Mr. Bush paused and endeavoured to reflect, but, failing, again permitted his ear to approach the vehicle, and again heard the same question, afflicted with the same and an additional oath. The gentleman from Bungay was not of very susceptible temperament, but this shadowyvoice of the night, speaking so genially and so colloquially, rather fascinated him, and, placing his candle upon the floor, he proceeded to listen attentively.
"Damn you! are you there?" continued the voice. "Did I or did I not tell you you was to watch all night, and be at the tube at three o'clock to the moment? Did I tell you or did I not?"
Silence fell. Mr. Bush remained in an attitude of entrancement. Presently once more the tiny voice took up the wondrous tale.
"If you aren't at the tube in another five minutes, to-morrow you shall be turned into the street, as sure as you're a living man! Into the street you shall go, bag and baggage! Do you hear, you——"
More words of a highly unmentionable character followed, and another but shorter pause, through which Mr. Bush smiled with a solemn appreciation of wide vocabularies. The bell rang violently again.
"—— you, go to the tube directly minute!" resumed the voice. "Go to the tube and answer me, or you'll repent it to the last minute of your natural life, you will!"
These repeated references to a tube, and to the earnest desire of the voice to receive a reply, at length began to take effect on Mr. Bush. He picked up his candle from the floor and let its light fall on the voice, or rather on the voice's near neighbourhood. A tube started to his eye. He slowly unhooked it, and again listened to the voice, which meanwhile had again rung the bell about five-and-fifty times.
"Are you there? Where are you? Where the —— are you? —— you, are you or aren't you there? Why aren't you there? What do you mean by it? Did I or did I not tell you to be there at three o'clock? I say, didI tell you or did I not tell you to be there? You ——, did I or did I——"
"No," said Mr. Bush into the tube.
"Oh, you're there at last, are you?" (More words.) "I wonder you have the impidence to come. Yes, I do, and Mrs. Lite says similar. She wonders, she says, you have the blasted impidence to come at all after keeping me dancing here for an hour and more. What? Dancing here, I say. I've been dancing here for an hour and more."
"Keep on dancing!" roared Mr. Bush to the tube. "Keep it up!"
He did not in the least comprehend what the telephone was, or what was happening. All he knew was that a voice was insulting him with a refreshing grossness, and that he seemed able, by means of this tube, to insult it back again. This pleased him very well, and he carefully laid his candlestick down on the floor with a view to thorough ease and equality in the ensuing combat. Then he once more seized the tube, and reiterated, "Dance away, and be ——!"
There was a long pause. Apparently the voice, obedient to the command, was engaged in dancing away and being treated according to Mr. Bush's prescription. That gentleman began to be afraid that the game was up, and that he had shown his valour too abruptly, when his ear was again tickled by the reassuring utterance:
"To-morrow I'll skin you!" (Pause.) "D'you hear what I say?—to-morrow, when you come round with your report, I'll skin you!"
Mr. Bush scratched his head, trying to invent an appropriate rejoinder to this pleasantry.
"When you come round with the report, skin you I will, as sure as you're a living man," tickled the voice once more.
"I sha'n't come round," said Mr. Bush. "Go to blazes!"
At this rejoinder the voice appeared to become a raving lunatic. It poured forth a stuttering volley of impossible words, some peculiar to Camberwell, others borrowed from a more Whitechapel dialect, and others again that are in ordinary use among the groom race, the able-seaman tribe, and the aborigines of the British army in all parts of the world. Mr. Bush heard them with a relish that was almost voluptuous. He now began to regard the affair as a thundering good joke—the sort of joke that his rustic mind could well appreciate, and his desire was to urge the voice on to further efforts in the fine profession of blasphemy. He therefore applied himself heartily to the tube just as Chloe appeared, walking gingerly at the summit of the staircase. Seeing the flicker of Mr. Bush's candle, she extinguished hers exactly as he bawled this varied monologue:
"Keep your hair on! There's nought like pea-poddin'. Look after the sheep, and the sheep'll look after you. Never give a bullock sulphur, or you'll repent of it. Keep on dancin'. Go to blazes—go!"
Chloe's first idea was that Mr. Bush had gravely exceeded, and that he was now squatting somewhere below her in a basement of the palace, and delivering his soul to some imaginary recipient of such articles. She cautiously descended some steps, and perceived the paragon at the telephone, listening with a rapt attention to the voice's reply to his rural adjuration. It cannot be printed here. In truth, the imperial occupant of the fishing-cottage, whosupposed himself to be conversing with Mr. Harrison, drew near to apoplectic convulsions with a rapidity which seriously alarmed the Empress.
"How's yourself?" continued Mr. Bush, making a strong intellectual effort. "Has the dancin' done for yer? Would you like to skin me now? Come on; I'm waitin' to be skinned. Yes, I am; I'm ready for it. Come and skin me—come!"
To Chloe these words were totally inexplicable. To whom this invitation was addressed so cordially she had no idea. She found herself entranced as by the progress of a nightmare, and was just racking her brain to summon a vision of the person who was at the other end of the telephone, when she heard above her a creaking footstep.
This was the groom of the chambers. Poor Mr. Harrison possessed that useful knowledge, the knowledge of which side his bread was buttered. He would almost as soon have died as have lost his post in the palace, which, usually so easy and agreeable, was now become so onerous and complicated, therefore he was intent on obeying as many of the Bun Emperor's increasing commands as possible. But Mr. Harrison, being human, was subject to fatigue. Naturally of a lazy habit, his present unwonted exertions were beginning seriously to tell upon him, and he had therefore disregarded his potentate's commands to watch all night, had set an enormous alarum clock to explode punctually at a quarter to three o'clock in the morning, and had then flung himself fully dressed upon his feather four-poster to refresh himself with a three hours' nap. The alarum, he surmised, would enable him to be at the telephone ready with a lie at the appointed hour. Unfortunately, his calculations, excellent in themselves, were vitiated by the malign proceedings of thealarum, which chose to misbehave itself and to remain silent till three thirty, at which time it made an ejaculation like the last trump. Without glancing at the clock, the trustful groom of the chambers extricated himself from the deep valley in which he had been reposing between two ranges of lofty mountains of heaped-up down, and hastened towards his post, inventing a great number of admirable lies as he went. As he arrived at the top of the stairs, Mr. Bush, now tiring of the joke, restored the tube to its place, and, perceiving that he had wandered into a strange portion of the palace, made slowly off in search of the baronial hall. Chloe, hearing approaching footfalls above her, crept down after him; and thus it happened that Mr. Harrison, wholly unaware of what had passed, presently gained the telephone, and, smiling to himself at the ingenious fable of his night-watch which he was about to unfold, stood listening for the Emperor's ring. It came with violence, and, lending ear, Mr. Harrison found himself welcomed with:
"If you don't come round, as sure as you're a living man, at the end of the week I'll tear you limb from limb, I will."
"Sir!" cried Mr. Harrison into the tube, with an accent of unmitigated terror.
"If you don't come round, I say, to-morrow by eight, at the end of the week I'll tear you limb from limb."
"But, sir, I shall be round, depend upon me; I shall be there to the moment. Oh, most decidedly—without fail I will be round; rely on me."
"Oh, you're coming, are you?"
"Oh, most certainly, sir! Could you doubt it?"
"Then as soon as you come I'll skin you."
"Sir!"
"At eight I'll skin you—to the moment I will; and Mrs. Lite says exactly similar."
On hearing this appalling decision as to his future fate, Mr. Harrison's fortitude gave way. His knees knocked together like castanets. He dropped the tube, and, uttering a dismal wail, turned and slowly fled, scarcely knowing whither, though as a matter of fact his feet mechanically carried him towards that hall in which he had so often held sweet converse with the beloved lady and gentleman who were now so anxious to possess his hide. Still reiterating his fearful wail, like some mournful night-bird, he flapped out into the open, and suddenly found himself within the circle of illumination cast by two bedroom candles, which lit up the following spectacle: Mr. James Bush, with his hands on his knees, guffawing with all his might, and Lady Drake seated on the floor in an Eastern position, attired in an Indian shawl, with her lap full of cigars, brandy-balls, coppers, luggage labels, boxes of pills, sticks of chocolate, rolls of curl-papers, pear-drops, and sealing-wax.
CHAPTER XII.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF LADY DRAKE'S SUPPER.
Lady Drakewas a woman of the very strictest propriety. It seems necessary to state the fact at this juncture. She was a woman of the strictest propriety, and, indeed, was inclined to carry respectability to excess, but she was of a hungry disposition. The descendant of an ancient family of large feeders, she very naturally possessed their main characteristic. Her temperament required a good deal of food to be administered to it at frequent intervals, and even in the watches of the night she wasby no means certain to be exempt from sudden accesses of what in a man might have been called voracity. To combat these effectually, she usually kept a large supply of biscuits, potted meats, and other necessaries by her bedside, and if she woke at any time, would apply herself to these, banish by their means the promptings of heredity, and then, turning over, fall quietly to sleep again, calmed, nourished, and altogether built up. In the hurry of her departure to Ribton Marches, however, she had omitted to provision herself as was her habit, and, being of a highly sensitive disposition, she did not care to disclose the emptiness of her nocturnal larder to those in charge of the commissariat of the palace. On the Monday night she had managed to secrete a dozen or so of chocolates at dessert, and this booty had secured her from actual starvation, although it had not prevented her from suffering severely during the dark hours. But on Tuesday, the chocolates having given out, and her position at dinner precluding the possibility of another successful raid, her case was sad indeed, and something very like starvation stared her in the face.
Under these circumstances Lady Drake became more acidulated than usual, and worried his Grace during the evening with even more than her normal pertinacity and success. And yet it was her victim who eventually heaped coals of fire upon her neat bandeaux, for it was the Duke who explained to her, in the very moment of her despair, those beautiful inventions placed by the Bun Emperor about his palace for the mechanical feeding of the hungry, and the solace of those who wandered abroad in search of luggage-labels and the reviving pill. Lady Drake went up to bed greatly comforted, and fully resolved that, when the palace was wrapped in slumber, she would fare forth,penny-wise, in search of that sustenance which she would most certainly be requiring long before the men dropped their cigar-ends and went up to their rooms. The men were late in going, and Lady Drake, after one or two furtive expeditions to the head of the stairs, rewarded by hideous visions of Mr. Bush resting beside a glass of whisky-and-water, in despair lay down, and, to her extreme surprise, fell fast asleep.
She woke soon after three, feeling heredity strong upon her. Accordingly she got up, wrapped herself in the Indian shawl dressing-gown that was her patent of courtly breeding, took a candlestick in one hand and three shillings and fourpence worth of coppers in the other, and set bravely forth upon her adventure. Down the mighty stairs she tripped, her heart beating high with pleasant anticipations, careless of the gloomy solitude in which the mighty hall was wrapped, intent only upon the satisfaction of an inherited appetite. She gained the bottom of the stairs. All was silent. But the friendly candle flickered upon the blessed machine in whose interior lay hid, as in a mine, such golden dainties—soft, succulent butter-scotch, the pale and rounded peppermint, the crunching bar of cocoanut-ice, and the insidious but rewarding brandy-ball. Her ladyship trembled with rapture as she surveyed it. For one brief instant she devoured it with her tiny eyes like pin-points. Then she placed her candle carefully down, grasped her forty coppers, and crept ravenously forward on slippered feet. She was about to enjoy a supper of some forty courses. The thought shook her to the very soul.
She gained the machine, and her glance ran passionately over its pretty knobs, its delicate buttons, the minute let-in labels which indicated the lairs of its various inhabitants.Which sweet should she treat like the wily badger and "draw" first? After a period of profound meditation, she resolved to open her banquet with a packet of "golden candy." She therefore advanced, placed a penny in the slot, and promptly received a parcel of luggage-labels with pink insertions full of twine. Lady Drake was staggered. Although a traveller, she had never accustomed herself to support life on addresses. But her ardour was only dashed for a moment. Reasoning that one mistake should only lift her on stepping-stones to higher things, and acutely surmising that if luggage-labels occupied the home of "golden candy," "golden candy" should fill the place of luggage-labels, she placed another penny in the slot, and grasping the drawer marked "luggage-labels," was the prompt recipient of yet another parcel of those useful articles. Her ladyship was now irritated. These delays increased her already sharp-set appetite. With a bitter exclamation she thrust a third copper into the slot, attacked a drawer marked "peppermints, extra strong," and was instantly the proud possessor of a neat black button-hook with a cork handle. Many persons of weak character would now have desisted from further perseverance, and have retired, depressed and supperless, to bed. But Lady Drake had not been married to a V.C. without catching the complaint of courage. She had now lost threepence, and was still famishing. Her situation seemed desperate, but she rose to the occasion. A dogged expression came into her tiny, peaked countenance. She seized a chair, placed it before the machine, and sat down with the fixed determination of pressing every button and pulling every knob before she left the battle-field. She meant to have it thoroughly out with the machine. She was resolved tofight to the death. A thousand button-hooks should not turn her from her purpose. In went another copper—another knob was pulled, but this time with a result so remarkable that Lady Drake almost screamed aloud. For all of a sudden an immense jet of pennies spouted forth into her lap and well-nigh submerged her. She was drenched in the coinage of departed generations of sugar-plum seekers, and was rendered breathless by their proved determination to be fed. She nearly succumbed under this wave of misfortune and coppers, but her grit saved her, and, beating aside the flood with her tiny hands as one that swims, she pressed button after button, attacked knob after knob, with all the frenzy of a passionate nature in arms, reckless of danger, heedless of death. Lady Drake "saw red," and had the judgment-day suddenly dawned behind the lattice-windows of the hall, she would still have fought on, still have pressed forward, headlong to glory—and food. A crash of cigars did not daunt her. A cloud of pills nearly blinded but could not deter her. Dutch dolls beset her, but she overcame them. Showers of cherry-blossom broke over her from collapsible squirts, stamps flew round her like falling leaves in autumn—she scarcely knew it. And at last she had her reward. The sweets began to come, heralded by the exquisite eruption of a sugar pig, with a string tail and pink eyebrows all complete. With a piping cry she greeted it and its lovely following, a crowd of all the wonders known to a greater than Fuller. They poured upon the tiny dauntless creature with a passionate ardour, filling her lap to the very brim, until the last knob was grasped, the last button had yielded to her frantic thumb. And just at this moment Mr. James Bush laid an enormous hand on Lady Drake's shoulder, and, with a scream ofsurprise, she turned round, slipped from her chair, and assumed that Eastern posture in which she was discovered by Mr. Harrison as he fled from the cursing telephone.
Now the Duke, who was a heavy man but a light sleeper, heard Lady Drake's scream in his dreams. It was followed by the bang of a door as Chloe, unobserved by the engrossed couple in the hall, gained her bedroom and flung herself in a fit of laughter upon her pillow. The bang decided the Duke to wake up. He carried out his decision with manly promptitude, and, bounding out upon the landing, protruded his head over the oaken balustrade and beheld Lady Drake seated upon the floor in a dressing-gown, apparently engaged in friendly intercourse with the man from Bungay. His Grace did not perceive Mr. Harrison, who had not yet emerged into the circle of light. Therefore, after a moment of careful contemplation, the Duke returned chuckling to his apartment, and, murmuring something vague about "not spoiling sport," and a mumbling conviction that he had always thought that fellow Bush was "a bit of a dog," lay down again to laugh.
Meanwhile, the courage which had supported Lady Drake during her fight with the machine was ebbing away under a stress of circumstances sufficient to appal the stoutest heart. Although her temper had given her a great victory over the Bun Emperor's patent, her respectability took serious umbrage at being discovered at four o'clock in the morning, immodestly draped in an Indian shawl, by an immense rustic of whom she knew nothing. Still, the little thing was grown so intrepid by association with the late deceased V.C. that she might have borne up against Mr. Bush. But the apparition of the groom of the chambers in full flight, the sound of his wailing cry, the sight of his disordered appearance and starting eyes,upset a mind and body naturally fatigued in the reaction that invariably succeeds a great crisis. Lady Drake remained upon the floor for about a couple of minutes, gazing fixedly at Mr. Bush and Mr. Harrison, and mechanically grasping in each hand two melting fragments of Turkish delight, vaguely thought of by her as defensive weapons against wicked men. Then, either forced to the conviction that such confections could hardly avail her much in a physical contest, or moved by some unreasonable fancy of the mind feminine, she got up very suddenly, and covering her retreat by a volley of edibles and miscellaneous articles of steel, wood and papier-mâché, she walked upstairs, having hysterics all the way, and vanished in a piping yell like the note of a toy terrier under the spell of music.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Harrison, their persons and hair decorated with a thousand sugar-plums, remained staring at each other aghast. Then Mr. Bush, extracting from his beard a surprise packet, two brandy balls and a penknife, solemnly turned and walked away to bed without deigning to speak to the groom of the chambers, who was left to make the best of his way to his apartment in a condition nearly bordering upon homicidal mania. Indeed, he knew not whether he waked or dreamed, whether he was in a nightmare, or whether he had merely become unexpectedly delirious. Only in the morning, when he woke to find his whiskers full of Everton toffee, did he realise that in very truth the Londoners had been holding their unhallowed revels in the sacred palace of the Emperor, and that it was incumbent upon him to get up if he was to be in time to be skinned by eight o'clock, according to the agreement made overnight with his imperial master.
The early beams of the bright and cheerful summer sun shone gaily over the Ribton Marches domain as the wretched Mr. Harrison, carrying in one hand the enormous volume containing his "Report of the Conduct of the Londoners on Tuesday, the — of June, 18—," set forth to the fishing-cottage to meet his doom. He walked very slowly, with that lingering gait peculiar to men in his dreadful circumstances, and occasionally rent the delicious morning atmosphere with lamentations which might have moved a heart of stone. But even the slowest walker arrives at the skinning post at last, and, as the clocks struck eight, Mr. Harrison's protruding eyes beheld the glittering sheet of water on whose verge stood the small pavilion where dwelt his banished master.
The Bun Emperor was up and already stationed in the embrasure examining the horizon through the telescope which had so alarmed Mr. Bush. His visage was empurpled. His hands, when not employed, clenched and unclenched themselves with threatening vivacity. Already, in fancy, they seemed to be at work on Mr. Harrison's outer integument. The groom of the chambers paused beside the pond and looked across its waters with an expression of wild entreaty. The Emperor dashed the window open.
"Come on!" he bawled.
"Sir!" cried Mr. Harrison, in a failing voice.
"Come on directly minute!" shouted the Emperor, as the small and rounded form of the Empress joined him, gazing through the field-glasses at the agitated menial. "Come on, or you'll repent of it to the last hour of your mortal life, you will!"
"Oh, by all means, most certainly—oh, most decidedly yes!" faltered Mr. Harrison, wavering very slowly aroundthe pond in the direction of the cottage. "Oh, indeed—rely—on——"
"Make haste!" yelled the Emperor in a voice of thunder.
"Oh, you wicked, ungrateful man!" squeaked the Empress. "Oh, to think that it should come to this!"
Mr. Harrison was now upon the gravel path before the cottage and between it and the pond. He stood still again.
"Come in this moment!" said the Emperor fiercely.
But Mr. Harrison did not obey this behest. Terror rooted him to the spot. He shook his head despairingly some dozen times or more.
"Come in!" reiterated the Emperor. "Do you dare to defy me?"
"Wicked, wicked man!" cried the Empress.
"Let me explain, sir! Oh, indeed, I will explain!" murmured Mr. Harrison, trying to gain time.
"Coward!" said the Emperor, with scathing bitterness. "You know I can't come out to get at you! You know I've given my word to the fiddle-faced feller. Coward!"
"Cowardy custard!" added the Empress with feminine force, and a manner of the keenest vituperation.
But Mr. Harrison was turned into cast-iron by fear.
"I will not come in, sir, to be skinned—no, I will not! by no means, on no account whatever," he explained. "No, I will not, if I stays here till the Doomsday—no, indeed!"
This intrepid reply evidently took the Emperor aback. He hesitated and held a whispered parley with his consort. Then he cried:
"You'd better come in!" with ferocity.
"Oh no, sir—no, indeed, not at all! I will not, indeed,you may depend upon me! Rely on me, I will not!" said Mr. Harrison with brazen timidity.
The Emperor again consulted with his helpmeet, who evidently urged a compromise, for he finally said:
"I'll keep my hands from you, but come in you shall!"
"Sir!" said Mr. Harrison, preparing to make conditions.
"Come in, I say, and I'll keep my hands off you!"
"And Mrs. Lite, sir?" said the cautious menial. "She will not attempt to injure me—oh dear no, on no account whatever!"
The Empress gave her word, and Mr. Harrison proceeded to the front door, and was quickly in the audience parlour. Now, extreme fear lends to some men brains. Mr. Harrison's fear was extreme, so extreme that, during his passage from the pond to the parlour, his mind became brilliant, and he formed a plan of campaign, which he at once proceeded to carry out with the skill of an accomplished general and actor. Instead of merely entering the parlour then, he burst into it with this remarkable utterance:
"Lord, sir, Lord! The doings of the Londoners! Lord, sir! The behaviour of them as is in your place! Their goings on! Their treatment of your inventions! Their tampering with Mrs. Lite's parrots! Their violence to me! Their manners with the telephone—Lord! Lord! To see them with the orchestrion! Only to see them! It is awful! Lord, sir, Lord! Their proceedings of a night-time! Sweet-eating! Getting at your labels! Flying at me with your button-hooks! Assaulting of me because I carry out your orders! Lord, sir, Lord! If I am driven mad, it is no wonder—oh no, indeed! by no means, on no account whatever!"
And he sank down upon a chair, as if in the very extremity of horror, as indeed, from other causes than those mentioned, he truly was. The Emperor and Empress turned ghastly pale as they surveyed him, and they, too, sat down abruptly.
"The worst has come!" said the Emperor, in a broken voice. "Henrietta, the worst has come along!"
"And worse than that, sir, you may depend upon me," said Mr. Harrison, plucking up courage and invention as he perceived the success of his wily ruse.
"And worse, Henrietta!" said the Emperor with intense emotion.
"The home! Our little home!" the Empress wailed, forgetting the size of Ribton Marches. "They are breaking up the home!"
"They are indeed, ma'am! They are. Oh yes—most certainly they are!"
"What did I say?" eloquently rejoined the Empress. "What did I always and ever say?"
Nobody seeming to have any idea, she repeated her question six or eight times, and burst into a flood of tears. The Emperor pressed her fat hands with his own, and endeavoured not to choke before a servant. He failed, however, and Mr. Harrison saw that he had won his day and secured the safety of his person. With remarkable conviction, and a fine choice of language, he therefore began to amplify.
"It begun yesterday, sir, I might say," he remarked, wringing his hands in an ostentatious manner. "It begun with them throwing me, sir, from one of your private hammicks, in which I was concealed to watch, according to your orders—throwing me out on my face, sir, flat, and laughing at what they done."
"The brutes!" sobbed the Empress. "The inhuman things! The brutes!"
"Yes, ma'am, it was nearly being my death, the heavy fall and shock. It was Mr. Rodney, I should say, what done it, with his own hands, Mrs. Veddleham standing by and laughing fit to split her sides."
"Hussy!" murmured the Empress. "Thieving hussy!"
"Exactly, ma'am. But there was worse to come. Being thrown down I could have stood, but could not stand being run at of a night-time when doing my duty according to your and Mr. Lite's directions, which was: "Be about, Mr. Harrison, here and there, and keep an eye, a special eye, on that there Mr. Bush, and at the telephone punctual to the moment at three," and then to be to and fro till morning; which I would have till I dropped, and was, though her ladyship, when caught by me with Mr. Bush a-tampering with one of your machines, sir, made for me, sir, him helping of her, and she only in a shawl, ma'am, and he anyhow, with his beard all a-full of your belongings, sir, as I took from him, though nearly laid low; and she screaming up the stairs with her hands that full of your Turkish delight as she could hardly walk, and me following after, and would have got it from her, but Mr. Bush took me unawares from behind, sir, like a coward; and if I escaped with my life, ma'am, it is a wonder—oh, most decidedly; yes, indeed, at all times it is a wonder!"
The groom of the chambers, having perorated, paused. There was a dead and awful silence. The stricken couple were rendered dumb by the magnitude of their horror. That the world should contain such wickedness, and that the Emperor, for a paltry bit of bun-praise, should have let the home to it! Even the Empress forgot to wail.She rested her head against the telescope, and closed her eyes as if to shut out the visions conjured up by Mr. Harrison's recital. Some minutes must have elapsed before she opened them and whispered, with a blush that did her the greatest credit, "And her only in a shawl!"
"My dear," said the Emperor, "my love, remember the presence of Mr. Harrison."
The Empress remembered it, and blushed again. The Emperor now turned towards the man he had intended to skin, and said, with all the frank readiness to own a fault which is only found in a noble nature:
"Mr. Harrison, I was mistook. You have done your duty, and myself and Mrs. Lite shall not forget it. You will receive those perquisites which are your bounden due."
Mr. Harrison got up and inclined himself.
"Though whatever you meant through the telephone," added the Emperor, clouding over again, "mercy only knows!"
"Yes, mercy knows!" concurred the Empress.
Mr. Harrison had no idea to what his master was alluding, but he thought it right and proper to say:
"Through the telephone, sir? I was mad, sir. They had drove me mad—most decidedly, yes, they had."
"Was you mad when you says, 'Dance away and be damned'?" said the Emperor.
"Sir!" cried Mr. Harrison, cold with surprise.
"Was you mad when you says to Mrs. Lite, 'Go to blazes'?"
"Oh, most decidedly—oh, undoubtedly I was, sir!"
"And when you tells me to give a bullock sulphur?"
"Did I, sir?" said Mr. Harrison, beaded with perspiration.
"Mr. Harrison, you did," said the Emperor, withpathetic impressiveness; "and that I was to keep my hair on, look after the sheep and again be damned, Mr. Harrison."
"It was madness, sir; it was indeed, it must have been; oh, not a doubt of it! There can be no question—a bullock, sulphur, dance and be——Oh dear! oh dear! It was madness—oh, most certainly."
"Enough, Mr. Harrison!" said the Emperor with benign condescension. "Enough! Mrs. Lite and me, believing that you was driven mad, will overlook the expressions which should not have come from you to such as us. Enough, Mr. Harrison, enough!"
If Mr. Harrison, touched to the quick by this sublime expression of pardon, fell at his master's feet, who shall blame him? Who shall call him servile? Only greatness and gratitude can properly worship greatness. In the council of war which followed potentate and subject consulted together on equal terms as to what should be done in consequence of the dreadful circumstances which had arisen in the palace from Lady Drake's hereditary instinct for suppers. Measures were concerted, plans were laid, and the groom of the chambers retired from the presence at about ten o'clock, primed with so many orders and injunctions that the madness to which he had falsely sworn seemed not unlikely soon to come upon him in stern reality.
Meanwhile, although Tragedy flapped one sable wing above the fishing-cottage, she managed to flap the other over some portion of the adjacent palace. In the Emperor's magnificent halls, various members of the wicked tribe which so afflicted the worthy owner were in a state of agitation. Mr. Rodney, of course, was one. If there was any agitation going, he was generally in it. That morninghe had received a letter from his excellent friend and most amusing correspondent, Lord Bernard Roche. From this communication it appeared that Lord Bernard had been, and still was, away from New York, which accounted for his delay in replying to Mr. Rodney's letter. But it was not this absence which agitated Mr. Rodney, and caused those impressive wrinkles which now seemed permanent dwellers in his long face. No, Lord Bernard went on to discuss the Van Adam affair, and to say:
"I fail to understand your remarks about poor dear old Huskinson. You seem to imply that you have met him in England, although you do not actually say so. But as far as I know he is still in Florida, with the beloved Boswell for his only companion. Perhaps you have met a relation of the same name. There are, I fancy, several Huskinson Van Adams. Huskinson is a family name, and the family are very fond of it, and so it figures at many Van Adam christenings. My old friend is the best known of the clan, a fine, strapping fellow, very American, but none the worse for that—indeed, all the better for it. They are a grand nation. Just as I am posting this I hear an amazing piece of news, that Huskinson is just sailing for England with Boswell. It seems that he has discovered that his wife is innocent of the charge on which he got his divorce. The Crackers who gave evidence perjured themselves because they thought he wanted to get rid of his Chloe, and would make it all right for them. Having found out their mistake, and that poor old Huskinson only acted hastily in a fit of temper, they have now been telling the truth with amazing vigour. Mrs. Van Adam is believed to be in England, and Huskinson means to find her and try to persuade her to re-marry him. Heaven knows how it will all end."
Reading this missive over a bit of dry toast at breakfast, Mr. Rodney was mightily perplexed. Huskinson a strapping fellow, and very American! Huskinson accompanied by Boswell! Huskinson despairingly searching for his Chloe! Huskinson just sailing for England! What could this mean? Lord Bernard must be mistaken in some of his items of information, and must be of an imaginative turn of mind if he regarded the very slight youth now in Ribton Marches who knew Paris so intimately, and talked English so like an Englishman, as "strapping" and "very American." Besides, where was the monkey? Where was the faithful and fondled Boswell? Mr. Rodney glanced across from his letter to Chloe, who sat opposite to him eating a poached egg calmly. They were the only breakfast-eaters.
"A monkey must be a great solace in moments of depression, I imagine, Van Adam," murmured Mr. Rodney gently.
"Pardon?" said Chloe, drinking some tea.
"I imagine that the companionship of a monkey must be of great assistance when—when a man has to face a world of—of trouble."
"Gracious me! I hate the little brutes!" cried Chloe, taken off her guard.
Mr. Rodney jumped, and glanced again at Lord Bernard's letter. "The beloved Boswell!" There it stood in black and white. What did this mean?
"You hate Boswell?" said Mr. Rodney, fixing his indefinite eyes on Chloe, and, without knowing it, touching with a tapping forefinger like a Queen's Counsel the open letter of Lord Bernard. Chloe saw the gesture, recognised her mistake, and had a cold shiver as she wondered whom the letter was from.
"Boswell! Oh, he's different!" she said hastily. "He's more like a monkey than a friend—I mean more like a friend than a monkey. Dear little Boswell! Oh, he's quite different."
"I almost wonder you could bring yourself to part from him," said Mr. Rodney smoothly.
"By Jove! so do I. But climate, you know. What suits one monkey doesn't suit another. If you bring a monkey up in Florida, he can't live over here. It's what they're accustomed to—like people, you know!"
The close was vague, and, feeling this, Chloe pushed back her chair, and murmuring something about a "cigarette in the garden," hurried out of the room. Mr. Rodney observed her confusion, and an awful thought flashed through his brain-pan. Could it be that Mrs. Verulam was being tricked by an adventurer? Could——Lady Drake pattered in to breakfast, followed almost immediately by the Duke of Southborough.
Lady Drake, who looked, if possible, even more acidulated and demure than usual, was ravenous after the frustrated purpose of the previous night. She perched upon her chair, and stretched her small hands for various foods, with difficulty concealing cannibal instincts. The Duke reposed his lanky frame beside her, and placed his tongue in his cheek as the clown does when he conceals the red-hot poker from the policeman who will presently be frizzled. He had long been worried by Lady Drake. Now he meant to worry her.
"I hope you had a good long night, Lady Drake?" He spoke with sinister geniality.
"Very," piped Lady Drake, cutting into a cutlet with a knife that seemed trembling with eagerness.
"You slept well?" said Mr. Rodney, unconsciously backing up his Grace.
"Beautifully. I've got a quiet conscience."
She threw this last at the Duke with a tiny sneer, which curled her little withered face grotesquely. The Duke got the red-hot poker ready.
"Someone in the house hasn't, I fancy," he said, drawling out his words, and fixing his eyes like an actor about to make a point to the gallery; "someone in the house is of a very restless temperament."
Lady Drake looked at him with the sudden sharpness of a mouse on the alert.
"Oh!" she cried, "there are always noises in a big house at night—furniture cracks."
"Yes," said the Duke, bringing the poker forward. "And armchairs scream, don't they? I've often noticed it."
Lady Drake winked her little eyes rapidly, and the pale yellow of her complexion began to change to a very delicate green, like the leaf of a blanched lettuce.
"And," his Grace continued, with most delicate raillery, "sofas sit on the floor, and then run upstairs like express trains if they're startled, don't they? I should like to see Wardour Street at—let us say half-past three to four in the morning."
The policeman was frizzling. Lady Drake let her cutlet get as cold as she was.
"I see you believe in table-turning," said Mr. Rodney to the Duke. His mind was still in a confusion, and he was only half following the conversation. "Animal magnetism is very remarkable—very," he added mildly.
"It is indeed," said the Duke; "if only you touch hands, eh, Lady Drake?"
"I think there's nothing in it; and if there is, it's exceedinglywrong," she said, with a violent effort to go on seeming respectable under the gaze of a Duke who, she now felt, believed her otherwise.
"Your cutlet is cold," the Duke said. "Let me—bring her ladyship a slice of broiled ham," he added to a footman.
The footman obeyed. Lady Drake pecked at it; even her hunger was deserting her before she had gratified it.
"Mr. Bush would make a fine medium, I fancy," continued the Duke—"a fine, steady medium. What do you say, Lady Drake?"
The little creature writhed. She was now quite certain that his Grace had suffered from insomnia the night before.
"I don't know anything about Mr. Bush," she said, letting her fork drop with a clatter.
"You have never 'sat' with him?"
"Oh dear no!"
"On the floor?" added the Duke.
Lady Drake laid down her knife and trembled, while Mr. Rodney, smoothly unaware that anything was wrong, said:
"Is that the last new thing in spiritualism—to sit on the floor?"
"Lady Drake will inform you," said his Grace.
And then, satisfied with his revenge for many an hour of irritation, and many a searching query into those little matters which he preferred to keep secret, he applied himself to his breakfast, pleased that the wretched little old person beside him was now quite unable to manage hers.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SIX SELF-CONSCIOUS GARDENERS.
AlthoughLady Sage, owing to temporary indisposition and the fact that Wednesday at Ascot is comparatively an "off day," did not honour the Wednesday races with her venerable presence, it was apparent both to Mrs. Verulam and to the now appalled owner of Mitching Dean that her tongue had been very busy on the preceding afternoon, and that she had doubtless proclaimed the intentions which she had not yet been able to carry out. For Mrs. Verulam was cold-shouldered by various good people, both in the Enclosure, in the paddock, and on the lawn. The Lady Jane Clinch, famous for her luncheons, snorted at her twice in a manner to attract attention and evoke imitation. Baroness Clayfield-Moor, kindliest of women, shuffled her feet as Mrs. Verulam drew near, and assumed an expression of rapt abstraction, such as may be seen upon the faces of seraphs in an oleograph. And Mrs. Brainton Gumm, the Banana Queen, upon whom Mrs. Verulam had never left cards—disliking bananas, which she considered tasted medicinal—Mrs. Gumm bridled violently at Mrs. Verulam, and tossed her head in most West Indian fashion, murmuring something mysterious about "the manner in which that sort of thing would have been treated in the old days at Spanish Town." Mr. Rodney heard this last remark, and was allof a tremble. He resolved, directly he found himself again at Mitching Dean, to consult his library, and look up ancient Spanish Town customs. Visions of Mrs. Verulam thrown to the tigers and alligators, which he vaguely considered to swarm in all distant settlements, haunted him perpetually, and his distress was greatly complicated by the extraordinary letter of Lord Bernard. During the afternoon Mrs. Verulam and he found themselves for a moment in a quiet corner at the back of the Royal Enclosure, and Mr. Rodney seized the opportunity to utter a few fragments of his confusion and suspicion.
"Let me speak, Mrs. Verulam," he began with unwonted agitation, and a manner as if she had been holding a pillow over his mouth for the last few days—"let me—oh, do let me speak!"
Mrs. Verulam put up a pale-blue parasol.
"Certainly," she said, idly watching Lady Cynthia Green, who was making puns to Sir Brigham Lockbury in the middle distance—"certainly."
"Mrs. Verulam," he continued, without much subtlety of exposition, "you are marching to your doom—you are indeed! And all for what?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Well, all for which—whom?" he cried in an under voice, seeking grammar. "Do you know? Are you not being deceived?"
"My dear friend, that lunch in the Guards' Enclosure has not suited you. You ought to be more careful."
"It is not lunch. It is you—it is him—it is Lord Bernard's letter," said Mr. Rodney, stating facts with extraordinary rapidity and looking distracted.
"Lord Bernard's letter?" said Mrs. Verulam, who had not succeeded in being alone with Chloe since breakfast.
"I heard from him this morning," said Mr. Rodney. And he proceeded to condense his lordship's information. Mrs. Verulam listened in silence. "What does this mean?" concluded Mr. Rodney, passionately flicking a speck of dust from his left coat-sleeve. "Is Lord Bernard mad? Is he misinformed?"
"Both, very probably," murmured Mrs. Verulam, wondering what the conversation of a misinformed madman would be like.
"Or," proceeded Mr. Rodney in a voice that quivered with suspicion, "can it be that—that——"
"Yes?"
"I can hardly force myself to say it—that an adventurer has crept over your threshold? That a monster in mortal guise has dared to take the name of——"
"Huskinson! Now, Mr. Rodney, you are a man of the world. I ask you, can you bring yourself to believe that any human being not christened so would for any purpose whatever assume such a name as Huskinson?"
This was a poser.
"It does not seem very likely," truth compelled him to reply.
"I knew your intellect would not desert you," she said kindly. "Now take me back to the Enclosure."
"But—but Lady Jane Clinch, Mrs. Brainton Gumm—they—they are——"
"They are endeavouring to be offensive," said Mrs. Verulam, with a slightly rising colour, but endeavouring to support herself with thoughts of her desire for the true life and Mr. James Bush. "But if they only knew how I long to be allowed to escape from this cage, they would try to shut the door which they are opening."
Mr. Rodney stared upon her with a white face.
"You think I am mad and misinformed, as well as Lord Bernard?" she said, smiling. "Come, take me back."
Mr. Rodney took her, endeavouring to prevent his agony from appearing in colours that would be perceptible to his world. He could not have been entirely successful in this endeavour, for several Countesses remarked towards the end of the day that "really Mr. Rodney began to look very old."
Meanwhile Chloe was becoming reckless, as people do when they know that the Cinderella clock of time will shortly strike, and a transformation of rags and a pumpkin take the place of silken attire and gilt coach and horses. If theWorldparagraph were true, if Huskinson were really in England, her game was nearly up; her hour was at hand. This Ascot was the closing revel, and even this Ascot might be interrupted—might be cut off short for her. Good-bye then to ducal circles and the pomp of English society, bristling with ancient names. In fancy, she heard the tick-tick of the Cinderella clock; she heard the warning buzz that precedes its announcement of the dreary midnight. She saw the tall hat, the frock-coat and trousers vanish in a mist of tears, and with it how much ecstasy! And a devil-may-care mood took possession of her soul. She would squeeze the inmost essence out of these last flying golden moments; she would drink her little wine-cup to the lees. And so, when Mrs. Verulam and Mr. Rodney returned to the Enclosure, they found her the centre of a group of smart women, and watched with glittering eyes by the Lady Pearl, talking with amazing vivacity, laughing in a gaiety that was almost fierce, and making herself slightly more conspicuous than was altogethercomme il faut. Mr. Rodney, governed by hisfeelings and so endowed with a distorted vision, considered that Van Adam was behaving outrageously—if he was Van Adam at all. And even Mrs. Verulam was a little surprised at Chloe's intense vivacity, and at the stream of audacious conversation that flowed so incessantly from her lips. When Chloe joined them, Mr. Rodney felt as if the eyes of the universe were directed upon the group they formed, and that even his proved and universally-accepted social standing and pre-eminent respectability could not save Mrs. Verulam from instant and eternal condemnation. He saw the small and attentive green eyes of Lady Jane Clinch observing them persistently beneath the shadow of her huge black parasol. He noted the plantation-song pantomime of the Banana Queen, who, attired in flame-coloured brocade, was being wooed by the impecunious members of the British aristocracy. And, worse than all, he perceived the indignant colour flood the large face of the Duchess of Southborough as she marked Chloe bend familiarly to Mrs. Verulam and pour into her really shell-like ear the tale of a dozen reckless and immoderate wagers. For Chloe had been betting wildly, and had lost a good deal of money. He was thankful indeed when the races were over, and the party drove home in the dust to Ribton Marches. On arriving, and strolling forth into the garden to rest and be thankful, they found various men dotted here and there—to the number of perhaps half a dozen—busily engaged among the Bun Emperor's plants and shrubs, or rolling and watering the lawns.
"Dear me, what an influx of gardeners!" said the Duchess. "It gives the grounds quite a crowded appearance. This must be a terribly expensive place to keep up."
Mr. Bush, who had cut off his roundabout for one day, turned his large eyes upon the busy labourers.
"If they keep on as they're a-keepin' now," he said, "there won't be a bloomin' flower within fifty mile this time to-morrow."
And he rolled towards the tea-tables. Miss Bindler put up her eye-glass and surveyed the scene. One man was apparently trying to pluck up a fine rose-tree by the roots; another was behaving with almost inhuman levity among some sunflowers; a third seemed to be having a stand-up fight with a laurustinus; a fourth was watering nothing at all with an enormous hose directed at a small cloud which was coming up from Sunningdale; and the remaining two were furiously trying to roll a tiny gravel walk with a roller, which managed them to such an extent that it seemed certain they would soon present the thin appearance of a film of flour fresh from the pressure of the rolling-pin. Away in the far distance the Bun Emperor's head-gardener stood weeping and wringing his horny hands beneath a copper beech, while Mr. Harrison was addressing to him what might be either oaths or words of comfort. It was impossible to discover which without the aid of a telescope. Miss Bindler dropped her eye-glass. It struck one of the huge buttons that sat about on the corduroy coat she wore and tinkled in a manly manner.
"If those men were my gardeners," she remarked, "I should have them up before the nearest magistrate for damaging my property. No tea, thanks. A whisky-and-seltzer, a biscuit, and a lump of ice."
"How self-conscious they look!" said the Lady Pearl, with a languishing air.
"Gardeners always do," said Lady Drake; "they think themselves the only artistic people among the wage-earning classes. Silly!"
She accepted a crumpet, despite the great heat.
"A gardener can be very attractive, though—eh, Lady Drake?" said the Duke, glancing from her withered face to Mr. Bush in an ostentatious manner.
Lady Drake suddenly remembered Mr. Bush's amiable profession, and was unable to give the crumpet its due and swallow it.
"I think that gardening is a high-minded and beautiful occupation. Oh!" cried Mrs. Verulam.
This last exclamation was occasioned by the behaviour of the gentleman with the hose, who, suddenly turning his attention from the Sunningdale cloud to the house-party, sprayed the tea-table nearest to him, at which were peacefully seated Mrs. Verulam, Mr. Ingerstall, and Mr. Rodney. The two former were only slightly watered, but the latter received about a ton and a half of cold liquid upon his head and down his delicate back. He uttered a cry like that which rises to heaven from a sinking ship with a large load of emigrants aboard.
"Wet?" said Miss Bindler. "Much better take your liquids internally."
"Wet? I am saturated! I am drenched!" cried the owner of Mitching Dean; while the gentleman with the hose ran off in the direction of London as fast as his legs would carry him. "I must go in and—these liberties are really unpardonable. The gardeners at Mitching Dean would never dare to treat a visitor with such gross familiarity!"
He hastened away, presenting the distressed back of a man whose every movement floods his spinal cord with sudden showers of displaced cold water.
"Mr. Rodney's wrong," Miss Bindler said, with her usual short decision.
"Wrong?" said the Duchess. "To sit at tea under ahose without knowing it? Anyone might do the same with such gardeners. Mr. Lite ought not to engage them."
"Don't abuse the man," said Miss Bindler; "he didn't do it on purpose."
"Then why did he run away?" asked Lady Drake.
"Because he's a coward and a quick sprinter," said Miss Bindler. "He was watching us and forgot his hose. All the gardeners are watching us."
The house-party started slightly, and, looking about them with opened eyes, were soon aware that Miss Bindler had followed her usual habit of speaking the truth. The self-conscious artists of the wage-earning world were, indeed, very intent upon those assembled about the tea-tables. The man who was disturbing the rose-tree in its home of years had his head set round like a deformity in a frantic effort to keep his eye on Lady Drake. The person who had been acting with levity among the sunflowers was now pretending to clip a diminutive box-hedge, and was in reality snapping the air while he gazed steadily at Mr. Bush. The individual who was fighting with the laurustinus had one eye fastened in a most expressive manner on Mr. Ingerstall, while the other seemed anxious to do sentry duty over Mrs. Verulam. And the gentlemen with the roller were staring at the whole party with a pertinacity and resolution which prevented them from observing that their enormous instrument was now doing its fell work upon an elaborately-conceived pattern of red, pink, and white geraniums.
"How very strange!" said the Duchess. "Are they a party of mesmerists, do you think? Really, it can scarcely be mere idle curiosity."
"The chap who's carving the atmosphere looks to melike a third-rate detective," observed Miss Bindler, munching a captain's biscuit.
"They all look like third-rate detectives," said the Duke, who was well acquainted with that class of society, having been shadowed off and on for years by agents acting for anxious husbands suspicious of his clown's manner with their wives.
These words, at which most of the company were good enough to laugh, sent a cold shiver down Chloe's back. Detectives! She glanced at the gardeners, and in an instant sprang to the conclusion that they were the emissaries of Huskinson, who had bribed the Bun Emperor's servants to let them in, disguised, to the domain of Ribton Marches. Were not their ten eyes fastened upon her? Her legs trembled in their trousers. The Cinderella clock seemed striking. She felt that she was pale, and the laughter of those around her sounded hollow and mirthless. Did these men, skulking in their disguise of gardeners, recognise her for what she was—a woman? The idea made her hot. She fancied she saw the laurustinus man smile. He knew. The rose-tree man passed his hand across his face—to hide a laugh, no doubt. The roller couple bent down, and sent their machine over a quantity of blowing pinks. Chloe felt certain that their attitude was one of ridicule making for concealment. Had she been underneath the copper beech, her mind would have been relieved, for she would have heard the voice of Mr. Harrison saying to the Emperor's head-gardener:
"Them is Mr. Lite's orders, and must be carried out—oh, indeed!"
"I cawn't abear it—I cawn't abear it!" sobbed the head-gardener. "Only look at 'um a rolling of the jerryaneeums and a rooting up of the roses! I cawn't abear it!"
"You must abear it, Gummill," rejoined Mr. Harrison, with stern resolution. "Mr. Lite says to me: 'Mr. Harrison, get down detectives—oh, most decidedly—by all means, get 'em down! Plant them here and there about the garden, place them to and fro about the house, and don't let them be knowst. If them Londoners,' he says, 'get up to their tricks, I'll have the law on 'em, I will, and on you I depend, Mr. Harrison, to get proper witnesses as will convict judge and jury.' Them men"—he pointed to the gardeners—"will convict any judge and jury; so abear it you must, Gummill—oh, most certainly, indeed, on every account whatever."
And with this exhortation he turned from the sobbing under-strapper and walked towards the palace, turning out his feet as he proceeded, and assuming, as he threaded his way among the detectives, a solemn dignity that was undoubtedly Jove-like.
The Duke of Southborough, when he had closely observed the Duchess's party of mesmerists, felt quite certain as to their calling, but, being a vain man, he mistook the reason of their presence; and while Chloe supposed them to be at Ribton Marches on her account, he had no doubt that they were watching him. He had a notion now that he had seen them at the races hovering about his steps. Honest men! He enjoyed such little attentions, and could not resist tipping Mr. James Bush the wink as the party rose from tea, and Mr. Bush lumbered at his side smoking a huge cigar presented to him by one of the men-servants; therefore the Duke nudged the paragon slyly in the ribs with his elbow, and said:
"See those men?"
"Eh?" said Mr. Bush.
"See those men who watered Rodney?"
Mr. Bush broke into a large laugh.
"Rodney'll be sproutin'," he said—"Rodney'll be sproutin'!"
"They are detectives," said the Duke—"Scotland Yard fellows."
Mr. Bush stared at the gardeners as if they were wild animals.
"What are they a-doin' of?" he asked. "What are they here for?"
"I'll let you into the secret," said the Duke, whispering with great elaboration, and leaning to Mr. Bush's ear in a dramatic manner: "they're here for me."
Mr. Bush made no reply, but turned his heavy eyes slowly from the Duke to the gardeners, and back again. The Duke again prodded him in the ribs, at the same time throwing up his left leg to a considerable height.
"You're a bit of a dog, you know, yourself," he whispered; "you want watching, too. What? The husband that would trust you would soon find himself in Queer Street—eh, eh?"
And he went off sniggering to the billiard-room, leaving Mr. Bush in some perplexity. The paragon, unaware of his Grace's insomnia on the previous night, did not comprehend these delicately masked allusions to the Lady Drake episode. He sat down heavily to consider them on a garden-seat, and before he fell into the doze which always eventually followed his assumption of a sitting posture, he had put two and two together with this result: Detective police were swarming about the garden. They were there for the Duke. The Duke considered that he, James Bush, was a bit of a dog and wanted watching, and held the opinion that the husband who would trust him, James Bush, would soon find himself inQueer Street. Ergo the Duke had engaged gardeners to spy on him and her Grace of Southborough. It took the paragon exactly half an hour to reason all this out, having done which he fell asleep, murmuring gently, "Here's a rum go! Here's a bit of fun!" and proceeded to dream that gardeners were always detectives.
And the six self-conscious gardeners, now reduced to five, went on rooting up respectable plants and rolling innocent flowers till the twilight glided into night, and the Londoners went indoors and presently sat down to dinner.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DUCHESS IN ASPIC.
Whenten people, eight of whom are labouring under delusions or suffering from engrossing mental complications, dine in company, and the banquet is supervised by a gentleman who is almost off his head, complete calm and the perfection of easy gaiety are not certain to ensue. There was, in fact, a good deal of constraint prevalent that night at Ribton Marches, constraint, however, varied by strange outbursts that kept things going, but scarcely kept them going in the average way of ordinary society. Only Miss Bindler and Mr. Ingerstall were fairly fancy-free that Wednesday night. Mrs. Verulam was abstracted because she wanted terribly to speak in private to Chloe, and inform her of Lord Bernard's letter to Mr. Rodney and of its strange contents. Chloe was abstracted because of the paragraph in theWorld, and the probable presence of the fatal Huskinson in England. The Duchess of Southborough was glowering with respectable fury against her hostess, and solicitude over the supposed wrongs of her gouty girl. The Lady Pearl was in a conditionof highly-wrought sensibility to the fascinations of Chloe. Lady Drake was petrified by the knowledge that the Duke thought her what she wasn't, and that Mr. Bush had beheld her in an Indian shawl at half-past three in the morning. The Duke could think of nothing with any comfort except the five self-conscious gardeners now engaged, as he supposed, in ruining the Emperor's domain. Mr. Rodney, who believed himself to be in the incipient stage of rheumatic fever, looked like a corpse whose mind was seriously affected, and spoke like a voice reverberating from a sepulchre. And Mr. James Bush, who was seated next to the Duchess, was rent asunder by two contending passions, a desire to hint delicately to her Grace that she was supposed to be in love with him, and a desire to flee at once from the machinations of policemen to the marshy solitudes of peaceful Bungay. Pride and cowardice in fact contended in the paragon's mighty bosom, and almost succeeded in rendering him slightly volcanic. To crown the tragic humours of the feast, Mr. Harrison, very near to madness, stood during its progress with his feet turned out in the first position in the neighbourhood of an enormous sideboard, his face contorted into an expression of hysterical vigilance, his hands straying hither and thither among the glittering knives and forks which the Bun Emperor always had displayed as dining-room ornaments, even if Mrs. Lite were only eating a piece of thin bread and butter alone in the cedar-wood parlour.
The conversation round the dinner-table languished at first, then rose in fitful and confusing gusts. Only Mr. Ingerstall chatted continuously to Miss Bindler about Art and Paris, and she talked incessantly to him about bets and racing stables.
"I hope you are none the worse for your immersion at tea this afternoon?" said Mrs. Verulam to Mr. Rodney, with her eyes fixed steadily on Chloe.
"I fear I cannot hope to escape rheumatic fever," he answered. "To do so would indeed be foolish optimism."
"Quite so," she answered; "you are perfectly right."
"It is not every man who can say, with truth, that he has been followed by detectives almost continuously for five-and-forty years," said the Duke with unusual dignity to Lady Drake.
Unable to meet his eyes, she piped in return: "It is not every man who can say anything at all with truth."
"Do you doubt my word?" he asked her, pursuing his train of thought.
She suddenly thought she perceived an opening into which she might insert an explanation of the preceding night's affair.
"I'll believe yours if you'll believe mine!" she cried.
"What!" said the Duke, "then you're followed by detectives, too!"
At this appalling corollary her ladyship collapsed. Evidently nothing on earth would ever convince his Grace that she was sinned against and not a sinner, if he thought her conduct so outrageous that she was habitually shadowed by the police! Although almost starving, she could not eat another morsel.
"Do you think it right to be happy, Mr. Van Adam?" asked the Lady Pearl, in her cooing, thunderous voice, inherited from her mother. "Do you think we are meant to have any joy here? Oh, tell me, tell me!"
"Oh dear no!" Chloe replied, thinking of her hour of triumph—so soon to be over.
She shook her head mournfully.
"No, no! When we think all is going well we are sure to see the gardeners. The gardeners are certain to come upon us."
"Gardeners!" said the Lady Pearl, mystified. "Do you think that the misery of the world is caused by gardeners?"
"I do, indeed," answered Chloe, intent on her fate, and speaking with poignant conviction; "I am perfectly certain of it now."
"How strange! I wonder why it should be so; but perhaps we are not meant to know here."
"I do know; I know very well," said Chloe.
"Then why is it?" asked the Lady Pearl.
"Because"—Chloe suddenly recollected herself and paused—"because we are all gardeners," she said, assuming the portentous air of one who deals in allegories. "Do we not garden in each other's souls?"
"How exquisitely thoughtful you are!" said the Lady Pearl with ecstasy; "so different from a Guardsman!"
"Well, Mr. Bush," the Duchess said heavily, while she ate a cutlet, "how do you like the great world?"
Her Grace had heard Mrs. Verulam say that this was the paragon's first experience of that remarkable collection of absurdities.
"Eh?" said Mr. Bush, thrusting a cautious glance at the Duke—"eh?"
"Do you find it very different from your marshes?" continued the Duchess. "I suppose there are only frogs there?"
"When I catch a frog about," replied Mr. Bush, "I go for it."
"Indeed!" said her Grace, trying to seem amiably interested in these rustic pursuits. "And where does the frog go?"
"Not far," rejoined the paragon—"not far!" And he laughed like Fee-faw-fum.
"Dear me!" said the Duchess, "I am afraid you're quite a bloodthirsty person, like most men. But you're all the same; you must kill something. One man stalks a deer, another a—a frog. You shoot, I suppose?"
"No, I don't," said Mr. Bush. "Frog-shootin' wouldn't pay; they go too slow."
At this point in his dissertation on English sport, her Grace suddenly started, caught hold of the table with both hands, and passionately struggled for breath.
"Got the staggers?" enquired Miss Bindler, who was sitting just opposite. "Keep your head up."
Mr. Rodney hastily began to pour cold water into a champagne glass, with a view to using it medicinally.
"Take it away!" gasped the Duchess. "Oh, take it away!" And she moved as a serpent moves when it thinks of casting its skin.
"Take what?" said Mr. Rodney. "What is it?"
"The aspic on my left shoulder—oh, take it away!"
"The asp on your left shoulder!" he cried, preparing for flight.
"No, no! The cutlet in aspic. Oh!"