MR. HARRISON'S NIGHT-WATCH.
From this terrible moment despair began to grip Mr. Rodney, and the
worst of it was, that besides being in despair, he was in confusion.
He now fully recognised that Mrs. Verulam was suffering under a
"possession," as he called it to himself. What he could not decide was,
which of those two demons, Huskinson Van Adam and James Bush, it was
who possessed her with demoniacal influence. Lady Sage was about to cut
Mrs. Verulam because of Mr. Van Adam. Society would certainly follow
Lady Sage's lead on the same account. But Mr. Rodney's penetration
had almost convinced him that the man from Bungay was, in truth, the
Svengali to this Trilby. It was surely his enormous shadow in which
Mrs. Verulam now walked. It was his fatal rusticity which she envied,
his sheep-washing, bee-swarming, cabbage-digging, pea-podding existence
she aimed at. This was so. But then, why should she compromise
herself with this divorced Huskinson? Why should she lead him about
whithersoever she went? Poor Mr. Rodney began "turning, turning in
mazes of heat and sound." He yearned for the informing letter from Lord
Bernard Roche which tarried so long upon the way. Nevertheless, when it
came, this letter only increased the darkness in which events moved—at
the first.
In fact, all things tended towards complication in and about the
palace at this time. And although Mr. Rodney, in the usual manner
of men, flattered himself that he alone of all the universe was
truly troubled in spirit, he was entirely mistaken. Mrs. Verulam was
secretly exercised at the apparent success which was about to crown
her endeavours to leave the _milieu_ in which Heaven had placed her.
The Lady Pearl was, or imagined herself to be, swept by the mysterious
tremors of a budding affection. The Duchess was in a simmering state
of fury against her hostess, and of match-making anxiety on her
daughter's behalf. And before the week was out Chloe was struck by a
thunder-bolt—metaphorically. At the moment, however, Mr. Rodney was
to some extent correct in considering himself the most unhappy person
within the precincts of the palace. On this Tuesday night he probably
was, as he sat down to dinner, pale, seedy, and bemuddled.
Her Grace was in a certain mental confusion. That afternoon in the
shrubbery she had been "sounding" Chloe, as she called it. That is to
say, she had been asking Chloe a very large number of extremely leading
questions in a very determined bass voice. Chloe had been obliged to
hear herself characterised as a very rascally woman, and to receive to
herself the flood of pity intended for her ex-husband. She had also
been informed that the victim of one unfortunate marriage should
instantly seek for happiness in another and more judicious union.
And she had learned the catalogue of the Lady Pearl's perfections.
According to her mother, the Lady Pearl's only fault was a slight
tendency to hereditary gout, and that, as her Grace very justly
observed, was glorified in a manner by the fact that it was distinctly
filial.
"The Duke has always been a victim to it, Mr. Van Adam," she exclaimed
with undoubted force, "and Pearl has been accustomed from a child to
look up to her father as to a being almost sacred."
The apparent deduction to be drawn from this sound reasoning was, that
if from childhood you look up to a sacred being—who has the gout—you
will be rewarded by receiving the sacred being's complaint; a somewhat
unsatisfactory state of things, which, however, has this advantage,
that it places you in the excellent position of being an undoubted
martyr. Chloe had done her best not to give any encouragement to the
determined hopes of the Duchess, but her gay delight in titles made it
so difficult for her to resist the seductions of one so venerable as
the title of Southborough, that she left upon her Grace an impression
that there was nothing in the Verulam business on her side. This made
the Duchess highly generous to Chloe, but hardly blunted her anger
against Mrs. Verulam, who was, no doubt, deliberately trying to snatch
the American away from the Lady Pearl. The Duchess's spirit was up in
arms against such paltry kleptomania. She was resolved to protect the
supposed orange-grower from such wicked designs; and on Tuesday night
her bosom swelled with mingled determination and enmity as she solaced
her spirit with mayonnaise and '84 champagne.
Mrs. Verulam paid but little heed to the Duchess's physical indications
of mental excitement. To-night she was engrossed with the desire to
show James Bush, her hero, off to this world ignorant of what a real
man can be. So far, Mr. Bush had borne himself bravely and naturally on
the whole, the telescope episode alone excepted. His treatment of Ascot
had been specially fine and noble. It is not every man, indeed, who has
the courage to forsake the gaieties of a box close to the winning-post,
the glories of the lawn, for the retired tent of the two-faced lady
and the painted charms of the roundabout. It is not every man who has
the intrepidity to give the ring the cold shoulder, and the beautiful
simplicity to return to a palace at eventide, laden, like the spies of
old, with the ripe fruits of Mother Earth—the cocoanuts of a Land of
Promise. Already James Bush had betrayed the grandeur of his nature,
but Mrs. Verulam was anxious to display every side of this character,
so multifarious in beauty. And accordingly, that night after dinner,
when the men came into the hall, she began to address herself rather
pointedly to her hero, while Mr. Rodney sat writhing with jealousy in
the immediate neighbourhood.
"Duchess," she said, "Mr. Bush, you must know, is full of maxims."
"Dear me! Is he related to a copy-book?" replied her Grace
lethargically.
"Oh no! Not maxims of that kind. His are founded upon observation of
life and knowledge of the world—that is to say, of the beautiful
earth. Aren't they, Mr. Bush?"
"There's nought like pea-poddin'," replied that gentleman judicially.
Attired in a dress suit of strikingly original conception and cut, some
sizes too small for his large frame, but well adapted to emphasise its
enormous bulk, he was spread out upon a huge settee in an attitude
of brilliant abandonment. The Duke was beside him, and Lady Drake
close by. Mrs. Verulam saw that everybody, reduced to a readiness for
comtemplative silence by much dinner, was listening with apparent
attention. A bright resolve came to her. She would induce James Bush to
show fully his true grand self, to illuminate them all with the light
that flamed from a great soul.
"Yes?" she said encouragingly. "Yes?"
Thus adjured, Mr. Bush added, after a moment of deep thought:
"Look after the sheep, and the sheep'll look after you!"
"It sounds like 'Diana of the Crossways,'" piped Lady Drake in her
acidulated manner.
"I don't know that I should care to be looked after by a sheep," said
Miss Bindler practically, as she lit a small cigar. "I don't consider a
sheep to be an efficient animal."
"They want a deal of mindin'," said Mr. Bush—"a deal of mindin'."
"Because they have no minds," said the Duke, yawning as a mask yawns in
a pantomime. "The same remark applies to the same class of the human
animal. Ask the Government of the day if it isn't so."
But Mrs. Verulam had no intention of permitting her hero to be involved
in a commonplace political discussion.
"Oh, I feel sure that even a sheep is deeply, deeply interesting, if
properly studied," she said.
"Aye," said Mr. Bush.
"It's what we bring to a thing, isn't it?" she added, greatly
encouraged.
"What would you bring to a sheep?" said Miss Bindler.
"Swedes," said Mr. Bush, before Mrs. Verulam could make reply.
All this time Mr. Rodney sat petrified, rendered inert and almost
idiotic by the turn the conversation was taking. What such remarks
meant he scarcely knew; but they seemed to him highly improper and
indelicate. He wondered that ladies could hear them without a blush!
That Mrs. Verulam could deliberately lead up to them was terrible to
him.
Mr. Bush was by this time growing expansive, aware that the
conversation which was now in progress depended mainly upon him.
"Swedes to a sheep, the stick to a woman," he ejaculated with a
rumbling chuckle.
The Duke looked delighted with this philosophy, which rather
overwhelmed Mrs. Verulam for the moment.
"You believe in the rights of man, Mr. Bush?" he said. "Eh? eh? You
stick to the old dispensation, the walnut-tree cure? What? what?"
"I should be very sorry for the man who laid a finger upon me, very!"
said Miss Bindler calmly, but with emphasis.
"Oh, Mr. Bush is only joking," said Mrs. Verulam hastily; while Mr.
Rodney lay back, closed his eyes, and permitted his entire face to
become a mass of wrinkles.
"A great many young men would be the better for a good whipping
nowadays," bellowed the Duchess from her sofa. "I would begin by
applying the bastinado to those who refuse to answer invitations. Susan
Barrington asked three hundred and two dancing men to her ball the
other night. Thirty-two answered, and thirty turned up. The ball was a
fiasco."
This restorative brought Mr. Rodney to. Lady Barrington was, of course,
one of his oldest and most valued friends.
"The question of answering invitations is certainly one of vital
importance," he began with soft animation. "For my part, as a citizen
of the world, I cannot help thinking that——"
"Never give a bullock sulphur," said Mr. Bush, now fully roused to
epigram—"never do it, or you'll repent of it."
Mr. Rodney was seldom in his life nearer making use of the foolish and
tiresome monosyllable "damn."
"And how about the bullock?" said his Grace, assuming the helplessness
of his appearance, and laying aside the usual grimacing geniality of
his manner. "If the bullock has the sulphur, and you repent of it, what
will be the exact mental condition of the swallower?"
All now prepared to hang upon the man from Bungay's words—all, that
is, except Mr. Rodney, who again closed his eyes, and Mr. Ingerstall,
whose silence is accounted for by the fact that all this time he
was sitting in a corner and drawing an elaborate caricature of the
paragon. But Mr. Bush was not of a temper to give satisfaction to
impertinent questioning; he suddenly turned sulky, and, after muttering
heavily "Let the bullock alone, and the bullock 'll let you alone!" he
appeared to fall asleep. Mrs. Verulam was very angry with the Duke for
thus spoiling a delightful evening, so she smiled with extraordinary
sweetness, and set Lady Drake at him while she devoted herself to the
Duchess. The latter, lethargic though she was, became suspicious of her
hostess's extraordinary affability, and of the perfectly free hand
which the Van Adam was being allowed with the Lady Pearl. She could
not realise that Mrs. Verulam's sudden access of seraphic sweetness
was occasioned solely by the fury of a woman who sees her hero balked
by a blunderer in the very hour of his triumph. It therefore suddenly
occurred to her Grace that possibly Mrs. Verulam and Mr. Van Adam
were trying to blind her and the world, that possibly they were even
using her precious, her gouty and innocent Pearl after the manner of
a stalking horse. Under the seizure of these black surmisings, she
replied to Mrs. Verulam's blandishments rather plethorically, and her
eyes became enormously prominent, as was their custom in moments of
acute mental strain. Mrs. Verulam was at first too angry to notice the
rather abrupt assumption by the Duchess of a private enquiry agent's
manner when in converse with a suspected party, but possibly she would
have been forced to observe it had not Mr. Ingerstall suddenly shot
forward from his corner, obtruded his squat form between them, and
hissed, in a pattering whisper:
"He's asleep, isn't he?"
"Asleep! Who?" cried the Duchess, startled.
For Mr. Ingerstall's proceedings were intensely rapid, and were always
carried forward with a masterly disregard of other people's feelings.
Mr. Ingerstall, with incomparable agility, indicated Mr. James Bush,
who at that moment emitted a reassuring snore.
"Yes, he is. I've got something to show you."
"Oh, what is it?" said Mrs. Verulam, hastily withdrawing her
skirts—"what is it? Is it alive?"
"In Paris I flatter myself they would say it was," he gabbled under
his breath. "For in Paris art is alive, breathing, vitalised,
full-blooded, fearless, sensuous, daring. God knows what they would
call it in England! Look at it!"
He popped out his hand under their noses, holding a sheet of paper,
upon which was drawn a thing as fat as a pig and as hairy as a
porcupine, lying on its back, with feet, as big as houses, pointing to
the sky, while from its mouth, wide as a witches' cavern, floated on a
scroll the following legend: "Never give a bullock sulphur!"
"It's very like," remarked her Grace, after a moment of
contemplation—"very true to life. Don't you think so, Mrs. Verulam?"
"I don't know what it is," said Mrs. Verulam, in great perplexity; "is
it meant for a bullock, then—after the sulphur?"
Mr. Ingerstall's monkey-like face was suffused with indignant blood.
"A bullock!" he cried poignantly. "It's Bush!"
The shrillness of the exclamation thus wrung from outraged genius not
only made all the awake members of the house-party jump, but even
pierced through the hide of the paragon's tough sleep.
"Bush!" he said, sitting up with a snort; "who's a-wantin' me? Is it
time to begin hoein'?"
There was a dead silence. Nobody grasped the inner meaning of the final
query.
"Who wants Bush?" continued the owner of the name. "Eh?"
"I do!" suddenly shrieked Mr. Ingerstall, protruding his caricature
beneath the eyes of Mrs. Verulam's ideal. "I do! I ask you, I ask you
confidently, is that a bullock, or is it you?" And, thrusting the
paper between Mr. Bush's fists, Mr. Ingerstall flung himself back in
his chair, puffing with all the generous indignation of insulted and
misunderstood genius.
The Duke with very great difficulty restrained himself from a nasal
"Joey!" succeeded by the time-honoured "Here we are again!" which is
the proper prelude to jokes of the more practical order. Mr. Rodney
opened his eyes and sat a little forward on his chair; and Mrs.
Verulam, speechless with horror at Mr. Ingerstall's named outrage,
gazed steadily at the Turkey carpet of the hall, and wished it might
engulf her. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush stared upon the work of art with his
goggling red-brown eyes and said nothing.
"Is it, I ask you once more with perfect confidence," snapped Mr.
Ingerstall with rising excitement—"is it a bullock or is it you? Come,
come!" And he slapped his fat hands with great violence down on his
knees.
"Me!" mumbled Mr. Bush at length. "Me! What d'yer mean?"
"What I say, Heaven preserve us all! What I say!" screamed the artist.
Mr. Bush looked from the outrage to its committer, and appeared to be
measuring the latter with his eye. Having done so, and apparently found
the result to be satisfactory as compared with his own measurements,
he remarked: "This me!" and made a movement suddenly as though he were
about to get up.
"Go it!" said Miss Bindler sharply, planting a single eye-glass rapidly
under her left eyebrow, and screwing up her cheek. "Time!"
Mrs. Verulam became breathless with excitement. Her gaze was fastened
upon her hero. A thrill ran through the house-party. With his huge
hands upon the arms of the chair, Mr. Bush lolled forward towards Mr.
Ingerstall and became brilliant.
"I ask _you_ with confidence," he bawled slowly, "is this here a
bullock, or is it me?"
Mr. Ingerstall looked at him for an instant, and then cried like
something whipped:
"It's a bullock!"
Mr. Bush glanced around with the air of a successful prize-fighter
about to retire from the ring.
"That's all right!" he ejaculated, and leaning back he fell asleep
again.
This incident, trifling enough in itself, was by no means trifling
in its consequence. For it turned the scale in which Mrs. Verulam's
heart was trembling. Down came the scale on Mr. Bush's side. The
feminine confidence that had been ever so slightly shaken by the hero's
beast-like retreat before the telescope of the Bun Emperor was now
entirely restored. That retreat had been a lapse from the brave custom
of a noble life, not an illustration from the existence of a coward.
Mrs. Verulam knew from this moment that she was worshipping before
a shrine that was really sacred, a shrine that deserved, that had
earned, its incense. As the conqueror fell so calmly and confidently
asleep, reposing, as it were, upon the very field of battle, she
looked across at Chloe with eyes that claimed her tender sympathy. The
Duchess intercepted the look, and darted indignant enquiry upon Mrs.
Verulam, while Chloe, observing the accident, softly smiled with a
pretty mischief. Unfortunately, her Grace, driven by dread suspicion,
turned sharply towards Chloe, and surprised the smile at its climax.
The Duchess swelled with fury. She now felt certain that she was
being tricked by this abandoned couple. Her Pearl was being made a
cat's-paw. Old Martha Sage was right. For a moment she sat shaking
like a jelly in her armchair. Then she rose up, uttered a general "good
night," that sounded like notes from a bass tuba, called the Lady
Pearl, and swept in a distinctly frenzied manner up the staircase to
bed.
"The Duchess is very quick on her pins," said Miss Bindler, looking
after her. "Did she ever enter for a walking race?" she added to the
Duke.
"Not since I married her," his Grace replied.
"She should; she'd stand a ten to one chance. Well, I'll be off to my
loose-box, too, I think."
There was a general movement, through which Mr. Bush calmly slept. Lady
Drake was just at the foot of the staircase when her sharp little eye
was attracted by a pillar, something like a tiny Cleopatra's needle in
shape, but bristling with handles and small knobs and buttons, which
stood in a far corner of the hall.
"What's that?" she asked, in her thin voice that was like a squeeze of
lemon-juice, pointing with her skeleton finger towards it.
"Oh," said the Duke, "that's one of Lite's patent automatic machines,
full of sweets, chocolates, and horrors of that kind. Put in a penny,
and out bursts a slab of butter-scotch or a stick of peppermint."
"Dear me!" said Lady Drake meditatively, and almost languishingly;
"what an excellent idea!"
And she walked slowly upstairs, occasionally turning her
virtuous-looking head to shoot an affectionate glance at the machine.
Miss Bindler had already vanished. Of all the women—recognised as
such—only Mrs. Verulam still lingered, gazing at the majestic form of
her sleeping hero. She longed to see it clothed in armour, helmeted,
with sword by its side and all the emblems of ancient chivalry and
valour, resting like a Crusader, only alive and on a sofa instead of on
a tomb. She breathed a gentle sigh, and suddenly became aware that Mr.
Rodney was observing her with a white glare of scrutiny over the top of
the _World_, the last number of which had arrived at the palace that
afternoon. She blushed and vanished. Mr. Rodney ground his teeth, a
proceeding which till that moment he had always regarded as the special
prerogative of the lower classes. Chloe heard the grating sound. She
was just resisting the urging of the Duke to "stay and have a smoke,
and hear some damned good stories!"
"Can't to-night," she answered, with a successful effort at
young-mannishness; "infernally tired!"
She forced a prodigious yawn and moved towards the staircase. Mr.
Rodney meanwhile was desperately reading the paper. Just as Chloe had
got her foot on the first stair, she heard him utter an exclamation of
surprise.
"Van Adam!" he said.
"Yes."
"Here's another paragraph about you—oh no, your brother. Did you
expect him?"
Chloe stopped dead.
"My brother?"
"Yes; look here."
Mr. Rodney rose, and softly approaching, put the paper into her hands.
"Mr. Van Adam, a brother, we believe, of Mr. Huskinson Van Adam, who
is now staying with Mrs. Verulam at Ribton Marches, Sunninghill, has
just arrived from America on board the _Arethusa_. His destination
is believed to be also Ascot. The race week promises to be the most
successful on record."
Chloe nearly let the paper fall.
"Dear me!" she said slowly, and looking steadily at Mr. Rodney. "Dear
me! I had no idea that—that"—she searched her mind hurriedly for an
appropriate American name—"that Vancouver intended to come over this
summer."
"I hope we shall see something of him," said Mr. Rodney, with a
slightly forced politeness.
"Oh, thanks! he's—Vancouver's rather shy—retiring. Well, good night."
She made off, taking boyish strides towards the friendly shelter of her
bedroom.
That night she was almost as much awake as the average owl is in
the dark and silent hours. Indeed, she was seldom in bed, being for
the most part engaged in searching the advertisement columns of the
_Daily Telegraph_ for the names of private enquiry agents who, for
a consideration, were ready to "watch" any living person from the
nineteenth century until the Judgment Day. Having compiled a full
list of these worthy persons, towards dawn Chloe wrote to the larger
number of them, expressing an ardent desire to have the newly-arrived
Vancouver shadowed. Just as she was directing the last of these
missives, her attention was attracted by a sound as of a loud and
heavy voice at some distance, uttering an enormous quantity of slow
remarks with pauses between them. She listened for some minutes. The
sound continued. Chloe was not naturally a nervous woman, but she was
a rather curious one, and she began to wonder what on earth could be
happening.
She got up from her writing-table and gently opened her bedroom door.
The palace was plunged in profound darkness, and somewhere, away in the
darkness, somebody was apparently delivering a recitation in snatches.
Who could it be? And where? Chloe took her candle, and, turning up her
trousers instinctively for fear they should rustle, made softly in
the direction of the sound. It chanced that her bedroom was very near
the servants' staircase, from which, on Monday morning, Mr. Rodney
had heard Mr. Harrison's anxious confidences poured into the distant
ear of his imperial master. Chloe knew nothing about this staircase,
but, searching for the sound, she presently arrived at a swing-door
which opened upon it, and stood on almost the self-same stair as that
previously pressed by the feet of the attentive Mr. Rodney. She then
heard something that at first absolutely amazed and confounded her.
When the women of the house-party, among whom we will include Chloe,
had gone to bed, the Duke, balked of his attempt to engage Chloe as a
listener, fastened on Mr. Ingerstall, and led away that unhappy and
seething victim of a Providence which sees fit unevenly to distribute
muscular development and size to be smoked over and anecdoted at. Mr.
Rodney proceeded to go on grinding his teeth and cursing himself as the
most miserable of men, and Mr. James Bush went on reposing. He did not
hear the powdered Frederick, with sweetly tinkling sounds by his left
elbow adjust the drink his soul loved upon an oaken table. He did not
hear the persistent grating which betokened the supreme mental agony
of the admirable owner of Mitching Dean. He was far away in the land
where all things are either forgotten or remembered in a manner more
fantastic than the trickery of blank oblivion. And in this land he
elected to remain until the Duke's last tale was told, Mr. Ingerstall's
last recollection of Paris Quartier Latin days was hissed, Mr. Rodney's
last groan was hushed. In short, everybody went off to bed, except Mr.
Bush, who had a nasty habit of going to sleep anywhere except in the
proper place for such a performance. Even the menials, after watching
hopelessly for awhile by the reposing warrior, in hopes to see him
wake, placed a lighted candle by his side, switched off the electric
light, and skedaddled to the luxuriously-furnished attics provided for
them by a thoughtful master. When at length Mrs. Verulam's hero woke,
he was alone, in almost total darkness. He heaved himself round, spread
forth his arms and clasped the cold, smooth sides of a decanter. The
object roused an instinct always latent, when not active, within his
heart. Mechanically he took measures to transfer the contents of the
decanter to another receptacle, and then, refreshed, he rose, grasped
the candle, and made off, a little vaguely, with some fragmentary
recollections of bed floating hazily through his mind. Missing the
grand staircase, he presently found himself at the foot of another, and
was about to ascend, when he heard, as Mr. Rodney had heard, the shrill
tinkle of the bell of the Bun Emperor's patent telephone. Mr. Bush
paused and scratched his enormous head. The bell rang again. Directing
his large eyes towards it, Mr. Bush, who had never before been made
known to a telephone, approached his face to it with a view merely of
examining it closely, and was suddenly startled by hearing a voice of
most extraordinary thinness and spiritualistic quality say, "Are you
there? Damn you! are you or aren't you there?"
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 shadowy
voice 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, did
I 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, who supposed 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 the alarum, 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.