by John Kendrick Bangs
Narrated by Bunny” - Copyright, 1905, by Harper &
Brothers – Published October 1905
Henriette had been unwontedly reserved for
a whole week, a fact which was beginning to get sadly on my nerves when she
broke an almost Sphinxlike silence with the
extraordinary remark:
“Bunny, I am sorry, but I don’t see any
other way out of it. You must get
married.”
To say that I was shocked by the
observation is putting it mildly. As you
must by this time have realized yourself, there was only one woman in the world
I could possibly bring myself to think fondly of, and that woman was none other
than Henriette herself. I could not
believe, however, that this was at all the notion she had in mind, and what
little poise I had was completely shattered by the suggestion.
I drew myself up with dignity, however, in
a moment and answered her.
“Very well, dear,” I said. “Whenever you are ready I am. You must have banked enough by this time to
be able to support me in the style to which I am accustomed.”
“That is not what I meant, Bunny,” she
retorted, coldly, frowning at me.
“Well, it’s what I mean,” said I. “You are the only woman I have ever loved---“
“But, Bunny, dear, that can come later,”
said she, with a charming little blush.
“What I meant, my dear boy, was not a permanent affair but one of those
“I don’t understand,” said I, affecting
denseness, for I understood only too well.
“Stupid!” cried Henriette. “I need a confidential maid, Bunny, to help
us in our business, and I don’t want to take a third party in at random. If you had a wife I could trust her. You could stay married as long as we needed
her, and then, following the Newport plan, you could get rid of her and marry
me later---that---is---er---provided I was willing to marry you at all, and I
am not so sure that I shall not some day, when I am old and toothless.”
“I fail to see the necessity for a maid of
that kind,” said I.
“That’s because you are a man, Bunny,”
said Henriette. “There are splendid
opportunities for acquiring the gems these
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,
Henriette,” I returned, with more positiveness than I commonly show, “I will
not marry a lady’s maid, and that’s all there is about it. You forget that I am a gentleman.”
“It’s only a temporary arrangement,
Bunny,” she pleaded. “It’s done all the
time in the smart set.”
“Well, the morals of the smart set are not
my morals,” I retorted. “My father was a
clergyman, Henriette, and I am something of a churchman myself, and I won’t
stoop to such business. Besides, what’s
to prevent my wife from blabbing
when we try to ship her?”
“H’m!” mused
Henriette. “I hadn’t though of that---it
would be dangerous, wouldn’t it?”
“Very,” said I. “The only safe way out of it would be to kill
the young woman, and my religious scruples are strongly against anything of the
sort. You must remember, Henriette,
that there are one or two of the commandments that I hold
in too high esteem to break them.”
“Then what shall we do, Bunny?” demanded
Mrs. Van Raffles. “I must have that
tiara.”
“Well, there’s the old amateur theatrical
method,” said I. “Have a little play
here, reproduce Mrs. Rockerbilt’s tiara in paste for one of the characters to
wear, substitute the spurious for the real, and there you are.”
“That is a good idea,” said Henriette;
“only I hate amateur
theatricals. I’ll think
it over.”
A few days later my mistress summoned me
again.
“Bunny, you used to make fairly good
sketches, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Pretty good,” said I. “Chiefly architectural drawings,
however---details of facades and ornamental designs.”
“Just one thing!” cried Henriette. “To-night Mrs. Rockerbilt gives a moonlight
reception on her lawns. They adjoin
ours. She will wear her tiara, and I
want you when she is in the gardens to hide behind some convenient bit of
shrubbery and make an exact detail sketch of the tiara. Understand?”
“I do,” said I.
“Don’t you miss a ruby or a diamond or the
teeniest bit of filigree, Bunny. Get the
whole thing to a carat,” she commanded.
You may be sure that when night came I
went at the work in hand with alacrity.
It was not always easy to get the right light on the lady’s tiara, but
in several different quarters of the garden I got her sufficiently well, though
unconsciously, posed to accomplish my purpose.
Once I nearly yielded to temptation to reach my hand through the shrubbery
and snatch the superb ornament from Mrs. Rockerbilt’s head, for she was quite
close enough to make this possible, but the vulgarity of such an operation was
so very evident that I put it aside almost as soon as thought of. And I have always remembered dear old
Raffle’s remark, “Take everything in site, Bunny,” he used to say; “but, damn
it, do it like a gentleman, not a professional.”
The sketch made, I took it to my room and
colored it, so that that night, when Henriette returned, I had ready for her a
perfect pictorial representation of the much-coveted bauble.
“It is simply perfect, Bunny,” she cried,
delightedly, as she looked at it. “You
have even got the sparkle of that incomparable ruby in the front.”
Next morning we went to New York, and
Henriette, taking my design to a theatrical property-man we knew on Union
Square, left an order for its exact reproduction in gilt and paste.
“I am going to do a little fancy-dress
dance, Mr. Sikes,” she explained, “as Queen Catharine of Russia, and this tiara
is a copy of the very famous lost negligee crown of that unhappy queen. Do you think you could let me have it by
Tuesday next?”
“Easily, Madam,” said Sikes. “It is a beautiful thing and it will give me
real pleasure to reproduce it. I’ll
guarantee it will be so like the original that the queen herself couldn’t tell
‘em apart. It will cost you forty-eight
dollars.”
“Agreed,” said Henriette.
And Sikes was true to his word. The following Tuesday afternoon brought to my
New York apartment---for of course Mrs. Raffles did not give Sikes here right
name---an absolutely faultless copy of Mrs. Rockerbilt’s chiefest glory.
It was so like that none
but an expert in gems could have told the copy from the original, and when I
bore the package back to Newport and displayed its contents to my mistress she
flew into an ecstasy of delight.
“We’ll have the original in a week if you
keep your nerve, Bunny,” she cried.
“Theatricals?” said I.
“No, indeed,” said Henriette. “If Mrs. Rockerbilt knew this copy was in
existence she’d never wear the other in public again as long as she lived
without bringing a dozen detectives along with her. No, indeed---a dinner. I want you to connect the electric lights of
the dinning-room with the push-button at my foot, so that at any moment I can
throw the dining-room into darkness.
Mrs. Rockerbilt will sit at my left---Tommy Dare to the right. She will wear her famous coiffure surmounted
by the tiara. At the moment you are passing
the poisson I will throw the room into darkness, and you---”
“I positively decline, Henriette, to
substitute one tiara for another in the dark.
Why, darn it all, she’d scream the minute I tried it,” I protested.
“Of course, she would,” said she,
impatiently. “And that is why I don’t
propose any such idiotic performance.
You will merely stumble in the dark and manage your elbow so awkwardly
that Mrs. Rockerbilt’s coiffure will be entirely disarranged by it. She will
scream, of course, and I will instantly restore the light, after which I
will attend to the substitution. Now
don’t fail me and the tiara will be ours.”
I stand ready with affidavits to prove
that that dinner was the most exciting affair of my life. At one time it seemed to me that I could not
possibly perform my share of the conspiracy without detection, but a glance at
Henriette, sitting calmly and coolly, and beautiful too, by gad, at the head of
the table, chatting as affably with the duke of Snarleyow and Tommy Dare as though
there was nothing in the wind, nerved me to action. The moment came, and instantly as I leaned
over Mrs. Rockerbilt’s side with the fish platter in my hand out went the
light; crash went my elbow into the lady’s stunning coiffure; her little, well-modulated
scream of surprise rent the air, and, flash, back came the lights, again. All was as Henriette had foretold, Mrs.
Rockerbilt’s lovely blond locks were frightfully demoralized, and the famous
tiara with it had slid aslant athwart her cheek.
“Dear me!” cried Henriette, rising hurriedly
and full of warm sympathy. “How very
awkward!”
“Oh, don’t speak of it,” laughed Mrs.
Rockerbilt, amiably. “It is nothing,
dear Mrs. Raffles. These electric lights
are so very uncertain these days, and I am sure James is not at all to blame
for hitting me as he has done; it’s the most natural thing in the world,
only---may I please run up-stairs and fix my hair again?”
“You most certainly shall,” said
Henriette. “And I will go with you, my
dear Emily. I am so mortified that if
you will let me do penance in that way I will myself restore order out of this
lovely chaos.”
The little speech was received with the
usual hilarious appreciation which follows anything out of the usual course of
events in high society circles. Tommy
Dare gave three cheers for Mrs. Van Raffles, and Mrs. Gramercy Van Pelt, clad
in a gorgeous red costume, stood up on a chair and toasted me in a bumper of
champagne. Meanwhile Henriette and Mrs.
Rockerbilt had gone above.
“Isn’t it a beauty, Bunny,” said Henriette
the next morning, as she held up the tiara to my admiring gaze, a flashing,
coruscating bit of the jeweler’s art that, I verily believe, would have tempted
the soul of honor itself into rascally ways.
“Magnificent!” I asserted. “But---which is this, the forty-eight-dollar
one or the original?”
“The original,” said Henriette, caressing
the bauble. “You see, when we got to my
room last night and I had Mrs. Rockerbilt sitting before the mirror, and despite
her protestations was fixing her disheveled locks with my own fair hands, I
arranged to have the lights go out again just as the tiara was laid on the
dressing-table. The copy was in the
table drawer, and while my right hand was apparently engaged in manipulating
the refractory light, and my voice was laughingly calling down maledictions
upon the electric lighting company for it wretched service, my left hand was
occupied with the busiest effort of its career in substituting
the spurious tiara for the
other.”
“And Mrs. Rockerbilt never even
suspected?”
“No,” said Henriette. “In fact, she placed the bogus affair in her
hair herself. As far as her knowledge
goes, I never even touched the original.”
“Well, you’re a wonder, Henriette,” said I
with a sigh. “Still, if Mrs. Rockerbilt
should ever discover---“
“She won’t Bunny,” said Henriette. “She’ll never have occasion to test the
genuineness of her tiara. These Newport
people have other sources of income than the vulgar pawnshops.”
But, alas! Later on Henriette made a
discovery herself that for the time being turned her eyes red with
weeping. The Rockerbilt tiara itself was
as bogus as our own copy. There wasn’t a
real stone in the whole outfit, and the worst part of it was that under the
circumstances Henriette could not tell anybody over the teacups that Mrs.
Rockerbilt was, in vulgar parlance, “putting up a shine” on high society.