"Totally and absolutely misinformed," repeated Mr. Rodney with the greatest decision.
"Really, Mr. Rodney," said Mrs. Verulam, preparing to fire up, "what are you saying? Mr. Bush has been shot at."
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Rodney very blandly—"I beg your pardon."
"If I hadn't a dropped, I shouldn't be here now," said Mr. Bush, in a voice whose timbre was slightly obscured by tea-cake.
Mr. Rodney turned towards him.
"I assure you, my dear Mr. Bush," he said, "that you are labouring under an entire delusion; you might with perfect safety have retained an upright posture. It's true that Mr. Lite made use of some hasty, inconsiderate words about skinning."
"There!" roared Mr. Bush; "what did I say?"
"But even they were no doubt rather metaphorical than strictly truthful. As to the firing, however, you were quite mistaken. What you took for a gun was merely a telescope. When you thought you were being shot at,you were only being looked at. There is an appreciable difference between the two operations. I think you will allow that."
And the owner of Mitching Dean calmly dropped into a chair, and prepared to continue his interrupted tea. Mr. Bush looked remarkably sulky under this light of truth.
"Telescope, indeed!" he muttered; "telescope—I daresay!"
"So you see, Mr. Lite can hardly be blamed after all," said Mr. Rodney cheerfully to Mrs. Verulam.
"Perhaps not," she said, a little doubtfully. "However, he should be more careful how he looks at people."
And then she rather hastily dropped the subject. In her secret heart she was sorry to find that the Emperor was not so given to murder as Mr. Bush had led her to suppose. Women love their heroes to stand uprightly even in moments of imminent danger. They infinitely prefer them not to quail before a telescope, however suddenly handled.
Mrs. Verulam could not entirely banish from her heart the uneasy conviction that on this occasion Mr. Bush had scarcely lived up to what she confidently expected of the man who was her idea of Agag.
CHAPTER X.
MR. RODNEY SCREAMS.
Thatevening in the hall after dinner the Duke chanced to say:
"Another top-hat Ascot! I wish the Prince would set the fashion of billycocks. What do you say, Mr. Bush? Wouldn't you rather have a low hat in the heat? Anythinglow is always so pleasant—between you and me. Eh? What—what?"
The paragon observed the grinning pantaloon face solemnly, and then answered:
"Top-hats are rubbish. I've only brought a straw."
Mr. Rodney turned as pale as ashes.
"I sha'n't wear nought but a straw to-morrer," proceeded the paragon with heavy calmness.
"A savage custom?" squeaked Lady Drake enquiringly.
"I hate a man to be over-dressed," ejaculated Miss Bindler approvingly.
"I beg your pardon," Mr. Rodney said suddenly, in a trembling voice—"I beg your pardon, but I must venture to say that I feel certain Major Clement will turn a—a straw off the lawn. Knowing him as I do, I feel confidently certain of it." And he cast a glance of passionate beseeching upon Mrs. Verulam.
For once she came to his rescue.
"I quite agree with Mr. Bush," she said; "a straw is much more sensible—"
"Merciful heavens!" in an under cry of acute anguish from Mr. Rodney.
"In every way. But at the same time, Mr. Bush, don't you think that custom should occasionally be adhered to?"
"Eh?"
"Every man will be wearing a top-hat to-morrow."
Mr. Bush began to look very sulky.
"I've hoed and I've planted in a straw for thirty year," he muttered, "day in, day out."
"There's no hoeing and planting on a racecourse," said Mr. Rodney, with vehement sarcasm.
"It'd make the going a bit heavy," said Miss Bindler reflectively.
"I fancy, Mr. Bush," said Mrs. Verulam very gently, "that, as you will not have any opportunity of hoeing at the races to-morrow, owing to all the silly rules and regulations, you will find it really pleasanter to be as everyone else is—I mean only, of course, as regards your head-covering."
"I haven't a-brought one," he mumbled; "I say I've only brought a straw."
"We must send a man to Windsor," said Mr. Rodney, with a sudden piercing decision, and he pushed eighteen times at an electric bell. The powdered Frederick appeared.
"Kindly bring us a yard measure," said Mr. Rodney.
"A what, sir?" exclaimed the man.
"A yard measure, and order a dogcart round; there is much to do to-night."
The powdered Frederick dropped his lower jaw like one confronted with the mysteries of Udolpho, and fled to execute these sinister commands. He returned, accompanied by Mr. Harrison, who had impounded a yard measure with his left hand, and whose eyes were starting out of his head with suspicion. The house-party were now tense with excitement as medical students gathered to witness the operation of the century. Only Mr. Rodney was wrapped in a white and still calm; he held out his long thin hand for the yard measure, but Mr. Harrison showed a bold front.
"Mr. Lite's last orders to me, sir," he began, shaking his bald head emphatically—"his last orders to me was: 'On no account, Mr. Harrison, is the carriages to be measured. Oh, by no means must it be so done—oh, indeed, on no account whatever!'"
"The carriages!" said Mr. Rodney, getting very red at this speech for the defence—"the carriages! It is this gentleman's head!" He pointed to the paragon.
"I understood, sir, from Frederick that the dogcart—oh, indeed, was ordered to be——"
But at this point Mr. Rodney snatched the tape from the protecting hand that secluded it, advanced heroically upon the paragon, measured the circumference of his enormous cranium, wrote the measurement down with a gold pencil on a sheet of writing-paper, gave it to the powdered Frederick, said: "Have that taken at once to Windsor, rouse up the best hatter in the royal borough, buy a top-hat of that size, and bring it back as fast as the horse can gallop," and then sank down on a sofa with the air of a man who, having stormed the heights, dies of his own bravery as he grasps the standard of the enemy.
"A glass of water," he murmured.
It was brought. He recovered, and shortly afterwards the spectators of the operation of the century retired to their respective bedrooms, conscious that they had been assisting at a historical event, but a little divided as to the complete tact and generalship shown by Mr. Rodney.
That night, when the faithful Marriner came into the primrose bedroom to brush Mrs. Verulam's pretty hair before the latter went to bed, she found her mistress in a very serious mood. And, on her side, Marriner was also unusually grave, although her demeanour, chastened as it was by Schopenhauer and an acquaintance with Nordau which might almost be termed intimate, was invariably and at all times sedate and thoughtful. Chloe had adroitly avoided the smoking-room, in which theDuke was now telling stories to Mr. Ingerstall; while Mr. Rodney wrote up his diary, and Mr. Bush dreamed over a whisky and soda of gigantic proportions. Mr. Harrison, above stairs, was with much tribulation and uncurled whiskers preparing his report to lay before the Emperor at eight o'clock on the following morning. The Duchess was asleep. Miss Bindler was considering the chances of the morrow. The Lady Pearl was dreaming softly of the person whom, in secret, she now named Huskinson; and Lady Drake, who though acid had an extraordinarily sweet tooth, was eating chocolate creams in a dressing-gown made from an Indian shawl presented to her by a very great personage indeed.
The faithful Marriner removed a hairpin and breathed a sigh simultaneously. Mrs. Verulam echoed the sigh, and hearing that she had been honoured with an echo, Marriner ventured to say:
"Oh, ma'am!"
"Why do you say 'Oh,' Marriner?" said Mrs. Verulam. "What should you have to say 'oh' about?"
"Many things, ma'am—many, many things," responded Marriner in a doleful voice.
"Have any more thoughts been taking you like a storm, Marriner?"
"They have indeed, ma'am."
"If you think so much you ought to keep a lifeboat by you," said Mrs. Verulam dreamily.
For her hair was now being brushed and was giving off electricity, and the process soothed her.
"Might I speak, ma'am?" said Marriner, making use of her habitual formula when she had anything special to say.
"You may, certainly."
"Ma'am," said Marriner, "I've heard a dreadful thing this night."
"Dreadful! What about?"
"Oh, ma'am, that I should have to say it—about you!" replied the faithful creature, with every outward sign of extreme dejection.
Mrs. Verulam started beneath the brush.
"A dreadful thing about me, Marriner! Who from?"
"From Mrs. Crouch, ma'am, her Grace's woman."
"Why, what should Mrs. Crouch say about me?"
"Oh, ma'am, she says, ma'am, that Lady Sage is—is——"
"Don't break down, Marriner, you'll wet my hair. Please go on."
Thus adjured, Marriner continued in a fragmentary voice, as one relating something almost too improper to be given tongue to:
"She says that—oh, that Lady Sage is going to have nothing at all to do with you in the Enclosure to-morrow, ma'am—oh dear, dear me!"
Mrs. Verulam sat still in silence for a moment. It must be confessed that during the moment she felt as if she was being whipped.
"Oh, ma'am, don't go—don't go there!" continued Marriner. "We should not place ourselves between the feet of our enemies, ma'am; no, no, we should not!"
"Be careful with the brush, Marriner, please," said Mrs. Verulam in a rather low voice.
"But that's not all, ma'am—there is worse, ma'am—there is treachery, indeed, and there is treason, ma'am."
"Really, one would think that Guy Fawkes was staying in the house," rejoined Mrs. Verulam, recovering herself a little.
"No, ma'am, indeed it is not him."
"Then who is it?"
"Oh, ma'am—her Grace."
"The Duchess!" said Mrs. Verulam in slight surprise.
"Yes, ma'am; Mrs. Crouch says, indeed, that her Grace will do as her Ladyship—Lady Sage—does, when the week is over, ma'am. And it is all because of Mrs. Van Adam—taking her for a man, ma'am. Oh, do—please, please do tell them, ma'am!"
"The teeth of the comb! Be careful, Marriner, please!"
"Yes, ma'am, I will. But I do implore you, ma'am, if I might——"
"Hush!" cried Mrs. Verulam suddenly; "let me think! Brush softly, Marriner, if you have any regard for me."
Marriner brushed softly, and Mrs. Verulam thought for a long while, hating Lady Sage and the Duchess for themselves, womanlike, yet half-inclined—or tricking herself to think so—to love their coming deed. James Bush, too, and the squirrel Tommy, and the cage door, and the different, the true, earnest, sincere, unaffected life—thoughts of all these ran through that pretty head beneath the shining hair, until the weary brusher ceased, and Mrs. Verulam said, "You may go to bed, Marriner; good night."
In consequence of Marriner's revelation, when, on the following morning, shortly before the Ribton Marches party started for the course, Mr. Rodney mysteriously begged to be allowed to speak with Mrs. Verulam alone, she was not much surprised by what he had to say, although, for some perhaps feminine reason, she pretended to be so.
"Could I have just a word with you?" Mr. Rodney said, in a voice not wholly unlike that of a sucking dove.
"Certainly," replied Mrs. Verulam. "Where?"
"I think there is no one in the pink boudoir."
"Let us go there, then."
They went, furtively watched by Mr. Harrison, who had just returned from the fishing-cottage in possession of that rather unacceptable belonging usually called a flea in the ear. For he had found the Emperor in a terrible condition of fury over the James Bush business and various other incidents of the preceding day. When Mrs. Verulam and Mr. Rodney had gained the pink boudoir, the latter carefully closed the pink door, walked very gently up to Mrs. Verulam, and said:
"Where do you think of watching the races from, may I venture to ask?"
"Where from? The Enclosure, of course!"
"Shall we sit down for a moment?" replied Mr. Rodney, with a consummate endeavour after genial ease.
They sat down on a couple of flesh-coloured chairs and he proceeded with extraordinary blandness:
"The Enclosure! Don't you think it is likely to be excessively hot?"
Mrs. Verulam instantly guessed that Mr. Rodney knew what the faithful Marriner knew.
"Hot," she said, "why specially hot in the Enclosure?"
"Well, you know, in consequence of its being so difficult to gain admission to, it is so very much more crowded than any other part of the course. Don't you think so?"
"Well, but where else shall I go?"
"I have ventured to take a couple of excellent boxes. You see one or two of our party, Mr. Ingerstall and Mr. Bush, have not got cards for the Enclosure."
Mr. Rodney just glanced at his boots. Mrs. Verulam had never liked him better than at this moment. Nevertheless, she was a woman, and, as all her sex, sweetly mischievous.
"It is very good and thoughtful of you; still, I think I shall go to the Enclosure. Mr. Van Adam is anxious to see what it is like."
Mr. Rodney stiffened.
"Indeed!"
"And then there are all one's friends there—Lady Clondart and Lady Sage, and——"
Mr. Rodney became as cold as the adventurer who approaches the Pole. He saw Mrs. Verulam rushing headlong to her doom, and he did not know how to stop her.
"Lady Sage grows a little wearisome, I fancy," he murmured dissuasively.
"Do you think so? Oh, I love her recollections!"
"I think her too historical for hot summer weather, I confess," continued Mr. Rodney; "and then her insatiable appetite for dates."
"Oh, surely she wouldn't eat them in the Enclosure!" cried Mrs. Verulam. "The Master of the Buckhounds would never permit it!"
"The dates of battles, dear lady, not dried fruits. Really, if you prefer to go to the Enclosure, I strongly—very strongly—advise you to avoid Lady Sage. She is agreeable in a drawing-room, but very, very Crimean, I do assure you, on a racecourse. Do give me your word; I cannot bear to see you bored!"
"You are all kindness," said Mrs. Verulam, secretly longing to pat this kind and true friend upon his anxious face. "I must go to the Enclosure, but I shall probably not see Lady Sage. Now, the carriages must be round."
Mr. Rodney, in his usual soft manner, opened the pink door, and was instantly confronted by Mr. Harrison, who, with tightly-shut eyes, was revealed in a crouched attitudewith his left ear glued to what, had the door been shut, would doubtless have been the keyhole. This surprising vision caused Mr. Rodney to start, and the groom of the chambers, in some obvious confusion, assumed a less attentive posture, and added:
"I was about to inform you, sir—in the temporary absence of all the men-servants—that the carriages are now before the door—oh, most certainly!"
He then proceeded to retire with a deliberate but distinct celerity.
"That man is really of a very original turn of body," remarked Mrs. Verulam, as they went downstairs.
"He carries it too far, in my opinion," replied Mr. Rodney, with considerable severity.
That day was to Mr. Rodney a day of trial and of acute anxiety. It might truly be said that he did not have one moment's peace during the whole course of it. He attended Mrs. Verulam into the Enclosure, which was, as he had foreseen, most uncomfortably full and crowded, and spent his time there in a faithful endeavour to emulate the procedure of the trained private detective. His eye, to which he tried to give that unmarkable acuteness attributed to the eye of the lynx, was ever upon the look-out for the approach of Lady Sage, and when he saw that redoubtable survival of pre-Crimean days moving afar off beneath a huge bonnet in form like a helmet, he ingeniously glided Mrs. Verulam into some other part of the royal pen, engaging her the while vigorously in conversation, and leading unsuspecting countesses and others to cover up her tracks in a masterly manner. Being a man, he thought that she was quite unaware that for four hours she was subtly being dodged about, and when at length the last race was over, and he placed her in the barouche,he fancied that the sigh of triumph which he could not help breathing was supposed by her to be merely a tribute to the heat.
The great lawn that stretched before the glittering windows of the palace; the mighty cedar-tree beneath which the powdered Frederick and his fellow menials now arranged the tea-tables—these works of Nature appeared exceedingly charming to the dusty eyes of the Ribton Marches house-party as they flocked anxiously out to refresh themselves after the torments of a day of pleasure. But not all had returned. Mr. James Bush and Mr. Ingerstall were absent. Lady Drake, exceedingly acidulated in airy black; the Duchess, full of bass conversation about the events of the day, but ever watchful of Chloe and Mrs. Verulam; Miss Bindler and the Duke talking racing; Chloe and the Lady Pearl—all these gathered round and sank in various attitudes of marked prostration into garden chairs. But the hero from the Bungay Marshes and the thickset person from Paris were nowhere to be seen.
"Where are Mr. Bush and Mr. Ingerstall?" said Mrs. Verulam, looking round.
"I can't imagine," said Mr. Rodney peacefully, as Frederick placed the magnificent grapes from Mitching Dean upon one of the little tables near a rose-bush.
"I daresay Mr. Bush is on a roundabout," said the Duchess. "You say he is fond of being rustic, Mrs. Verulam?"
"Yes; but not in that way, I hope."
"It all goes together, love of the country and a passion for riding wooden horses painted yellow to the sound of comic songs. Depend upon it, Mr. Bush is on a roundabout."
Mrs. Verulam began to look very anxious.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed, turning towards Mr. Rodney, "I do hope—Mr. Rodney, don't you think, perhaps——"
Now, Mr. Rodney, beneath all his breeding, was human. He didn't know it, but he was, and upon this occasion he revealed the fact.
He was at this moment, when Mrs. Verulam addressed him, very busily engaged in being happy, and he was determined not to be interrupted in this activity. His tired limbs were caressed by a charming chair, into which he fitted quite perfectly. A soft breeze played about his carefully-parted hair. His eyes were dazzled by the beautiful grapes grown in his own hot-houses, and his heart was cradled in the arms of success. Dreamlike he felt, softly rapturous, as the tired but triumphant gladiator. The desperate past, haunted by Lady Sage, lay behind him; tea, sugar, bread-and-butter, a future tenderly bright, lay before. And should he allow even the woman whom he loved to send him forth again to those arid stretches of dusty landscape, there to quest among the perspiring vulgar for a great rustic bumpkin astride an orange or blue horse, revolving furiously in the heat to the sound of the music of the lower spheres? No, no. Rather annihilation.
Under the stress of this definite determination, therefore, he said with unusual firmness:
"If Mr. Bush is fond of horse-exercise, I certainly think he should be permitted to enjoy it in all freedom. Probably it is his custom to ride on a roundabout every day. Dear me, tea is very refreshing on these occasions!"
Mrs. Verulam was checkmated. She had never seen Mr. Rodney so masterful before.
"There's a great deal of knack in sitting a wooden horse," said the Duke. "Some people can never acquire it. I knew a very excellent clergyman who was thrown three times running by a deal cob which his cook rode perfectly at the very first try."
"You ought always to give a horse of that material his head," said Miss Bindler, taking out a hunting-flask and pouring something yellow into her tea. "If you try to hold him in you're done. Had a good day?" she added to Mr. Rodney.
"Perfect!" said that gentleman celestially—"quite, quite perfect!"
"What, after backing Cubicle?"
"Absolutely perfect!"
"How much did you clear on all the results?"
"Clear?"
"Yes—pouch."
"Pouch?" said Mr. Rodney as in a happy dream—"pouch?"
"Did you have anything on Lambton and Try your Luck? Did you go for Mulligatawney?"
"No, no; I didn't go for Mulligatawney."
"Well, then, I'm—I don't see how you had a good day," said Miss Bindler, giving him up and turning again to the Duke.
"Do you like Ascot, Mr. Van Adam?" said the Lady Pearl, with unusual vivacity.
"It's heavenly," cried Chloe; "it's like a dream."
"Have you nothing of the kind in America?"
"How can we, when we have no aristocracy? Oh, I should like to make it my life's mission to create a grand American aristocracy, with grades, a Debrett, and everything complete. I would travel, I would hold meetings,I would stir up the splendid class feeling that makes England what it is, I would leave no stone unturned, I would begin by getting baronets for my dear native land—they should be the thin end of the wedge, and everything else would follow."
Her cheeks flushed with enthusiasm, and her eyes sparkled as she unbuttoned her frock-coat, and flung it open with the gesture of a born orator. The Lady Pearl caught the infection of the missionary spirit.
"Mr. Van Adam," she said, "you should have lived in the olden days. You should have led Crusaders."
"To Burke instead of battle, an army to armorial bearings. Oh!"
She drank her tea in a soft frenzy, which went straight to the heart of the Lady Pearl.
The Duchess, who had observed these noble raptures with satisfaction, looked narrowly at Mrs. Verulam.
"Is Mr. Van Adam to be much longer with you?" she asked.
"I am afraid not in London," said Mrs. Verulam. "But we may go over to Paris together in a week or two."
"Indeed!" said her Grace, flushing with respectable fury—"indeed!"
"Or on the Continent," continued Mrs. Verulam, with pretty malice, as she thought of the faithful Marriner's midnight remarks.
Her Grace heaved, and Mr. Rodney woke suddenly from his dreams, and spilt some tea over his boots. Was Mrs. Verulam mad? For a moment he dreaded that the Duchess would lose her head and make a scene, for the famous features became enlarged with passion. Her Grace's form was agitated like an enormous flower in a strong wind, and she opened her capacious mouth as ifto allow egress to a stream of eloquent remarks of an opprobrious nature.
But, unfortunately, her curses were lost to an enquiring world, for at this moment Mr. Bush and Mr. Ingerstall emerged from the palace and came towards the group on the lawn with a demeanour which attracted the attention of all. The artist looked wildly hilarious. His enormous spectacles were dimmed with tears of laughter, and his frantic bow-tie streamed abroad in a manner suggestive of unbridled licence. Mr. Bush's gigantic countenance, on the other hand, was marked by its usual solid gravity. But the hat from Windsor perched on the side of his head like a wounded bird, battered and forlorn; his clothes seemed to have been hurriedly put on during the active progress of an earthquake; one or two buttons had burst off his boots, and he carried in his hands what appeared at a distance to be a large number of cannon-balls, but as he approached resolved themselves into various cocoanuts, such as grow so plentifully in all places where the sinews of Great Britain assemble to have a good time. All eyes were now riveted upon these nuts, two or three of which Mr. Bush let drop on Mr. Rodney's toes as he gained the tea-table. Miss Bindler was the first to break the awed silence which reigned beneath the cedar-tree.
"Been betting in kind?" she said to Mr. Bush. "Taking the odds in fruit? Not a bad idea, if you're keen on it. I shouldn't mind having a bit on Kiss Me to-morrow—say in gooseberries."
Mr. Bush sat down in silence in a wicker chair and nursed his nuts, while Mr. Rodney, with an approach to violence, kicked away that portion of the winnings which had bruised his delicate feet.
"I would give one year—yes, one whole year—of mycaricaturing life," shrieked Mr. Ingerstall, "to take Mr. Bush round the side-shows of Montmartre. How he would appreciate their subtle beauty! He has the artistic sense; he understands the exquisite poetry of vulgarity, the inwardness of the cocoanut-shy, the extraordinary elements of the picturesque which appear in the staring face of Madame Aunt Sally, open-mouthed to receive the provender shot at her by Hodge and Harriet. He knows well the bizarre and beautiful effect upon the nervous system of that strange combination of the arts of music and motion—the roundabout! He——"
"The roundabout?" interrupted the Duchess. "Didn't I say so?"
"You've been riding?" said the Duke to Mr. Bush. "Good exercise—good for the liver! good for the muscles! Did you get a decent horse?"
Mr. Bush burst forth into a loud guffaw.
"Splendid animal!" cried Mr. Ingerstall. "I rode a pink, he a delicate—a really very delicate—apple-green, with sulphur-coloured spots. The music was that extremely pathetic composition 'Write me a letter from home.' I should have preferred 'Quand les amoureux s'en vont deux par deux'; still, the other really did very well. After dismounting—Bush was thrown, by the way—we spent half an hour in a tent with the bottle imp. Paris would like it. And then we passed on to the two-faced lady, ending up with a cocoanut-shy, which Whistler would love to paint. I really never enjoyed an Ascot so much—never!"
He swallowed a cup of tea as a Soudanese miracle-worker swallows an impromptu bonfire, and leaned back, extending his short legs towards the west, as if in complimentto the approaching sunset. Mrs. Verulam looked with glistening approval at Mr. Bush.
"How original you are," she murmured; "and how bravely simple!" She turned to the house-party. "Should we not all learn to find pleasure in—in what Nature provides for us," she exclaimed, "instead of creating artificial amusements to—to titillate our baser appetites?"
"Does Nature provide apple-green animals with sulphur-coloured spots?" asked Chloe innocently, stroking the place where she was supposed to shave meditatively with her forefinger.
"Nature," said Mr. Rodney, in a voice that quivered and was hoarse with horror—"Nature is—is really scarcely decent."
Mrs. Verulam's approval of Mr. Bush's abominable and Neronic orgy shook him to the soul. That she should praise bottle imps, two-faced females, and speak of the royal Enclosure as ministering to our baser appetites! Even the Mitching Dean grapes lost their colour, their peculiar sweetness, for the moment.
"And all the better for that," began the Duke in his most St. John's Wood manner.
"Lady Drake," said Mrs. Verulam a little hastily, "have you seen the fish-pond? I believe it is lovely; and I know how fond you are of fish-ponds. I wonder if the Duke——"
The hint was sufficient. Lady Drake immediately began to worry the Duke, and the situation was saved.
All the party were now in that condition of physical refreshment which leads human beings to think complacently of gentle movement. They rustled like leaves in a forest, and this rustling was a preliminary to a general uprising. Lady Drake carried off the Duke as the chariot and horses carried off Elijah. The Duchess, under thestress of some sudden mental prompting, swooped in a dignified manner upon Chloe. Mr. Bush composed himself to rest with a cake in each hand. Lady Pearl, Miss Bindler, and Mr. Ingerstall formed a somewhat unsympathetic trio, and trundled towards an adjoining orchid-house; and Mr. Rodney, still trembling and horror-stricken, strolled tragically forward with Mrs. Verulam into the Bun Emperor's rose garden, Number 4. (All the rose gardens were numbered at Ribton Marches.)
Mrs. Verulam was glowing, Mr. Rodney glowering. The former was full of James Bush, the latter of intense and shrinking disgust. These feelings rather clashed in the soft light which now began to fall over the scented garden.
"The true path of pleasure," began Mrs. Verulam in an inward voice, "lies where we never seek it—far, far away from the shams and the conventions with which we surround our little lives. Oh! why—why are we so blind?"
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Rodney; "I can see perfectly well, and I must really venture to say that——"
"You think you can see," interrupted Mrs. Verulam in soft rebuke, "as the blind man does when he mistakes men for trees walking."
"I never made any such mistake," Mr. Rodney rejoined with unwonted vivacity; "I never in my life supposed that I saw a tree taking active exercise. Really, I must protest——"
"Your very protestations prove your sad condition, and the sad condition of all in our world," Mrs. Verulam went on intellectually; "but I, at least, will be blind no longer. Mr. Bush shall open my eyes."
Mr. Rodney gasped. He felt that the time had indeed arrived for him to speak out.
"Mrs. Verulam," he began—"Mrs. Verulam, I must—forgive me."
"For what?" she sweetly queried.
"I must, indeed—I must speak. Are you—can you be aware of what society will inevitably say if you permit a—a man—of Mr. Bush's—er—appearance, or, indeed, any man to open your eyes? Society will not permit these—these unwarrantable—forgive me—unwarrantable liberties. The line will be drawn—it will, indeed. Let me implore you to realise this before it is too late—let me implore you, if I have any influence!"
He quite broke down, and trod on a valuable verbena.
"Society calls crimes virtuous, and virtues criminal," said Mrs. Verulam.
"Oh, pardon me—pardon me!" he babbled.
"Yes, it does. True virtue is simple, frank, unashamed."
"Ah, ah! unashamed in the—the very shocking way of Eve before her very desirable—if I may say so—fall," cried Mr. Rodney.
"Mr. Bush stands to me for virtue," added Mrs. Verulam irrepressibly.
This was too much for Mr. Rodney. He stood stock still like one struck with paralysis.
"Mr. Bush!" he stuttered. "Then what does Mr. Van Adam stand for?"
"Chloe—er—Mr. Van Adam! What has he to say to the matter?"
"Oh, Mrs. Verulam, everything, everything! It is time, I see—it is time—I must—I ought to tell you the truth."
"Please do so."
He hesitated for a moment, passing a cambric pocket-handkerchief across his pallid lips; then he said:
"At least, let us come into the shade."
That "at least" gave the man's soul in a couple of words. He felt all the terror of his coming revelation. Mrs. Verulam assented, and they moved to a little grove of shrubs, monkey-trees, and other indigenous plants which grew near by. Here the sun was less ardent; here a soft breeze blew kindly; but here also something else occurred, which gave Mr. Rodney time to compose himself a little. As they came into this seclusion, artificially induced by the genius of the Bun Emperor's landscape-gardener, an unexpected vision burst upon their eyes. Beneath a monkey-tree of superb proportions, in a hammock suspended between substantial supports, they beheld Mr. Harrison laid out at full length smoking a large cigar in semi-unconsciousness, while the faithful Marriner alternately rocked him gently the while she hummed a crooning lullaby, and stroked the surface of his bald and dome-like head with the palm of her delicate hand. For a moment the charm of this quite unexpected fairy scene so enervated Mrs. Verulam and Mr. Rodney that they remained motionless in contemplation of it. The rhythmically rocking groom of the chambers, the shrill and monotonous cry of the lady's-maid in the sultry summer evening, created a sort of magical, unreal atmosphere. The slanting light, too, caught the bald head, and transformed it almost into the likeness of a globe of some glittering material. And as it swayed solemnly to-and-fro like the pendulum of a clock, in obedience to the motion given by the faithful Marriner to the hammock, it laid a hypnotic spell upon these two who gazed at it.
"Sleep, oh, sleep! it's never too late for that;Sleep, yes, sleep, with your head upon the mat!For the workman's train is passing nigh,And the early milkman gives his cry,You'll be taken to quod when the copper comes by,So sleep, yes, slee-eep!"
sang Marriner tenderly, and Mr. Harrison did all he knew to be obedient. He dozed, and was rapidly proceeding towards the most profound condition of slumber, when Mr. Rodney, whether by accident or design, coughed rather loudly. At this unearthly sound, Marriner, who was half dreaming while she sang, was greatly startled. Surprise released her limbs from her control, and the arm that rocked the hammock shot suddenly forward with such violence that Mr. Harrison was ejected from his delicious position, and, executing a clever turn in the air, alighted at full length upon the ground, face downwards, with a noise that was surprising. Mrs. Verulam looked reproachfully at Mr. Rodney, while the faithful Marriner fell on her knees beside the groom of the chambers.
"Oh, he's dead!" she wailed. And she, too, turned on Mr. Rodney. "You've killed him, sir!" she shrieked respectfully.
"I am very sorry," said Mr. Rodney. "I didn't intend."
At this juncture Mr. Harrison lifted his face from the earth, sat round so that they could see his indignant expression, heaved himself forward upon his knees, and then, planting his hands, palms downwards, upon the ground, and using them as a lever, straightened his legs very deliberately, and was presently successful in standing upon his feet. He made no remark after this elaborate acrobatic performance, but gave Mr. Rodney a markedly malignant glance, and then shambled away among the monkey-trees till he was lost to sight. Marriner, meanwhile, stood by looking downcast.
"I am sure, ma'am," she said at length, "if I had surmised that the races would conclude so early, I should never——"
"You can go, Marriner," said Mrs. Verulam. "I had no idea you had such a pretty singing voice."
"If I might speak, ma'am."
"Certainly, Marriner."
"I learnt from going to hear Madame Albani, ma'am, at the Albert Hall on my evenings out."
And she slipped away, carrying with her an atmosphere of curious cultivation.
"That man is very offensive, very!" said Mr. Rodney with feeling.
"For being thrown out of the hammock?"
"He had no business to be in it. Servants should not go about sleeping all over the place in their masters' gardens. This sort of thing is never permitted at Mitching Dean."
"Oh, I like to see the humble enjoying themselves," said Mrs. Verulam with vague beneficence, a little forgetful, perhaps, of Mr. Harrison's natural self-importance and late severe accident. "But what were you going to say to me?"
And she sat down on a rustic seat made from the trunk of a tree all knobs. Mr. Rodney perched in a distressed manner upon one of the branches, and said dolefully:
"Really, all this—this tumult has quite put it out of my head."
"You wished, I think, to tell me the truth about something," said Mrs. Verulam in an assisting voice.
"I believe so—yes, I thought it my duty," began Mr. Rodney.
He was now in cold blood, owing to the late hammock episode, and found it difficult to say what would have been easy enough when he was in what was for him apassion. He ran one long hand over a dozen or so of the knobs, feeling them like a phrenologist.
"I really considered it my bounden duty," he continued very plaintively, with an accent on the "bounden."
"Yes?" said Mrs. Verulam with calm innocence.
"To—to tell you what—what the world is saying," said Mr. Rodney in marked discomfort.
"About me?"
"About you and—and Mr. Van Adam."
"Indeed! What should it say?"
"Very, very dreadful things!" said Mr. Rodney, almost blushing.
"Dear me! How very absurd!" she cried lightly.
"Indeed!" said Mr. Rodney, with more courage. "It is not absurd." He thought of his hours of furtive precaution in the royal Enclosure. "Far, far from it! I hardly like to tell you——"
"Please do."
"Well," commenced Mr. Rodney, with the manner of a budding anarchist throwing his first bomb, "Lady Sage and one or two others—leading la——" he thought of theEra, and hastily substituted "leading women, take the matter so seriously that—oh, my dear Mrs. Verulam, do pray forgive me! they are actually intending not to see you—when you are there, you understand."
"They want to cut me, in fact?"
Mr. Rodney really blushed and was silent, giving consent.
"If they do so, what will follow?" said Mrs. Verulam, with a great deal of apparent composure.
"Follow!" cried Mr. Rodney, with all his force and eloquence. "Death!"
"Indeed! Is Lady Sage to be the corpse, or am I?"
"You!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Mrs. Verulam, think of it! Social death, ostracism, exile—er—er——" He tried to think of further words bearing a similar signification, but failing, added: "Do you realise my meaning? Do you see the gulf that is opening out beneath your very feet?"
"Indeed I do, with very great pleasure."
"Pleasure!"
The word rose from him in a male scream.
"Who is being murdered?" remarked the deep voice of the Duchess, who at this instant became visible threading her way through the shrubs with Chloe at her side.
CHAPTER XI.
MR. HARRISON'S NIGHT-WATCH.
Fromthis terrible moment despair began to grip Mr. Rodney, and the worst of it was, that besides being in despair, he was in confusion. He now fully recognised that Mrs. Verulam was suffering under a "possession," as he called it to himself. What he could not decide was, which of those two demons, Huskinson Van Adam and James Bush, it was who possessed her with demoniacal influence. Lady Sage was about to cut Mrs. Verulam because of Mr. Van Adam. Society would certainly follow Lady Sage's lead on the same account. But Mr. Rodney's penetration had almost convinced him that the man from Bungay was, in truth, the Svengali to this Trilby. It was surely his enormous shadow in which Mrs. Verulam now walked. It was his fatal rusticity which she envied, his sheep-washing, bee-swarming, cabbage-digging, pea-podding existence she aimed at. This was so. But then, why should she compromise herself with this divorced Huskinson?Why should she lead him about whithersoever she went? Poor Mr. Rodney began "turning, turning in mazes of heat and sound." He yearned for the informing letter from Lord Bernard Roche which tarried so long upon the way. Nevertheless, when it came, this letter only increased the darkness in which events moved—at the first.
In fact, all things tended towards complication in and about the palace at this time. And although Mr. Rodney, in the usual manner of men, flattered himself that he alone of all the universe was truly troubled in spirit, he was entirely mistaken. Mrs. Verulam was secretly exercised at the apparent success which was about to crown her endeavours to leave themilieuin which Heaven had placed her. The Lady Pearl was, or imagined herself to be, swept by the mysterious tremors of a budding affection. The Duchess was in a simmering state of fury against her hostess, and of match-making anxiety on her daughter's behalf. And before the week was out Chloe was struck by a thunder-bolt—metaphorically. At the moment, however, Mr. Rodney was to some extent correct in considering himself the most unhappy person within the precincts of the palace. On this Tuesday night he probably was, as he sat down to dinner, pale, seedy, and bemuddled.
Her Grace was in a certain mental confusion. That afternoon in the shrubbery she had been "sounding" Chloe, as she called it. That is to say, she had been asking Chloe a very large number of extremely leading questions in a very determined bass voice. Chloe had been obliged to hear herself characterised as a very rascally woman, and to receive to herself the flood of pity intended for her ex-husband. She had also beeninformed that the victim of one unfortunate marriage should instantly seek for happiness in another and more judicious union. And she had learned the catalogue of the Lady Pearl's perfections. According to her mother, the Lady Pearl's only fault was a slight tendency to hereditary gout, and that, as her Grace very justly observed, was glorified in a manner by the fact that it was distinctly filial.
"The Duke has always been a victim to it, Mr. Van Adam," she exclaimed with undoubted force, "and Pearl has been accustomed from a child to look up to her father as to a being almost sacred."
The apparent deduction to be drawn from this sound reasoning was, that if from childhood you look up to a sacred being—who has the gout—you will be rewarded by receiving the sacred being's complaint; a somewhat unsatisfactory state of things, which, however, has this advantage, that it places you in the excellent position of being an undoubted martyr. Chloe had done her best not to give any encouragement to the determined hopes of the Duchess, but her gay delight in titles made it so difficult for her to resist the seductions of one so venerable as the title of Southborough, that she left upon her Grace an impression that there was nothing in the Verulam business on her side. This made the Duchess highly generous to Chloe, but hardly blunted her anger against Mrs. Verulam, who was, no doubt, deliberately trying to snatch the American away from the Lady Pearl. The Duchess's spirit was up in arms against such paltry kleptomania. She was resolved to protect the supposed orange-grower from such wicked designs; and on Tuesday night her bosom swelled with mingled determination and enmity as she solaced her spirit with mayonnaise and '84 champagne.
Mrs. Verulam paid but little heed to the Duchess's physical indications of mental excitement. To-night she was engrossed with the desire to show James Bush, her hero, off to this world ignorant of what a real man can be. So far, Mr. Bush had borne himself bravely and naturally on the whole, the telescope episode alone excepted. His treatment of Ascot had been specially fine and noble. It is not every man, indeed, who has the courage to forsake the gaieties of a box close to the winning-post, the glories of the lawn, for the retired tent of the two-faced lady and the painted charms of the roundabout. It is not every man who has the intrepidity to give the ring the cold shoulder, and the beautiful simplicity to return to a palace at eventide, laden, like the spies of old, with the ripe fruits of Mother Earth—the cocoanuts of a Land of Promise. Already James Bush had betrayed the grandeur of his nature, but Mrs. Verulam was anxious to display every side of this character, so multifarious in beauty. And accordingly, that night after dinner, when the men came into the hall, she began to address herself rather pointedly to her hero, while Mr. Rodney sat writhing with jealousy in the immediate neighbourhood.
"Duchess," she said, "Mr. Bush, you must know, is full of maxims."
"Dear me! Is he related to a copy-book?" replied her Grace lethargically.
"Oh no! Not maxims of that kind. His are founded upon observation of life and knowledge of the world—that is to say, of the beautiful earth. Aren't they, Mr. Bush?"
"There's nought like pea-poddin'," replied that gentleman judicially.
Attired in a dress suit of strikingly original conception and cut, some sizes too small for his large frame, but well adapted to emphasise its enormous bulk, he was spread out upon a huge settee in an attitude of brilliant abandonment. The Duke was beside him, and Lady Drake close by. Mrs. Verulam saw that everybody, reduced to a readiness for comtemplative silence by much dinner, was listening with apparent attention. A bright resolve came to her. She would induce James Bush to show fully his true grand self, to illuminate them all with the light that flamed from a great soul.
"Yes?" she said encouragingly. "Yes?"
Thus adjured, Mr. Bush added, after a moment of deep thought:
"Look after the sheep, and the sheep'll look after you!"
"It sounds like 'Diana of the Crossways,'" piped Lady Drake in her acidulated manner.
"I don't know that I should care to be looked after by a sheep," said Miss Bindler practically, as she lit a small cigar. "I don't consider a sheep to be an efficient animal."
"They want a deal of mindin'," said Mr. Bush—"a deal of mindin'."
"Because they have no minds," said the Duke, yawning as a mask yawns in a pantomime. "The same remark applies to the same class of the human animal. Ask the Government of the day if it isn't so."
But Mrs. Verulam had no intention of permitting her hero to be involved in a commonplace political discussion.
"Oh, I feel sure that even a sheep is deeply, deeply interesting, if properly studied," she said.
"Aye," said Mr. Bush.
"It's what we bring to a thing, isn't it?" she added, greatly encouraged.
"What would you bring to a sheep?" said Miss Bindler.
"Swedes," said Mr. Bush, before Mrs. Verulam could make reply.
All this time Mr. Rodney sat petrified, rendered inert and almost idiotic by the turn the conversation was taking. What such remarks meant he scarcely knew; but they seemed to him highly improper and indelicate. He wondered that ladies could hear them without a blush! That Mrs. Verulam could deliberately lead up to them was terrible to him.
Mr. Bush was by this time growing expansive, aware that the conversation which was now in progress depended mainly upon him.
"Swedes to a sheep, the stick to a woman," he ejaculated with a rumbling chuckle.
The Duke looked delighted with this philosophy, which rather overwhelmed Mrs. Verulam for the moment.
"You believe in the rights of man, Mr. Bush?" he said. "Eh? eh? You stick to the old dispensation, the walnut-tree cure? What? what?"
"I should be very sorry for the man who laid a finger upon me, very!" said Miss Bindler calmly, but with emphasis.
"Oh, Mr. Bush is only joking," said Mrs. Verulam hastily; while Mr. Rodney lay back, closed his eyes, and permitted his entire face to become a mass of wrinkles.
"A great many young men would be the better for a good whipping nowadays," bellowed the Duchess from her sofa. "I would begin by applying the bastinado to those who refuse to answer invitations. Susan Barrington asked three hundred and two dancing men to her ball the othernight. Thirty-two answered, and thirty turned up. The ball was a fiasco."
This restorative brought Mr. Rodney to. Lady Barrington was, of course, one of his oldest and most valued friends.
"The question of answering invitations is certainly one of vital importance," he began with soft animation. "For my part, as a citizen of the world, I cannot help thinking that——"
"Never give a bullock sulphur," said Mr. Bush, now fully roused to epigram—"never do it, or you'll repent of it."
Mr. Rodney was seldom in his life nearer making use of the foolish and tiresome monosyllable "damn."
"And how about the bullock?" said his Grace, assuming the helplessness of his appearance, and laying aside the usual grimacing geniality of his manner. "If the bullock has the sulphur, and you repent of it, what will be the exact mental condition of the swallower?"
All now prepared to hang upon the man from Bungay's words—all, that is, except Mr. Rodney, who again closed his eyes, and Mr. Ingerstall, whose silence is accounted for by the fact that all this time he was sitting in a corner and drawing an elaborate caricature of the paragon. But Mr. Bush was not of a temper to give satisfaction to impertinent questioning; he suddenly turned sulky, and, after muttering heavily "Let the bullock alone, and the bullock 'll let you alone!" he appeared to fall asleep. Mrs. Verulam was very angry with the Duke for thus spoiling a delightful evening, so she smiled with extraordinary sweetness, and set Lady Drake at him while she devoted herself to the Duchess. The latter, lethargic though she was, became suspicious of her hostess's extraordinaryaffability, and of the perfectly free hand which the Van Adam was being allowed with the Lady Pearl. She could not realise that Mrs. Verulam's sudden access of seraphic sweetness was occasioned solely by the fury of a woman who sees her hero balked by a blunderer in the very hour of his triumph. It therefore suddenly occurred to her Grace that possibly Mrs. Verulam and Mr. Van Adam were trying to blind her and the world, that possibly they were even using her precious, her gouty and innocent Pearl after the manner of a stalking horse. Under the seizure of these black surmisings, she replied to Mrs. Verulam's blandishments rather plethorically, and her eyes became enormously prominent, as was their custom in moments of acute mental strain. Mrs. Verulam was at first too angry to notice the rather abrupt assumption by the Duchess of a private enquiry agent's manner when in converse with a suspected party, but possibly she would have been forced to observe it had not Mr. Ingerstall suddenly shot forward from his corner, obtruded his squat form between them, and hissed, in a pattering whisper:
"He's asleep, isn't he?"
"Asleep! Who?" cried the Duchess, startled.
For Mr. Ingerstall's proceedings were intensely rapid, and were always carried forward with a masterly disregard of other people's feelings. Mr. Ingerstall, with incomparable agility, indicated Mr. James Bush, who at that moment emitted a reassuring snore.
"Yes, he is. I've got something to show you."
"Oh, what is it?" said Mrs. Verulam, hastily withdrawing her skirts—"what is it? Is it alive?"
"In Paris I flatter myself they would say it was," he gabbled under his breath. "For in Paris art is alive,breathing, vitalised, full-blooded, fearless, sensuous, daring. God knows what they would call it in England! Look at it!"
He popped out his hand under their noses, holding a sheet of paper, upon which was drawn a thing as fat as a pig and as hairy as a porcupine, lying on its back, with feet, as big as houses, pointing to the sky, while from its mouth, wide as a witches' cavern, floated on a scroll the following legend: "Never give a bullock sulphur!"
"It's very like," remarked her Grace, after a moment of contemplation—"very true to life. Don't you think so, Mrs. Verulam?"
"I don't know what it is," said Mrs. Verulam, in great perplexity; "is it meant for a bullock, then—after the sulphur?"
Mr. Ingerstall's monkey-like face was suffused with indignant blood.
"A bullock!" he cried poignantly. "It's Bush!"
The shrillness of the exclamation thus wrung from outraged genius not only made all the awake members of the house-party jump, but even pierced through the hide of the paragon's tough sleep.
"Bush!" he said, sitting up with a snort; "who's a-wantin' me? Is it time to begin hoein'?"
There was a dead silence. Nobody grasped the inner meaning of the final query.
"Who wants Bush?" continued the owner of the name. "Eh?"
"I do!" suddenly shrieked Mr. Ingerstall, protruding his caricature beneath the eyes of Mrs. Verulam's ideal. "I do! I ask you, I ask you confidently, is that a bullock, or is it you?" And, thrusting the paper between Mr. Bush's fists, Mr. Ingerstall flung himself back in his chair, puffingwith all the generous indignation of insulted and misunderstood genius.
The Duke with very great difficulty restrained himself from a nasal "Joey!" succeeded by the time-honoured "Here we are again!" which is the proper prelude to jokes of the more practical order. Mr. Rodney opened his eyes and sat a little forward on his chair; and Mrs. Verulam, speechless with horror at Mr. Ingerstall's named outrage, gazed steadily at the Turkey carpet of the hall, and wished it might engulf her. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush stared upon the work of art with his goggling red-brown eyes and said nothing.
"Is it, I ask you once more with perfect confidence," snapped Mr. Ingerstall with rising excitement—"is it a bullock or is it you? Come, come!" And he slapped his fat hands with great violence down on his knees.
"Me!" mumbled Mr. Bush at length. "Me! What d'yer mean?"
"What I say, Heaven preserve us all! What I say!" screamed the artist.
Mr. Bush looked from the outrage to its committer, and appeared to be measuring the latter with his eye. Having done so, and apparently found the result to be satisfactory as compared with his own measurements, he remarked: "This me!" and made a movement suddenly as though he were about to get up.
"Go it!" said Miss Bindler sharply, planting a single eye-glass rapidly under her left eyebrow, and screwing up her cheek. "Time!"
Mrs. Verulam became breathless with excitement. Her gaze was fastened upon her hero. A thrill ran through the house-party. With his huge hands upon the arms ofthe chair, Mr. Bush lolled forward towards Mr. Ingerstall and became brilliant.
"I askyouwith confidence," he bawled slowly, "is this here a bullock, or is it me?"
Mr. Ingerstall looked at him for an instant, and then cried like something whipped:
"It's a bullock!"
Mr. Bush glanced around with the air of a successful prize-fighter about to retire from the ring.
"That's all right!" he ejaculated, and leaning back he fell asleep again.
This incident, trifling enough in itself, was by no means trifling in its consequence. For it turned the scale in which Mrs. Verulam's heart was trembling. Down came the scale on Mr. Bush's side. The feminine confidence that had been ever so slightly shaken by the hero's beast-like retreat before the telescope of the Bun Emperor was now entirely restored. That retreat had been a lapse from the brave custom of a noble life, not an illustration from the existence of a coward. Mrs. Verulam knew from this moment that she was worshipping before a shrine that was really sacred, a shrine that deserved, that had earned, its incense. As the conqueror fell so calmly and confidently asleep, reposing, as it were, upon the very field of battle, she looked across at Chloe with eyes that claimed her tender sympathy. The Duchess intercepted the look, and darted indignant enquiry upon Mrs. Verulam, while Chloe, observing the accident, softly smiled with a pretty mischief. Unfortunately, her Grace, driven by dread suspicion, turned sharply towards Chloe, and surprised the smile at its climax. The Duchess swelled with fury. She now felt certain that she was being tricked by this abandoned couple. Her Pearl was being made a cat's-paw.Old Martha Sage was right. For a moment she sat shaking like a jelly in her armchair. Then she rose up, uttered a general "good night," that sounded like notes from a bass tuba, called the Lady Pearl, and swept in a distinctly frenzied manner up the staircase to bed.
"The Duchess is very quick on her pins," said Miss Bindler, looking after her. "Did she ever enter for a walking race?" she added to the Duke.
"Not since I married her," his Grace replied.
"She should; she'd stand a ten to one chance. Well, I'll be off to my loose-box, too, I think."
There was a general movement, through which Mr. Bush calmly slept. Lady Drake was just at the foot of the staircase when her sharp little eye was attracted by a pillar, something like a tiny Cleopatra's needle in shape, but bristling with handles and small knobs and buttons, which stood in a far corner of the hall.
"What's that?" she asked, in her thin voice that was like a squeeze of lemon-juice, pointing with her skeleton finger towards it.
"Oh," said the Duke, "that's one of Lite's patent automatic machines, full of sweets, chocolates, and horrors of that kind. Put in a penny, and out bursts a slab of butter-scotch or a stick of peppermint."
"Dear me!" said Lady Drake meditatively, and almost languishingly; "what an excellent idea!"
And she walked slowly upstairs, occasionally turning her virtuous-looking head to shoot an affectionate glance at the machine. Miss Bindler had already vanished. Of all the women—recognised as such—only Mrs. Verulam still lingered, gazing at the majestic form of her sleeping hero. She longed to see it clothed in armour, helmeted, with sword by its side and all the emblems of ancientchivalry and valour, resting like a Crusader, only alive and on a sofa instead of on a tomb. She breathed a gentle sigh, and suddenly became aware that Mr. Rodney was observing her with a white glare of scrutiny over the top of theWorld, the last number of which had arrived at the palace that afternoon. She blushed and vanished. Mr. Rodney ground his teeth, a proceeding which till that moment he had always regarded as the special prerogative of the lower classes. Chloe heard the grating sound. She was just resisting the urging of the Duke to "stay and have a smoke, and hear some damned good stories!"
"Can't to-night," she answered, with a successful effort at young-mannishness; "infernally tired!"
She forced a prodigious yawn and moved towards the staircase. Mr. Rodney meanwhile was desperately reading the paper. Just as Chloe had got her foot on the first stair, she heard him utter an exclamation of surprise.
"Van Adam!" he said.
"Yes."
"Here's another paragraph about you—oh no, your brother. Did you expect him?"
Chloe stopped dead.
"My brother?"
"Yes; look here."
Mr. Rodney rose, and softly approaching, put the paper into her hands.
"Mr. Van Adam, a brother, we believe, of Mr. Huskinson Van Adam, who is now staying with Mrs. Verulam at Ribton Marches, Sunninghill, has just arrived from America on board theArethusa. His destination is believed to be also Ascot. The race week promises to be the most successful on record."
Chloe nearly let the paper fall.
"Dear me!" she said slowly, and looking steadily at Mr. Rodney. "Dear me! I had no idea that—that"—she searched her mind hurriedly for an appropriate American name—"that Vancouver intended to come over this summer."
"I hope we shall see something of him," said Mr. Rodney, with a slightly forced politeness.
"Oh, thanks! he's—Vancouver's rather shy—retiring. Well, good night."
She made off, taking boyish strides towards the friendly shelter of her bedroom.
That night she was almost as much awake as the average owl is in the dark and silent hours. Indeed, she was seldom in bed, being for the most part engaged in searching the advertisement columns of theDaily Telegraphfor the names of private enquiry agents who, for a consideration, were ready to "watch" any living person from the nineteenth century until the Judgment Day. Having compiled a full list of these worthy persons, towards dawn Chloe wrote to the larger number of them, expressing an ardent desire to have the newly-arrived Vancouver shadowed. Just as she was directing the last of these missives, her attention was attracted by a sound as of a loud and heavy voice at some distance, uttering an enormous quantity of slow remarks with pauses between them. She listened for some minutes. The sound continued. Chloe was not naturally a nervous woman, but she was a rather curious one, and she began to wonder what on earth could be happening.
She got up from her writing-table and gently opened her bedroom door. The palace was plunged in profound darkness, and somewhere, away in the darkness, somebody was apparently delivering a recitation in snatches.Who could it be? And where? Chloe took her candle, and, turning up her trousers instinctively for fear they should rustle, made softly in the direction of the sound. It chanced that her bedroom was very near the servants' staircase, from which, on Monday morning, Mr. Rodney had heard Mr. Harrison's anxious confidences poured into the distant ear of his imperial master. Chloe knew nothing about this staircase, but, searching for the sound, she presently arrived at a swing-door which opened upon it, and stood on almost the self-same stair as that previously pressed by the feet of the attentive Mr. Rodney. She then heard something that at first absolutely amazed and confounded her.
When the women of the house-party, among whom we will include Chloe, had gone to bed, the Duke, balked of his attempt to engage Chloe as a listener, fastened on Mr. Ingerstall, and led away that unhappy and seething victim of a Providence which sees fit unevenly to distribute muscular development and size to be smoked over and anecdoted at. Mr. Rodney proceeded to go on grinding his teeth and cursing himself as the most miserable of men, and Mr. James Bush went on reposing. He did not hear the powdered Frederick, with sweetly tinkling sounds by his left elbow adjust the drink his soul loved upon an oaken table. He did not hear the persistent grating which betokened the supreme mental agony of the admirable owner of Mitching Dean. He was far away in the land where all things are either forgotten or remembered in a manner more fantastic than the trickery of blank oblivion. And in this land he elected to remain until the Duke's last tale was told, Mr. Ingerstall's last recollection of Paris Quartier Latin days was hissed, Mr. Rodney's last groan was hushed. In short, everybodywent off to bed, except Mr. Bush, who had a nasty habit of going to sleep anywhere except in the proper place for such a performance. Even the menials, after watching hopelessly for awhile by the reposing warrior, in hopes to see him wake, placed a lighted candle by his side, switched off the electric light, and skedaddled to the luxuriously-furnished attics provided for them by a thoughtful master. When at length Mrs. Verulam's hero woke, he was alone, in almost total darkness. He heaved himself round, spread forth his arms and clasped the cold, smooth sides of a decanter. The object roused an instinct always latent, when not active, within his heart. Mechanically he took measures to transfer the contents of the decanter to another receptacle, and then, refreshed, he rose, grasped the candle, and made off, a little vaguely, with some fragmentary recollections of bed floating hazily through his mind. Missing the grand staircase, he presently found himself at the foot of another, and was about to ascend, when he heard, as Mr. Rodney had heard, the shrill tinkle of the bell of the Bun Emperor's patent telephone. Mr. Bush paused and scratched his enormous head. The bell rang again. Directing his large eyes towards it, Mr. Bush, who had never before been made known to a telephone, approached his face to it with a view merely of examining it closely, and was suddenly startled by hearing a voice of most extraordinary thinness and spiritualistic quality say, "Are you there? Damn you! are you or aren't you there?"