The groom of the chambers was at length fully aroused by the very complex situation in which he now found himself, and, being really a man of considerable resource, he put two and two together with the swiftness of a Maxim gun.
"James Bush, sir," he said very emphatically; "oh dear no, sir! James Bush—not at all—by no means—on no account whatever!"
He had not the smallest idea what he meant, or what he was being asked, and nobody could have been more surprised than himself at the effect which his vociferous jargon created. The Emperor turned to the Empress with the manner of a man who has received his quietus.
"There, Henrietta!" he said hoarsely—"there! You see what Mr. Harrison thinks of him! And that he should come into the home! A feller like that—a feller that——" He broke off, and turned to the astounded groom of the chambers. "Mr. Harrison," he said, "we depend upon you in this affair entirely."
Mr. Harrison inclined himself in unutterable perplexity.
"Keep your eye upon him."
"Sir?"
"I say, keep your eye especially upon that feller James Bush."
"Certainly, sir."
"Don't let him be too much for you, Mr. Harrison. He may have ways; he may be such a man as Ezekiel, there's no knowing. But I hold you responsible—Mrs. Lite and me, we hold you entirely responsible for everything that man may do in the home."
The groom of the chambers, having now gathered that a person of the name of James Bush was coming into Ribton Marches, doubtless as a member of the Londoners' tribe, and that he was to be specially watched by order of the Emperor, was comparatively at ease. He inclined himself again.
"I shall see to him, sir. Depend upon me."
"We do depend upon you, Mr. Harrison—we do, don't we, Henrietta?"
"Mercy knows—we do!" sobbed the Empress.
"I shall not disappoint you, madam," said Mr. Harrison. "I shall know how to act."
"I believe that, Mr. Harrison," said the Emperor. "And I may add that if you should cop—if you should catch this feller, James Bush, at any of his games—you understand?"
"Certainly, sir."
"And if you should, as we expect, be one too many for him, we shall not forget it. You will have no reason to regret hereafter any steps that you may take. You understand?"
"Quite so, sir. I shall take them, sir, you may depend."
"Thank you, Mr. Harrison. You may go."
Mr. Harrison left the presence with dignity, and was soon back again in bed. As he laid his whisker once more on the bolster, he said to himself:
"I must take care to cop that there James Bush at some game or another, or where does the perquisite come in? Where is it?"
And murmuring thus he slept.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARRIVAL OF THE LONDONERS AT RIBTON MARCHES.
Ifthe expulsion of our first parents from the Garden of Eden was a depressing business, what can be said of the final expulsion of the Emperor and Empress from Ribton Marches? It took place very early on the Monday morning. Originally they had been going overnight, but the Empress had so implored her husband to allow her to have one last Sunday night in the old home that he had not the necessary strength to refuse her, although, according to the strict letter of the agreement come to between him and Mr. Rodney, the palace belonged to Mrs. Verulam from the Monday to the Saturday inclusive.
At earliest dawn, then, behold the wretched couple "on the move," in terrible agitation having their last pet chattels placed reverently by menials in their trunks, infearful confusion hastily gathering together any little things likely to be of solace to them in the period of excruciating exile that lies before them. The Emperor, now the moment of departure had actually arrived, was in a boiling passion. Steam might almost have been seen escaping from him as he gave directions to his servants, and laid a thousand last injunctions upon Mr. Harrison, who, rendered almost impotent by having had to get up from bed in that dead hour which precedes the rising of the sun, received them with a grievous courtesy and the bending knees that so plainly betoken the deepest dejection of the human soul.
"Mr. Harrison!" shouted the Emperor.
"Sir!" replied that wretched functionary.
"Remember they are not to feed the parrots. On no account are they to tamper with Mrs. Lite's favourites."
"Certainly not, sir."
"If you see any symptom of a desire to do anything of that kind, you are to check it, Mr. Harrison."
"If I see any symptom of a desire to tamper with any of the parrots, I am to check it—yes, sir."
"If a single parrot goes wrong, Mrs. Lite will hold you responsible, Mr. Harrison. You understand that?"
Mr. Harrison bowed feebly, and thought of his empty bed.
"The pugs we shall take with us, Mr. Harrison."
"The pugs you will take——"
"Don't echo me, Mr. Harrison—don't echo me; I will not allow myself to be echoed."
"Certainly not, sir. Oh no, by no means."
The Emperor stared furiously around him, fearful lest he might leave any necessary behind. His eyes fell upon a large field-glass in a case, which reclined upon a neighbouring bureau.
"Pack that glass!" he cried to his valet in a voice of thunder.
The valet packed it with trembling rapidity. The Emperor turned again to the groom of the chambers.
"Through that glass I shall be able to command a considerable portion of the grounds," he exclaimed. "If I see anything going on there of which I disapprove, I shall summon you by the telephone, Mr. Harrison. You will hold yourself in readiness to fly to me at any moment of the day or night."
Mr. Harrison found himself feebly wondering which known bird he should be likely most nearly to resemble when he winged his way, as described by the Emperor, from the palace to the fishing-cottage.
"I shall do so, sir," he said.
"Each morning," continued the Emperor, with blazing eyes and gathering excitement, "you will be round by eight o'clock with the report which you will have drawn up overnight, as arranged by me."
"By eight, sir?" cried Mr. Harrison, his voice vibrating with a music that was almost piercing.
"Well, seven, if you prefer it. I shall be up—I shall be ready."
"Oh, eight will suit me, sir, very well; I shall be round by eight."
"Be careful to omit nothing from that report. Make it ample; for I shall have damages out of these people—heavy damages—if they dare to exceed in any way, or to behave in any unseemly manner. You have your own ideas of what is unseemly, Mr. Harrison?"
"Oh, decidedly so, sir."
"Then I shall hold you responsible."
Mr. Harrison's knees began visibly to tremble, doubtlessunder the weight of responsibility that rested, like the globe, upon his slightly-rounded shoulders. He said nothing, only bowed once again, badly, as if the mechanism was getting out of order.
The dawn was now beginning to grow bright in the eastern sky above the fir-trees and the pines. The Emperor observed it through the lattice-pane, and knew that the hour was at hand. He called to the Empress:
"Henrietta!"
"Perry!" replied a broken voice, which might indeed almost be described as wet with tears.
"Henrietta, my dear, are you—are you nearly ready?"
"Oh, Perry, is it time? Oh, to think that——"
The Empress appeared in the aperture of the door fully dressed for eviction, wearing a large black bonnet, and carrying in one hand a small but bulging bag. Her face was disfigured, even corrugated, with emotion.
"Is it time? Oh, is it really, really time?" she wailed.
The Emperor was greatly affected. He turned away for a moment and gazed towards the sunrise. Then he said: "Mr. Harrison!"
"Sir!"
"Is it time? Have you the paper?"
The groom of the chambers extracted a crested sheet from his left-hand pocket.
"Read it out," said the Emperor hoarsely.
Mr. Harrison read as follows:
"Arrivals, Monday, June the —: At 12.30, Mrs. Verulam, Mr. Rodney, and Mr. Van Adam, with Mrs. Marriner, maid, and one valet."
A loud sob from the Empress.
"At 3.15, Mr. James Bush."
"Go on, Mr. Harrison—go on."
"At between four and five, the Duke and Duchess of Southborough, the Lady Pearl McAndrew, Lady Drake, Miss Bindler, Mr. Ingerstall, with four maids and one valet."
Mr. Harrison paused, and the Emperor, looking with terrible enquiry at the Empress, repeated:
"Four maids and one valet."
"Oh, what may they not do—what may they not do, Perry?" wailed his consort feebly.
The Emperor bit his lips to prevent himself from breaking down.
"Mr. Harrison!" he said.
"Sir!"
"Mr. Harrison, I warn you—I give you warning——"
"Give me warning, sir! Am I to go, sir?"
The groom of the chambers was so much overwhelmed that he suddenly sat down in the presence on a small occasional chair—one of those chairs which are seldom equal to the occasion. His agitation and surprise perhaps rendering him heavier than usual, the chair was unable to withstand the full bulk of his fourteen stone of horror. It gave way, and Mr. Harrison attained the floor with a noise like a drum-tap. He remained in a seated posture, gazing at the Emperor with eyes that looked sightless, although they were very wide open indeed. The Emperor and Empress backed from this vision with the rapidity of two crabs.
"Oh, that it should come to this!" cried the latter, putting the mind of the groom of the chambers into words.
"Mr. Harrison!" cried the Emperor, recovering himself near the door, "get up! get up from the floor, sir!"
But that gentleman was beyond movement, and was indeed at that moment vaguely considering whether hedid not owe it to himself to be taken with a paralytic seizure. The Emperor, observing his meditative but complete prostration, condescended to approach him and to lend him a hand.
"Come, come, Mr. Harrison! Rise, I beg. Be a man, Mr. Harrison! Come, come! There, there! Lean against the wall. A glass of water, my dear!" (To the Empress.)
The Empress ran, bearing a tooth-glass brimful.
"There, there, Mr. Harrison! You're spilling it! That's right! You mistook my meaning."
"Sir?"
"I meant that I give you warning that we, Mrs. Lite and me, will hold you responsible for the maids and the valets."
Relief ran over the recovering groom of the chambers in a complete flood.
"Oh, certainly, sir! I beg pardon! Oh, by no—by all means!"
The sun was beginning to pour in. The Emperor turned and offered his arm to the Empress. She shrank away with a whimper.
"My darling—my love—be firm! Remember, Henrietta, we are not alone."
He drew her trembling arm through his, and patted it violently with one fat hand.
"It must be done," he said in a heroic voice. "I've give my word. It must be done."
They moved in procession from the private apartments, followed by Mr. Harrison, who threw his feet out on either side as he went with a noble attempt after his habitual dignity. The household, by order of the Emperor, were grouped in the hall in front of the organ. It hasnot been recorded whether the women were weeping, but no doubt they were. The Emperor and Empress paused at the foot of the grand staircase in a baronial portion of the hall. The Emperor cleared his throat loudly not once nor twice. Between the clearings a pin was heard to drop, so intense was the silence. The third housemaid stooped to pick it up, and keeps it still as a memento of the occasion. Then the Emperor spoke in a sad, and at the same time very angry, manner.
"The time has come," he said, "when we must leave you; when me and Mrs. Lite must go."
There was a subdued murmur of regret from the crowd.
"We go," continued the Emperor, "with breaking hearts."
"We do! we do!" from the Empress.
More murmurs.
"But we feel that—that—we feel, I may say, that those we leave behind us in the home will not desert their master and missus; that they will do their duty by us, as we have done ours by them."
"True, true! Oh, indeed!" deep-mouthed from Mr. Harrison.
"Thank you, Mr. Harrison. We, me and Mrs. Lite, shall not forget that."
An inclination from the groom of the chambers.
"Others," proceeded the Emperor, in a loud and aspen-like voice, "others will come after us. Others will take our places. So it must ever be—bear up, Henrietta, my love, bear up!—so, I say, it must be. Things is—are like that in this world. Never a one can deny it. Do your duty by them!"
"No, no, Perry! Oh no, no!" from the now sodden Empress.
"Hush, my dear! Do your duty one and all in those places into which they have been pleased to call you." Here the Emperor gingerly approached the wording of the catechism. "Do it, I say, but don't be put upon."
Loud murmurs of assent, more especially from those engaged in the kitchen department of the establishment.
"Don't be put upon. Don't be slaves."
"Hear, hear!" from Mr. Harrison.
"And"—here the Emperor obviously faltered—"don't go for to forget the—old faces. Mr. Harrison——" His voice suddenly burst out in a trumpet-note of forcible resolution.
"Sir!"
"Is the pony-shay at the door?"
"It is, sir! Oh, most decidedly!"
The massive portals were flung open, and outside in the gay summer sunlight there appeared a basket-chaise drawn by a fat white pony, and led by a little groom. The four pugs stood round it barking vociferously. The Emperor threw one last distracted glance around, then shut his eyes, took hold of the Empress, and, pioneered by Mr. Harrison, moved slowly forward. The Empress, as one in a ghastly dream, accompanied him. In a moment she would have been placed in the chaise and driven from the dreadful scene, calm, blank, practically unconscious of her doom. But this was not to be. Fate willed it otherwise. Seized by a sudden, and it must be confessed a very noble, impulse, the powdered Frederick had run like a lamplighter to the purple drawing-room. The orchestrion stood before him. He leaped upon it as the wild beast leaps upon its prey. He caught at it. An instant! Then there was the sound of a click, and suddenly the wild and thrilling uproar of Tosti's "Good-bye!" poured violently through the reverberating palace.
The Empress heard it. She paused. She trembled. She opened her mouth. Something with her brain seemed to go snap. She shrieked aloud. The Emperor saw what was coming.
"Mr. Harrison!" he shouted.
"Sir!"
"Help me with Mrs. Lite! Get hold of her, Mr. Harrison, get hold of her!"
Mr. Harrison got hold of her, and, yelling, kicking, laughing, crying, and throwing her rounded limbs furiously abroad, the Empress was carried down the steps, placed in the "shay," and rapidly driven off. Then Mr. Harrison returned into the hall.
"Prepare for the Londoners!" he said sternly to the household, and hurried instantly off to bed.
Soon after the big clock over the Ribton Marches stables had boomed out the half-hour after twelve, a carriage drove rapidly up to the palace, followed by a second, and succeeded by a private omnibus covered with luggage. The tribe were arriving. In the first carriage sat Mrs. Verulam, pale, but full of an animation that approached excitement; Chloe, clad in a delicious suit of tweed, with perfectly-falling trousers, the newest thing in collars, a red tie, and a straw hat; and Mr. Rodney playing cicerone and looking mightily serious. Why will presently be revealed. In the second carriage was placed the faithful Marriner, amid a cloud of wraps, dressing-cases, hat-boxes, parasols, and jewel-caskets. In the omnibus sat Mr. Rodney's valet, a pale gentleman with an under-sized manner, the features of a rat, and very thin legs. Thus the vanguard approached. Chloe was apparently in fine spirits. She was talking incessantly, showing whiteteeth, and gazing about her with black eyes that sparkled with animation.
"Oh, is this really Ascot?" she cried. "Where is the course?"
"My dear Van Adam!" gently corrected Mr. Rodney; "the course is at some distance. This is Sunninghill."
"What a number of cupolas!" said Mrs. Verulam. "And what an enormous house! We shall be lost in it!"
"I assure you it is quite cosy inside," said Mr. Rodney, who considered the last remark as a sort of reflection upon him for engaging the house for the week. "The Lites consider it most home-like, I assure you; and they are very particular. Here is the entrance."
The gravel flew up beneath the hoofs of the high-stepping horses. The front door of the home opened wide, and discovered two footmen, behind and between whom were visible the large body and red face of Mr. Harrison, his features being decorated with an expression which it would be tame indeed to call one of suspicion. Imagine a London policeman who observes a ragged ruffian stealing out of the Tower of London with his hands full of the Crown jewels, and you may form some slight notion of the groom of the chambers' demeanour and facial attitudes on the entry of the Londoners into the hall of Ribton Marches. He had evidently been sleeping to some purpose, for he was now preternaturally wide awake, and not a person descended from the carriages, not a thing was removed therefrom, without having to run the gauntlet of his piercing and most extraordinary observation.
"What a very remarkable-looking man," Mrs. Verulam remarked to Mr. Rodney, as she removed her dust-wrap and walked towards the purple drawing-room. "He seems anxious. Is he ill?"
"Oh no; I think not. I fancy he superintends the servants," said Mr. Rodney.
"Or us," said Chloe, flicking the dust off her patent-leather boots in a way that was hardly Englishmanly. "He appears to me like a detective who hasn't mastered the first principle of his profession."
"And may I ask what this is?" blandly enquired Mr. Rodney.
"Certainly, old chap—not to look like one. See?"
Mr. Rodney did see, and secretly writhed. When he was called "old chap" he felt much as the maiden lady did when Mr. Pickwick appeared from the four-post bed, and recently Huskinson's familiarities had tried him deeply.
"What a very purple room!" said Mrs. Verulam, glancing round. "What is that thing over there—not a sideboard, nor a bureau, nor a writing-table?"
"That, madam," bayed a sudden voice, "is the instrument. Mr. and Mrs. Lite are very partial to it, but do not allow it to be employed during their absence."
Mr. Harrison was the speaker. Mr. Rodney was outraged by his intrusion into the conversation.
"Thank you," he said. "Kindly leave us."
Mr. Harrison hesitated visibly, but Mr. Rodney meant to be obeyed, so the groom of the chambers very deliberately decamped, casting his feet abroad after his manner.
"What a most extraordinary person!" said Mrs. Verulam.
"Oh, I daresay Mr. Lite has made a friend of him," said Mr. Rodney hastily. "Thesenouveaux richesdo strange things."
"Hallelujah, bow-wow-wow!" murmured a distant voice; to which another voice responded: "Polly dreadfuldrunk. What's o'clock, Polly?" Then innumerable corks were drawn with apparently supernatural swiftness.
Mr. Rodney reddened.
"Pray don't be alarmed," he said to Mrs. Verulam, who was visibly startled.
"Is it the same man?" she said. "Why, he must be mad."
"No, no. They are only Mrs. Lite's parrots talking in one of the winter gardens. It must be nearly lunch time. Would you not like to see your rooms?"
"Perhaps it would be as well. I feel as if you were my kind host."
Mr. Rodney beamed with pride and pleasure.
"I hope some day—at Mitching Dean—from which, by the way, I have ventured to order up a supply of grapes for the week. The Mitching Dean grapes are remarkably fine. Here is Mrs. Marriner," as the faithful Marriner appeared, apparently hypnotised by the orchestrion; "she will conduct you. By the way," Mr. Rodney added, turning to Huskinson, "I trust you will allow my man Harry to valet you during the week, since you've not yet succeeded in finding a man to your liking. Harry is——"
"No, no, thank you. You're awfully good; but it's not necessary," replied Chloe with some haste.
"Most efficient," calmly pursued Mr. Rodney, intent on benevolence to the man he heartily hated. "He shaves better than any——"
"Thank you, I always shave myself," said Chloe—"morning and evening."
"So often?" said Mr. Rodney, with a glance of surprise at the smooth face above the tweed coat.
"Once a month—once a week, I mean. Well, I'll goand have a wash;" and she scurried off, leaving Mr. Rodney alone in the purple drawing-room.
He sat down on a purple chair, placed his thin feet on a purple stool, and fell into deep meditation. Since we first met him, in early May, perplexity had almost continually attended him. Mr. Rodney's mainspring was propriety, touched up with the adjective "smart." He believed devoutly in conventionality and titles. Respectability and pedigrees were necessaries to him, and as yet he had never been without them. It is true that he could accept the "right sort of man—or woman," even if he were aware that their lives were not ordered entirely on Nonconformist principles. In fact, he knew a great many rascals of both sexes, but they were rascals who knew everybody and were known by everybody. The women were all received at Court; the men all belonged to the right clubs, and so, according to Mr. Rodney's code, they were eminently respectable. Mr. Rodney had no special objection to people who broke the Ten Commandments, but he had a very great and very deeply-seated horror of people who outraged society. And this was what Mrs. Verulam—whom he admired, after Mitching Dean, more than anything on earth—seemed bent upon doing.
As he sat in the purple drawing-room with his eyes fixed moodily on the orchestrion, he reviewed the events of the last few weeks without gaining any comfort from them. Undoubtedly Mrs. Verulam had succeeded in making herself the talk of the town with the Van Adam. She had never moved without the divorced orange-grower in her pocket. She had taken him to every party; she had continually been alone with him in her opera-box; she had supped with him at the Savoy and at Willis's;she had driven down with him to Ranelagh, and returned after the moon was up; she had been with him on the river, and even in it, for Chloe had caught a crab near Athens, and been rescued by the steam-launch of a Cabinet Minister. All London was talking of her strange indiscretions. All London was talking—would all London presently be acting? That was the horrid thought, the grisly idea, which turned Mr. Rodney cold on the purple brocade and set the orchestrion dancing in front of his eyes. Even his jealousy faded before the spectre of Mrs. Verulam abandoned by society; "out of it," a person reduced to "first nights" and supper parties in shady restaurants. To be obliged to depend on "first nights" for one's gaiety was, to Mr. Rodney, much the same thing as having to keep house in the valley of dry bones. It was immolation. It was more: it was interment. He heard the earth pattering upon Mrs. Verulam's coffin. And the terrible thing was that some evil spirit seemed to have entered into Mrs. Verulam, a spirit that rejoiced in this threatening of disaster. She was with her own hands cutting through the cables that moored her to all that makes life worth living. And for an American! A man mixed up with oranges, the commonest of all fruits, the yellow thing that may be seen on the breakfast-tables of the lower middle classes, the abomination that is sucked in pits, whose pips are flung in showers from a thousand galleries a night! Mr. Rodney turned almost faint at the thought. If this Van Adam had even cultivated nectarines, or made his money in medlars. But no. It might have been nuts, certainly. But even this reflection brought little solace. Mr. Rodney had long since written to his old and valued friend, Lord Bernard Roche, asking a thousand discreet questions about "poor dear old Huskinson."But he had received no reply, no satisfaction to his very natural curiosity about the man so suddenly plunged into the very heart of his heart's life. And though this grave matter so afflicted Mr. Rodney, there was something further to perplex him.
There was James Bush. He was still in a measure shrouded in mystery. Yet Mr. Rodney had sometimes felt his influence upon Mrs. Verulam as one feels a thing in the dark. Since that afternoon when Mr. Rodney practically had a fit on hearing of her intention to abandon society, Mrs. Verulam had not again openly alluded to it, or referred pointedly to Mr. Bush. She thought that to do so might be dangerous, so long as high collars were in fashion for men. Had Mr. Rodney worn a scarf, like a costermonger, she would have been troubled by no such delicacy. But perhaps she had hardly considered that, if Mr. Rodney were seized with convulsions on appreciating the possibility of her abandoning society, he would most probably be attacked by an enemy still more dreadful if he beheld society abandoning her, as now seemed possible. Women are so careless. Mr. Rodney, thinking of Mr. James Bush, drew forth his watch. In something less than a couple of hours that mysterious figure from the Marshes of Bungay, that figure first seen shrouded in the romantic privacy of a reversed meat-safe, was due at the palace. What then? What then? Mr. Rodney, forgetful of lunch, forgetful of his duties as cicerone of Ribton Marches, forgetful of the passing hour that may never return, forgetful even of the orchestrion, and of a life-size and life-like portrait of the Bun Empress in an orange-coloured tea-gown which stared upon him from the opposite wall of the purple drawing-room, plunged into the most solemn meditation, with his chin sunk down upon an opal breast-pinpresented to him by an Austrian Archduchess. At length, coming once more to the surface, he recalled the fact that he had not arranged his hair since travelling, and that lunch was imminent. He therefore rose with a sigh to seek the "green bedroom," in which apartment he was to be accommodated during his stay in the palace. But owing to his ignorance of the building, or his absence of mind, or both, he strayed from the right path, and endeavoured to make his way into the upper regions through a side door, and up a staircase which, not having been brought from abroad at an immense cost, was dedicated to the uses of the Bun Emperor's menials. As Mr. Rodney vaguely ascended this staircase, and when he was not quite half-way up, his attention was attracted by the tiny but sharp tinkling of a bell in some hidden place below. He stopped, as one stops when arrested by some triviality in a dream. The tinkling was renewed, and then the following monologue broke upon Mr. Rodney's listening ear:
"Yes, sir—yes, sir. Mr. Harrison, sir—Mr. Harrison. Because I didn't hear the bell, sir. I didn't hear the bell, sir. I didn't hear the—— Because I was in the hall, sir—watching, sir, according to your directions. Yes, sir, they have arrived—the ones on the paper, sir—Mrs. Veddleham, Mr. Rodney, and Mr. Van Adams, sir. What do you say, sir?—one maid and one valet, sir—one maid and one—— Not much to look at, sir. Which, sir—the valet or the maid? Oh, rather like a rat, sir. Rather like a ra—— No, not the maid, sir, the valet. Yes, sir, I know I am—I know I'm responsible, I say, sir. Poke their noses? oh, on no account, sir—by no means—not at all—by no means, sir—not at—— Now, sir? Mr. Rodney is in the purple drawing-room, sir——"
"Am I?" murmured that gentleman vaguely to himself on the stairs.
"The purp—— Mrs. Veddleham, sir? She has retired, sir, to—— Not fatigued, sir, retired.—Seems very quiet, sir, so far. Not Mr. Adams, Mrs. Veddleham, sir. He has gone upstairs, sir—to his bedroom, sir—to brush his hair, I presume, sir—I presume to bru—— I didn't take partic'lar notice, sir—I didn't take partic—— I will, sir; oh, indeed you may depend—— Rely on me, sir—till I drop, sir—I say till I dr—— I beg pardon, sir—the what, sir?—the what do you say, sir?—Partridges, sir?—Parliament do you say, sir?—I beg pardon—peppermint, sir?—pepperm—oh, parrots! Oh dear no, sir—oh dear no, they shall not be tamp—— I say, sir, they shall not be, while I am here, sir.—Thank you, sir, and the same to Mrs. Lite, sir.—Mr. Rodney, sir? Makes himself quite at home, sir—makes himself qui—— I says they do not allow it to be employed in their absence, sir—they do not al—— I thought you would, sir—I am glad I have done ri—— Which, sir?—the which do you say, sir?—the parrots, sir? Do you say the parr—— Oh, quite theirselves, so far, sir—I say they seem quite theirselves so far. A little quiet p'raps, sir—a little quieter than usual p'raps, sir.—Only twice, sir, as I heard—only Hallelujah twice, sir, and rather low if anything, sir—lower than usual if anything, sir. I will notify you, sir—certainly, I will take care to noti—— What, sir? Lame, sir, do you say? Which of 'em, sir? None of 'em are lame, sir—I say none of 'em are lame so far as I've—— Not lame, sir! Not lame! James, sir—oh, I under—— Mr. James Bush, sir!"
Mr. Rodney pricked up his ears at this point, andleaned a little lower upon the balustrade towards the hidden voice of the groom of the chambers.
"Mr. Bush, sir—oh, I will indeed—a special eye on him—certainly, sir. If he should I will indeed, sir—I say I will indeed if he should.—I believe at three-fifteen, sir. If you will give me a mo—a moment I will see, sir——"
Here there was a pause, and a sound of paper rustling.
"It is three-fifteen, sir. In the hall, sir, I will indeed. Rely on—— He shall not, sir—I say he shall not, if I have to—— Night, sir—do you say at night, sir? Very well, sir—I say ver—— I will endeavour not to let him know it, sir. Softly, sir? Oh, most deci—— Mr. Bush, sir? Do you say Mr. Bu—— Rather him, sir, than the rest I see—I say I see, sir. At all times after Mr. Bush, sir—yes."
Just at this point Harry, Mr. Rodney's man, appeared abruptly on the staircase, coming down, and almost ran into his bent-double master. Mr. Rodney hastily reared himself up to his full height.
"Kindly show me my room, Harry," he said; "I am looking for it."
"Certainly, sir," said Harry, wondering very much why his master was looking for it over the balusters of the servants' staircase. He turned back to usher his master to the green bedroom, and Mr. Rodney followed him in the deepest perplexity. What was this about James Bush? What was the man's record? Of what nature was his history? Did the exiled Bun Emperor know more of him than met the eye? Did——
"This is your room, sir," said Harry, throwing open a green door.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Verulam and Chloe had secured a moment to themselves in one of the winter gardens.
"I say," said the latter, "Mr. Rodney's getting very officious, almost as bad as that horrid little Mr. Ingerstall. He wants Harry to shave me!"
"What?" cried Mrs. Verulam, dropping a lump of sugar, by means of which she was tampering with one of the Bun Empress's favourites, much to the gratification of that individual.
"He does!"
"Harry!"
"His man."
"Don't let him, Chloe. Don't be shaved. Let me imp——"
"My dear, is it likely? I told him I always did it myself. But still, these offers are afflicting."
"I wonder Mr. Rodney hadn't more tact," began Mrs. Verulam. Then she recollected herself and laughed. "When shall I remember that you're a man?" she said.
"Perhaps when you get no more invitation cards," said Chloe with solemnity.
"Oh yes, yes!" cried Mrs. Verulam ecstatically. "It has nearly come to that; the goal is in sight at last."
"I believe it is," said Chloe rather grimly. "You don't mean to tell me, Daisy, that you really are in earnest, that you really do want to be put out of this heavenly life?"
"Indeed, indeed I do! This week, perhaps, the cage door will open. Oh!" she clasped her hands in rapture. "This week!"
"Well, you are the most extraordinary creature! But I believe this week will decide it. Daisy, the Duchess means mischief."
"I know."
"I almost thought at the last moment she wouldn'tcome, that she would think you were too compromised and compromising."
"You don't know her. She hadn't got another invitation for Ascot; she is obliged to use me as a sort of hotel. Besides, you are here, and she's a woman of courage and resource. In spite of all, she still has hopes of you for Lady Pearl."
"It's rather a shame—that part, I mean; but it couldn't be helped. Well, at any rate, I've played the time-honouredrôleof Carlsbad. I've cured her daughter of the gout. That should be counted unto me for righteousness."
"It will, dear. It must. Oh, Chloe, I'm so excited!"
"Why?"
"How forgetful you are! In two hourshewill be here. How wonderful it seems!"
"He? Oh, of course, Mr. Bush. Now, Daisy, if you really do wish to get out of society, don't spoil everything by flirting with James Bush instead of with me."
"Flirting!" cried Mrs. Verulam indignantly. "James Bush never flirts; he doesn't know the meaning of the word."
"Then he ought to get one of those explanatory dictionaries—they're only half a dollar apiece."
"Don't, Chloe. Don't be flippant about Mr. Bush. It—it isn't suitable. When you see him you'll understand that in a moment. James Bush has a lofty nature, a little reserved, perhaps. He is apt to be reticent with strangers."
"Does that mean that he never opens his mouth to anyone who isn't a blood relation?"
"I should not go so far as to say that. Still, he is reticent."
"Then don't put him next to me at dinner. Oh, I forgot, of course I shall sit between two women. What's Miss Bindler like?"
"Oh, one of those women who is so much more respectable than she looks that men always find her disappointing."
"I know, now that I've been in London a month."
"She lives by what she makes racing."
"How much is that?"
"A few hundreds a year, I fancy. She is quite a good soul really."
"And Lady Drake? She's the only other one whom I haven't seen, except, of course, the paragon."
Mrs. Verulam blushed softly.
"Lady Drake? Well, she's a widow, you know."
"That tells me all, naturally."
"Nonsense. Her being a widow is really only a sort of accident in her life. Her husband was a V.C."
"What's that?"
"A brave man."
"What odd epithets you have over here. Well?"
"He's been dead thousands of years. She's intensely old."
"Why did you ask her, then?"
"Only because she worries the Duke."
"As Mr. Ingerstall worries the Duchess?"
"Oh no, quite differently."
"Well, but why is the Duke to be worried, too? I don't know him yet; I've only caught sight of him at Hurlingham. Why must he be worried?"
"If he isn't, he is apt to get obstreperous—in quite, quite a different way from the Duchess. I can't explain, really. You'll soon find out. Oh, I forgot, though, you're a man at present, so you won't."
Chloe smiled a rather charming smile of comprehension. But Mrs. Verulam was looking at her with a sort of dawning expression that seemed to mingle alarm with amusement.
"Unless," she added slowly, "unless he should chance to confide in you—in the smoking-room afterwe'veall gone to bed."
"Gracious heavens! I shall go to bed, too."
"Yes, perhaps that would be better."
"I'm quite certain it would. I don't want to feel like Daniel in the lions' den. There's the gong! Oh, I'm so hungry! That's one advantage of being a man—one can eat more if one wishes to."
"Come along, then. But where's—oh, here you are, Mr. Rodney."
Mr. Rodney at this moment entered, looking far more solemn than any owl, and, indeed, with knitted brows and a face almost entirely covered with an artistic disposition of wrinkles.
"Yes, I am here," he said abstractedly. "Yes, here I am."
And they walked into the cedar-wood parlour to lunch.
CHAPTER IX.
MRS. VERULAM'S IDEA OF AGAG.
Thatcurious cerebral condition which we call excitement affects men and women in very different ways. At 3.15 on this Monday afternoon it caused a nervous restlessness in Mrs. Verulam, a hectic calm in Mr. Rodney, and an apoplectic irritability in Mr. Harrison. The first of these victims of the nervous system talked incessantly; the second said nothing at all; the third abused the powderedFrederick, had a "few words"—fifty thousand or thereabouts—with the cook of Ribton Marches, and fell foul of the second housemaid, with whom, in moments of condescension, he was rather apt than otherwise to keep company. And all these circumstances were brought about by Mr. James Bush, at that very moment driving from the Sunningdale station to the palace, with his very large feet up on the cushions of the carriage, and his very small bag of necessaries up on the box. However, he was kept awake by no warning instinct which told him of the turmoil cast before him by his personality, but, on the contrary, slept profoundly, and even snored, with his great head well back on the hood of the barouche. He was awakened by the stoppage of the carriage before the palace door. Inside, in the baronial hall, the crunching of the gravel was heard, and Mrs. Verulam had just said with elaborate indifference:
"Dear me! Can this be Mr. Bush already?"
Mr. Rodney had looked at his watch, and answered:
"I fancy so."
And Chloe had exclaimed:
"By Jove! Bungay Marshes to the front!" a remark which she considered manly, and calculated to impress Mr. Rodney, which it did—with horror.
The palace menials advanced at the double, accompanied by Mr. Harrison, who proceeded with an air of extraordinary precaution, and the drawn expression of one who believes himself to be on the point of catching a murderer red-handed. The mighty portals flew slowly open, and the carriage was revealed, with Mr. Bush laid out in it, his mouth wide open in a yawn, and his fists in his eyes rubbing the slumber out of them, while his snort of astonishment at the sudden interruption of hisdelicious reveries was distinctly audible in the still summer air.
"What's all this? What the devil is it all?" he said in a huge and rumbling voice to the menials who came forward to assist him from the barouche.
"Ribton Marches, sir," said the powdered Frederick, while Mr. Harrison looked as if doubtful whether it were not his duty to run Mr. Bush in upon the spot without further ado.
"Marchuss?" retorted Mr. Bush—"Marchuss?"
"Yes, sir. Won't you get out, sir?"
Mr. Bush rolled out, rather as a barrel rolls out of a dray down an inclined plane into a vault. Planting his feet upon the marble steps, he turned round and said:
"Lay hold of that bag!"
Frederick laid hold of it with the arms of a man anticipating a considerable weight. As the bag, however, appeared to contain nothing of much greater bulk than a collar-stud, the footman was nearly thrown down by the unexpected triviality of his labour. He almost dropped the bag.
"You'd better!" said Mr. Bush—"you'd better!"
The alarmed menial met the Bungay Marshes eye, and apparently thought he had better not, for he ascended the steps with some rapidity, and vanished into the interior of the palace in the twinkling of an eye.
Mr. Bush lethargically moved onward into the baronial hall, in which Mrs. Verulam, Mr. Rodney, and Chloe were seated.
"Oh, Mr. Bush," cried the former, rising with a lovely blush, and coming forward to meet him, "I am so glad to see you!"
That gentleman grunted, and permitted her to take his hand.
"It is so good of you to come and leave your lovely garden, and all your sheep, and—and bees. Let me introduce you to Mr. Rodney and Mr. Van Adam. The rest of the party come this afternoon."
Mr. Bush threw a couple of nods at Mr. Rodney and Chloe. Then he abruptly exclaimed:
"What are you after, eh?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Bush," said Mrs. Verulam in some surprise.
"What are you after?" pursued her gracious guest, with a very sinister intonation.
"Oh, nothing, sir, not at all, by no means!" replied a rather hurried voice, and Mr. Harrison somewhat hastily retreated from a shadowy nook in which he had been taking observations, until that moment erroneously supposed by him to be secret.
"Really, Mr. Rodney," said Mrs. Verulam rather petulantly, "that man is becoming very unnecessary. Can't you keep him in order?"
"I will endeavour—I will certainly endeavour to do so," returned Mr. Rodney in some disorder, turning to pursue Mr. Harrison. Mrs. Verulam had a way of behaving as if he were responsible for everything and everybody in the palace which he began to find distinctly trying.
"Yes, please do," said Mrs. Verulam. "Would you like to go to your room at once, Mr. Bush, or will you rest a little first?"
"I'll rest there. I'll have a lay down," he replied, yawning—"a good lay down."
And, without further parley, he set out for the upper regions of the palace, his boots squeaking as he walked.When the squeaking had died away, Mrs. Verulam turned rapturously to Chloe.
"Well, dear?" she said—"well?"
"Well," responded Chloe, with a good deal of hesitation.
"Isn't he simple? Isn't he straightforward and natural?"
"Oh, quite—quite."
"Yes. And isn't it a relief to find a man like that after all the shams and hypocrisies of society? One is never in doubt about what Mr. Bush is thinking, or what he means. Oneknowsit."
"I should think so."
"Yes; I knew you would agree with me. Oh, how delightful it is to have one friend who feels in all things as one does oneself!"
"Daisy, don't! You forget—you mustn't kiss me."
"Oh, heavens! Could anybody have seen?"
She glanced apprehensively round.
"No; it is all right. But I knew you would. A large, frank nature like that seems to go straight to all that is good and right in one. Oh, do let us take advantage of our opportunity this week! Do—do let us make the most of it."
"Do you mean that Mr. Bush is our opportunity?"
"Yes—yes."
"Well, dear, I don't mind, I'm sure. But the most of Mr. Bush is a great deal. I think he is the largest human being I have ever seen. Now I'm going to wander about the garden and see what the Bun Emperor's plants are like."
And Chloe went off wondering greatly at her friend's enthusiasm for the gentleman from Bungay. She herself could at present see nothing in him but a mountain of humanity, with that face, head, beard, and expressionalready described as appearing to Mrs. Verulam in the imaginary mirror of the cotillon of her fancy. Nor could his manner—essentially truthful as no doubt it was—be called precisely pleasing. Chloe picked a rose or two and lost herself in wonder. Meanwhile, Mrs. Verulam wandered ecstatically about the palace. Mr. Harrison was busy with the Bun Emperor at the telephone. Mr. Rodney was plunged once more in terrible meditation in the purple drawing-room, and Mr. Bush was enjoying to the utmost his good lay down on one of the Empress's largest spring-mattresses. He woke soon after the arrival of the rest of the party, and strolled heavily forth alone into the grounds to take the air, which had not circulated very freely beneath the quilt with which his head had been completely covered during the last hour and a half.
Meanwhile the baronial hall looked fuller of people than it had ever looked before. Tea was going on, but Mrs. Verulam had declined to allow Mr. Bush to be disturbed.
"He will come in his own good time," she said, "I don't wish to bother him. He is accustomed to perfect liberty."
She addressed the company generally. The Duke of Southborough, who resembled an unusually tall pantaloon in appearance, but was not entirely unlike a clown in manner, said in reply:
"Ah, then, I suppose he's a bachelor."
"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Verulam, with a secret glance at Chloe.
"Poor chap! poor chap!" said the Duke, with his funny demeanour of an actor being remarkably successful in his part. "What a sad business this anti-matrimonial bias that is growing up in the present generation of Englishmen is! Eh, Lady Drake?"
Lady Drake, who was the human equivalent of the most perfect sort of acid-drop that the power of the sugar-plum manufacturer has yet produced, shook her head, on which the hair reposed in bandeaux.
"Men are more selfish than the lower animals, I fear," she said, sweetening her tea with some modern preparation which she always carried about with her in a good-sized phial.
"Oh, Mr. Bush is a most self-sacrificing man, I assure you," said Mrs. Verulam quickly.
"Then why is he a bachelor? That's what Lady Drake means," said the Duke, with a Drury Lane pantomime wink at the company.
"I think the French way of doing things by far the best," cried Mr. Ingerstall, lifting a muffin to his mouth as a juggler poises a billiard-ball on the rounded tip of a cue. "The Frenchman marries as a matter of course, and with no more intention of curtailing his full liberty of action than——"
"The French point of view in that matter is scarcely a suitable subject for discussion, Mr. Ingerstall," said the Duchess of Southborough very severely, while the Duke chuckled to himself. "Full liberty of action! Very good! very good indeed! Ha, ha, ha!" Mr. Ingerstall violently engaged her Grace—began to worry the Duchess, as Chloe said to herself—while Miss Bindler, a wiry lady of about five-and-thirty, who had a face like a horse, a tailor-made manner and boots with spats, turned to Mr. Rodney and asked him what he was going to back on the following day.
"I expect to make a bit on Cubicle in the first race," she said.
"Indeed!" said Mr. Rodney. "I trust I may do the same."
"Did you get a good price?"
"What for?" said Mr. Rodney. "Did I say that I had sold anything?"
This remark shows that the pressure of circumstances was becoming rather too much for the owner of Mitching Dean. In fact, he was considerably agitated. Since her arrival the Duchess had taken him aside and indulged him with some very dreadful confidences. Her Grace had been pleased to tell him, "as an old friend," that she had been on the very point of telegraphing at the last moment to Mrs. Verulam to give up her visit.
"She has been going too far, Mr. Rodney," said the Duchess in a whispering bass. "She has disgusted London."
"Disgusted London!" cried the appalled confidant. "Oh, no; impossible!"
"You think nothing could; but you are wrong. There is a limit even in our world, and she has overstepped it. You will see that to-morrow in the enclosure. Old Martha Sage intends to cut her."
"Impossible!" reiterated Mr. Rodney, the perspiration starting in beads upon his narrow forehead.
"Nothing is impossible to Martha Sage. I assure you it is the fact."
"It must be prevented," cried Mr. Rodney. "It must, it shall!"
He felt as Curtius probably did when he found that he really was in the gulf.
"I don't see how it can be," said the Duchess. "You don't know Martha Sage."
"But indeed I do," said Mr. Rodney. "She has often dandled me in her arms."
"What, recently?"
"Yes, yes," he rejoined distractedly; "often and often."
"Possibly you may have some influence over her then," said the Duchess; "and, indeed, if what you say is true, I hardly think Martha Sage has the right to take the initiative in such an affair."
"When I was a little boy—when I was a child," said Mr. Rodney, recovering himself in time to save Lady Sage's vanishing reputation with the Duchess.
"Oh, that's nothing. She has dandled everybody at that age. But she doesn't allow anybody to influence her decisions for all that."
"Then Mrs. Verulam must be kept out of the enclosure," cried Mr. Rodney, wringing his hands together. "She must and shall!"
"That will only delay the matter," said her Grace calmly. "In fact, Mr. Rodney—but this I tell you in the strictest confidence—if I don't observe a very great change in Mrs. Verulam's behaviour during this week, I am very much afraid that I shall be obliged to agree with Martha Sage. Oh, is it tea-time?"
It was this terrible conversation which had reduced Mr. Rodney to making amal-àproposreply, a thing he had scarcely ever done before in the whole course of his social life. He was immersed in thought, considering whether he ought not solemnly to warn Mrs. Verulam of her danger, or whether, on the other hand, he should go privately to Lady Sage, recall the dandling incident to her Crimean War recollection, and implore her, for her old intimacy's sake, to be merciful, and to bow to the Ribton Marches party on the morrow. He could not decide. He could not come to a conclusion. And MissBindler very soon gave him up in despair, and took to a close and exhaustive study of her betting-book. This study, Mr. Rodney's gloomy agonies, the Duke's jokes, Mr. Ingerstall's recollections of Parisian life and art, and, indeed, everything that was going on in the baronial hall, was, however, interrupted very shortly by the sudden entry of Mr. James Bush, with disordered and earthy costume, breathing stertorously, and looking rather puffy about the cheeks. Mrs. Verulam greeted him with a delighted smile, and was about to make him known to the fresh arrivals, when he broke in upon her "Oh, Mr. Bush, let me intro——" with the loud and rather startling exclamation, uttered in evident bitter sarcasm, "You've got nice company here!"
"What!" said Mrs. Verulam, while the assembled magnates joined in a simultaneous start of astonishment.
"Well, I'm blowed!" continued Mr. Bush. "You've got nice company!"
"I hope so, indeed!" murmured Mrs. Verulam. "Let me make you known to them. Mr. Bush—the Duchess of Southborough, Lady Pearl McAndrew——" She named her guests.
Mr. Bush plunged his head in their direction, without deigning to glance at them.
"Mad, I s'pose!" he resumed to Mrs. Verulam. "Mad as Moses!"
Consternation now reigned among the inmates of the palace, who began to fear that Mr. Bush was giving a name to his own private affliction. Even Mrs. Verulam felt a certain diffidence steal over her at so definite an inclusion of all her party within the sad circle of a supposititious lunacy. But she guessed Mr. Bush to be a bit of a wag, like most great men. Doubtless he wasonly having his little joke. Still, she felt quite definitely that this fact should be made apparent to the Duchess and others with as short a delay as possible, so she hastened to reply:
"Ah, Mr. Bush, you mustn't make a joke on so serious a subject as madness."
"Joke! There's no joke! Where's the joke of being potted at like a rook in January? Joke, indeed—joke!"
He blew forth a perfect volume of angry breath.
"A rook in January?" said poor Mrs. Verulam, in consummate perplexity, and really beginning to have her fears for her guest's reason.
"Aye. If I'd have stayed he'd have had me. I wasn't eight paces off him."
"Unless the other gentleman was an unusually indifferent shot," remarked the Duke, glancing at Mr. Bush's gigantic bulk, "I must say I think Mr. Bush must have stood in some slight danger. Did you not stay, then?" his Grace added, addressing himself to the narrator.
"Stay? Not I! I just ducked down on all fours, and came back like a beast through the rhododendrons."
"Indeed!" continued the Duke pleasantly. "A very sensible posture and mode of exit under the circumstances. Who's your sportsman?" he added, turning to Mrs. Verulam.
"I have no idea, indeed!" she replied, in perplexity unutterable. "Oh, Mr. Bush!" she added, with a most tender accent of commiseration, "I can scarcely tell you how grieved, how horrified I am that you should have been so nearly murdered—and so soon after your arrival, too!"
"I should think so!" Mr. Bush rejoined angrily. "A nice thing to happen to a respectable man!"
His tacit refusal to be mollified reacted upon his hostess, who, as usual in untoward circumstances, turned instantly upon the man who she thought loved her.
"Mr. Rodney," she said with bitter reproach, "you never told me there was a murderer living in this neighbourhood."
"I never knew it!" cried Mr. Rodney. "It never occurred to me, I do assure you. Where were you?" he exclaimed to Mr. Bush, with the poignant accent of a man whose reputation is at stake.
"I was walkin' in the garden, a-lookin' at the mistakes the gardener here's been makin'," said Mr. Bush sulkily.
"Yes, yes!" chorused the company.
"Presently I came to a bit of a pond, with flowers a-floatin' on it."
"Ah!" suddenly cried Mr. Rodney, in an illuminated manner. "And a cottage on the farther side?"
"Aye; where he fires from."
"The Bun Emperor!" exclaimed Mr. Rodney, as if the matter was settled.
"Very unsportsmanlike behaviour," said Miss Bindler, "to shoot from such cover as that. The game haven't a ghost of a chance."
"You're right, mum," said Mr. Bush, "they haven't—not unless they're as quick at droppin' on all fours as I am."
"But I can't understand it even yet," pursued Mr. Rodney. "The Emperor's really not a bad sort of man, as a general rule. Did you do anything in particular by the pond, Mr. Bush?"
"Not I. I only stood a-lookin' at the little house. I saw a fattish, smallish feller, with a fattish, smallish woman by his side, starin' out——"
"The Empress, too!" said Mr. Rodney. "Well, Mr. Bush?"
"But I didn't take any account of them at first. I put out my stick across the water to lay hold of some of the lilies, when what does the fattish man do but shout out, "If you do it, I'll skin you!" I didn't choose to notice his nonsense, and I'd just got hold of a lily, when what do I see but him with a gun at his shoulder firin' straight at me. So, as I say, I came away like a beast through the bushes."
Mr. Rodney seemed perfectly at ease.
"Mr. Lite always is a little hasty," he said. "The matter is perfectly clear to me. He doesn't like anything being interfered with."
"A defender of the rights of property," said the Duke approvingly. "A good Conservative."
"Still, he goes too far," said Mrs. Verulam, in considerable agitation. "Mr. Rodney, I must ask you to be kind enough to tell Mr. Lite that I cannot have my house-party shot at. Make it perfectly clear, please. As a hostess, I cannot and will not permit anything of that kind."
"Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Rodney; "I see your point of view."
"If you won't have any more tea, it would be very good of you to go to the fishing-cottage at once," said Mrs. Verulam. "Some of us might like to stroll about the grounds presently, and I am sure we shall all prefer to have Mr. Lite's solemn promise of amendment before we do so."
These words were received with an emphatic chorus of unfeigned assent, so poor Mr. Rodney, who had only half finished his first cup, was obliged to get up and fare forth into the afternoon. He went gloomily, feeling thathis Ascot this year was evidently to be a period of hard labour, and that Mrs. Verulam, like many women, was inclined to make mountains out of mole-hills. Not that James Bush could be accurately described as a mole-hill. Nevertheless, under the circumstances, Mr. Rodney's sympathies lay very decidedly with Mr. Lite. Indeed, as he walked tealess in the sun, he gradually worked himself up into a perfect fever of perfervid pity for the wrongs of the outraged exile, practically homeless by the waterside, and forced to behold the assaults of such an enemy as the man who had so foully influenced Mrs. Verulam against society. Moved by this wild access of emotion, Mr. Rodney burst into the fishing-cottage like a well-bred volcano, leapt into the tiny parlour which for the moment accommodated the unfortunate Lites, and, seizing Mr. Lite by the hand, exclaimed in a voice that trembled with feeling:
"You have all my sympathy; I am entirely—entirely on your side. If you had hit him, I don't think I could blame you—I don't, indeed!"
The Bun Emperor, who had an enormous pair of strong field-glasses in one hand, and was in the very act of ringing the telephone-bell to summon Mr. Harrison with the other, looked for an instant petrified by this intrusion; and the Empress cried out in shrill alarm from her station in the minute bay-window built to fit a fisherman. Mr. Rodney breathlessly continued:
"I know what you—what any man worthy of the name—must feel on seeing such a—such a—a spectacle, yes, as that man daring to make away with the flowers that have been floating on those waters perhaps for centuries."
The pond was exactly two years and three months old.
"What d'you mean?" gasped Mr. Lite, at length getting in an ejaculation edgewise. "Are you mad?"
"I wish you had shot him—yes, I do!" cried Mr. Rodney, frantically eulogising British assassination; and he threw himself into an adjacent wicker-chair in a most Corsican manner.
The Empress wailed again from her embrasure.
"Oh, Perry, save me—save me!" was her natural cry.
"I will, Henrietta—I will, my love," said the Emperor. "Keep up." After these reassuring words he advanced in a threatening manner upon Mr. Rodney, and remarked: "Give over! D'you hear me? Give over!"
"I beg your pardon," murmured Mr. Rodney, exhausted by his unwonted vocal exertions.
"Give over, or I'll lay my hands on you—I will."
"But I am sympathising with you—I am——"
"Sympathising!" said the Emperor, still maintaining a posture of protection and defence; "what for? what over?"
"Your manly attempt to shoot James Bush," said Mr. Rodney, giving himself away with extraordinary indifference to the opinion of the civilised world on criminal affairs.
At the name the Emperor's manner changed. His black eyes blazed, and he shook the field-glass as if it had been a fist.
"It was him, then," he cried—"it was him as I saw through the telescope!"
"The telescope!" said Mr. Rodney, suddenly penetrated by a ray of light.
He turned rapidly in the wicker-chair, and threw a distracted glance towards the embrasure. In it, reposing upon a window-seat, was an enormous telescope. Mr. Rodney began to comprehend, and to see the necessity of reconsidering his position under these much less violent circumstances.
"Then you didn't fire at him?" he said, with an abrupt lamb-like serenity.
"Fire at him!" said the Emperor. "What are you talking about? When he went for Mrs. Lite's lilies I said I'd skin him; and so I would have, or telephoned Mr. Harrison to, if he hadn't dropped into the ground for all the world like a mole or a badger. I don't know where he went to, though I had my eye to the telescope, and Mrs. Lite she was looking through the field-glasses."
"He behaved like vermin," remarked the Empress at this juncture. "Like a rat he went, he did. Never did I see a Christian demean himself so till this day—never, no!"
"The man's a coward," said Mr. Rodney with firmness—"an arrant coward. I shall inform Mrs. Verulam."
And he suddenly broke from the Emperor and Empress and absconded towards the palace, leaving them immersed in helpless astonishment.
Returning with rapid steps into the baronial hall, he found the party preparing to set forth into the grounds on receiving his assurances that the Emperor had laid aside his gun for the time being.
"You are perfectly safe," said Mr. Rodney, with unwonted sarcasm, and calmly waving one white hand towards the estate; "you will not be hurt, I can promise you. Nobody will attempt to injure you."
The guests were obviously relieved, and they began at once to evaporate, Mr. Ingerstall escorting the Duchess, the Duke with Lady Drake, Chloe accompanying the Lady Pearl, and Miss Bindler bringing up the rear in sturdy solitude. Mr. Bush remained because he had not nearly finished munching his tea, and Mrs. Verulam stayed because she loved to see him munch.
"You have persuaded him, then?" she said approvinglyto the ambassador. "I knew you would have weight with him."
But even this compliment could not divert Mr. Rodney from his purpose of unmasking the man who had behaved like a badger in the moment of supposed peril.
"My dear lady," he said, glancing with elaborate pity towards Mr. Bush, who was closely engaged with a tea-cake, "there was nothing to persuade. I am happy to say that you have been totally misinformed as to the circumstances."
"Eh?" growled Mr. Bush, stirring his spoon vigorously in his tea-cup—"eh?"