CHAPTER IXIN WHICH CHERITON DROPS HIS UMBRELLA
“NEVER mind your umbrella,” said Caroline, tartly.
“I must mind my umbrella,” said Cheriton, plaintively. “If one attends Divine worship in London in the middle of the season without one’s umbrella, one is bound to be taken for an agnostic.”
“John,” demanded Caroline, “what have you done with his lordship’s umbrella?”
“You placed it here, my lord,” said John, indicating an umbrella with an ivory handle and a gold band.
“Nonsense,” said Cheriton. “I don’t own an umbrella with an ivory handle.”
John looked at the gold band and assured his lordship imperturbably that his name was upon it. Cheriton examined it himself.
“It is the name of my father,” said he. “How the dooce did an umbrella with an ivory handle come into the possession of my father!”
The clock in the hall slowly chimed eleven. The procession started for Saint Sepulchre’s with the redoubtable Caroline in a decidedly unchristian temper, with Miss Burden profoundly uncomfortable, with Miss Perry innocently absorbed in her new frock andpreoccupied with the modest hope that the passersby would notice it; whilst Cheriton walked by her side apparently without a thought in his head save the ethical significance of an ivory-handled umbrella.
“I remember now, my dear Miss Araminta,” said he. “It was given to my grandfather of pious memory as a token of esteem by that singularly constituted monarch George the Fourth.”
“I am sure it must be almost as nice as Muffin’s was,” said Miss Perry. “That old gentleman with the white mustache turned round to look at it.”
“Did he?” said Cheriton, fixing his eyeglass truculently.
“Muffin’s was mauve,” said Miss Perry. “But I think lilac is almost as nice, don’t you?”
“It is all a matter of taste, my dear Miss Araminta. Fancy one entering a church in the West End of London with an umbrella with an ivory handle!”
“Why shouldn’t one, pray?” snorted Caroline from the recesses of her bath-chair.
“My dear Caroline,” said Cheriton, “it looks so worldly.”
“Humph!” said Caroline.
Scarcely had the procession reached the outer precincts of Saint Sepulchre’s when its ears were smitten with the sound of a thousand fervent voices uplifted in adulation of their Creator.
“There, Cheriton,” said Caroline, “now you are satisfied. We are late.”
This fact, however, did not seem to perturb Cheriton as much as it ought to have done. He even deprecated the alacrity with which Caroline left her bath-chair, and the determined manner in which she prepared to head the procession into the sacred edifice.
“Easy, Caroline,” said he. “Let ’em get fairly on to their legs.”
As the procession filed very slowly down the central aisle with the fervent voices still upraised and the organ loudly pealing, more than one pair of eyes took their fill of it. There was not a worshiper within those four walls who did not know who the old woman was with the hawklike features and the ebony walking-stick. Nor were they at a loss for the identity of the distinguished if slightly overdressed gentleman who came in her train. Moreover, the wonderful creature in the picture hat and the lilac frock did not fail to inspire their curiosity.
Caroline Crewkerne’s pew was at the far end of the church, next but two to the chancel. The procession had reached the middle of the central aisle when there came a brief lull in the proceedings. The organ was muffled in a passage of peculiar solemnity; the fervor of the voices was subdued in harmony; there was hardly a sound to be heard, when Cheriton had the misfortune to drop his umbrella.
The sound of the ivory handle resolutely meeting cold marble at such an intensely solemn moment was really dramatic. Not a person throughout the whole of the sacred edifice who could fail to hear the impactof the ill-fated umbrella. For the umbrella was indeed ill-fated. The ivory handle lay upon the marble, shivered in three pieces. Almost every eye in the church seemed to be fixed upon the owner of the umbrella. A wave of indignation, which seemed to make the air vibrate, appeared to pass over the congregation. Not only did the owner of the umbrella come late to church, but he must needs disturb the sanctity of the occasion by mundanely dropping his umbrella with extraordinary violence and publicity.
From a little to the left of Cheriton, as he stood ruefully surveying the wreck of his umbrella, there penetrated cool and youthful tones.
“My aunt!” they said, “who is the gal the old blighter’s got with him?”
“Sssh, Archibald!” came a sibilant whisper; and then arose a louder and more decisive, “Overdressed!”
A drawl that was charmingly sympathetic, yet of a length that was really absurd, seemed to float all over the church in the most delightfully subtle convolutions.
“What a pity!” it could be heard to proclaim by all in the vicinity. “It cannot be mended. They couldn’t mend Muffin’s when she dropped hers at the Hobson baby’s christening.”
With a naturalness so absolute did the Amazon with the daffodil-colored mane stoop to assist her cavalier to retrieve the fragments of the shattered umbrella, that it seemed almost to the onlookers thatshe had mistaken the central aisle of Saint Sepulchre’s at 11:15 a.m. on the second Sunday in May for the middle of Exmoor.
“My aunt!” said the cool and youthful tones, “the gal’s tophole.”
“Sssh, Archibald!” said the sibilant whisper. “Dear me, what loud manners! Sssh, Archibald! don’t speak during the Confession.”
Caroline Crewkerne and her gentlewoman had been kneeling devoutly upon their hassocks for at least two minutes by the time Cheriton and Miss Perry arrived at the second pew from the chancel. Cheriton bore in his right hand a fragment of ivory; in the left the decapitated body of his umbrella. Somehow his expression of rue did not seem to be quite so sincere as the circumstances and the surroundings warranted. In the right hand of Miss Perry was a prayer-book; in the left two fragments of ivory. The gravity of her demeanor was enough to satisfy the most sensitive beholder.
After the service, as Caroline Crewkerne’s party was moving out of the church, it was joined by no less a person than George Betterton. Like Caroline herself, he was an infrequent worshiper at Saint Sepulchre’s.
“Hallo, George!” said Cheriton. “What the dooce has brought you to church?”
Cheriton was not sincere in his inquiry. He knew perfectly well what had brought George to church. The responsibility for his appearance there was his entirely.
“The weather, Cheriton,” growled George solemnly. “Fine mornin’ to hear a good sermon.”
“I don’t approve of candles on the altar,” said Caroline Crewkerne in a voice that all the world might heed. “Far too many Roman practices have crept into the service lately.”
“You are perfectly right, Caroline,” said Cheriton. “That is my opinion. I intend to lodge a complaint with the Vicar.”
“How are you, Caroline?” said George, with affability. “It is a great pleasure to see you at church.”
“It is a pleasure you might afford yourself oftener,” said Caroline, grimly.
George cast an envious eye to the front. Cheriton, walking with the lilac frock and the picture hat ten paces ahead of the bath-chair, appeared to be coming in for a good deal of public attention.
“How does it feel, Caroline,” said George Betterton, “to go to church with Grandmother Dorset?”
“Do you mean my niece, Miss Perry?” said she, huffily.
“Perry, eh? A girl of Polly’s?”
“Don’t you see the likeness?” said Caroline, with a little snort.
“No, I don’t,” said George. “She resembles Polly about as much as Cheriton resembles a Christian.”
“I agree with you, George,” said Caroline Crewkerne.
“She reminds me of what you were in the ’Fifties, Caroline,” said George, obviously trying to be agreeable.
“A compliment,” sneered its recipient.
“Gal’s on the big side. A reg’lar bouncer; but, by George——!”
His grace paused on the apostrophe to his natal saint.
“Carries her clothes like Grandmother Dorset,” said he.
“It is a great responsibility,” said Caroline, “for a woman of my age to have a creature like that to look after.”
“Money?”
“Not a sou.”
“Pity,” said George, whose standards were frankly utilitarian. “Fine-looking gal. Cheriton appears to think so.”
By now the space between the bath-chair and the first pair in the procession had been increased to twenty paces.
“Cheriton,” called the old lady, “this is not a coursing match.”
Cheriton checked politely to await the arrival of the powers.
“Dear me!” said he; “arewe walking quickly? Miss Araminta moves like a fawn in her own West country.”
“Girl,” said the old lady, “don’t walk so quickly. You are now in Hyde Park, not in a lane in Devonshire.”
“You come from Devon,” said George Betterton, addressing Miss Perry with an air of remarkable benevolence, “where the cream comes from, eh?”
If we assert positively that Miss Perry made a gesture of licking her lips in a frankly feline manner, we lay ourselves open to a scathing rebuke from the feminine section of our readers. They will assure us that no true lady would be guilty of such an act when walking in Hyde Park on a Sunday morning with the highest branch of the peerage. Yet we are by no means certain she did not. At least, the gesture she made was highly reminiscent of a feat of that nature.
“They promised to send me some from the Parsonage,” said Miss Perry, wistfully, “but it hasn’t come yet.”
“Shame!” said his grace, with deep feeling. “I’ll go round to Buszard’s first thing to-morrer and tell ’em to send you a pot.”
“Oh, thank you so much,” said Miss Perry.
“Pray don’t mention it, my dear Miss——” said the Duke, with a somewhat heavy yet by no means unsuccessful air.
“My name is Araminta,” drawled Miss Perry, with her usual formula; “but they call me Goose because I amrathera Sil-lay.”
“Charmin’. Call you Goose, eh? Charmin’ name.”
“A silly name, isn’t it?” said Miss Perry.
“Charmin’,” said George. “Charmin’ name. I’ll call you Goose myself if you have no objection.”
“Oh do, please,” said Miss Perry, “then I shall know we are friends.”
“Capital! Shall I tell you, Miss Goose, what they call me?”
“Oh do, please,” said Miss Perry.
“They call me Gobo, because they say I gobble like a turkey.”
“What fun!” cried Miss Perry. “What a splendid name! I shall write to tell Muffin about it.”
Miss Perry’s clear peal of laughter appeared to excite the curiosity of a particularly well-groomed and well-gowned section of the British public which occupied the chairs along the path. At all events, it eyed the slow-moving procession very intently.
“Here comes that gal,” said the proprietor of the cool and youthful tones, removing a silver-mounted stick from his mouth. “She’s got another old sportsman with her.”
“Sssh, Archibald!” said the sibilant voice; “that is the Duke of Brancaster.”
“He’s a lucky old fellow,” said the voice of youth. “But if I was that gal I wouldn’t walk in the Park with a chap who has a face like an over-ripe tomato, and who gobbles like a turkey.”
“Sssh, Archibald,dearest!”
The procession was now almost alongside the youthful critic. Miss Perry, a positive queen challenging the superb May morning in its glamor and its freshness, with her chin tilted at a rather proud angle, for she could not help rejoicing simply and sincerely in the attention that was paid to her new frock, was flanked upon the one hand by Cheriton, on the other by George Betterton. Ten paces in the rear came the bath-chair with its hawklike occupant. Beside it was Miss Burden with Ponto on a lead.
“I tell you what, mater,” said the voice of youth. “If those two old bucks are not ridin’ jealous they will be very soon.”
“Sssh, my pet!” said mamma, placing a particularly neat suède over the mouth of young hopeful.
“If you call me Goose”—the deliciously ludicrous drawl was borne on the zephyrs of spring—“I may call you Gobo, may I not?”
“’Arry,” said a bystander, with a gesture of ferocious disgust to a companion who embellished a frock-coat with a pair of brown boots, “that’s what they call clawss. It fairly makes you sick. That’s what comes of ’aving a ’ouse of Lords.”
The proprietor of the brown boots assented heartily.
“If I was a nob,” said he, “I would learn to respect meself.”
The voice of command came forth from the bath-chair.
“George,” it said, “have you noticed the tulips?”
“No,” said George; “where are they?”
He looked down at his feet to see if he had trodden upon them.
“Burden,” said the old lady, “take the Dook across the road to see the tulips.”
Somewhat reluctantly, it must be confessed, his grace permitted himself to be conducted by Ponto and the faithful gentlewoman over the way to inspect these specimens of British horticulture.
“Cheriton,” said Caroline Crewkerne, “to-morrowyou must take my niece to view the National Gallery.”
“That will be too sweet,” said Miss Perry.
Cheriton bestowed upon his old friend and adversary a look of wariness tempered with gratitude.