The City of Masks

by George Barr McCutcheon

It was obvious to Miss Emsdale that Stuyvesant endorsed the supplemental tribute of the twins. He made it very plain to the new governess that he thought more of her beauty than he did of her goodness. He ogled her in a manner which, for want of a better expression, may be described as possessive. Instead of being complimented by his surreptitious admiration, she was distinctly annoyed. She disliked him intensely.

He was twenty-five. There were bags under his eyes. More than this need not be said in describing him, unless one is interested in the tiny black moustache that looked as though it might have been pasted, with great precision, in the centre of his long upper lip,—directly beneath the spreading nostrils of a broad and far from aristocratic nose. His lips were thick and coarse, his chin a trifle undershot. Physically, he was a well set-up fellow, tall and powerful.

For reasons best known to himself, and approved by his parents, he affected a distinctly English manner of speech. In that particular, he frequently out-Englished the English themselves.

As for Miss Emsdale, she was a long time going to sleep. The encounter with the scion of the house had left her in a disturbed frame of mind. She laid awake for hours wondering what the morrow would produce for her. Dismissal, no doubt, and with it a stinging rebuke for what Mrs. Smith-Parvis would consider herself justified in characterizing as unpardonable misconduct in one employed to teach innocent and impressionable young girls. Mingled with these dire thoughts were occasional thrills of delight. They were, however, of short duration and had to do with a pair of strong arms and a gentle, laughing voice.

In addition to these shifting fears and thrills, there were even more disquieting sensations growing out of the unwelcome attentions of Smith-Parvis, Junior. They were, so to speak, getting on her nerves. And now he had not only expressed himself in words, but had actually threatened her. There could be no mistake about that.

Her heart was heavy. She did not want to lose her position. The monthly checks she received from Mrs. Smith-Parvis meant a great deal to her. At least half of her pay went to England, and sometimes more than half. A friendly solicitor in London obtained the money on these drafts and forwarded it, without fee, to the sick young brother who would never walk again, the adored young brother who had fallen prey to the most cruel of all enemies: infantile paralysis.

Jane Thorne was the only daughter of the Earl of Wexham, who shot himself in London when the girl was but twelve years old. He left a penniless widow and two children. Wexham Manor, with all its fields and forests, had been sacrificed beforehand by the reckless, ill-advised nobleman. The police found a half-crown in his pocket when they took charge of the body. It was the last of a once imposing fortune. The widow and children subsisted on the charity of a niggardly relative. With the death of the former, after ten unhappy years as a dependent, Jane resolutely refused to accept help from the obnoxious relative. She set out to earn a living for herself and the crippled boy. We find her, after two years of struggle and privation, installed as Miss Emsdale in the Smith-Parvis mansion, earning one hundred dollars a month.

It is safe to say that if the Smith-Parvises had known that she was the daughter of an Earl, and that her brother was an Earl, there would have been great rejoicing among them; for it isn't everybody who can boast an Earl's daughter as governess.

One night in each week she was free to do as she pleased. It was, in plain words, her night out. She invariably spent it with the Marchioness and the coterie of unmasked spirits from lands across the seas.

What was she to say to Mrs. Smith-Parvis if called upon to account for her unconventional return of the night before? How could she explain? Her lips were closed by the seal of honour so far as the meetings above "Deborah's" were concerned. A law unwritten but steadfastly observed by every member of that remarkable, heterogeneous court, made it impossible for her to divulge her whereabouts or actions on this and other agreeable "nights out." No man or woman in that company would have violated, even under the gravest pressure, the compact under which so many well-preserved secrets were rendered secure from exposure.