"Yes," faltered Chloe; "we can say what we like now."
"A very good cigar this," cried Mr. Rodney with a jaunty air, that sat as naturally upon him as a matinée hat on the head of a major-general.
"I daresay it is—when it's lighted," said the Duke, with a prolonged snigger.
Mr. Rodney got violently red, and lit eight or ten matches all at the same time.
"Well done, Rodney! Set the place on fire!" cried the Duke. "What the deuce is that?"
It was merely the noise made by Mr. Harrison as he raced to the telephone to acquaint the Bun Emperor that Mr. Rodney was at present engaged in igniting the palace. Concealed among the pedals of the organ, the groom of the chambers had been doing detective duty.
"It sounded like athletic sports on an oil-cloth," continued the Duke, while Mr. Rodney held his cigar in the match flames till it glowed like a furnace. "Well, as I was saying, now we can say what we like. Tell us a good story, Rodney—one of your rorty ones."
Mr. Rodney shrivelled.
"I fear," he murmured—"I fear I am scarcely in the—the—er—rorty vein to-night. To-morrow—the next day—perhaps——"
"Well, then, you tip us one, Van Adam. Give us some of your Florida experiences among the orange-girls. What? Go ahead!"
Thus adjured, Chloe said:
"Some of the girls in Florida do such lovely needlework, you have no idea."
The Duke raised one eyebrow to a level with his side parting.
"Lovely needlework! That's a funny beginning for a Pink un. Well?"
"Yes; but they do indeed. They sit all day in the sun and——"
"Damned silly girls! Spoil their complexions! They should go into the shade, eh! What—what?"
"I knew a grisette once who lived on a fourth floor in the Rue des Martyres," began Mr. Ingerstall in the distance; but nobody heeded him, and he relapsed passionately into his former moody silence.
"They sit in the sun and work hard for their living," continued Chloe, trying to look rakish without losing self-respect.
"Deuced tiresome to keep on working hard for one's living in the sun, eh, Rodney?" cried his Grace.
"I confess I should prefer to be under the trees, Duke—I confess that frankly," said the owner of Mitching Dean with unnecessary earnestness.
"Well, go on, Van Adam," said the Duke, expectant of some spicy development in this apparently unpromising plot—"they work for their living in the sun. Well?"
"Well—er—well, that's all," said Chloe, rather crestfallen.
The Duke's jaw fell several inches.
"All! Oh, come, I say, hang it, you're pulling all our legs!"
"Pulling all your—oh, indeed, I'm not! Why should I do such a thing? I do assure you, Duke——"
"But, hang it, your story'd do for a school treat or a grandmothers' meeting. That's not the sort of thing Rodney cares for—eh, Rodney?" and his Grace was good enough to dig the owner of Mitching Dean in his eminently respectable ribs. Mr. Rodney started, and broke the frail back of the small chair on which he was sitting. "Smashing up the furniture now, after trying to set the wholeplace on fire," cried the Duke, just as Mr. Harrison was in course of stealing back cautiously to his lair among the organ-pedals.
The groom of the chambers heard the sentence with bristling horror, and immediately made off once more to the telephone, through which he proceeded to deliver the following remarks to the fishing-cottage:
"After setting fire to the 'ouse—oh, most decidedly, sir!—Mr. Rodney is now smashing up of Mrs. Lite's own particular chairs—oh, indeed! And the Duke, ma'am, is splitting his sides with laughture while he done it. I am keeping an eye on him according to your instructions, sir, and to my latest breath will do so, though what will become of us all, ma'am, is more than anyone can say—oh, indeed, I do assure you on every account whatever!"
On hearing this peaceful catalogue of facts, the Emperor and Empress engaged Mr. Harrison in animated conversation for the space of perhaps an hour and a half, during which time events were moving forward in the palace with some rapidity. In answer to the Duke, Mr. Rodney forced a ghastly smile, and answered hoarsely:
"An accident! merely an unlucky accident, Duke! I shall make it good to Mr. Lite."
"If you don't he'll probably skin you," said his Grace. "He's so tetchy."
"Oh, really," rejoined Mr. Rodney, looking much upset—"really, I should not submit for a moment to any indignity of that nature."
"Well, I daresay even a moment of being flayed would inconvenience a chap. But come, give us a Limerick. Cheer us up now! Give us a good Limerick. You must know thousands."
"I assure you I do not. I have never been in Ireland."
The Duke burst out into a mirthless laugh.
"Well, upon my—what's Ireland got to do with it?"
"Everything, I should suppose," returned Mr. Rodney, trembling with nervous exhaustion, but trying to look dignified. "Where are you going, Van Adam?"
"Bed," said Chloe, endeavouring to vanish.
"Bed be damned!" remarked the Duke. "I never saw such fellows for a carouse. Bed at ten!"
"It is past eleven," said Chloe uncomfortably, while Mr. Rodney looked eaten up with suspicion.
"Well, what if it is?" exclaimed the Duke. "Does America go to bed at seven?"
"Oh, I don't say that——"
"I should imagine not. Anyone would think we were a lot of damned old women. Here, pour some whisky down your throat and look jolly."
Chloe obeyed the first command but not the second. Mr. Ingerstall, at this point in the carouse, bounced up from his chair, muttered some French oaths, and suddenly tore upstairs.
"There's another cheery soul!" said the Duke after him. "We might all as well be Sunday-school teachers at a Methodist funeral at once."
He was proceeding to various other comparisons of a like innocent and respectable nature, when the air was rent by an exceeding loud uproar. Mr. Rodney caught hold of the sides of his chair and cried, "What's that?"
The Duke looked hastily at the organ and Chloe apprehensively at the ceiling. The uproar was repeated, and then they became aware that it came from the nose of the paragon, and signified that he was resting.
"Oh, it's only Mr.—it's only Bush asleep," said Chloe.
"Asleep!" said the Duke, with a bitter sneer.
He felt convinced that the paragon's snores were merely a blind to deceive a doting husband. The demon in human form was doubtless wide awake, perhaps conceiving some diabolical plot beneath this theatrical travesty of the gentle music of slumber.
"He sleeps very loud," said Mr. Rodney—"for decent society."
"He does sleep very loud," said the Duke. Then, lowering his voice, he hummed into Mr. Rodney's ear: "Does anything occur to you, Rodney?"
"I beg your pardon, Duke?" said Mr. Rodney.
"I say, does anything occur to you with regard to it?"
"With regard to what?"
"This damned uproarious sleep?"
"No," said Mr. Rodney. "Nothing at all. Why, what should occur to me?"
"Oh, Lord! I don't know," said the Duke, with keen irritation and contempt. "I don't know."
He released the owner of Mitching Dean, and, looking round, exclaimed: "Why, where the deuce is Van Adam?"
Mr. Rodney gazed wildly in every conceivable direction.
"He's gone!" he cried on a piercing note. "He's——"
In his turn he bent down to the Duke and whispered excitedly, "Does anything occur toyou, Duke?"
"Eh?"
"I say, does anything occur to you?"
And Mr. Rodney crouched over him, looking far more surreptitious and knowing than Guy Fawkes.
"What about?"
"About Van Adam's sudden going to bed in this strange manner?" whispered Mr. Rodney.
"No, except that he's like some damned old woman. What should occur?"
"Oh dear, nothing, nothing at all!" cried Mr. Rodney petulantly. "I—I——Good night!"
And he suddenly hastened upstairs four steps at a time, displaying the activity of a wild-cat and the excitement of a van-load of monkeys.
"Well, of all the snivelling, psalm-singing, nonconformist, Salvation Army sets of fellows that ever I met in my life," said the Duke irrelevantly, "this one takes the——"
He paused, and sat for a moment listening to the wild symphony of the paragon, who was sunk deep in his armchair with his huge head plunged upon his chest.
"That fellow's as broad awake as I am," muttered the Duke to himself, "and broader! But I'll be even with him, crafty as he is!"
He got up softly, went to the swing-door that led to the detectives' quarters, put his head through it and hissed, "Bliggins!"
Bliggins appeared, wiping curry, trifle and champagne from his startled features. The Duke beckoned to him and jerked his chin upwards.
Bliggins approached, assuming his hungry look.
"D'you hear that?" the Duke whispered.
"Which, sir?"
"Which! I told you to be dumb, not deaf! Which! That!"
The paragon snored.
"Yes, sir. Which of 'em is playing the organ, sir?"
"The organ, you fool! It's the red-bearded villain pretending to be asleep."
"He pretends awful noisy, sir!"
"Yes; he over-does it. He's no artist, deep as he is. Now listen to me. Go and turn out the lights. Then come back here and watch. If he stops snoring, crawl up the backstairs to the chocolate room, and let me know immediately. You understand?"
"I do, sir."
"Very well, not a word."
The Duke retreated up the main staircase on tiptoe, while Mr. Bliggins proceeded to turn out the lights and leave the paragon in total darkness.
Although night is the time for sleep, and is usually, in country places, dedicated to that delightful occupation, circumstances induced a good many people to sit up in the palace during the hours of darkness, to listen with a strained attention for any nocturnal sound. Mr. Harrison, as we know, was busy at the telephone, explaining to his Emperor that the palace was being set on fire and the furniture reduced to matchwood by the owner of Mitching Dean. Mr. Bliggins crouched like a tiger behind the swing-door, solacing himself with a parcel of curry which he had hastily ravished from the detectives' supper-table and wrapped in a sheet of brown paper convenient for the pocket. The Duke sat with his ear to the keyhole of the chocolate bedroom. The Duchess, who was located in the grey bedroom, was on the alert in a majestic early Victorian dressing-gown with her hair in curl-papers, to which she still faithfully adhered, despite the changing fashions of an age of tongs and pins. Her Grace was determined Mrs. Verulam should make no expedition, hold no colloquy with the orange-grower unobserved, uninterrupted. Mrs. Verulam was frantically writing a note to Chloe, while the faithful Marriner stood by ready to convey it with all speedand caution to that deception's apartment. As to Mr. Rodney, he had turned out all the lights in his room, set the door ajar and removed his pumps, and now sat in his slippered feet and dense darkness waiting for he knew not what. Only he was confident that something was up, that Mrs. Verulam and Chloe were desirous of communicating with each other, and that they would probably endeavour to do so under cover of night.
Upon the cupolas of the palace meanwhile the rain dripped steadily, and in the mighty hall below the paragon snored on, as the Duke supposed, in violently pretended slumber. Soon after Chloe had gained her room, Mr. Rodney heard a gentle rustle near his door.
"Who's there?" he called, in a trembling voice.
He was answered by a slight soprano scream and a sudden violent scrambling, as the faithful Marriner on terror-stricken feet gained Chloe's room, into which she cast a note before fleeing in a frenzied manner to her virgin chamber in an upper storey. The note hit Chloe, who was at the writing-table, in the eye. She uttered an ejaculation of surprise, then controlled herself, and tore it open.
"We must meet to-night," it ran. "Wait till all is quiet, then steal down in the dark to the hall, and meet me there. Do not light a candle, as I think the Duchess is probably on the look-out, full of horrible suspicions. I have extraordinary news to communicate."Daisy."
"We must meet to-night," it ran. "Wait till all is quiet, then steal down in the dark to the hall, and meet me there. Do not light a candle, as I think the Duchess is probably on the look-out, full of horrible suspicions. I have extraordinary news to communicate.
"Daisy."
"When all is quiet," murmured Chloe to herself. "And I, too, have extraordinary news to communicate."
She sat waiting in a smoking-coat and a pair of Moorish slippers till the psychological moment should arrive.The minutes wore on in their usual weary manner on such occasions. The wind sighed against the casement, announcing the fact that it was an inclement night. Several times the Duke had crawled to the balustrade of the staircase, and heard that the paragon was still pretending to be asleep. Several times Mr. Rodney had said, "Who's there?" without result. Several times had the Duchess torn her curl-papers in a fury of anger against Mrs. Verulam, and folded the early Victorian dressing-gown more firmly round her ample form, anticipating the time of action. But nothing happened. Both Mrs. Verulam and Chloe, overwhelmed with prudence, prolonged their vigil, dreading to come forth before the inmates of the palace were duly plunged in sleep. At length the Duke dropped into a nap with his ear to the keyhole. Mr. Rodney's slippered feet grew cold, and he lay down for an instant between the blankets just to get them warm and keep his rheumatic fever a little quiet. Mr. Bliggins, having finished the whole of his parcel of curry, retired for a second from his post to put some trifle up in paper and lay hold of a magnum of champagne. And the Duchess nodded her head at nothing, and endeavoured to contend with the trooping dreams that thronged about her weary brain. Then Mrs. Verulam stole forth upon the landing, holding in one hand an unlighted bedroom candle, and keeping her draperies quiet with the other. Feeling her way, and suffering many things from walls and balusters, she softly descended the staircase to the hall in which Mr. Bush still sat, although, attacked by a nightmare that paralysed all his faculties, he had for the moment ceased to snore. Reaching the hall, she paused and listened. She heard no noise except a patter of the rain on some distant cupola. But suddenly a cold hand grasped her.
"Oh!" she cried.
"Be quiet, Daisy!" said Chloe's voice. "It's only me. They're all asleep. Don't wake them."
"I thought it was a ghost!" gasped Mrs. Verulam convulsively. "Oh dear, I should like to cry!"
"There isn't time. I've got dreadful things to whisper. Can't we sit down?"
She felt cautiously for a seat.
"Here's a—no, it's an umbrella-stand, we can't sit on that."
"There's something comfortable here," whispered Mrs. Verulam, and she sank down gently on a large cactus in a porcelain tub.
Her resurrection was instant, and was accompanied by a strangled wail that reached the ears of the nodding Duchess. Her Grace started, grasped the curl-papers in a frenzied manner, and tried to recall who she was and what she was doing. This took time, and meanwhile Mrs. Verulam and Chloe had at last found a large armchair, in which they both gingerly ensconced themselves.
"Now," whispered Mrs. Verulam, "I must tell you——"
"And I you, that——"
"Mr. Rodney has heard from Lord Bernard Roche. Don't pinch me. Oh! oh!"
"Lord Bernard! What does he say? Tell me, tell me quickly!"
"That Husk—that your husband is on his way to England to——"
"I know; only he's not on his way—he's here."
"Here! what do you mean?"
"What I say. Yillick wired it. You saw the telegram. He came by theArethusa, and he's here."
"Not at Ribton Marches? Mercy! Let us go back to our rooms! Oh, why——"
"No, no, but in Berkshire. He may come to Ascot at any moment. What must I do?"
"Do you want to marry him again?"
"Marry! Daisy! Whatdoyou mean?"
"Well, you know, he wants to marry you. That's why he has come. If you pinch me, I must and will shriek out!"
And she struggled vehemently between Chloe's suddenly clutching hands.
"What do you mean? You shall tell me! I will tear it out of you!"
"Help! help!"
"Be quiet! You'll wake the whole house!"
"I don't care if I do! I won't be murdered without a——"
"There, then! Now be quiet. Marry me again! Huskinson marry me again!"
"Lord Bernard said in his letter to Mr. Rodney that he sailed for England on purpose to do it. He's discovered that you never—Bream, you know. The Crackers have acknowledged they perjured themselves. What are you doing, Chloe? What——"
She listened to a curious little emotional sound that stirred the blackness in Chloe's direction. It was of a gurgling nature, not exactly laughter, not precisely weeping, yet partaking of the nature of both; intense excitement, it seemed, expressing itself in an inarticulate, but irresistible, music. It went on for about two minutes, and then Chloe pinched Mrs. Verulam again with all her might and main in silence. Mrs. Verulam's whispered reply to this fresh assault was: "I always thought so, Chloe. You could not deceive me."
"Nonsense! It isn't true!"
"But you can't re-marry him in trousers!"
"Oh, don't—don't! I shall take them off! Of course—of course I shall take them off!"
"Yes. But if you do that, what is to happen to me?"
"You!"
"Yes. Remember I exist."
A kiss from Chloe was the ecstatic reply to this protest—a kiss vehement, genuine, and rather loud. It was heard by an early Victorian dressing-gown, which spent the next few minutes in trying to locate it.
"Dear! I'm so glad—for you. But—but it's all very complicated, Chloe."
"Well, but I've done my work. I've saved you from society. Lady Sage has cut you publicly, and all your friends will follow suit. So you're all right now, dear."
"Yes, I'm all right now," said Mrs. Verulam in a most dreary and doleful whisper; "I'm all right now."
"Then I must disappear—to some place where I can change my trousers quietly, some place remote, deserted. Oh, Daisy, how I shall always love that place!"
"And give up society?"
"I don't care now. I feel as you do."
"As I do?"
"Yes, that it is hollow, meretricious, morbid, vulgar, empty, futile, lying, slanderous, loveless, greedy, vain, hid——"
"Oh, stop! It sounds like 'How the water comes down at Lodore.' I never said all that."
"You said most of it, and you were right. I would rather take off these trousers and—and—well, you know—Huskinson, than consort with archduchesses for the rest of my natural life."
"Oh, archduchesses—yes," said Mrs. Verulam, rather doubtfully. "Viennese society is so very stiff and conventional."
"Love is the only thing," continued Chloe, once more passionately pinching her friend. "You are right."
"Did I say so?"
"Daisy! Why, about Bungay and Mr. Bush! Why, when you first saw him in his meat-safe, you——"
"Yes, yes, I remember. But I daresay it wasn't really a meat-safe, though it was very like one." She started, as if struck by a sudden idea. "Bungay!" she cried, in an excited whisper. "Bungay! your trousers. The very place!"
"Bungay, my trousers! What do you mean? Surely it would spoil them!"
"Listen! You want to change them, don't you?"
"Yes, yes, as soon as possible."
"In a quiet, sweet place, full of roses, the hum of bees, the——"
"I don't know that the hum of bees is actually necessary. I might manage without that."
"And I—I am weary of it all. I am sick of being cut and cold-shouldered."
"Already? I thought you enjoyed it."
"Yes, just at first. But now I want to get out of it all. I can't go to the races to-morrow."
"Nor can I. Huskinson may be there. And if he saw me in—well, I should just expire!"
"And the Duchess is going to cut me, too, as soon as the week is over. I have no social duty towards her now. I have no social duty to anyone. Chloe, let us go! Let us creep away!"
"Creep! Where to?"
"To Bungay. There must be cots there; we will take one."
"A cot? What's that?"
"A thing that is smaller than a cottage. We will bury ourselves——"
"Creep away and bury ourselves—it sounds rather earthy."
"You shall change your trousers. I will dream, work, learn the true life;heshall teach me."
"James Bush?"
"Yes. Let us go."
"When?"
"Now."
"Is there a train at one o'clock in the morning?"
"It is not far, I think; only some miles."
"Some—yes; but how many? Two or twenty?"
"It is in this county somewhere. We will find it."
"I hope so."
"I shall leave a note, saying—er——"
"What lie?"
"That I am called to the sick-bed of a dear mother."
"But Lady Sophia's quite well."
"Of a dying sis—no; I haven't got one—a dying relative. Everybody has a dying relative, so that will do. Oh, to be away in the free air!"
"The free air's very cold on a wet night."
"Are you a coward, Chloe?"
"I! No!" cried Chloe in a violent whisper. "I'll go now—this instant. A coward—never!"
"Then away—away!"
"Yes—yes; away!"
At the third "away" Mr. Bush emerged from his nightmare and renewed his vociferous snoring. Mrs. Verulam and Chloe started and trembled.
"What's that?" said Mrs. Verulam. "Oh! is it a ghost?"
"It sounds like something horrible! Oh, and there's a light flickering! Daisy—Daisy, let us run!"
And they ran, just as the Duchess, with bristling curl-papers and a night-light shrouded in a fragment of the Times newspaper, appeared cautiously at the head of the stairs, the early Victorian dressing-gown streaming out behind her in a majestic and terror-striking manner. Her Grace had heard the impact of Chloe's kiss, followed by the sound of excited whisperings, which she had finally located as emanating from the baronial hall. Listening with a strained attention, and eyes becoming far more prominent than those of the average lobster, she had presently arrived at the awful certainty that the whispering voices belonged to her hostess and the orange-grower. She therefore fell into a paroxysm of respectable fury, and, catching up the night-light, proceeded forth to confront wickedness in its very lair, and force it to acknowledge itself and to receive a terrible castigation. Unluckily, the premature snores of the paragon had served as a warning of her approach by distracting the attention of Mrs. Verulam and Chloe from their own engrossing concerns; and consequently, before the Duchess had time to miss her footing, and, stumbling in the labyrinth of the early Victorian dressing-gown, to fall, and, bounding from step to step of the Emperor's expensive staircase, to roll, night-light in hand, into the baronial hall, they were well away among the winter gardens, out of hearing and almost beyond the reach of pursuit.
The noise of her Grace's close intercourse with the Emperor's oak and Parian marble not only disturbed the rest of the paragon—which was perfectly genuine, despitethe suspicions of the Duke—but attracted the painful attention of the owner of Mitching Dean in the green, and of his Grace in the chocolate, bedroom. Mr. Rodney trembled in a nervous paroxysm, and the perspiration, as was its custom, stood in beads upon his narrow brow. The Duke, who had been napping, sprang up, lit a candle after about eight-and-twenty attempts, seized the nearest weapon at hand—a cat's-eye breast-pin, with diamond strawberry leaves, and the Southborough crest, a sheep's head rouge in the cup of a tulip noir—and made forth upon the landing like one distraught, exactly as his Duchess rolled to the very feet of the paragon, covered with bruises and abrasions, the night-light extinguished in her fist. Feeling in agony for something to stay her barrel-like progress, her Grace grasped Mr. Bush in the dark, and he, suddenly waked from sleep, and perhaps under some such impression as that he was beset by stranglers or attended by phantoms, grappled her in return, greatly to her terror. She screamed; he grappled all the more. And the Duke, staring wildly over the balustrade, beheld a picture that might well shake the faith of the most trusting husband in Christendom—at any rate, it shook his to its foundations. He protruded the candle over the balustrade, and roared in a voice of thunder:
"I've caught you at last, have I?"
The question rang through the hall. The paragon heard it, and perceived the fierce and frenzied countenance of his Grace, then, gazing downwards, beheld the Duchess in a dressing-gown kneeling at his feet. This was enough. Under the notion that he must have made an impression on her Grace, and that the Duke was about to take vengeance on the guiltless as well as on the guilty party, he cast the Duchess off and fled he knew not whither.
"You shall not escape me!" shrieked the Duke. "Your blood—I'll have it!"
And leaping down the remaining stairs, he jumped the Duchess cleverly, and tore after the paragon with the fixed intention of taking it there and then. The Duchess fled in an opposite direction just as Miss Bindler, who had been waked by all this noise and movement, opened her bedroom door and, suspecting cracksmen, emptied six chambers of her pocket-revolver over the landing into the hall, at the same time remarking:
"This sort of thing won't do; it's time someone taught these fellows a lesson."
Although the Bun Emperor's palace was exceedingly large, it now contained so many people in full flight that there was some slight danger of their knocking up against one another. Mrs. Verulam and Chloe, Mr. James Bush, the Duke and the Duchess, were all stretching away at full speed in various directions, and to their number were shortly added Mr. Harrison, Mr. Bliggins, and the owner of Mitching Dean. The groom of the chambers was disturbed in his operations at the telephone by being knocked down just as he was saying to the Emperor:
"Oh, most certainly, sir; you may rely on me, and Mrs. Lite, to my latest breath—oh, indeed! I know I am, sir—I know I am responsible; and if so much as the house is set afire, or the furniture is broke to pieces, I shall——"
At this point in his discourse the paragon ran against him like a charging elephant, and laid him low; and while he was engaged in endeavouring to get up, the Duke fell over him, and the noise of Miss Bindler's six shots rang through the palace. Mr. Harrison sat up, and the Duke began to strangle him, while Mr. Rodney, terrified byMiss Bindler's behaviour, tore out of the green bedroom, and rushed to the detectives' quarters, crying in a piercing voice:
"Save yourselves! All is over! Save yourselves!"
Four of the detectives were so fast asleep that they took no manner of notice of this kindly warning; but Mr. Bliggins, dropping his paper of trifle and tipsy-cake, and letting his magnum fall with a crash, took to his heels, and, after making the entire circuit of the palace about eighty-five times at the top of his speed, plunged head-foremost through a plate-glass window, emerged into the domain, and never stopped till he reached London, where he at once took up another profession.
Mr. Harrison was not of a temper to be strangled, even by a Duke, without making some show of opposition; and on this occasion he exerted himself to such good purpose that, after about ten minutes of acute struggling, during which the fortunes of war sometimes inclined to one side and sometimes to the other, he succeeded in extricating his throat from his Grace's claws, when, wailing at the top of his voice, he flapped off into the darkness, and was no more seen. This misadventure had given the paragon such a start that he gained his bedroom in safety, turned the key eight or nine times in the lock, and then began tying the bed-sheets together with a view to instantly escaping to Bungay by the window. The sheets were, however, too short, and he was forced to desist from this attempt. Meanwhile the Duke, believing that he had very nearly killed Mr. Bush, who had probably only escaped for the moment to die a lingering death in some distant corner of the palace, got up and hurried away to Mr. Rodney's room, which he reached just as the owner of Mitching Dean darted back into it, and was preparing to shut the door on imaginary murderers.
"Don't dare to enter!" cried Mr. Rodney, struggling to bang the door on the Duke. "I shall certainly kill the first man who enters!"
He meant that the first man who entered would certainly kill him, but that was his way of putting it.
"Rodney! Rodney!" cried his Grace. "Let me in, Rodney—let me in!"
"If I sell my life, I'll sell it dearly!" replied Mr. Rodney. "I will not be slain without a struggle."
And he elongated himself against the swaying door, while Miss Bindler, with rapid precision, reloaded her revolver in the adjoining bedroom, and the Duchess tore through Winter Garden No. 3.
"Rodney, don't be a fool! Don't be an ass, Rodney!"
"I will! Nothing shall prevent me—nothing on earth! I will! I will!" replied the owner of Mitching Dean, with an attempt at manly decision of manner.
But the Duke was desperate, and was also very much stronger physically than Mr. Rodney. He therefore burst in the door, and added:
"Rodney, you must act for me in this affair—I insist upon it; I require it of you. Rodney, you must act for me in this affair."
The owner of Mitching Dean, who was busily engaged in trying to get under the bed before his visitor had time to slay him, made no reply to this demand, unless the putting of his head and nearly half his trunk into hiding could be called so. But the Duke had laid aside all sense of his great position, and now pointed his remarks, and endeavoured to convey a sense of their real urgency, by seizing fast hold of Mr. Rodney's left leg, and trying with might and main to eject him from the position which he had taken up.
"I will die here! I will not be killed in the open! I will die here!" cried Mr. Rodney in a suffocated voice, passionately endeavouring to force some more of his person beneath the tester.
"You'll die where I choose!" retorted his Grace, losing his temper and commencing to handle the unfortunate gentleman rather roughly. "Come out of it!"
"No, no; I will not come out! I will die here!" shrieked Mr. Rodney, while Miss Bindler emerged once more upon the landing, and again started firing about the palace.
"Come out you shall!" shouted the Duke, and he acted with such vigour that in something less than ten minutes he had forced Mr. Rodney from his cover and dragged him, smothered with dust and pale with terror, into the open.
"Do it mercifully! For Heaven's sake, kill me without hurting me!" began the owner of Mitching Dean, looking at his Grace with eyes that had retreated far into his head. "What—you, Duke! I thought you were one of my oldest and most valued—you to fly at me like——"
"Rodney, you're an ass! You're a fool, Rodney! But, all the same, you must act for me in this affair."
Mr. Rodney, beginning to gather that his slaughter was not so imminent as he had previously supposed, now endeavoured to assume an air of dignity.
"Duke, this is strange language," he began stiffly.
"Damned strange! and so's it strange your getting under the bed directly I try to speak to you. Sit down."
And the Duke thrust the owner of Mitching Dean into a sitting posture upon the bed, closed the door, turned the key in the lock, returned to Mr. Rodney—who had meanwhile again gone very pale, suspecting treachery—and remarked:
"Rodney, I've just been trying to strangle that fellow Bush!"
This was scarcely reassuring, but Mr. Rodney forced a tortured smile, and stammered, with white lips:
"Did you—did you succeed—in doing so, Duke?"
"Only partially, Rodney—only partially, I fear," returned his Grace. "He managed to get away from me."
"Indeed!"
"Yes, just as I was on the point of choking the life out of him."
"What—what a pity!" gasped Mr. Rodney in a humouring tone.
The Duke grasped his trembling hand.
"You're a good fellow, Rodney!" he exclaimed. "I knew I could rely on you."
"Oh, certainly, Duke, certainly. Rely on me, pray!"
"I will. Then you will act for me in this affair?"
"Yes, yes, with the greatest pleasure!" cried Mr. Rodney, feebly temporising.
"Thank you! You're a man, after all! We'll kill him yet, between us!"
Mr. Rodney gasped. Still, he preferred therôleof murderer to therôleof dead body, on the whole. He therefore thought it best to reply:
"I hope so—I sincerely hope so."
"My belief is this," continued the Duke, knitting his brows ferociously, "that the fellow is already more than half dead."
"Dear me!"
"Although he had sufficient strength left to crawl away and hide himself—Heaven knows where."
"Oh!"
"Either he'll die in some attic or basement, under a pump, or in a sink or somewhere, like the rat he is, or he'll break out of the place and make a bee-line for Bungay. In that event, we shall follow him directly it's dawn."
"Quite so, Duke—quite so!"
"Force a duel on him then and there, and shoot him like a dog in his own damned cabbage-garden!"
"An excellent plan—excellent!" cried Mr. Rodney, trembling in the absolute conviction that the Duke was raving mad. "How—how clever of you to think of it!"
"This sort of business makes a man think," said the Duke moodily.
"It does—it does, indeed!" murmured Mr. Rodney, who had, perhaps, thought more during the last fifteen minutes than in the whole course of his previous life.
"Very well, then," said the Duke; "then that's settled?"
"Quite—absolutely!"
"Don't you play me false!"
"Oh, Duke! Could you suppose such a thing possible?" cried Mr. Rodney, assuming an injured air.
"I shall search for the fellow first. If I find him still here, I'll finish killing him now. If not, you and I start for Bungay as soon as it's dawn. That's the bargain?"
"That is the bargain."
"Wait here, then, till I come back."
And his Grace left the room, carrying the door-key with him in an absent-minded manner. Mr. Rodney remained sitting on the bed in a convulsed attitude, staring at nothing. He had, of course, intended to lock and double-lock the door after the Duke's exit. Precluded from taking this simple measure of precaution, he wasreduced to a jelly, and, as such, was naturally incapable of movement. He therefore remained where he was, and when his Grace, after a considerable interval, returned to the room, he found the gentleman who was to act for him in this affair still crouched in a heap upon the mattress, and looking far more dead than most ordinary living people can manage.
"Rodney," said the Duke, "he's gone! He's got away!"
Mr. Rodney nodded. He was incapable of speech.
"We shall follow him as soon as it's dawn. Get your coat and hat."
"I—I beg your pardon?"
"Get your coat and hat."
Mr. Rodney began to look for those articles in the tooth-brush dish. Not finding them there, he again collapsed, perhaps from surprise. The Duke, seeing his condition, rummaged in the wardrobe, produced his Ascot silk hat and a travelling ulster, handed them to him, and then remarked:
"Now follow me. We shall spend the rest of the night in my room considering the best course to take—pistols or swords—and directly it's light we'll break into the stables, saddle a couple of horses with our own hands, and ride across country to Bungay. I've got a map of the district. We shall go as the crow flies."
"As the crow flies!" murmured Mr. Rodney, imbecile in the presence of this delightful programme: a few hours with a maniac, succeeded by horse-stealing, and continuing with twenty or thirty miles across a difficult country in a top-hat, the whole to conclude with a cold-blooded murder in a marsh. However, he followed the Duke with tottering steps, and a tongue which clave to the roof of his mouth.
Meanwhile the paragon had indeed escaped from the palace. After finding that it was impossible to swarm down the sheets, Mr. Bush took counsel with himself and resolved to dare all in the effort to reach a place of safety beyond the vengeance of the Duke. He therefore, choosing a moment when Miss Bindler was engaged in reloading her burglar-destroyer for the third time, stole forth from his bedroom and gained the baronial hall unobserved. Once there, he, with cautious hand, proceeded to unbar the mighty front door, and found himself presently facing a wild night. The wind was getting up. The rain was coming down. The darkness was intense. He hesitated. But death was behind him, and he resolved to go. Only for one instant did he stay to catch up from the hall-table a bottle of whisky and a box of cigars, provender for the journey. In justice to him, it must here be stated that he had no time to notice that the whisky bottle was of silver, engraved with the Emperor's crest, a bun couchant on a plate d'or, and that the cigar-box happened by some oversight to be made of gold set with turquoises, and surrounded by a legend setting forth that it was presented to Mr. Lite by the Bun-makers' Company as a mark of their "affection and regard." Laden thus, the paragon disappeared into the darkness, made his way to the stables, by a fortunate chance ran across a shed in which the head coachman—a venerable and a very heavy man—stabled his own private tricycle, and by the time the Duke was searching for him in the sink, was tricycling at a good round pace along the highroad that led to Bungay. He flattered himself that his exit had been unnoticed. It had, however, been observed by two people, the Duchess, who was at that moment fleeing through an adjoining boudoir, andMr. Harrison, who was running away in a contiguous winter garden. Now, the groom of the chambers had a stern sense of duty, which did not entirely desert him even when he was trying to escape from being strangled. He therefore stayed his flight to inform the Emperor that the paragon had just made off, loaded with gold and silver, presentation caskets, and other costly treasure, and then continued running away until his strength was totally exhausted.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE TRUE LIFE.
Asthe first pale streak of dawn rose over the peaceful marshes of Bungay, and touched with palest rose the thatched eaves of the Farm, Mr. Jacob Minnidick, as was his custom, arose cursing and swearing from his truckle bed. Mr. Minnidick possessed a temperament which displayed itself chiefly in personal abuse, and he was quite as ready to direct this abuse against Nature as against man. Indeed, he was accustomed to treat the weather as his deliberate enemy, the sun or rain as full of a spite against him, the very earth itself as emphatically hostile to him, emphatically set on "getting at him" so far as Providence permitted.
"Darn it!" remarked Mr. Minnidick, putting on a stocking with a hole in it. "Darn it all, I say!"
And he proceeded to make a sketchy toilet of a rather corduroy nature, after which he walked to the narrow window and looked forth across the marshes. The grass was saturated with rain. Mr. Minnidick viewed it with sour disfavour.
"A deal of good it'll do us," he muttered. "Didn'tI 'ave to drain the water off only yesterday, and the three-feet-sixer choked up, as I allers knew 'twould be? Darn the rain, I say!"
He shook a gnarled old fist at it out of the window, and heavily descended the narrow stairs.
Some threescore and ten summers had passed over Mr. Minnidick's head, and been darned by him, since he was born, yet still he laboured on as Mr. Bush's assistant in the grand, true life aimed at by Mrs. Verulam. His small and thin form was duly bent with years. His legs were bowed. His scanty grey hair fell adown his stooping shoulders, and his nut-cracker mouth, fallen in, moved incessantly as if he were trying to masticate invisible food. In fact, he lived up to his name and calling most thoroughly, and would have looked quite realistic in an Adelphi hay-field or Drury Lane cabbage scene. Emerging now into the garden, he glanced angrily around from under his shaggy eyebrows. He beheld a flat plot of ground bounded by tough hedges, in one of which stood a wicket-gate. There were beds of flowers, small paths, a thicket of trees, and a vegetable domain adorned with melon and cucumber frames against a moss-grown wall. Cherries were being forced in pots; beehives stood about; an old-fashioned brick flue had been turned into accommodation for some mysterious fruit; a small brick house, about as big as a loose-box with a roof to it, and devoid of windows, sheltered a pit in which mushroom-spawn was germinating in dense darkness and dull heat. Elsewhere stood two or three rather ramshackle outhouses. The Farm itself was a small and plain building, with narrow windows almost blinded with creepers, a door in the middle, and protruding eaves like Mr. Minnidick's eyebrows. Flattish land stretched away to the horizon onevery side, steaming now in the gathering light of the morning. Mr. Minnidick surveyed this prospect and continued:
"Darn it all, I say!"
This sentence had been his morning hymn of praise for more than half a century, and it was quite certain that he would only cease to uplift it with the coming of death. His matins completed, Mr. Minnidick took his way to one of the outhouses, making a slight detour on the journey to glance at some marl and a pet manure tank, and, selecting from various implements a favourite hoe, and an enormous spade, returned to the kitchen-garden, prepared his hands for labour in the usual manner, and began performing various mysterious rites among the cabbages, peas, potatoes and other vegetables with which Mr. Bush's estate was liberally endowed. Now and then he desisted from labour for a moment, and on these occasions he invariably looked towards the wicket-gate and muttered, "He's a beauty—darn 'im!" a statement which seemed to bring with it great satisfaction, and to cause a certain amount of exultation in Mr. Minnidick's earnest and retiring soul. Towards seven o'clock, as Mr. Minnidick was looking towards the gate for the twentieth or so time, and was in the very act of opening his purse-like mouth in his age-honoured and terse remark, there appeared before him a vision that seemed to fill him with amazement. For he dropped the favourite hoe among some sprouts, set his hands over his eyes, let fall his lower jaw, and stared as one that sees a ghost.
"Darn it all!" he murmured. "If it ain't 'im aback a'ready! Darn it all, I say!"
"'Im" signified the paragon, who had indeed at that very instant ridden up to the gate on the Emperor's headcoachman's tricycle, and who now dismounted therefrom with much groaning, and walked unsteadily into the garden, the pockets of his coat bulging with the silver whisky-bottle and the gold presentation cigar-box. He approached the sprouts among which his retainer was standing, and gave the latter a sulky nod of the head, to which Mr. Minnidick returned a nod that was, if possible, sulkier.
"How's the vegs?" mumbled Mr. Bush.
"Mortial spoilt by rain—darn 'em!" replied Mr. Minnidick. "Mortial spoilt."
And he stared harder than ever at Mr. Bush, whose saturated evening costume was now beginning to steam in the sun.
"What's brought ye back s' soon?" he enquired.
The paragon shuffled his feet.
"What's that to yer?" he replied. "Why don't yer get to hoein'?"
Mr. Minnidick munched and swallowed nothing with considerable vehemence for some minutes, and then he said with excruciating bitterness:
"Why don't ye git to them as drew ye from hoein'?"
"Shut yer head, I've done with 'em," said the paragon.
"Oh, I dessay," returned Mr. Minnidick, with aggravated grievousness, "I dessay, but where's the garding been while ye was with 'em? Who's seen arter the mushrims? Who's a-cared for them there mellings? Who's been a-watchin' of the cowcumbers? Lawks-a-mussy! Darn it all, I say!"
Mr. Bush deigned no reply to these passionate questions, but proceeded heavily into the house, from which he presently emerged, clad in more suitable raiment, still loaded with the Emperor's gold and silver, and in theact of swallowing a mighty hunch of home-made bread. Without making any further remark, he laid hold of a spade and began to dig in gloomy silence, while Mr. Minnidick went on hoeing and muttering angrily to himself. How long these pastoral occupations would have continued in ordinary circumstances, it is impossible to say. They might, perhaps, have been protracted till full noontide, had not a sound of horses galloping in the adjacent lane suddenly attracted the attention of the paragon, who rested upon his spade, scratched his huge head, and began to look rather uneasy.
"Whatever's that?" he muttered.
"'Osses," replied Mr. Minnidick. "A-runnin' away, darn 'em!"
It really seemed as if there were something in this remark, for the noise upon the highway proclaimed that the animals were approaching at a tremendous pace, and would soon be in view of the diligent gardeners. Scarcely had Mr. Minnidick made his last statement, when Mr. Bush went through a somewhat remarkable performance. He dropped his spade, and cast himself down on the earth upon his face, at the same time shouting to Mr. Minnidick:
"Stand before me! Cover me up! Throw sprouts on me! Throw sprouts over me!"
These suggestions were not carried out, for Mr. Minnidick was of a leisurely turn of mind, and at no time of a disposition to sacrifice valuable cabbage growths without good reason. He therefore merely rested on his hoe and stared, at the same time munching the air with extraordinary rapidity and determination. And thus he was posed, like some Shakespearian rustic, when two smoking horses hove in sight, and the air was rent with the crackingof a hunting-whip, and the furious cries of one of the riders.
"Give him his head, Rodney! give him his head, I tell you!"
"I have been giving it him for the last three hours, Duke. If I give it him any more, I shall be killed, I shall indeed!"
"Take your arms from his neck, I tell you!"
"I will not. If I do I shall be thrown. Both the reins have been broken for hours."
"That's because you held 'em so damned tight. You'd break a six-foot rope that'd anchor a man-of-war. Why don't you sit straight?"
"Because I can't, because—I—am—dropping!"
The unfortunate owner of Mitching Dean did indeed seem in a parlous condition. Wrapped in the travelling ulster, his silk hat smashed into a pulp and fixed, by the edge of a rent, on his left ear, he was laid out almost flat along his horse with his arms clasped round its neck. His long white face was smothered in liquid mud, which had only dried upon the bridge of his nose, forming a sort of forbidding-looking island in the midst of his wrinkled countenance. His trousers had been torn into ribbons by the quick-set hedges through which he had passed and the five-barred gates he had reduced to splinters. One of his stirrups had gone. His reins, as he had affirmed, fluttered around his horse's chest in fragments, and he had in some mysterious manner lost a boot, possibly in a small pond in which his animal had recently lain down and rolled out of sheer gaiety of disposition. Altogether, he scarcely looked his best as he reached the hedge of the paragon's domain. On perceiving the rigid figure of Mr. Minnidick, the Duke suddenlypulled up, with the result that Mr. Rodney cannoned against him and promptly bit the mud.
"Damn you, Rodney! Why don't you look where you're going?" said his Grace crossly. "Here, you—my man, can you tell me the way to the Farm, Bungay Marshes, Lisborough?"
"Heh?"
"I want the Farm, Bungay Marshes, Lisborough."
"What d'ye want 'un fur?"
"What the deuce is that to you? Get on again, Rodney, or the brute'll be off."
"I cannot. I am unable; I fear both my legs are fractured."
"Nonsense! The shaking'll do you good—wake you up—put some spirit into you. Well, my man, don't you know where the Farm is?"
"Yes, I knows," said Mr. Minnidick.
"Where, then?"
"'Ereabouts."
"I know that."
"What did ye arst me fur, then?"
"Shovel the sprouts over me, d'ye hear? Cover me over!" muttered Mr. Bush, while the Duke angrily rejoined:
"If I have any of your impudence, I'll give you a taste of my whip. Tell me where the Farm is this moment."
"I have told ye."
"Where is it?"
"'Ereabouts."
"Where the devil's hereabouts?"
"Where I'm a-standing of."
"Where you're standing! Why didn't you say so?"
"I did say so—darn it all!"
"Where's your master?" said the Duke. "Is he back?"
"Heh?"
"Where the deuce is your infernal master?"
"'Ereabouts," replied Mr. Minnidick calmly, despite renewed and furious whispers of "Throw sprouts over me! Cover me up!" from the paragon.
"Where the deuce is that?"
"Where I'm a-standin' of," replied Mr. Minnidick, indicating Mr. Bush with the favourite hoe.
The Duke leaped from his horse.
"Here, catch hold, Rodney!" he cried, flinging the reins to the owner of Mitching Dean, who, failing to grasp them, permitted the animal to gallop from the spot at the rate of about twenty miles an hour.
"Rodney, you're the ——dest muddler I ever met in the whole course of my life!" said the Duke witheringly, as he tied up the remaining horse and proceeded to scramble over the hedge in a most murderous and determined manner.
The paragon hastily sat up among the sprouts, and raised his arms before his face in an attitude of awkward defence.
"You rascal!" said the Duke—"you infernal rascal! Then I didn't strangle you, after all?"
"Eh?" said Mr. Bush sulkily, and still keeping up his arms.
"I didn't strangle you. But I will!"
"Duke, Duke, let me counsel delay!" cried Mr. Rodney from the other side of the hedge. "Take time, I implore you—take a little time to think it over."
"Rodney, hold your tongue! I thought I'd killed you," continued his Grace to Mr. Bush.
"You never touched me!" growled the paragon. "You never caught me; I went too quick."
At this statement the Duke looked surprised.
"I certainly strangled someone," he said meditatively. "Rodney, I know I strangled somebody. Who could it have been?"
"Possibly it was merely a footman, Duke," said Mr. Rodney in a relieved tone of voice. "You ought to be very thankful, I am sure."
"I daresay, a footman; or it may have been only Bliggins. It doesn't matter. What does matter is, that I'm going to have satisfaction. D'you hear, sir?" he shouted in Mr. Bush's ear.
"I ain't deaf," retorted that gentleman.
"I'm going to fight you and kill you in your own garden here."
"Darn it all, I say!" from Mr. Minnidick, who was standing calmly by during this social intercourse.
"Duke, I implore you, be calm!" cried Mr. Rodney, grasping some brambles oratorically. "Kill him quietly; don't make a scene, Duke—for Heaven's sake, don't make a scene!"
"He shall have a chance, Rodney; he shall die in fair fight. Choose your weapons!" he added to the paragon.
"Eh?"
"Choose your weapons! What do you generally fight with here?"
"Hoes," replied Mr. Bush sulkily, while Mr. Minnidick muttered something about "Allers fight with a 'oe and you won't repint of it."
"Hoes!" said his Grace. "I've never tried them. I shall have to practise first; that's only fair."
"Yes, yes!" cried Mr. Rodney eagerly—"that's it. Take a week to practise, and then kill him quietly."
"A week! An hour will be enough," said the Duke. "Very well, hoes let it be; where can I get one?"
"At the Elephant and Drum," mumbled the paragon.
"What the deuce is that?"
"The inn to Bungay."
"An inn!" exclaimed Mr. Rodney—"an inn! The very place. There are always plenty of hoes at an inn, and things to eat, and water to wash in. The Elephant and Drum is the very place for us."
"How far is it?" said his Grace.
"Only a mile, straight on," said Mr. Bush, "as the rooks a-go."
"I shall be back in an hour or two, then; and mind, if you try to get away, I'll follow you to the ends of the earth and strangle you there. Now, then——Hulloa! what's that?"
His Grace had perceived the tricycle standing at the wicket-gate. A crafty look came into his face, such as decorates Dan Leno's when that marvel is enacting clever Mr. Green.
"Rodney!" he said.
"Duke!"
"Come over the hedge, get on that tricycle, and follow me; I'll ride the horse."
"But, Duke, I have never tricycled in my life. Indeed, I——"
"Come over the hedge and get on this moment!"
Mr. Rodney feebly crawled sufficiently high up the brambles to be caught hold of and thrown among the sprouts. He was then picked up, led to the machine and placed upon it in a nerveless and quivering heap.The Duke gave him a push, and, as the Farm stood on a slight eminence, the machine instantly ran off at an increasing pace, till Mr. Rodney's cries for assistance died down towards the horizon. Then the Duke mounted the horse, gave Mr. Bush a sinister look, informed him that the duel would take place within the next two hours—or three, at latest—and galloped off towards the inn.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Minnidick examined each other's physiognomies for a moment with some attention. Then Mr. Bush grunted; Mr. Minnidick replied, "Darn it all, I say!" and they resumed their labours among the sprouts. It seemed that Mr. Bush considered any attempt at further flight useless; or possibly he thought that he could hold his own with a hoe against any living man. In either case, he looked more dogged and heavier even than usual as he solemnly turned up the damp earth with his spade, and arranged the lives of various inoffensive and patient vegetables for them, no doubt entirely to his own satisfaction. Presently the rattle of a trotting chaise disturbed these processes. Mr. Bush paused and scratched his head.
"Whatever's that?" he said.
"A kerridge a-comin'," said Mr. Minnidick.
"What should a carriage a-come for?" rejoined the paragon.
Mr. Minnidick uttered his morning hymn, and stared across the hedge by way of reply, while Mr. Bush looked somewhat inclined to lie down again among the sprouts. He stood his ground, however, and was rewarded almost immediately by the appearance of a tub-like chaise chiefly constructed of basket-work, and drawn by a tottering white pony which was driven by a small boy with a very sharply-pointed nose, at whose side—in an attitude of large abandonment and intimate despair—wasspread her Grace the Duchess of Southborough. On seeing the paragon, her Grace gave vent to a bass screech, and seizing the hands of the boy with the sharply-pointed nose—much to that individual's fury—compelled him to bring the white pony to against the hedge.
"Oh, Mr. Bush! Mr. Bush!" cried the Duchess.
"What's brought you a-here?" queried the paragon.
"Oh, Mr. Bush, you have ruined me! You have undone me, Mr. Bush!" continued the Duchess, on her most piercing lower notes.
"Get along with yer!" said Mr. Bush, while Mr. Minnidick, poised upon the favourite hoe in a gardening attitude, surveyed the dreadful scene.
"You have, indeed. But you must make reparation! You must and shall!"
And her Grace, who still wore the early Victorian dressing-gown, surmounted with a waterproof cloak, and crowned by a bonnet and feathers, began attempting to scramble over the hedge into the paragon's domain.
"What are yer up to now?" said Mr. Bush. "Where are yer a-makin' for?"
"You!" replied the Duchess, atop of a big bramble interspersed with stakes. "You, you bad, evil-minded man!"
And she pitched into the mould at Mr. Minnidick's feet, head foremost.
"Darn it all, I say!" quoth Mr. Minnidick, while the small boy with the sharply-pointed nose broke out incontinently a-laughing.
"You must go to the Duke, Mr. Bush," proceeded her Grace, getting right end up, and raising her hands towards heaven. "You must go to him and tell him how innocent I am!"
"Innercent—oh, crikey!" said the small boy, emerging for an instant from his convulsions and speaking in a very high treble voice. "Innercent, does she sy?" and he relapsed again into his fit.
Mr. Bush began to look very sulky, and rather as if he were meditating a nap. The Duchess clasped his knees.
"Oh, Mr. Bush!" she wailed; "do me justice! set me right! Go to my husband and tell him what a true wife I have always been to him!"
"Give over! Give over now!"
"I will not give over! I have followed you here, for you alone can tell the Duke that there's nothing between——Oh, hide me! hide me! There's a carriage coming! Oh, if I am seen here I am lost for ever! Hide me!"
"Give over! Where can yer be a-hid?"
Her Grace sprang up with amazing agility for so large a woman. She glanced around like a hunted elephant. She heard the noise of rapidly approaching wheels. Her protruding eye took in the aspect of the place, ravaging it for its possibilities of concealment. Then, with the wail of a thing at bay, she fled across the vegetable-garden, fought her way through a small but dense jungle of gooseberry bushes, and darted into the mushroom-house just as a hired fly containing Mrs. Verulam, Chloe, and the faithful Marriner drove up to the wicket-gate.
"She'll a-treadle down the spawn! She'll do a mischief on them there mushrims! Darn it all, I say!" was Mr. Minnidick's comment on her Grace's choice of sanctuary, while Mr. Bush, who—perhaps deliberately—became more and more lethargic with each accumulating disaster, solemnly started digging again, with the manner of alabourer totally isolated from all intercourse with human-kind.
The bed of sprouts, which seemed rapidly becoming the centre of a whirlpool of violent activities, was at some little distance from the residence of the paragon, and was partially concealed from the wicket-gate and the flower-garden by a small hedge of yew. For this reason, perhaps, the occupants of the hired fly did not at first observe that the garden was tenanted. After enquiring the way to the nearest inn, and being duly informed of the existence of the Elephant and Drum, Mrs. Verulam and Chloe descended from the vehicle, in which the faithful Marriner—looking rather pale—was deliberately driven away.
Mrs. Verulam approached the wicket-gate, leaned upon it, and breathed a gentle sigh.
"Ah, Chloe," she murmured; "how exquisitely peaceful it is! Just what I expected. No harm could happen here. No echoes from the cruel world could ever pierce to this haven. Here there are no intrigues, no quarrels, no secrets, no slanders. Here all is rest and happiness."
"Quite so, dear. And here, or at least very near here, at the Elephant and Drum, I shall be able to change my trousers. It is sweet!"
"It's like heaven!" said Mrs. Verulam ecstatically. "How little Mr. Bush knows that we are here, looking upon his birthplace"—the paragon was born at Brixton, but no matter—"breathing the same air he has so often breathed!"
"You're hardly scientific, Daisy. Besides, by this time Mr. Bush is reading your note at the palace, and the Duchess and all of them know of our departure."
"Ah—true; I had forgotten that. I wonder what the Duchess is saying."
Her Grace was at the moment saying, "Oh, I shall be suffocated!" as she tried to compose herself upon a stack of dibble-holes filled with spawn that would have rejoiced the heart of Nicol.
"No doubt she is taking away your character," said Chloe.
"I hate those large, respectable women!" said Mrs. Verulam with sudden energy, and getting very red.
The special large, respectable woman to whom she alluded was furtively considering the chances of apoplexy, and marvelling at the heroic endurance displayed by the average mushroom.