This letter may enable the judicious to discern that although the conquest of London by the lilac frock and the daffodil-colored mane proceeded apace, all was not harmony in Hill Street, W. To Cheriton’s masterly stage management there can be no doubt much of the triumph was due, but he unfortunately was the last man in the world to underrate his own achievement. “Cheriton can’t carry corn” was the trite but obviously just manner in which George Betterton summed up the situation.
No two persons knew Caroline Crewkerne quite so well as these old cronies. And no one save Caroline Crewkerne knew them quite so well as they knew each other. It required a very experienced hand to hold the balance even between them. Let it be said at once that one was forthcoming in that very worldly wise old woman.
This was quite as it should be. For it was wonderful how soon it was bruited about in the parish that two Richmonds had already entered the field. Both were eligible, mature, and distinguished men, and both were more popular than in Caroline’s opinion they ought to have been. As she said in her sarcastic manner, she knew them both too well to have any illusions about them. Les hommes moyens sensuels, said she.
Not, of course, that Caroline’s opinion prevented their entrances and exits in Hill Street at all hours of the day and of the evening becoming a subject of comment. There were those, however, who were favorably placed to watch the comedy—or ought we to call it farce now that criticism has grown so sensitive upon the point?—who were by no means enamored of the spectacle. The fair protagonist was so authentic.
However, the gods were looking, as they are sometimes. And the manner in which they contrived to mark their attention was really rather quaint. They inserted a bee in Cheriton’s cool and sagacious bonnet.
“My dear Caroline,” said he, one morning when he paid a call, “do you know I have taken a fancy to have a copy of Grandmother Dorset to stick in the little gallery in Grosvenor Square.”
“Humph!” said Caroline, ungraciously.
“Don’t say ‘humph,’ my dear Caroline,” said Cheriton, melodiously; “it makes you look so plain.”
“I have never allowed that picture to leave my drawing-room,” said she, “for public exhibition or on any other pretext, and I don’t see why I should do so at this time of day.”
“There is no need for it to leave your drawing-room,” said Cheriton, persuasively. “A man can come here to copy it if you will grant him the use of the place of a morning.”