Mrs. Raffles: Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman

"Not a bit, the naughty boy!" cried Mrs. Shadd. "That's it, Mrs. Van Raffles, as certainly as we stand here. Suppose, just to worry him, we never let on that anything out of the ordinary has happened, eh?"

"Splendid!" said Henriette, with enthusiasm. "Let's act as if all turned out just as we expected, and, best of all, never even mention it to him, or to Bunderby his confederate, neither of us, eh?"

"Never!" said Mrs. Shadd, rising and kissing Henriette good-bye. "That's the best way out of it. If we did we'd be the laughing-stock of all Newport. But some day in the distant future Tommy Dare would better look out for Pauline Shadd, Mrs. Van Raffles."

And so it was agreed, and Henriette successfully landed Mrs. Shadd's musicale.

Incidentally, Jockobinski was very affable and the function went off well. Everybody was there and no one would for a moment have thought that there was anything strange in the transfer of the scene from Onyx House to Bolivar Lodge.

"Who wrote that letter, Henriette?" I asked late in the evening when the last guest had gone.

"Who do you suppose, Bunny, my boy?" she asked with a grin. "Bunderby?"

"No," said I.

"You've guessed right," said Henriette.

As a postscript let me say that until he reads this I don't believe Tommy Dare ever guessed what a successful joke he perpetrated upon Mrs. Shadd and the fair Henriette. Even then I doubt if he realizes what a good one it was on – everybody.

XI
THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. INNITT'S COOK

"It is curious, Bunny," said Henriette the other morning after an unusually late breakfast, "to observe by what qualities certain of these Newport families have arrived, as the saying is. The Gasters of course belong at the top by patent right. Having invented American society, or at least the machine that at present controls it, they are entitled to all the royalties it brings in. The Rockerbilts got there all of a sudden by the sheer lavishness of their entertainment and their ability to give bonds to keep it up. The Van Varick Shadds flowed in through their unquestioned affiliation with the ever-popular Delaware Shadds and the Roe-Shadds of the Hudson, two of the oldest and most respected families of the United States, reinforced by the Napoleonic qualities of the present Mrs. Shadd in the doing of unexpected things. The Gullets, thanks to the fact that Mrs. Gullet is the acknowledged mother-in-law of three British dukes, two Italian counts, and a French marquis, are safely anchored in the social haven where they would be, and the rumor that Mrs. Gushington-Andrews has written a book that is a trifle risque fixes her firmly in the social constellation – but the Innitts with only eighty thousand dollars per annum, the Dedbroke-Hickses with nothing a year, the Oliver-Sloshingtons with an income of judgments, the study of their arrival is mighty interesting."

"It doesn't interest me much," quoth I. "Indeed, this American smart set don't appeal to me either for its smartness or its setness."

"Bunny!" cried Henriette, with a silvery ripple of laughter. "Do be careful. An epigram from you? My dear boy, you'll be down with brain-fever if you don't watch out."

"Humph!" said I, with a shrug of my shoulders. "Neither you nor my dear old friend Raffles ever gave me credit for any brains. I have a few, however, which I use when occasion demands," I drawled.

"Well, don't waste them here, Bunny," laughed Henriette. "Save 'em for some place where they'll be appreciated. Maybe in your old age you'll be back in dear old London contributing to Punch if you are careful of your wits. But how do you suppose the Oliver-Sloshingtons ever got in here?"

"He holds the divorce record I believe," said I. "He's been married to four social leaders already, hasn't he?"

"Yes – "

"Well, he got into the swim with each marriage – so he's got a four-ply grip," said I.

"And the Dedbroke-Hickses?" asked Henriette. "How do you account for them?"

"Most attractive diners and weekenders," said I. "They got all the laughs at your dinner to the Archbishop of Decanterbury, and their man Smathers tells me they're the swellest things going at week-end parties because of his ingenuity at cotillion leading and her undeniable charms as a flirt. By Jove! she's that easy with men that even I tremble with anxiety whenever she comes into the house."

"But how do they live? – they haven't a cent to their names," said Henriette.

"Simplicity itself," said I. "He is dressed by his tailors and she by her dressmaker; and as for food, they take home a suit-case full of it from every house-party they attend. They're so gracious to the servants that they don't have to think of tips; and as for Smathers, and Mrs. Dedbroke-Hicks's maid, they're paid reporters on the staff of The Town Tattler and are willing to serve for nothing for the opportunities for items the connection gives them."

"Well – I don't envy them in the least," said Henriette. "Poor things – to be always taking and never giving must be an awful strain, though to be sure their little trolley party out to Tiverton and back was delightful – "

"Exactly; and with car-fare and sandwiches, and the champagne supplied free by the importers, for the advertisement, it cost them exactly twelve dollars and was set down as the jolliest affair of the season," said I. "I call that genius of a pretty high order. I wouldn't pity them if I were you. They're happy."

"Mrs. Innitt, though – I envy her," said Henriette; "that is, in a way. She has no conversation at all, but her little dinners are the swellest things of the season. Never more than ten people at a time and everything cooked to a turn."

"That's just it," said I. "I hear enough at the club to know just what cinches Mrs. Innitt's position. It's her cook, that's what does it. If she lost her cook she'd be Mrs. Outofit. There never were such pancakes, such purées, such made dishes as that woman gets up. She turns hash into a confection and liver and bacon into a delicacy. Corned-beef in her hands is a discovery and her sauces are such that a bit of roast rhinoceros hide tastes like the tenderest of squab when served by her. No wonder Mrs. Innitt holds her own. A woman with a cook like Norah Sullivan could rule an empire."

A moment later I was sorry I had spoken, for my words electrified her.

"I must have her!" cried Henriette.

"What, Mrs. Innitt?" I asked.

"No – her cook," said Henriette.

I stood aghast. Full of sympathy as I had always been with the projects of Mrs. Van Raffles, and never in the least objecting on moral grounds to any of her schemes of acquisition, I could not but think that this time she proposed to go too far. To rob a millionaire of his bonds, a national bank of its surplus, a philanthropist of a library, or a Metropolitan Boxholder of a diamond stomacher, all that seemed reasonable to me and proper according to my way of looking at it, but to rob a neighbor of her cook – if there is any worse social crime than that I don't know what it is.

"You'd better think twice on that proposition, Henriette," I advised with a gloomy shake of the head. "It is not only a mean crime, but a dangerous one to boot. Success would in itself bring ruin. Mrs. Innitt would never forgive you, and society at large – "

"Society at large would dine with me instead of with Mrs. Innitt, that's all," said Henriette. "I mean to have her before the season's over."

"Well, I draw the line at stealing a cook," said I, coldly. "I've robbed churches and I've made way with fresh-air funds, and I've helped you in many another legitimate scheme, but in this, Mrs. Van Raffles, you'll have to go it alone."

"Oh, don't you be afraid, Bunny," she answered. "I'm not going to use your charms as a bait to lure this culinary Phyllis into the Arcadia in which you with your Strephonlike form disport yourself."

"You oughtn't to do it at all," said I, gruffly. "It's worse than murder, for it is prohibited twice in the decalogue, while murder is only mentioned once."

"What!" cried Henrietta "What, pray, does the decalogue say about cooks, I'd like to know?"

"First, thou shalt not steal. You propose to steal this woman. Second, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's maid-servant. How many times does that make?" I asked.

"Dear me, Bunny," said Henriette, "but you are a little tuppenny Puritan, aren't you? Anybody'd know you were the son of a clergyman! Well, let me tell you, I sha'n't steal the woman, and I sha'n't covet her. I'm just going to get her, that's all."

It was two weeks later that Norah Sullivan left the employ of Mrs. Innitt and was installed in our kitchen; and, strange to relate, she came as a matter of charity on Henriette's part – having been discharged by Mrs. Innitt.

The Friday before Norah's arrival Henriette requested me to get her a rusty nail, a piece of gravel from the drive, two hair-pins, and a steel nut from the automobile.

"What on earth – " I began, but she shut me off with an imperious gesture.

"Do as I tell you," she commanded. "You are not in on this venture." And then apparently she relented. "But I'm willing to tell you just one thing, Bunny" – here her eyes began to twinkle joyously – "I'm going to Mrs. Innitt's to dinner to-morrow night – so look out for Norah by Monday."

I turned sulkily away.

"You know how I feel on that subject," said I. "This business of going into another person's house as a guest and inducing their servants to leave is an infraction of the laws of hospitality. How would you like it if Mrs. Gaster stole me away from you?"

Henriette's answer was a puzzling smile. "You are free to better your condition, Bunny," she said. "But I am not going to rob Mrs. Innitt, as I told you once before. She will discharge Norah and I will take her, that's all; so do be a good boy and bring me the nail and gravel and the hair-pins and the automobile nut."

I secured the desired articles for my mistress, and the next evening she went to Mrs. Innitt's little dinner to Miss Gullet and her fiancé, Lord Dullpate, eldest son of the Duke of Lackshingles, who had come over to America to avoid the scrutiny of the Bankruptcy Court, taking the absurd objects with her. Upon her return at 2 a. m. she was radiant and triumphant.

"I won out, Bunny – I won out!" she cried.

"How?" I inquired.

"Mrs. Innitt has discharged Norah, though I begged her not to," she fairly sang.

"On what grounds?"

"Several," said Henriette, unfastening her glove. "To begin with, there was a rusty nail in my clam cocktail, and it nearly choked me to death. I tried hard to keep Mrs. Innitt from seeing what had happened, but she is watchful if not brainy, and all my efforts went for naught. She was much mortified of course and apologized profusely. All went well until the fish, when one of the two hair-pins turned up in the pompano to the supreme disgust of my hostess, who was now beginning to look worried. Hair-pin number two made its début in my timbale. This was too much for the watchful Mrs. Innitt, self-poised though she always is, and despite my remonstrances she excused herself from the table for a moment, and I judge from the flushed appearance of her cheeks when she returned five minutes later that somebody had had the riot act read to her somewhere.

"'I don't understand it at all, Mrs. Van Raffles,' she said with a sheepish smile. 'Cook's perfectly sober. If anything of the kind ever happens again she shall go.'"

"Even as Mrs. Innitt spoke I conveyed a luscious morsel of filet mignon with mushrooms to my mouth and nearly broke my tooth on a piece of gravel that went with it, and Norah was doomed, for although we all laughed heartily, the thing had come to be such a joke, it was plain from the expression of Mrs. Innitt's countenance that she was very, very angry.

"'Forgive her this time for my sake, Mrs. Innitt,' I pleaded. 'After all it is the little surprises that give zest to life.'"

"And you didn't have to use the automobile nut?" I asked, deeply impressed with the woman's ingenuity.

"Oh yes," said Henriette. "As dinner progressed I thought it wise to use it to keep Mrs. Innitt from weakening; so when the salad was passed I managed, without anybody's observing it, to drop the automobile nut into the bowl. The Duke of Snarleyow got it and the climax was capped. Mrs. Innitt burst into a flood of tears and – well, to-morrow, Bunny, Norah leaves. You will take her this ten-dollar bill from me, and tell her that I am sorry she got into so much trouble on my account. Say that if I can be of any assistance to her all she has to do is to call here and I will do what I can to get her another place."

With this Henriette retired and the next morning on her way to early church I waylaid Norah. Her eyes were red with weeping, but a more indignant woman never lived. Her discharge was unrighteous; Mrs. Innitt was no lady; the butler was in a conspiracy to ruin her – and all that; indeed, her mood was most receptive to the furtherance of Henriette's plans. The ten-dollar bill was soothing, and indicated that my mistress was a "foine woman" and "surely Norah would come 'round in the evening to ask her aid."

"It's ruined I am unless somebody'll be good to me and give me a riference, which Mrs. Innitt, bad cess to her, won't do, at all, at all," she wailed, and then I left her.

She called that night, and two days later was installed in the Van Raffles's kitchen.

A new treasure was added to the stores of our loot, but somehow or other I have never been happy over the successful issue of the enterprise. I can't quite make up my mind that it was a lady-like thing for Henriette to do even in Newport.

XII
THE LAST ADVENTURE

I am bathed in tears. I have tried to write of my sensations, to tell the story of the Last Adventure of Mrs. Van Raffles, in lucid terms, but though my pen runs fast over the paper the ink makes no record of the facts. My woe is so great and so deep that my tears, falling into the ink-pot, turn it into a fluid so thin it will not mark the paper, and when I try the pencil the words are scarce put down before they're blotted out. And yet with all this woe I find myself a multi-millionaire – possessed of sums so far beyond my wildest dreams of fortune that my eye can scarce take in the breadth of all the figures. My dollars coined into silver, placed on top of one another, would form a bullion tower that would reach higher into the air than fifteen superimposed domes of St. Peter's placed on top of seventeen spires of Trinity on the summit of Mont Blanc. In five-pound notes laid side by side they'd suffice to paper every scrap of bedroom wall in all the Astor houses in the world, and invested in Amalgamated Copper they would turn the system green with envy – and yet I am not happy. My well-beloved Henriette's last adventure has turned my fortune into bitterest gall, and plain unvarnished wormwood forms the finish of my interior, for she is gone! I, amid the splendor of my new-found possessions, able to keep not one but a hundred motor-cars, and to pay the chauffeur's fines, to endow chairs in universities, to build libraries in every hamlet in the land from Podunk to Richard Mansfield, to eat three meals a day and lodge at the St. Regicide, and to evade my taxes without exciting suspicion, am desolate and forlorn, for, I repeat, Henriette has gone! The very nature of her last adventure by a successful issue has blown out the light of my life.

She has stolen Constant-Scrappe!

If I could be light of heart in this tragic hour I would call this story the Adventure of the Lifted Fiancé, but that would be so out of key with my emotions that I cannot bring myself to do it. I must content myself with a narration of the simple facts of the lengths to which my beloved's ambition led her, without frivolity and with a heavy heart.

Of course you know what all Newport has known for months, that the Constant-Scrappes were seeking divorce, not that they loved one another less, but that both parties to the South Dakota suit loved some one else more. Colonel Scrappe had long been the most ardent admirer of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, and Mrs. Constant-Scrappe's devotion to young Harry de Lakwitz had been at least for two seasons evident to any observer with half an eye. Gushington-Andrews had considerately taken himself out of the way by eloping to South Africa with Tottie Dimpleton of the Frivolity Burlesquers, and Harry de Lakwitz's only recorded marriage had been annulled by the courts because at the time of his wedding to the forty-year-old housemaid of the Belleville Boarding-School for Boys at Skidgeway, Rhode Island, he was only fifteen years of age. Consequently, they both were eligible, and provided the Constant-Scrappes could be so operated on by the laws of South Dakota as to free them from one another, there were no valid reasons why the yearnings of these ardent souls should not all be gratified. Indeed, both engagements had been announced tentatively, and only the signing of the decree releasing the Constant-Scrappes from their obligations to one another now stood in the way of two nuptial ceremonies which would make four hearts beat as one. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's trousseau was ready, and that of the future Mrs. de Lakwitz had been ordered; both ladies had received their engagement rings when that inscrutable Henriette marked Constant-Scrappe for her own. Colonel Scrappe had returned from Monte Carlo, having broken the bank twice, and Henriette had met him at a little dinner given in his honor by Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. He turned out to be a most charming man, and it didn't require a much more keen perception than my own to take in the fact that he had made a great impression upon Henriette, though she never mentioned it to me until the final blow came. I merely noticed a growing preoccupation in her manner and in her attitude towards me, which changed perceptibly.

"I think, Bunny," she said to me one morning as I brought her marmalade and toast, "that considering our relations to each other you should not call me Henrietta. After all, you know, you are here primarily as my butler, and there are some proprieties that should be observed even in this Newport atmosphere."

"But," I protested, "am I no more than that? I am your partner, am I not?"

"You are my business partner – not my social, Bunny," she said. "We must not mix society and business. In this house I am mistress of the situation; you are the butler – that is the precise condition, and I think it well that hereafter you should recognize the real truth and avoid over-familiarity by addressing me as Mrs. Van Raffles. If we should ever open an office for our Burglary Company in New York or elsewhere you may call me anything you please there. Here, however, you must be governed by the etiquette of your environment. Let it be Mrs. Van Raffles hereafter."

"And is it to be Mr. Bunny?" I inquired, sarcastically.

Her response was a cold glance of the eye and a majestic sweep from the room.

That evening Colonel Scrappe called, ostensibly to look over the house and as landlord to see if there was anything he could do to make it more comfortable, and I, blind fool that I was for the moment, believed that that was his real errand, and ventured to remind Henriette of the leak in the roof, at which they both, I thought, exchanged amused glances, and he gravely mounted the stairs to the top of the house to look at it. On our return, Henriette dismissed me and told me that she would not require my services again during the evening. Even then my suspicions were not aroused, although there was a dull, disturbed feeling about my heart whose precise causes I could not define. I went to the club and put in a miserable evening, returning home about midnight to discover that Colonel Scrappe was still there. He was apparently giving the house and its contents a thorough inspection, for when I arrived, Henriette was testing the fifty-thousand-dollar piano in the drawing-room for him with a brilliant rendering of "O Promise Me." What decision they reached as to its tone and quality I never knew, for in spite of my hints on the subject, Henriette never spoke of the matter to me. I suppose I should have begun to guess what was happening under my very nose then, but thank Heaven I am not of a suspicious nature, and although I didn't like the looks of things, the inevitable meaning of their strange behavior never even dawned upon my mind. Even when two nights later Colonel Scrappe escorted Henriette home at midnight from a lecture on the Inscrutability of Sartor Resartus at Mrs. Gushington-Andrews's it did not strike me as unusual, although, instead of going home immediately, as most escorts do under the circumstances, he remained about two hours testing that infernal piano again, and with the same old tune.

Then the automobile rides began, and pretty nearly every morning, long before polite society was awake, Colonel Scrappe and Henriette took long runs together through the country in her Mercedes machine, for what purpose I snever knew, for whatever interest the colonel might have had in our welfare as a landlord I could not for the life of me guess how it could be extended to our automobiles. One thing I did notice, however, was a growing coldness between Henriette and Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. The latter came to a card-party at Bolivar Lodge one afternoon about two weeks after Colonel Scrappe's return, and her greeting to her hostess instead of having the old-time effusiveness was frigid to a degree. In fact, when they clasped hands I doubt if more than the tips of their fingers touched. Moreover, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, hitherto considered one of the best fists at bridge or hearts in the 400, actually won the booby prize, which I saw her throw into the street when she departed. It was evident something had happened to disturb her equanimity.

My eyes were finally opened by a remark made at the club by Digby, Reggie de Pelt's valet, who asked me how I liked my new boss, and whose explanation of the question led to a complete revelation of the true facts in the case. Everybody knew, he said, that from the moment she had met him Mrs. Van Raffles had set her cap for Colonel Scrappe, and that meeting her for the first time he had fallen head over heels in love with her even in the presence of his fiancée. Of course I hotly denied Digby's insinuations, and we got so warm over the discussion that when I returned home that night I had two badly discolored eyes, and Digby – well, Digby didn't go home at all. Both of us were suspended from the Gentleman's Gentleman's Club for four weeks for ungentleman's ungentlemanly behavior in consequence. Black as my eyes were, however, I was on hand at the breakfast-table the following morning, and of course Henriette observed my injuries.

"Why, Bunny!" she cried. "What is the meaning of this? Have you been fighting?"

"Oh no, Mrs. Van Raffles," I returned, sarcastically, "I've just strained my eyes reading the divorce news from South Dakota."

She gave a sudden start.

"What do you mean?" she demanded, her face flushing hotly.

"You know well enough what I mean," I retorted, angrily. "Your goings on with Colonel Scrappe are the talk of the town, and I got these eyes in a little discussion of your matrimonial intentions. That's all."

"Leave the room instantly!" she cried, rising and haughtily pointing to the door. "You are insufferable."

But the color in her cheeks showed that I had hit home far harder than she was willing to admit. There was nothing for me to do but to obey meekly, but my blood was up, and instead of moping in my room I started out to see if I could find Constant-Scrappe. My love for Henriette was too deep to permit of my sitting quietly by and seeing another walk away with the one truly coveted prize of my life, and I was ready on sight to take the colonel by the collar – he was only a governor's-staff colonel anyhow, and, consequently no great shakes as a fighter – and throw him into the harbor, but my quest was a vain one. He was to be found in none of his familiar haunts, and I returned to Bolivar Lodge. And then came the shock. As I approached the house I saw the colonel assisting Henriette into the motor-car, and in response to the chauffeur's "Where to, sir," I heard Scrappe reply in an excited undertone:

"To New York – and damn the speed laws."

In a moment they had rushed by me like the flash of a lightning express, and Henriette was gone!

You must know the rest. The papers the next day were full of the elopement in high life. They told how the Scrappe divorce had been granted at five o'clock in the afternoon the day before, how Colonel Scrappe and Mrs. Van Raffles had sped to New York in the automobile and been quietly married at the Little Church Around the Corner, and were now sailing down the bay on the Hydrostatic, bound for foreign climes. They likewise intimated that a very attractive lady of more than usual effusiveness of manner, whose nuptials were expected soon to be published for the second time, had gone to a sanitarium in Philadelphia to be treated for a sudden and overwhelming attack of nervous hysteria.

It was all too true, that tale. Henriette's final coup had been successful, and she had at one stroke stolen her landlord, her landlady's husband, and her neighbor's fiancé. To console me she left this note, written on board of the steamer and mailed by the pilot.

On Board the Hydrostatic.

Off Sandy Hook, September 10, 1904.

Dear Bunny, – I couldn't help it. The minute I saw him I felt that I must have him. It's the most successful haul yet and is the last adventure I shall ever have. He's worth forty million dollars. I'm sorry for you, dear, but it's all in the line of business. To console you I have left in your name all that we have won together in our partnership at Newport – fourteen millions five hundred and sixty-three thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven dollars in cash, and about three million dollars in jewels, which you must negotiate carefully. Good-bye, dear Bunny, I shall never forget you, and I wish you all the happiness in the world. With the funds now in your possession why not retire – go home to England and renew your studies for the ministry? The Church is a noble profession.

Sincerely yours,

Henriette Van Raffles-Scrappe.

I have gathered together these meagre possessions – rich in bullion value, but meagre in happiness, considering all that might have been, and to-morrow I sail for London. There, following Henriette's advice, I shall enter the study of the ministry, and when I am ordained shall buy a living somewhere and settle down to the serene existence of the preacher, the pastor of a flock of human sheep.