, and how much more curious was her course of action if she didn’t, when suddenly, one fair May morning, on every news-stall in England appeared a well-known magazine, displaying upon its cover list of contributors the name of our heroine, and upon its pages a terrible tale, entitled, “The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think,” which clearly owed its inception and development to the quick wit and ready pen of that same blue-blooded young woman.

Here was a fresh sensation in good earnest, the more pronounced from the fact that there was a very thoughtless dowager marchioness in the Veritas family. It was not many hours before all London was buzzing, and none of the buzzing was louder than that set up by the wheels of the irate aunt’s car as they hummed round and round, spinning her rapidly toward her niece. For the earl’s eldest sister lived near Windsor and was very, very rich, quite rich enough to have a good and legal right to a thoughtless disposition, the latter combined, be it added, with a most uncertain temper.

The marchioness had the magazine with her, but the speed she had commanded was so great and the purchase of her pince-nez so uncertain that she could only glance casually from time to time at the iniquities portrayed therein. It was easy to see, however, that it was a frightful story and calculated to incite to riot and bloodshed, or, at the very least, to upset all discipline in the servants’ hall. The plot seemed to hint at some vague system of retribution (here the marchioness held the page very close), and in one spot there were certain vicious passages about downing—or was it drowning?—all aristocrats; but just at that moment the car struck a stone, and the noble lady lost her place, in fact, both her places. By the time that she had readjusted herself, the leaf had turned over, and her eye fell on another and yet more absorbing horror, for an old villager in the story predicted death to all who had oppressed him, and following immediately upon this bloodthirsty prophecy came a style of invective that quite shocked one, and made Verita’s aunt suspect that her dear niece had been slumming in Limehouse.

“I wonder what her father will—” reflected the ancient lady of ten times more ancient lineage, shutting tight her thin-lipped mouth; but there the car, making ever more and more violent efforts to save time at the expense of every other consideration, skidded, and again the dowager marchioness was forced to give up thinking.

She gave it up for so long a time that the next thing of which she became aware was the pillared entrance to Veritas House and the green-and-silver footman who was brother to her own maid. He took her out with a solicitude that showed that he also was fully aware of the tragic happening which had just shaken the august family.

“The duchess is up-stairs, your Ladyship,” he whispered respectfully, as she clung to his arm, “and Captain Adair, too.”

The dowager marchioness nodded with jelly-like faintness. Then she mounted the staircase in real agitation, and was announced by a second footman, this one being a son of her own cook.

The countess was “laid up with her head,” so Verita was pouring the tea; no one else was present except the duchess and the captain.

“Not a copy to be had,” the captain was saying excitedly; “I tried everywhere. I tried at Paddington and at the club, and then I took a taxi to Gray’s Inn. There’s a news-stall just across the way, don’t you know; but not a beastly one could I find.”

“Too bad,” said the author, going to kiss the new arrival; “but it doesn’t matter so much now, because here’s one.” She took the dowager marchioness’s magazine as she spoke, and gave it to the duchess, who opened it eagerly.

“O Vera, how could you?” began her aunt at once. “Or if you wanted to do it, why did you drag us all in this terrible way? This is something much more dreadful than walking in processions and being arrested; this is the most dreadful thing that you’ve done yet.”

“The worst of it is,” said the captain, “that it breaks down all the sense of noblesse oblige and entre nous—all that kind of thing, you know. If it were anybody else, it wouldn’t so much matter, for we seem to be baited from every side just now; but I don’t think that she ought to join in, and what worries me especially is that their being sold out at Paddington shows that the magazine has gone out on the afternoon trains in every direction.” He drew a hard breath and glared. Just to look at him, any casual observer would have declared on the Bible that here was a man with great force of character.

“The Paddington trains go only as far as Oxford,” said Lady Verita in a soothing tone, but Captain Adair was clearly in no easily soothed mood.

“They go to Reading, too,” he said with an uncommon air of real opposition, “and to Banbury.”

“And to Stratford—they go to Stratford, too,” interposed the dowager marchioness. “Oh, I’m sure, if you looked into the matter, you’d find that quite a number of places are reached from Paddington. Else why shouldn’t those trains have gone from some other station?” She paused at this bit of constructive London logic, and reverted to her usual condition.

“I wish that they did go from some other station,” said Captain Adair, irately, “it took me so long to get to Paddington. To-day was the first time in ages that I’d gone there, and I wouldn’t have gone there to-day only I was right in the neighborhood.”

Lady Verita looked at him in a way that she had, and he ceased speaking. There was no special quality in her glance, but it was of a kind that one frequently encounters in the best English circles, and it always causes some one to cease speaking. Captain Adair would become a duke some day if one man should die and another should never marry; but it must be confessed that Lady Verita, whether she did or did not have his interest at heart, frequently chose that he should cease speaking.

“I wish that you hadn’t put your name to it,” said the dowager marchioness, suddenly awakened to life and their family grievance by the duchess’s turning a page with a smart snap; “there’s a place there where a man shrieks that he will fight until not one drop of blue blood is left running beside another. That is really very terrible, my dear, that”—She was stopped abruptly, for the duchess threw the book violently from her, gathered up her feather boa, and, rising abruptly, started toward the door.

“What is it?” asked Lady Verita, rising also.

Without a word of explanation or adieu, her grace sailed out of the room. Captain Adair having jumped to open the door for her.

The dowager marchioness sat open-mouthed.

“She must be mad,” said the man as he returned to his seat; “but you know that you really shouldn’t have written it, Vera; really you shouldn’t. People don’t do such things.”

“So revolutionary!” expostulated the dowager marchioness, finding her tongue. “You ought to consider the times. We might as well have Tolstoy in the family, or that horrid little man who led the French strike. Think of your country. Think of her need. Think of our ships.”

“Think of the docks,” the captain added, “or don’t write. That would do just as well.”

“Or, if you must write,” said the aunt, “why not write about the cottage industries? We’ve such a nice cottage industry near us.”

“You might as well be a socialist,” continued the captain; “think of the danger then. Think of the taxes.”

“Think of all the men who are continually being killed,” said the dowager, warming to her argument.

“Think of the condition of your party,” said the captain; and then, having picked up the magazine and hunted out the offending matter, he ceased speaking and carefully adjusted his glass.

Lady Verita leaned back in her chair and seemed to resign herself to the inevitable.

“And if I were not kindness itself,” went on the marchioness, after a slight somnolent pause, “I should feel outraged over your taking your title from me. That”—

“Well, by George!” cried the captain.

“What is it?” asked the marchioness.

Lady Verita began to laugh.

“I declare!” The captain began to laugh, too.

“What is it?” cried the marchioness again.

“The whole thing is about the French Revolution!”

“Of course,” said the author, laughing more.

“The French Revolution!” stammered her aunt.

“It doesn’t mean us at all,” said Adair, dropping his glass and staring at both ladies.

“Naturally not.” Lady Verita began crumbling bread for the poodle. “How could any of you suppose that I would make a story out of you?”

“The French Revolution!” repeated the dowager.

“I’ll wager that’s why the duchess bolted,” said the captain, suddenly. “She’d seen through it.”

“Selbstverständlich,” said Lady Verita, pouring cold tea over the crumbs, to the end that the poodle might enjoy some truly kind attention.

“I’m going straight to her!” announced the marchioness, rising with dignity. “I wish to let her know that I know, too.”

In less than two minutes the lady and the captain were left alone together.

“I believe you wrote it for a sell,” the man said then. He did occasionally beam brightly through his own fog, and he was anxious now to be on good terms again; “you knew how it would be taken.”

“Perhaps,” said Lady Verita, calmly; “but do ring for them to take away the tea, and then run along yourself. I’m tired.”

“You treat me like a dog,” grumbled the captain, “and I never rebel. Do kiss me once before I go, anyhow, and say you love me just once. Do!”

She kissed him, and that so sweetly that she was barely through with it when the men came in for the tea-things. The men going out with the tea-things were barely on the other side of the door when she said “I love you,” and that sweetly, too. The captain went away in raptures. If only—if only—

It was this sort of happenings that kept so much gossip afloat about the young couple.

THERE are only two short months between the first of May and the first of July; it follows therefore that there were only two short months between the publication of “The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think” and that of “The Earl’s Own County.” Every one who had been shocked by the title of “The Dowager Marchioness doesn’t Think” had become quickly calmed upon discovering that it concerned nothing nearer home than the French Revolution, and so could not have meant anything invidious in relation to either our particular dowager marchioness, or yet her times, or yet her class. But there was quite another tale to tell about “The Earl’s Own County,” and both the earl and his county were so well known and so dreadful, the description of them was so vividly accurate, and the language so painful and so glowing, that those who knew the whole truth stood open-mouthed and aghast, wondering what the noble father would do with his noble daughter now.

The noble father was off yachting and thus altogether removed from the field of immediate retribution. But his noble brother, the bishop, came trundling up from his bishopric as fast as, first, a pair of cobs, second, a first-class ticket, and third, a taxi, could be induced to bring him. Arriving at Veritas House, he found his sister-in-law, the countess, laid up with her head, as usual; but the youthful culprit received her uncle with an outstretched hand and a beaming smile. It was hard to believe her so great a sinner as she had proved, but the bishop was ready to believe anything of a daughter and an aristocrat who would write “The Earl’s Own County.”

“Verita,” he said at once and gravely, “this is no light matter. This cannot be overlooked. Your own ancestral acres! It is really most dreadful. You have absolutely identified the place by your detailed description of the thatches and the drains. Thatches and drains are no longer mere impersonal matters of picturesque possibility, as in the past. The low-lying politics of the present government have unduly exalted the drain and all but carried off the thatch. To write lightly of the matter is the reverse of pardonable. Indeed, I may say without fear of prevarication that it is a very serious offense. Statements such as yours, put in the peculiarly unfortunate manner which you have somehow hit upon, stir people up beyond all reason. You remember that American book about the pigs in the jungle near Chicago? Do you recollect that it nearly wrecked the whole slaughtering industry? These things are better left alone. There is no knowing to what end they may lead. You might bring about a question in the House. Consider that possibility. Such fearful issues have arisen out of most trivial matters. In the present state of German tiles, we must put down with a hand of steel all reference to English thatches. I trust that you are following me?” The bishop paused, quite out of breath.

“But I have a purpose,” said Lady Verita. “Have you read my story?”

“In part—only in part; vespers intervened to spare me useless pain. But that little was enough—too much, in fact. It is pulling the very foundations from under our civilization to write as you have written. I cannot in justice deny that your description of life among the poor is a remarkable piece of work, but no good can come of descriptions of life among the poor. Indeed, in my estimation, it is a thing that never should be done. We have our master’s own warrant for the continual existence of the poor, and we may not question his statement. ‘Always with you,’ he said. What could be clearer? In my estimation, their elimination would undermine the whole foundation of that crown of virtue, Christian charity.”

“But I don’t agree with that view,” said Lady Verita; “I disagree with it completely. I think that the situation of the poor can be vastly improved; in fact, it is being improved; which absolutely proves that it can be. That’s logic.”

“Not at all,” protested the bishop; “on the contrary, it’s altogether the opposite of logical. I have it on the authority of nearly all who view the matter as I do, that things are getting continually worse. And with things getting continually worse, the case is proved in opposition to all law and all your so-called logic. I must decline to argue the matter, for the simple reason that the only side to take is mine. Therefore, do not let us go into it. Nothing can be gained by discussing. No one denies that the country has fallen on evil days, but that is a mere trifle compared to the horror of what you have written—and to think that it should have been written by one in the lofty station of your father’s daughter!” Again the bishop paused for breath.

“I’m interested in the poor,” said Lady Veritas, meditatively.

“Perhaps we had best leave the poor out of the question,” said the bishop, who was noted for the firmness with which he adhered to any ground that he had once taken. “As a churchman of more than ordinary weight, I may say that I have ever deprecated the wasting of words as to the economic position of the poor. The poor, in my opinion, are becoming far too prominent. They occupy at present a position never intended in that divine order of things to which I have already referred. It is a position that even the most casual observer must admit is far beyond their limited capabilities to hold. Much of the provision which is needed—and I may say even bitterly needed—by the church is now being diverted to what may well be denominated as the bottomless pit wherein dwell the poor. The poor are fast becoming the rich. The rich are rapidly being pauperized for the unreasonable aggrandizement of the poor. The situation will all too soon become completely unbearable. Now, I put it to you,”—the bishop warmed suddenly in his most persuasive pulpit manner,—“why make it worse? A story like yours is to all intents and purposes a suggestion as to making everything better, and what could be worse? I may say without fear of prevarication that this is a serious matter. It is a very serious matter. Here in your story you have your childhood home desecrated! Our old ancestral acres stripped for the popular gaze! Why did you do it? Or, if an unconquerable longing to perpetuate them in print obsessed you, why did you not perpetuate the beeches or the wild boar or one of the sweet old stories of dole and dungeon? Why drag forth into the fierce light of the present unfortunate tendency to look into matters which, after all”—

“Dear uncle,” said Lady Verita, quite wearied by the length as well as the breadth of her right reverend relative’s scope, “to say the truth, the story is about Ireland. Any one who reads it carefully through to the end sees that. The difficulty is that no one reads anything through to the end nowadays. They skip all but the love scenes. There isn’t a word about any of us or our own wretched belongings in the whole thing. It is all about County Mayo.”

“County Mayo!” cried the bishop.

“Yes,” said his niece, “it is all about County Mayo. Of course it is written very carefully, just as the other story was, and I had a fancy that it might lead some readers to think, ‘Whom the cap fits, let him wear it.’ It has amused me not a little to see how the guilty jump at conclusions. I drew a picture of the French Revolution, and every one cried out that I was writing of ourselves. And now I write of a poor corner in a poor county in Ireland, and your own conscience at once attaches my silly tale to a poor corner in a poor county in England. That amuses me.”

A dull red glowed in the bishop’s angry face. He never had liked this girl, and now he felt that he disliked her intensely. But of course there was no more to be said. An English bishop must not allow himself to be interested in Ireland.

“I am afraid that your youthful spirits will cause you to do what you never can undo,” he said, carefully avoiding her glance of fun as he rose stiffly.

“They have,” said his niece.

“You admit it. Yes, I should imagine so. I”—

Just here Captain Adair was announced.

“Dear uncle,” said Verita, putting her hand into the captain’s while she looked toward the bishop, “we are what Fate wills in our weaving, and I am busy unraveling my skein, that’s all.”

The bishop shook his head in a rather irritated manner and went away. Left alone together, the captain kissed her ladyship and drew her to a seat on the divan.

“My uncle has been expostulating about ‘The Earl’s Own County,’” she said then.

“It’s an awful sell,” said Adair, half angry, half laughing; “down to the last line, every one thinks it’s your place. Of course I always read to the last line before I say anything now. I’ve learned your little way.”

Verita laughed brightly.

“But isn’t it droll that directly I deny it, no one sees the real truth in the descriptions any more?”

“Y-e-s,” said the captain, looking into her pretty face; “and yet I wish that you wouldn’t—’pon my soul I do. You might consider me a little, I think. You know what a hard time I have. I’ve stood such a lot for you. We have all stood such a lot with you. The trouble is, you’re so much too clever for a woman. All women are nowadays. They’re going ahead of all the rules of the game. And you go ahead of all the rest of them.”

“Somebody must go ahead, or progress would cease,” said Lady Verita. “We’ve sat around quite a bit waiting for the men to do things lately, I think.”

“Oh, but we’d be so comfortable if progress ceased, don’t you think?” protested the captain. “Hang it all! if I don’t think that that progress cult is at the bottom of every trouble in the world these days. If everybody’s going to join in for progress, there never will be any peace any more. And as for women like you, Vera dear, if you ever do get the vote, you’ll find yourself a thorn in the side of your party. It’s that way with the clever men always: one has to give the country over to ’em just to keep ’em quiet.”

“I never shall have any party,” said Lady Verita, thoughtfully. “I don’t believe in party politics. I’ll believe in any party that will give even the devil his due. That’s all.”

“That would be the worst party of all,” said the captain; “that would be the kind that no one ever would know which lobby you’d see ’em in.” He stopped to shake his head sadly, for there seemed to him so much of which he should despair, and he, like most well-born Englishmen, did so long to be hopeful and happy! “I do wish you’d quit all this,” he continued, “and settle down like other girls. Some day I’ll get on my feet, and then we’ll tell every one. It really isn’t any of it my fault, you know.”

Lady Verita looked at him not unkindly,—he was a handsome fellow,—and was aware of a sincere wish that she were not so very much the cleverer of the two, or, at least, that he wouldn’t be so ready to admit it.

“I’m aiming to accomplish something,” she said, speaking almost as sadly as he had spoken. “When I’ve done it, I’ll cease writing; but I can’t before. You know that I never do anything very long, however, so I shall soon finish with this.”

But this was cold comfort for the captain.

“You keep me so upset, Vera,” he said after a moment’s painful reflection. “I never know what you’ll do next.”

She laughed a little.

“But there’s one thing I must say,” he added, “and you must remember it, too: don’t you ever write anything about me, because that’s something I won’t stand for. Promise me that.”

Lady Verita did not promise. She kissed him instead, and he did not notice the alteration in the program.

IT was only a moon or two later that my lady’s last tale appeared in print. It was called “If I were only a Duke.” Captain Adair was the hero, and society, on noting the latter fact, was shaken to its very center. The captain was in Malta with a special commission of inquiry into the chance of a night attack from Germany; but he had a sister in London, who mailed him a copy the day that it appeared.

The framework of the story was remarkable.

“Of course they’re engaged,” people said everywhere; “they must be.”

“We know that it’s true about his being poor,” said the cabinet minister’s wife to her cousin; “she didn’t need to tell that.”

“And that his uncle’s a beast,” rejoined the cousin.

“He’ll rage when he reads this,” continued the cabinet minister’s wife; “it is rather a give-away, I do think. He might have made them an allowance.”

“To think of her writing openly that, after all the labor she had had to get him to offer himself, it is too bad that she must wait indefinitely to be married!” The cousin sighed deeply. As she had been waiting twenty-five years for some allowance to be made for her own marriage, she felt a secret sympathy with Lady Verita.

“A most shocking confession,” said the cabinet minister’s wife, knowing just what the sigh meant, and being one of those wives who never regard an allowance as necessary when the maiden ladies of the family marry. And then she gathered up her wrap and departed.

The old duke, even if he was a beast, had always been a very dignified beast; but the commotion about his supposedly published parsimony shook even his conception of noble rights. He went in his big blue car to call at the house where the dreadful young woman stayed when she was at home. The countess, her mother, was laid up with her head, as usual. Lady Verita received his grace exactly as she received most persons in these trying times.

“I suppose it is the story,” she said as she greeted him. She wasn’t a bit afraid of him, having learned to regard him as much the same stuff as the rest of humanity, only more in her way.

“Yes, it is the story,” he said haughtily. He regarded it as most unfortunate that she herself differed so widely from the rest of humanity. “It’s really too bad of you, don’t you know. If Clifford wishes to marry, I’ll give him a little something regular. He ought to know that. You ought to know that. What’s the good of rowing?”

Lady Verita lowered her eyes. She thought that there had been a deal of good in rowing, since it had brought his close-fisted grace to this.

“But it’s very shocking to write it out for the hoi polloi, don’t you know,” the duke continued vigorously; “I must beg, if you marry Clifford, that we have no more of this kind of thing.”

“But it wasn’t meant for any one we know,” protested Lady Verita.

“Yes, it was,” said the duke, putting up his glass and glaring at her; “everything you’ve written has been straight from the shoulder. I read the other two, and it was rubbish to suppose you meant the French Revolution or Ireland. Ireland, indeed! Any one with half an eye could see what you meant. And I don’t need even half an eye to see what you mean now. You mean to marry Clifford, and you wish to do it at once. Dash it all! if putting it off is going to lead to more of these stories, and putting it forward will stop ’em, I’ll set you up in housekeeping to stop ’em. We can’t let this kind of thing continue.”

“Thank you so much,” said Lady Verita, casting down her eyes modestly. “We are betrothed.”

“Yes, I thought so,” said the duke; “I’ve reason to think so, for every one’s been telling me so for the last two years. But what beats me is how, with your daring, you haven’t found a way to marry him before this.”

Lady Verita hesitated.

“I have,” she said finally.

ON receipt of the magazine, Captain Adair flew home as if he had been a dynamite cartridge. For the first time in his life he was stirred enough to be really very much worth while.

“What did I tell you?” he cried, rushing in upon the guilty person without even having stopped to be brushed by his valet. “Now you have done it. We’ll have to tell now.”

Verita wasn’t in the least upset. If he had been plate-glass and she had been a hammer, she couldn’t have been more aware of where the advantage lay.

“We’ll have to tell now,” he repeated; “in fact, you have virtually told already.”

She did not deny it. But she rose and went to him. There was something about her that always had a calming effect when he was vexed, and the charm worked this time as always. He took her hands, clasped them behind his neck, and drew her to him.

“Do let us announce it,” he said in a tone that was muffled by circumstances.

She returned his kiss, for although she knew all his mental deficiencies, she loved him dearly.

“I want to tell,” he whispered; “I’ve always wanted to tell, you know. What if we are poor? We’ll scrape along somehow. We’ll open a flower-shop or a laundry or something.”

She laid her face against his breast.

“I think we’d better tell, too,” she said. “That was the reason why I wrote the story. Writing stories is such a simple way of bringing the truth before the public.”

“But our marriage isn’t on a par with the state of the times nor the condition of your father’s estate,” he reminded her.

“No, not exactly,” she admitted; “but it was something that I felt should be known and which required careful leading up to.”

He kissed her again.

“But you’ll let it be known now?” he asked.

She did not say:

“I’ve wanted it known all the time, but you were so beastly afraid of your uncle.” Instead she murmured, “We’ll send an announcement to the newspapers to-night.”

Then she looked at him and smiled, and then for an instant her heart misgave her and she sighed. She knew that she had gained her purpose, and she knew that she liked him better than any other man; but she was a femme d’esprit, and she knew also that although he would one day be a duke, he never would be her equal. And, like all clever women who marry future dukes for love, she could but sigh slightly.

[7] This story was received by THE CENTURY shortly before the death of the author, which occurred February 4, 1913.

Owned by Sir William Van Horne

ST. ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY. BY FRANCISCO ZURBARÁN

(TIMOTHY COLE’S WOOD ENGRAVINGS OF MASTERPIECES IN AMERICAN GALLERIES)

[❏
LARGER IMAGE]

TIMOTHY COLE’S
WOOD ENGRAVINGS
OF
MASTERPIECES
IN
AMERICAN GALLERIES

ST. ELIZABETH
OF HUNGARY

BY

ZURBARÁN