J. D. Beresford

“ Black was exasperated. "Why travel in a smoking-carriage, madam, if you object to the smell of smoke?" he asked, acidly. "The train is not full."
"I did not notice," said Valetta, and put her head a little back to stare at this impossible fellow-traveler of hers. It was a trick of hers; she had put her head back in precisely the same way when she was a spectacled school-girl of fourteen, long before she had any hope of becoming a duchess.
Black put her pose down to aristocratic intolerance. He shrugged his shoulders, looked at the ground-glass legend on the window and then at his cigar. ”

“ All Black's best work was in the portrait of Mrs. Scroggins, and such was his genius in depicting her that the character carried conviction; the enormous public which read Little Frailties realized for the first time how far personal dignity will cover a multitude of minor defects. And no one who had seen "Madam Dignity" could doubt for a moment that Mrs. Scroggins was, in another sphere of life, none other than Valetta, Duchess of Tottenham. ”

“ Then, just as the train was starting, Valetta was ushered with some ceremony into his empty compartment.
Black did not know that it was the Duchess; he did not know that the Duchess was going to the Davidsons. He only knew that a thin, middle-aged, rather expensively dressed woman in a pince-nez had been thrust upon him, and he resented it. He realized, too, the fact that she was treated with much deference by the attendant guard. There was an innate radicalism in Black which was always up in arms against this show of deference to the upper classes. ”

“ That possibility drew crowds to Hyde Park on Sunday mornings, and when, at the beginning of the season, Valetta drove round in her shabby hired landau, a wave of emotion passed over the ring of sight-seers. Anybody who was anybody could not fail to point an excited finger and whisper: "That's her. That's the Duchess of Tottenham."
Valetta had to cease driving in the Park.
So far Black had merely drawn a strikingly true portrait of Valetta ”

“ Every one now knows the other protagonist. The unhappy Valetta, Duchess of Tottenham, has attained a celebrity she neither desired nor deserved. Her very tricks of manner and speech are familiar to the general public. Unhappy she certainly is, and for no fault of her own. ”

“ I wanted to make it plain that I had had no idea when I took my seat that this was the particular compartment in which she always traveled. I was humble and, I hope, delicately apologetic. But, no! I received no sign of forgiveness."
"What a weird person!" interpolated one of Black's listeners.
Black held up his hand. "Ah! But I have a theory," he said. "Is it possible that this lady could have been a princess, traveling incognita, some very elect person who was unable to recognize my right to exist in the same compartment?" ”

“ He sat a long way from Valetta at the table, but that very fact gave him an opportunity.
The dinner began badly. For some reason there was a slight atmosphere of constraint. People seemed bored with one another, and none of them made the least attempt to claim the general attention. In vain did Mrs. Davidson gasp and bubble, speak to Mr. Greening across two intervening guests, and to Professor Barrett across four, in the endeavor to draw some interesting topic from them. Most vainly did she throw a beseeching glance at Cunningham Black ”

“ A chorus of incredulity greeted this theory, but before Black could get a hearing Valetta very distinctly "er—ahemmed" again. She had thought of a remark.
"How are the pheasants doing this year?" she asked, addressing Mrs. Davidson, and Black got no further chance to claim the general attention. The point of his theory was lost. Every one gave way to the Duchess.
Black had all the qualities that go to the making of success, and chief among them was that which in a statesman or a general might be dignified as "an iron will" ”

“ A story of Black's appeared in a well-known magazine, and told as a piece of pure comedy the incident of the railway carriage. He made a good story out of it, distorted the facts, and introduced some kind of a plot. ”

“ Originally there had been a countess in the play, the kind of part of which Miss Compton might have made a success, but this part was now altered and expanded until it was second only to that of the actor-manager's. ”