Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels
CHAPTER I
The room looked very cool in the afternoon light. A few bowls of white roses that were arranged about it seemed to lend it an aspect of more than usual specklessness.
To Madame Querterot, a person of no taste, who made no pretension of being fastidious, and who had, moreover, little sympathy with a passion for cleanliness when this was carried to exaggeration, the airy lightness of the place suggested the convent school of her youthful days; and, bringing again before her the figure of a stern sister superior who had been accustomed in those vanished times to deal out severe penalties to the youthful but constantly erring Justine, caused her invariably to enter Mrs. Vanderstein’s bedroom after a quick intake of the breath on the threshold, as if she were about to plunge into an icy bath.
Mrs. Vanderstein, ever the essence of punctuality, was ready for her on this particular evening, as she always was.
Wrapped in some diaphanous white garment, which she would perhaps have called a dressing-gown, she lay on a silk covered sofa and lazily watched Madame Querterot unpacking the little bag in which she carried the accessories of her profession, that of a hairdresser and beauty specialist.
“You must make me very beautiful to-night, Madame Justine,” she said, with a smile. “We are going to hear La Bohème, and the Queen will be there. My box is nearly opposite the Royal box, and in case Her Majesty’s eyes fall in my direction I wish to look my best.”
“All eyes will not fail to be directed to your side of the theatre, madame,” replied Madame Querterot, taking out her collection of pomade pots, powder boxes and washes, and arranging them in a semicircle upon a Louis XVI table. “Royalties know the use of opera glasses as well as any citizen. As for making you beautiful, the good God has occupied Himself with that! I can only preserve what I find. I can make your beauty endure, madame. More than that one must not ask of me. I am not the good God, me!” and Madame Querterot’s plump shoulders shook with easy merriment.
Mrs. Vanderstein, too, smiled. She did not suffer from any affectation of modesty as far as her obvious good looks were concerned. But she was obliged to own regretfully – though only to herself – that she was no longer as young as she had been; and the masseuse’s assurances that her youthful appearance could be indefinitely preserved fell on her ears as melodiously as if they were indeed a prelude to the magic strains that would presently rise to charm her through the envied, if stuffy atmosphere of Covent Garden.
“You are a flatterer, Madame Justine,” she murmured. Then, before she laid her head back against the cushions and gave herself up to Madame Querterot’s ministrations, she called to a figure that was seated in the window, half hidden among the muslin curtains that fluttered before it: “Barbara, be sure and tell me if you see anything interesting.”
Barbara Turner answered without looking round:
“Nothing has come yet, but I am keeping a good look-out.”
Mrs. Vanderstein closed her eyes, and Madame Querterot, after turning up her sleeves and arraying herself in an apron, began to pass her short fingers over the placid features and smooth skin of the lady’s face. For a time nothing else stirred in the big room.
A ray of sunlight passed very slowly across a portion of the grey panelled walls, and coming to a gilded mirror climbed cautiously over the carved frame, only to be caught and held a while on the flashing surface of the looking-glass.
On every side the subdued gold of ancient frames, surrounding priceless pictures that had been acquired by the help of the excellent judgment and long purse of the late Mr. Vanderstein, shone softly and pleasantly.
The furniture, of the best period of the reign of Louis XVI – as was the case all over the house – had been collected by the same unerring connoisseur, and each piece would have been welcomed with tears of joy by many an eager director of museums.
The thick carpet that covered the floor exactly matched the pale grey tone of the walls and upholstery, and the extreme lightness of these imparted that air of great luxury which the lavish use of fragile colours, in a town as dirty as London, does more to convey than any more ostentatious sign of extravagance.
Through the open casements many noises rose from the street, for the bedroom was at the front of the house, which stood in a street in Mayfair immediately opposite to a great hotel where the overflow of foreign Royalty is frequently sheltered at times of Court festivals, when the hospitable walls of the Palace are filled to bursting point.
The coming and going of these distinguished guests was always a source of the most unquenchable interest to Mrs. Vanderstein, to whom every trivial action, if it were performed by any sort of a Highness, was brimming with thrilling suggestion.
At the period of which I speak, London was astir with preparations for a great function, and representatives of the Courts of Europe were arriving by every train from the Continent.
Mrs. Vanderstein could hear the sounds of a constant stream of carriages and motors stopping or starting below her window, and knew that it was not to her door that they crowded, but across the road under the magnificent stucco portico of Fianti’s Hotel.
“Barbara, has no one interesting appeared?” she called again after a few minutes.
“Not yet,” was the reply. “There’s a victoria driving along the street now, though, which looks something like a Royal turnout. Rather a nice looking pair in it.”
“Is it a pair of foreign looking gentlemen?” asked Mrs. Vanderstein excitedly.
“No, a pair of Cleveland bays. I hate them as a rule, but from here they don’t look bad. All back, though, of course.”
“My dear girl, do tell me about the people. I don’t want to hear about your horrid horses. I believe all sorts of celebrities go in and out of Fianti’s while I am lying here, and you never even notice them.”
“Yes, yes, I do,” said Barbara. “I will call you directly any one passes who looks as if he might be accustomed to wield the sceptre, or who is wearing a crown over his top hat.”
Mrs. Vanderstein made a little impatient movement. It annoyed her that her companion did not take her duties more seriously – did not, in fact, seem to understand how much more important was this task of keeping a good look-out in the wide bow of the window than any of the others that she was apt to approach in a quite admirable spirit of thoroughness. Why, wondered Mrs. Vanderstein, could the girl not do as she was asked in this matter, without making those attempts to be facetious which appeared so ill-advised, and which fell so extremely flat, as a moment’s observation would have made apparent to her? She did not make jokes about the flowers while she arranged them, nor about Mrs. Vanderstein’s correspondence, to which it was her business to attend. She was able to answer the telephone or order the carriage without indulging in unseemly giggles. Why then, in heaven’s name, couldn’t she take up her post of observation at the window without finding in it an excuse for pleasantries as dull as they were pointless?
Mrs. Vanderstein sighed deeply and wriggled her head deeper in the cushions.
Madame Querterot saw the cloud and guessed very easily what had caused it: she had often noticed similar disturbances of her customer’s otherwise easy-going temper. Knowing with remarkable accuracy on which side of her bread the butter was applied, she at once set herself to calm the troubled waters.
“You did not see me to-day, madame,” she began, “but me, I have already seen you. I passed in Piccadilly where your auto was stopped in a block before the Ritz.”
“Yes, we were kept there quite a long time, but I did not see you, Madame Justine,” said Mrs. Vanderstein indifferently.
“How should you have seen me? I was in a bus. It’s not there that you would look for your acquaintances. That understands itself! But I was not the only one to see you, and what I heard said of you then will make you smile. I said to myself at the moment, ‘It is quite natural, Justine, but it will make her laugh all the same.’”
“What was it? Who can have said anything of me in an omnibus?”
“Ah, madame! Even in buses people do not cease to talk. One hears