MRS. VERULAM'S IDEA OF AGAG.
That curious cerebral condition which we call excitement affects men
and women in very different ways. At 3.15 on this Monday afternoon it
caused a nervous restlessness in Mrs. Verulam, a hectic calm in Mr.
Rodney, and an apoplectic irritability in Mr. Harrison. The first of
these victims of the nervous system talked incessantly; the second
said nothing at all; the third abused the powdered Frederick, had a
"few words"—fifty thousand or thereabouts—with the cook of Ribton
Marches, and fell foul of the second housemaid, with whom, in moments
of condescension, he was rather apt than otherwise to keep company.
And all these circumstances were brought about by Mr. James Bush, at
that very moment driving from the Sunningdale station to the palace,
with his very large feet up on the cushions of the carriage, and his
very small bag of necessaries up on the box. However, he was kept awake
by no warning instinct which told him of the turmoil cast before him
by his personality, but, on the contrary, slept profoundly, and even
snored, with his great head well back on the hood of the barouche. He
was awakened by the stoppage of the carriage before the palace door.
Inside, in the baronial hall, the crunching of the gravel was heard,
and Mrs. Verulam had just said with elaborate indifference:
"Dear me! Can this be Mr. Bush already?"
Mr. Rodney had looked at his watch, and answered:
"I fancy so."
And Chloe had exclaimed:
"By Jove! Bungay Marshes to the front!" a remark which she considered
manly, and calculated to impress Mr. Rodney, which it did—with horror.
The palace menials advanced at the double, accompanied by Mr. Harrison,
who proceeded with an air of extraordinary precaution, and the drawn
expression of one who believes himself to be on the point of catching
a murderer red-handed. The mighty portals flew slowly open, and the
carriage was revealed, with Mr. Bush laid out in it, his mouth wide
open in a yawn, and his fists in his eyes rubbing the slumber out of
them, while his snort of astonishment at the sudden interruption of
his delicious reveries was distinctly audible in the still summer air.
"What's all this? What the devil is it all?" he said in a huge and
rumbling voice to the menials who came forward to assist him from the
barouche.
"Ribton Marches, sir," said the powdered Frederick, while Mr. Harrison
looked as if doubtful whether it were not his duty to run Mr. Bush in
upon the spot without further ado.
"Marchuss?" retorted Mr. Bush—"Marchuss?"
"Yes, sir. Won't you get out, sir?"
Mr. Bush rolled out, rather as a barrel rolls out of a dray down an
inclined plane into a vault. Planting his feet upon the marble steps,
he turned round and said:
"Lay hold of that bag!"
Frederick laid hold of it with the arms of a man anticipating a
considerable weight. As the bag, however, appeared to contain nothing
of much greater bulk than a collar-stud, the footman was nearly thrown
down by the unexpected triviality of his labour. He almost dropped the
bag.
"You'd better!" said Mr. Bush—"you'd better!"
The alarmed menial met the Bungay Marshes eye, and apparently thought
he had better not, for he ascended the steps with some rapidity, and
vanished into the interior of the palace in the twinkling of an eye.
Mr. Bush lethargically moved onward into the baronial hall, in which
Mrs. Verulam, Mr. Rodney, and Chloe were seated.
"Oh, Mr. Bush," cried the former, rising with a lovely blush, and
coming forward to meet him, "I am so glad to see you!"
That gentleman grunted, and permitted her to take his hand.
"It is so good of you to come and leave your lovely garden, and all
your sheep, and—and bees. Let me introduce you to Mr. Rodney and Mr.
Van Adam. The rest of the party come this afternoon."
Mr. Bush threw a couple of nods at Mr. Rodney and Chloe. Then he
abruptly exclaimed:
"What are you after, eh?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Bush," said Mrs. Verulam in some surprise.
"What are you after?" pursued her gracious guest, with a very sinister
intonation.
"Oh, nothing, sir, not at all, by no means!" replied a rather hurried
voice, and Mr. Harrison somewhat hastily retreated from a shadowy nook
in which he had been taking observations, until that moment erroneously
supposed by him to be secret.
"Really, Mr. Rodney," said Mrs. Verulam rather petulantly, "that man is
becoming very unnecessary. Can't you keep him in order?"
"I will endeavour—I will certainly endeavour to do so," returned Mr.
Rodney in some disorder, turning to pursue Mr. Harrison. Mrs. Verulam
had a way of behaving as if he were responsible for everything and
everybody in the palace which he began to find distinctly trying.
"Yes, please do," said Mrs. Verulam. "Would you like to go to your room
at once, Mr. Bush, or will you rest a little first?"
"I'll rest there. I'll have a lay down," he replied, yawning—"a good
lay down."
And, without further parley, he set out for the upper regions of the
palace, his boots squeaking as he walked. When the squeaking had died
away, Mrs. Verulam turned rapturously to Chloe.
"Well, dear?" she said—"well?"
"Well," responded Chloe, with a good deal of hesitation.
"Isn't he simple? Isn't he straightforward and natural?"
"Oh, quite—quite."
"Yes. And isn't it a relief to find a man like that after all the shams
and hypocrisies of society? One is never in doubt about what Mr. Bush
is thinking, or what he means. One _knows_ it."
"I should think so."
"Yes; I knew you would agree with me. Oh, how delightful it is to have
one friend who feels in all things as one does oneself!"
"Daisy, don't! You forget—you mustn't kiss me."
"Oh, heavens! Could anybody have seen?"
She glanced apprehensively round.
"No; it is all right. But I knew you would. A large, frank nature like
that seems to go straight to all that is good and right in one. Oh, do
let us take advantage of our opportunity this week! Do—do let us make
the most of it."
"Do you mean that Mr. Bush is our opportunity?"
"Yes—yes."
"Well, dear, I don't mind, I'm sure. But the most of Mr. Bush is a
great deal. I think he is the largest human being I have ever seen. Now
I'm going to wander about the garden and see what the Bun Emperor's
plants are like."
And Chloe went off wondering greatly at her friend's enthusiasm for
the gentleman from Bungay. She herself could at present see nothing
in him but a mountain of humanity, with that face, head, beard,
and expression already described as appearing to Mrs. Verulam in
the imaginary mirror of the cotillon of her fancy. Nor could his
manner—essentially truthful as no doubt it was—be called precisely
pleasing. Chloe picked a rose or two and lost herself in wonder.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Verulam wandered ecstatically about the palace. Mr.
Harrison was busy with the Bun Emperor at the telephone. Mr. Rodney was
plunged once more in terrible meditation in the purple drawing-room,
and Mr. Bush was enjoying to the utmost his good lay down on one of the
Empress's largest spring-mattresses. He woke soon after the arrival
of the rest of the party, and strolled heavily forth alone into the
grounds to take the air, which had not circulated very freely beneath
the quilt with which his head had been completely covered during the
last hour and a half.
Meanwhile the baronial hall looked fuller of people than it had ever
looked before. Tea was going on, but Mrs. Verulam had declined to allow
Mr. Bush to be disturbed.
"He will come in his own good time," she said, "I don't wish to bother
him. He is accustomed to perfect liberty."
She addressed the company generally. The Duke of Southborough, who
resembled an unusually tall pantaloon in appearance, but was not
entirely unlike a clown in manner, said in reply:
"Ah, then, I suppose he's a bachelor."
"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Verulam, with a secret glance at Chloe.
"Poor chap! poor chap!" said the Duke, with his funny demeanour of an
actor being remarkably successful in his part. "What a sad business
this anti-matrimonial bias that is growing up in the present generation
of Englishmen is! Eh, Lady Drake?"
Lady Drake, who was the human equivalent of the most perfect sort
of acid-drop that the power of the sugar-plum manufacturer has yet
produced, shook her head, on which the hair reposed in bandeaux.
"Men are more selfish than the lower animals, I fear," she said,
sweetening her tea with some modern preparation which she always
carried about with her in a good-sized phial.
"Oh, Mr. Bush is a most self-sacrificing man, I assure you," said Mrs.
Verulam quickly.
"Then why is he a bachelor? That's what Lady Drake means," said the
Duke, with a Drury Lane pantomime wink at the company.
"I think the French way of doing things by far the best," cried Mr.
Ingerstall, lifting a muffin to his mouth as a juggler poises a
billiard-ball on the rounded tip of a cue. "The Frenchman marries as
a matter of course, and with no more intention of curtailing his full
liberty of action than——"
"The French point of view in that matter is scarcely a suitable subject
for discussion, Mr. Ingerstall," said the Duchess of Southborough
very severely, while the Duke chuckled to himself. "Full liberty of
action! Very good! very good indeed! Ha, ha, ha!" Mr. Ingerstall
violently engaged her Grace—began to worry the Duchess, as Chloe said
to herself—while Miss Bindler, a wiry lady of about five-and-thirty,
who had a face like a horse, a tailor-made manner and boots with spats,
turned to Mr. Rodney and asked him what he was going to back on the
following day.
"I expect to make a bit on Cubicle in the first race," she said.
"Indeed!" said Mr. Rodney. "I trust I may do the same."
"Did you get a good price?"
"What for?" said Mr. Rodney. "Did I say that I had sold anything?"
This remark shows that the pressure of circumstances was becoming
rather too much for the owner of Mitching Dean. In fact, he was
considerably agitated. Since her arrival the Duchess had taken him
aside and indulged him with some very dreadful confidences. Her Grace
had been pleased to tell him, "as an old friend," that she had been on
the very point of telegraphing at the last moment to Mrs. Verulam to
give up her visit.
"She has been going too far, Mr. Rodney," said the Duchess in a
whispering bass. "She has disgusted London."
"Disgusted London!" cried the appalled confidant. "Oh, no; impossible!"
"You think nothing could; but you are wrong. There is a limit even in
our world, and she has overstepped it. You will see that to-morrow in
the enclosure. Old Martha Sage intends to cut her."
"Impossible!" reiterated Mr. Rodney, the perspiration starting in beads
upon his narrow forehead.
"Nothing is impossible to Martha Sage. I assure you it is the fact."
"It must be prevented," cried Mr. Rodney. "It must, it shall!"
He felt as Curtius probably did when he found that he really was in the
gulf.
"I don't see how it can be," said the Duchess. "You don't know Martha
Sage."
"But indeed I do," said Mr. Rodney. "She has often dandled me in her
arms."
"What, recently?"
"Yes, yes," he rejoined distractedly; "often and often."
"Possibly you may have some influence over her then," said the Duchess;
"and, indeed, if what you say is true, I hardly think Martha Sage has
the right to take the initiative in such an affair."
"When I was a little boy—when I was a child," said Mr. Rodney,
recovering himself in time to save Lady Sage's vanishing reputation
with the Duchess.
"Oh, that's nothing. She has dandled everybody at that age. But she
doesn't allow anybody to influence her decisions for all that."
"Then Mrs. Verulam must be kept out of the enclosure," cried Mr.
Rodney, wringing his hands together. "She must and shall!"
"That will only delay the matter," said her Grace calmly. "In fact,
Mr. Rodney—but this I tell you in the strictest confidence—if I
don't observe a very great change in Mrs. Verulam's behaviour during
this week, I am very much afraid that I shall be obliged to agree with
Martha Sage. Oh, is it tea-time?"
It was this terrible conversation which had reduced Mr. Rodney to
making a _mal-àpropos_ reply, a thing he had scarcely ever done before
in the whole course of his social life. He was immersed in thought,
considering whether he ought not solemnly to warn Mrs. Verulam of her
danger, or whether, on the other hand, he should go privately to Lady
Sage, recall the dandling incident to her Crimean War recollection,
and implore her, for her old intimacy's sake, to be merciful, and to
bow to the Ribton Marches party on the morrow. He could not decide.
He could not come to a conclusion. And Miss Bindler very soon gave
him up in despair, and took to a close and exhaustive study of her
betting-book. This study, Mr. Rodney's gloomy agonies, the Duke's
jokes, Mr. Ingerstall's recollections of Parisian life and art, and,
indeed, everything that was going on in the baronial hall, was,
however, interrupted very shortly by the sudden entry of Mr. James
Bush, with disordered and earthy costume, breathing stertorously, and
looking rather puffy about the cheeks. Mrs. Verulam greeted him with a
delighted smile, and was about to make him known to the fresh arrivals,
when he broke in upon her "Oh, Mr. Bush, let me intro——" with the
loud and rather startling exclamation, uttered in evident bitter
sarcasm, "You've got nice company here!"
"What!" said Mrs. Verulam, while the assembled magnates joined in a
simultaneous start of astonishment.
"Well, I'm blowed!" continued Mr. Bush. "You've got nice company!"
"I hope so, indeed!" murmured Mrs. Verulam. "Let me make you known to
them. Mr. Bush—the Duchess of Southborough, Lady Pearl McAndrew——"
She named her guests.
Mr. Bush plunged his head in their direction, without deigning to
glance at them.
"Mad, I s'pose!" he resumed to Mrs. Verulam. "Mad as Moses!"
Consternation now reigned among the inmates of the palace, who began
to fear that Mr. Bush was giving a name to his own private affliction.
Even Mrs. Verulam felt a certain diffidence steal over her at so
definite an inclusion of all her party within the sad circle of a
supposititious lunacy. But she guessed Mr. Bush to be a bit of a wag,
like most great men. Doubtless he was only having his little joke.
Still, she felt quite definitely that this fact should be made apparent
to the Duchess and others with as short a delay as possible, so she
hastened to reply:
"Ah, Mr. Bush, you mustn't make a joke on so serious a subject as
madness."
"Joke! There's no joke! Where's the joke of being potted at like a rook
in January? Joke, indeed—joke!"
He blew forth a perfect volume of angry breath.
"A rook in January?" said poor Mrs. Verulam, in consummate perplexity,
and really beginning to have her fears for her guest's reason.
"Aye. If I'd have stayed he'd have had me. I wasn't eight paces off
him."
"Unless the other gentleman was an unusually indifferent shot,"
remarked the Duke, glancing at Mr. Bush's gigantic bulk, "I must say I
think Mr. Bush must have stood in some slight danger. Did you not stay,
then?" his Grace added, addressing himself to the narrator.
"Stay? Not I! I just ducked down on all fours, and came back like a
beast through the rhododendrons."
"Indeed!" continued the Duke pleasantly. "A very sensible posture and
mode of exit under the circumstances. Who's your sportsman?" he added,
turning to Mrs. Verulam.
"I have no idea, indeed!" she replied, in perplexity unutterable. "Oh,
Mr. Bush!" she added, with a most tender accent of commiseration, "I
can scarcely tell you how grieved, how horrified I am that you should
have been so nearly murdered—and so soon after your arrival, too!"
"I should think so!" Mr. Bush rejoined angrily. "A nice thing to happen
to a respectable man!"
His tacit refusal to be mollified reacted upon his hostess, who, as
usual in untoward circumstances, turned instantly upon the man who she
thought loved her.
"Mr. Rodney," she said with bitter reproach, "you never told me there
was a murderer living in this neighbourhood."
"I never knew it!" cried Mr. Rodney. "It never occurred to me, I
do assure you. Where were you?" he exclaimed to Mr. Bush, with the
poignant accent of a man whose reputation is at stake.
"I was walkin' in the garden, a-lookin' at the mistakes the gardener
here's been makin'," said Mr. Bush sulkily.
"Yes, yes!" chorused the company.
"Presently I came to a bit of a pond, with flowers a-floatin' on it."
"Ah!" suddenly cried Mr. Rodney, in an illuminated manner. "And a
cottage on the farther side?"
"Aye; where he fires from."
"The Bun Emperor!" exclaimed Mr. Rodney, as if the matter was settled.
"Very unsportsmanlike behaviour," said Miss Bindler, "to shoot from
such cover as that. The game haven't a ghost of a chance."
"You're right, mum," said Mr. Bush, "they haven't—not unless they're
as quick at droppin' on all fours as I am."
"But I can't understand it even yet," pursued Mr. Rodney. "The
Emperor's really not a bad sort of man, as a general rule. Did you do
anything in particular by the pond, Mr. Bush?"
"Not I. I only stood a-lookin' at the little house. I saw a fattish,
smallish feller, with a fattish, smallish woman by his side, starin'
out——"
"The Empress, too!" said Mr. Rodney. "Well, Mr. Bush?"
"But I didn't take any account of them at first. I put out my stick
across the water to lay hold of some of the lilies, when what does the
fattish man do but shout out, "If you do it, I'll skin you!" I didn't
choose to notice his nonsense, and I'd just got hold of a lily, when
what do I see but him with a gun at his shoulder firin' straight at me.
So, as I say, I came away like a beast through the bushes."
Mr. Rodney seemed perfectly at ease.
"Mr. Lite always is a little hasty," he said. "The matter is perfectly
clear to me. He doesn't like anything being interfered with."
"A defender of the rights of property," said the Duke approvingly. "A
good Conservative."
"Still, he goes too far," said Mrs. Verulam, in considerable agitation.
"Mr. Rodney, I must ask you to be kind enough to tell Mr. Lite that I
cannot have my house-party shot at. Make it perfectly clear, please. As
a hostess, I cannot and will not permit anything of that kind."
"Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Rodney; "I see your point of view."
"If you won't have any more tea, it would be very good of you to go
to the fishing-cottage at once," said Mrs. Verulam. "Some of us might
like to stroll about the grounds presently, and I am sure we shall all
prefer to have Mr. Lite's solemn promise of amendment before we do so."
These words were received with an emphatic chorus of unfeigned assent,
so poor Mr. Rodney, who had only half finished his first cup, was
obliged to get up and fare forth into the afternoon. He went gloomily,
feeling that his Ascot this year was evidently to be a period of hard
labour, and that Mrs. Verulam, like many women, was inclined to make
mountains out of mole-hills. Not that James Bush could be accurately
described as a mole-hill. Nevertheless, under the circumstances, Mr.
Rodney's sympathies lay very decidedly with Mr. Lite. Indeed, as he
walked tealess in the sun, he gradually worked himself up into a
perfect fever of perfervid pity for the wrongs of the outraged exile,
practically homeless by the waterside, and forced to behold the
assaults of such an enemy as the man who had so foully influenced Mrs.
Verulam against society. Moved by this wild access of emotion, Mr.
Rodney burst into the fishing-cottage like a well-bred volcano, leapt
into the tiny parlour which for the moment accommodated the unfortunate
Lites, and, seizing Mr. Lite by the hand, exclaimed in a voice that
trembled with feeling:
"You have all my sympathy; I am entirely—entirely on your side. If you
had hit him, I don't think I could blame you—I don't, indeed!"
The Bun Emperor, who had an enormous pair of strong field-glasses in
one hand, and was in the very act of ringing the telephone-bell to
summon Mr. Harrison with the other, looked for an instant petrified
by this intrusion; and the Empress cried out in shrill alarm from her
station in the minute bay-window built to fit a fisherman. Mr. Rodney
breathlessly continued:
"I know what you—what any man worthy of the name—must feel on seeing
such a—such a—a spectacle, yes, as that man daring to make away
with the flowers that have been floating on those waters perhaps for
centuries."
The pond was exactly two years and three months old.
"What d'you mean?" gasped Mr. Lite, at length getting in an ejaculation
edgewise. "Are you mad?"
"I wish you had shot him—yes, I do!" cried Mr. Rodney, frantically
eulogising British assassination; and he threw himself into an adjacent
wicker-chair in a most Corsican manner.
The Empress wailed again from her embrasure.
"Oh, Perry, save me—save me!" was her natural cry.
"I will, Henrietta—I will, my love," said the Emperor. "Keep up."
After these reassuring words he advanced in a threatening manner upon
Mr. Rodney, and remarked: "Give over! D'you hear me? Give over!"
"I beg your pardon," murmured Mr. Rodney, exhausted by his unwonted
vocal exertions.
"Give over, or I'll lay my hands on you—I will."
"But I am sympathising with you—I am——"
"Sympathising!" said the Emperor, still maintaining a posture of
protection and defence; "what for? what over?"
"Your manly attempt to shoot James Bush," said Mr. Rodney, giving
himself away with extraordinary indifference to the opinion of the
civilised world on criminal affairs.
At the name the Emperor's manner changed. His black eyes blazed, and he
shook the field-glass as if it had been a fist.
"It was him, then," he cried—"it was him as I saw through the
telescope!"
"The telescope!" said Mr. Rodney, suddenly penetrated by a ray of light.
He turned rapidly in the wicker-chair, and threw a distracted glance
towards the embrasure. In it, reposing upon a window-seat, was an
enormous telescope. Mr. Rodney began to comprehend, and to see the
necessity of reconsidering his position under these much less violent
circumstances.
"Then you didn't fire at him?" he said, with an abrupt lamb-like
serenity.
"Fire at him!" said the Emperor. "What are you talking about? When he
went for Mrs. Lite's lilies I said I'd skin him; and so I would have,
or telephoned Mr. Harrison to, if he hadn't dropped into the ground for
all the world like a mole or a badger. I don't know where he went to,
though I had my eye to the telescope, and Mrs. Lite she was looking
through the field-glasses."
"He behaved like vermin," remarked the Empress at this juncture. "Like
a rat he went, he did. Never did I see a Christian demean himself so
till this day—never, no!"
"The man's a coward," said Mr. Rodney with firmness—"an arrant coward.
I shall inform Mrs. Verulam."
And he suddenly broke from the Emperor and Empress and absconded
towards the palace, leaving them immersed in helpless astonishment.
Returning with rapid steps into the baronial hall, he found the party
preparing to set forth into the grounds on receiving his assurances
that the Emperor had laid aside his gun for the time being.
"You are perfectly safe," said Mr. Rodney, with unwonted sarcasm, and
calmly waving one white hand towards the estate; "you will not be hurt,
I can promise you. Nobody will attempt to injure you."
The guests were obviously relieved, and they began at once to
evaporate, Mr. Ingerstall escorting the Duchess, the Duke with Lady
Drake, Chloe accompanying the Lady Pearl, and Miss Bindler bringing
up the rear in sturdy solitude. Mr. Bush remained because he had not
nearly finished munching his tea, and Mrs. Verulam stayed because she
loved to see him munch.
"You have persuaded him, then?" she said approvingly to the
ambassador. "I knew you would have weight with him."
But even this compliment could not divert Mr. Rodney from his purpose
of unmasking the man who had behaved like a badger in the moment of
supposed peril.
"My dear lady," he said, glancing with elaborate pity towards Mr.
Bush, who was closely engaged with a tea-cake, "there was nothing to
persuade. I am happy to say that you have been totally misinformed as
to the circumstances."
"Eh?" growled Mr. Bush, stirring his spoon vigorously in his
tea-cup—"eh?"
"Totally and absolutely misinformed," repeated Mr. Rodney with the
greatest decision.
"Really, Mr. Rodney," said Mrs. Verulam, preparing to fire up, "what
are you saying? Mr. Bush has been shot at."
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Rodney very blandly—"I beg your pardon."
"If I hadn't a dropped, I shouldn't be here now," said Mr. Bush, in a
voice whose timbre was slightly obscured by tea-cake.
Mr. Rodney turned towards him.
"I assure you, my dear Mr. Bush," he said, "that you are labouring
under an entire delusion; you might with perfect safety have retained
an upright posture. It's true that Mr. Lite made use of some hasty,
inconsiderate words about skinning."
"There!" roared Mr. Bush; "what did I say?"
"But even they were no doubt rather metaphorical than strictly
truthful. As to the firing, however, you were quite mistaken. What
you took for a gun was merely a telescope. When you thought you were
being shot at, you were only being looked at. There is an appreciable
difference between the two operations. I think you will allow that."
And the owner of Mitching Dean calmly dropped into a chair, and
prepared to continue his interrupted tea. Mr. Bush looked remarkably
sulky under this light of truth.
"Telescope, indeed!" he muttered; "telescope—I daresay!"
"So you see, Mr. Lite can hardly be blamed after all," said Mr. Rodney
cheerfully to Mrs. Verulam.
"Perhaps not," she said, a little doubtfully. "However, he should be
more careful how he looks at people."
And then she rather hastily dropped the subject. In her secret heart
she was sorry to find that the Emperor was not so given to murder as
Mr. Bush had led her to suppose. Women love their heroes to stand
uprightly even in moments of imminent danger. They infinitely prefer
them not to quail before a telescope, however suddenly handled.
Mrs. Verulam could not entirely banish from her heart the uneasy
conviction that on this occasion Mr. Bush had scarcely lived up to what
she confidently expected of the man who was her idea of Agag.