The Brightener. Williamson Charles Norris
not yet quite come to the part about those developments. After the funeral, when I knew the worst about the entail, and that Paolo's brother Carlo was breaking it wholly for his own benefit, and not at all for mine, Mrs. Carstairs asked sympathetically if I had thought what I should like to do.
"Like to do?" I echoed, bitterly. "I should like to go home to the dear old Abbey, and restore the place as it ought to be restored, and have plenty of money, without lifting a finger to get it. What I must do is a different question."
"Well, then, my dear, supposing we put it in that brutal way. Have you thought – er – "
"I've done nothing except think. But I've been brought up with about as much earning capacity as a mechanical doll. The only thing I have the slightest talent for being, is – a detective!"
"Good gracious!" was Mrs. Carstairs' comment on that.
"I've felt ever since spy night at the Abbey that I had it in me to make a good detective," I modestly explained.
"'Princess di Miramare, Private Detective,' would be a distinctly original sign-board over an office door," the old lady reflected. "But I believe I've evolved something more practical, considering your name – and your age – (twenty-one, isn't it?) – and your looks. Not that detective talent mayn't come in handy even in the profession I'm going to suggest. Very likely it will – among other things. It's a profession that'll call for all the talents you can get hold of."
"Do you by chance mean marriage?" I inquired, coldly. "I've never been a wife. But I suppose I am a sort of widow."
"If you weren't a sort of widow you couldn't cope with the profession I've – er – invented. You wouldn't be independent enough."
"Invented? Then you don't mean marriage! And not even the stage. I warn you that I solemnly promised Grandmother never to go on the stage."
"I know, my child. She mentioned that to Henry – my husband – when they were discussing your future, before you both left London. My idea is much more original than marriage, or even the stage. It popped into my mind the night Mrs. Courtenaye died, while we were in a taxi between the Palazzo Ardini and this hotel. I said to myself, 'Dear Elizabeth shall be a Brightener!'"
"A Brightener?" I repeated, with a vague vision of polishing windows or brasses. "I don't – "
"You wouldn't! I told you I'd invented the profession expressly for you. Now I'm going to tell you what it is. I felt that you'd not care to be a tame companion, even to the most gilded millionairess, or a social secretary to a – "
"Horror! – no, I couldn't be a tame anything."
"That's why brightening is your line. A Brightener couldn't be a Brightener and tame. She must be brilliant – winged – soaring above the plane of those she brightens; expensive, to make herself appreciated; capable of taking the lead in social direction. Why, my dear, people will fight to get you – pay any price to secure you! Now do you understand?"
I didn't. So she explained. After that dazzling preface, the explanation seemed rather an anti-climax. Still, I saw that there might be something in the plan – if it could be worked. And Mrs. Carstairs guaranteed to work it.
My widowhood (save the mark!) qualified me to become a chaperon. And my Princesshood would make me a gilded one. Chaperonage, at its best, might be amusing. But chaperonage was far from the whole destiny of a Brightener. A Brightener need not confine herself to female society, as a mere Companion must. A young woman, even though a widow and a Princess, could not "companion" a person of the opposite sex, even if he were a hundred. But she might, from a discreet distance, be his Brightener. That is, she might brighten a lonely man's life without tarnishing her own reputation.
"After all," Mrs. Carstairs went on, "in spite of what's said against him, Man is a Fellow Being. If a cat may look at a King, Man may look at a Princess. And unless he's in her set, he can be made to pay for the privilege. Think of a lonely button or boot-maker! What would he give for the honour of invitations to tea, with introductions and social advice, from the popular Princess di Miramare? He might have a wife or daughters, or both, who needed a leg up. They would come extra! He might be a widower – in fact, I've caught the first widower for you already. But unluckily you can't use him yet."
"Ugh!" I shuddered. "Sounds as if he were a fish – wriggling on a hook till I'm ready to tear it out of his gills!"
"He is a fish – a big fish. In fact, I may as well break it to you that he is Roger Fane."
"Good heavens!" I cried. "It would take more electricity than I'm fitted with to brighten his tragic and mysterious gloom!"
"Not at all. In fact, you are the only one who can brighten it."
"What are you driving at? He's dead in love with Shelagh Leigh."
"That's just it. As things are, he has no hope of marrying Shelagh. She likes him, as you probably know better than I do, for you're her best pal, although she's a year or so younger than you – "
"Two years."
"Well, as I was going to say, in many ways she's a child compared to you. She's as beautiful as one of those cut-off cherubs in the prayer-books, and as old-fashioned as an early Victorian sampler. These blonde Dreams with naturally waving golden hair and rosebud mouths, and eyes big as half-crowns, have that drawback, as I've discovered since I came to live in England. In my country we don't grow early Victorian buds. You know perfectly well that those detestable snobs, the Pollens, don't think Fane good enough for Shelagh in spite of his money. Money's the one nice thing they've got themselves, which they can pass on to Shelagh. Probably they forced the wretched Miss Pollen, who was the male snob's sister, to marry the old Marquis of Leigh just as they wish to compel Shelagh to marry some other wreck of his sort – and die young, as her mother did. The girl's a dear – a perfect lamb! – but lambs can't stand up against lions. They generally lie down inside them. But with you at the helm, the Pollen lions could be forced – "
"Not if they knew it!" I cut in.
"They wouldn't know it. Did you know that you were being forced to marry that poor young prince of yours?"
"I wasn't forced. I was persuaded."
"We won't argue the point! Anyhow, the subject doesn't press. The scheme I have in my head for you to launch Fane on the social sea (the sea in every sense of the word, as you'll learn by and by) can't come off till you're out of your deepest mourning. I'll find you a quieter line of goods to begin on than the Fane-Leigh business if you agree to take up Brightening. The question is, do you agree?"
"I do," I said more earnestly than I had said "I will" as I stood at Paolo's side in church. For life hadn't been very earnest then. Now it was.
"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Carstairs. "Then that's that! The next thing is to furnish you a charming flat in the same house with us. You must have a background of your own."
"You forget – I haven't a farthing!" I fiercely reminded her. "But Mr. Carstairs won't forget! I've made him too much trouble. The best Brightening won't run to half a Background in Berkeley Square."
"Wait," Mrs. Carstairs calmed me. "I haven't finished the whole proposition yet. In America, when we run up a sky-scraper, we don't begin at the bottom, in any old, commonplace way. We stick a few steel girders into the earth; then we start at the top and work down. That's what I've been doing with my plan. It's perfect. Only you've got to support it with something."
"What is it you're trying to break to me?" I demanded.
The dear old lady swallowed heavily. (It must be something pretty awful if it daunted her!)
"You like Roger Fane," she began.
"Yes, I admire him. He's handsome and interesting, though a little too mysterious and tragic to live with for my taste."
"He's not mysterious at all!" she defended Fane. "His tragedy – for there was a tragedy! – is no secret in America. I often met him before the war, when I ran over to pay visits in New York, though he was far from being in the Four Hundred. But