THE CONSEQUENCES OF LADY DRAKE'S SUPPER.
Lady Drake was a woman of the very strictest propriety. It seems
necessary to state the fact at this juncture. She was a woman of the
strictest propriety, and, indeed, was inclined to carry respectability
to excess, but she was of a hungry disposition. The descendant of an
ancient family of large feeders, she very naturally possessed their
main characteristic. Her temperament required a good deal of food to
be administered to it at frequent intervals, and even in the watches
of the night she was by no means certain to be exempt from sudden
accesses of what in a man might have been called voracity. To combat
these effectually, she usually kept a large supply of biscuits,
potted meats, and other necessaries by her bedside, and if she woke
at any time, would apply herself to these, banish by their means the
promptings of heredity, and then, turning over, fall quietly to sleep
again, calmed, nourished, and altogether built up. In the hurry of her
departure to Ribton Marches, however, she had omitted to provision
herself as was her habit, and, being of a highly sensitive disposition,
she did not care to disclose the emptiness of her nocturnal larder to
those in charge of the commissariat of the palace. On the Monday night
she had managed to secrete a dozen or so of chocolates at dessert, and
this booty had secured her from actual starvation, although it had not
prevented her from suffering severely during the dark hours. But on
Tuesday, the chocolates having given out, and her position at dinner
precluding the possibility of another successful raid, her case was sad
indeed, and something very like starvation stared her in the face.
Under these circumstances Lady Drake became more acidulated than
usual, and worried his Grace during the evening with even more than
her normal pertinacity and success. And yet it was her victim who
eventually heaped coals of fire upon her neat bandeaux, for it was the
Duke who explained to her, in the very moment of her despair, those
beautiful inventions placed by the Bun Emperor about his palace for the
mechanical feeding of the hungry, and the solace of those who wandered
abroad in search of luggage-labels and the reviving pill. Lady Drake
went up to bed greatly comforted, and fully resolved that, when the
palace was wrapped in slumber, she would fare forth, penny-wise, in
search of that sustenance which she would most certainly be requiring
long before the men dropped their cigar-ends and went up to their
rooms. The men were late in going, and Lady Drake, after one or two
furtive expeditions to the head of the stairs, rewarded by hideous
visions of Mr. Bush resting beside a glass of whisky-and-water, in
despair lay down, and, to her extreme surprise, fell fast asleep.
She woke soon after three, feeling heredity strong upon her.
Accordingly she got up, wrapped herself in the Indian shawl
dressing-gown that was her patent of courtly breeding, took a
candlestick in one hand and three shillings and fourpence worth of
coppers in the other, and set bravely forth upon her adventure. Down
the mighty stairs she tripped, her heart beating high with pleasant
anticipations, careless of the gloomy solitude in which the mighty
hall was wrapped, intent only upon the satisfaction of an inherited
appetite. She gained the bottom of the stairs. All was silent. But
the friendly candle flickered upon the blessed machine in whose
interior lay hid, as in a mine, such golden dainties—soft, succulent
butter-scotch, the pale and rounded peppermint, the crunching bar of
cocoanut-ice, and the insidious but rewarding brandy-ball. Her ladyship
trembled with rapture as she surveyed it. For one brief instant she
devoured it with her tiny eyes like pin-points. Then she placed her
candle carefully down, grasped her forty coppers, and crept ravenously
forward on slippered feet. She was about to enjoy a supper of some
forty courses. The thought shook her to the very soul.
She gained the machine, and her glance ran passionately over its
pretty knobs, its delicate buttons, the minute let-in labels which
indicated the lairs of its various inhabitants. Which sweet should
she treat like the wily badger and "draw" first? After a period of
profound meditation, she resolved to open her banquet with a packet of
"golden candy." She therefore advanced, placed a penny in the slot,
and promptly received a parcel of luggage-labels with pink insertions
full of twine. Lady Drake was staggered. Although a traveller, she had
never accustomed herself to support life on addresses. But her ardour
was only dashed for a moment. Reasoning that one mistake should only
lift her on stepping-stones to higher things, and acutely surmising
that if luggage-labels occupied the home of "golden candy," "golden
candy" should fill the place of luggage-labels, she placed another
penny in the slot, and grasping the drawer marked "luggage-labels," was
the prompt recipient of yet another parcel of those useful articles.
Her ladyship was now irritated. These delays increased her already
sharp-set appetite. With a bitter exclamation she thrust a third copper
into the slot, attacked a drawer marked "peppermints, extra strong,"
and was instantly the proud possessor of a neat black button-hook
with a cork handle. Many persons of weak character would now have
desisted from further perseverance, and have retired, depressed and
supperless, to bed. But Lady Drake had not been married to a V.C.
without catching the complaint of courage. She had now lost threepence,
and was still famishing. Her situation seemed desperate, but she
rose to the occasion. A dogged expression came into her tiny, peaked
countenance. She seized a chair, placed it before the machine, and
sat down with the fixed determination of pressing every button and
pulling every knob before she left the battle-field. She meant to have
it thoroughly out with the machine. She was resolved to fight to the
death. A thousand button-hooks should not turn her from her purpose.
In went another copper—another knob was pulled, but this time with a
result so remarkable that Lady Drake almost screamed aloud. For all
of a sudden an immense jet of pennies spouted forth into her lap and
well-nigh submerged her. She was drenched in the coinage of departed
generations of sugar-plum seekers, and was rendered breathless by
their proved determination to be fed. She nearly succumbed under this
wave of misfortune and coppers, but her grit saved her, and, beating
aside the flood with her tiny hands as one that swims, she pressed
button after button, attacked knob after knob, with all the frenzy of a
passionate nature in arms, reckless of danger, heedless of death. Lady
Drake "saw red," and had the judgment-day suddenly dawned behind the
lattice-windows of the hall, she would still have fought on, still have
pressed forward, headlong to glory—and food. A crash of cigars did not
daunt her. A cloud of pills nearly blinded but could not deter her.
Dutch dolls beset her, but she overcame them. Showers of cherry-blossom
broke over her from collapsible squirts, stamps flew round her like
falling leaves in autumn—she scarcely knew it. And at last she had her
reward. The sweets began to come, heralded by the exquisite eruption
of a sugar pig, with a string tail and pink eyebrows all complete.
With a piping cry she greeted it and its lovely following, a crowd of
all the wonders known to a greater than Fuller. They poured upon the
tiny dauntless creature with a passionate ardour, filling her lap to
the very brim, until the last knob was grasped, the last button had
yielded to her frantic thumb. And just at this moment Mr. James Bush
laid an enormous hand on Lady Drake's shoulder, and, with a scream of
surprise, she turned round, slipped from her chair, and assumed that
Eastern posture in which she was discovered by Mr. Harrison as he fled
from the cursing telephone.
Now the Duke, who was a heavy man but a light sleeper, heard Lady
Drake's scream in his dreams. It was followed by the bang of a door
as Chloe, unobserved by the engrossed couple in the hall, gained her
bedroom and flung herself in a fit of laughter upon her pillow. The
bang decided the Duke to wake up. He carried out his decision with
manly promptitude, and, bounding out upon the landing, protruded his
head over the oaken balustrade and beheld Lady Drake seated upon the
floor in a dressing-gown, apparently engaged in friendly intercourse
with the man from Bungay. His Grace did not perceive Mr. Harrison, who
had not yet emerged into the circle of light. Therefore, after a moment
of careful contemplation, the Duke returned chuckling to his apartment,
and, murmuring something vague about "not spoiling sport," and a
mumbling conviction that he had always thought that fellow Bush was "a
bit of a dog," lay down again to laugh.
Meanwhile, the courage which had supported Lady Drake during her fight
with the machine was ebbing away under a stress of circumstances
sufficient to appal the stoutest heart. Although her temper had given
her a great victory over the Bun Emperor's patent, her respectability
took serious umbrage at being discovered at four o'clock in the
morning, immodestly draped in an Indian shawl, by an immense rustic of
whom she knew nothing. Still, the little thing was grown so intrepid by
association with the late deceased V.C. that she might have borne up
against Mr. Bush. But the apparition of the groom of the chambers in
full flight, the sound of his wailing cry, the sight of his disordered
appearance and starting eyes, upset a mind and body naturally fatigued
in the reaction that invariably succeeds a great crisis. Lady Drake
remained upon the floor for about a couple of minutes, gazing fixedly
at Mr. Bush and Mr. Harrison, and mechanically grasping in each hand
two melting fragments of Turkish delight, vaguely thought of by her
as defensive weapons against wicked men. Then, either forced to the
conviction that such confections could hardly avail her much in a
physical contest, or moved by some unreasonable fancy of the mind
feminine, she got up very suddenly, and covering her retreat by a
volley of edibles and miscellaneous articles of steel, wood and
papier-mâché, she walked upstairs, having hysterics all the way, and
vanished in a piping yell like the note of a toy terrier under the
spell of music.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Harrison, their persons and hair decorated with a
thousand sugar-plums, remained staring at each other aghast. Then Mr.
Bush, extracting from his beard a surprise packet, two brandy balls and
a penknife, solemnly turned and walked away to bed without deigning to
speak to the groom of the chambers, who was left to make the best of
his way to his apartment in a condition nearly bordering upon homicidal
mania. Indeed, he knew not whether he waked or dreamed, whether he was
in a nightmare, or whether he had merely become unexpectedly delirious.
Only in the morning, when he woke to find his whiskers full of Everton
toffee, did he realise that in very truth the Londoners had been
holding their unhallowed revels in the sacred palace of the Emperor,
and that it was incumbent upon him to get up if he was to be in time to
be skinned by eight o'clock, according to the agreement made overnight
with his imperial master.
The early beams of the bright and cheerful summer sun shone gaily over
the Ribton Marches domain as the wretched Mr. Harrison, carrying in
one hand the enormous volume containing his "Report of the Conduct
of the Londoners on Tuesday, the — of June, 18—," set forth to the
fishing-cottage to meet his doom. He walked very slowly, with that
lingering gait peculiar to men in his dreadful circumstances, and
occasionally rent the delicious morning atmosphere with lamentations
which might have moved a heart of stone. But even the slowest walker
arrives at the skinning post at last, and, as the clocks struck eight,
Mr. Harrison's protruding eyes beheld the glittering sheet of water on
whose verge stood the small pavilion where dwelt his banished master.
The Bun Emperor was up and already stationed in the embrasure examining
the horizon through the telescope which had so alarmed Mr. Bush. His
visage was empurpled. His hands, when not employed, clenched and
unclenched themselves with threatening vivacity. Already, in fancy,
they seemed to be at work on Mr. Harrison's outer integument. The groom
of the chambers paused beside the pond and looked across its waters
with an expression of wild entreaty. The Emperor dashed the window open.
"Come on!" he bawled.
"Sir!" cried Mr. Harrison, in a failing voice.
"Come on directly minute!" shouted the Emperor, as the small
and rounded form of the Empress joined him, gazing through the
field-glasses at the agitated menial. "Come on, or you'll repent of it
to the last hour of your mortal life, you will!"
"Oh, by all means, most certainly—oh, most decidedly yes!" faltered
Mr. Harrison, wavering very slowly around the pond in the direction of
the cottage. "Oh, indeed—rely—on——"
"Make haste!" yelled the Emperor in a voice of thunder.
"Oh, you wicked, ungrateful man!" squeaked the Empress. "Oh, to think
that it should come to this!"
Mr. Harrison was now upon the gravel path before the cottage and
between it and the pond. He stood still again.
"Come in this moment!" said the Emperor fiercely.
But Mr. Harrison did not obey this behest. Terror rooted him to the
spot. He shook his head despairingly some dozen times or more.
"Come in!" reiterated the Emperor. "Do you dare to defy me?"
"Wicked, wicked man!" cried the Empress.
"Let me explain, sir! Oh, indeed, I will explain!" murmured Mr.
Harrison, trying to gain time.
"Coward!" said the Emperor, with scathing bitterness. "You know I can't
come out to get at you! You know I've given my word to the fiddle-faced
feller. Coward!"
"Cowardy custard!" added the Empress with feminine force, and a manner
of the keenest vituperation.
But Mr. Harrison was turned into cast-iron by fear.
"I will not come in, sir, to be skinned—no, I will not! by no means,
on no account whatever," he explained. "No, I will not, if I stays here
till the Doomsday—no, indeed!"
This intrepid reply evidently took the Emperor aback. He hesitated and
held a whispered parley with his consort. Then he cried:
"You'd better come in!" with ferocity.
"Oh no, sir—no, indeed, not at all! I will not, indeed, you may
depend upon me! Rely on me, I will not!" said Mr. Harrison with brazen
timidity.
The Emperor again consulted with his helpmeet, who evidently urged a
compromise, for he finally said:
"I'll keep my hands from you, but come in you shall!"
"Sir!" said Mr. Harrison, preparing to make conditions.
"Come in, I say, and I'll keep my hands off you!"
"And Mrs. Lite, sir?" said the cautious menial. "She will not attempt
to injure me—oh dear no, on no account whatever!"
The Empress gave her word, and Mr. Harrison proceeded to the front
door, and was quickly in the audience parlour. Now, extreme fear lends
to some men brains. Mr. Harrison's fear was extreme, so extreme that,
during his passage from the pond to the parlour, his mind became
brilliant, and he formed a plan of campaign, which he at once proceeded
to carry out with the skill of an accomplished general and actor.
Instead of merely entering the parlour then, he burst into it with this
remarkable utterance:
"Lord, sir, Lord! The doings of the Londoners! Lord, sir! The behaviour
of them as is in your place! Their goings on! Their treatment of your
inventions! Their tampering with Mrs. Lite's parrots! Their violence
to me! Their manners with the telephone—Lord! Lord! To see them with
the orchestrion! Only to see them! It is awful! Lord, sir, Lord! Their
proceedings of a night-time! Sweet-eating! Getting at your labels!
Flying at me with your button-hooks! Assaulting of me because I
carry out your orders! Lord, sir, Lord! If I am driven mad, it is no
wonder—oh no, indeed! by no means, on no account whatever!"
And he sank down upon a chair, as if in the very extremity of horror,
as indeed, from other causes than those mentioned, he truly was. The
Emperor and Empress turned ghastly pale as they surveyed him, and they,
too, sat down abruptly.
"The worst has come!" said the Emperor, in a broken voice. "Henrietta,
the worst has come along!"
"And worse than that, sir, you may depend upon me," said Mr. Harrison,
plucking up courage and invention as he perceived the success of his
wily ruse.
"And worse, Henrietta!" said the Emperor with intense emotion.
"The home! Our little home!" the Empress wailed, forgetting the size of
Ribton Marches. "They are breaking up the home!"
"They are indeed, ma'am! They are. Oh yes—most certainly they are!"
"What did I say?" eloquently rejoined the Empress. "What did I always
and ever say?"
Nobody seeming to have any idea, she repeated her question six or eight
times, and burst into a flood of tears. The Emperor pressed her fat
hands with his own, and endeavoured not to choke before a servant.
He failed, however, and Mr. Harrison saw that he had won his day and
secured the safety of his person. With remarkable conviction, and a
fine choice of language, he therefore began to amplify.
"It begun yesterday, sir, I might say," he remarked, wringing his
hands in an ostentatious manner. "It begun with them throwing me, sir,
from one of your private hammicks, in which I was concealed to watch,
according to your orders—throwing me out on my face, sir, flat, and
laughing at what they done."
"The brutes!" sobbed the Empress. "The inhuman things! The brutes!"
"Yes, ma'am, it was nearly being my death, the heavy fall and shock. It
was Mr. Rodney, I should say, what done it, with his own hands, Mrs.
Veddleham standing by and laughing fit to split her sides."
"Hussy!" murmured the Empress. "Thieving hussy!"
"Exactly, ma'am. But there was worse to come. Being thrown down I could
have stood, but could not stand being run at of a night-time when doing
my duty according to your and Mr. Lite's directions, which was: "Be
about, Mr. Harrison, here and there, and keep an eye, a special eye,
on that there Mr. Bush, and at the telephone punctual to the moment at
three," and then to be to and fro till morning; which I would have till
I dropped, and was, though her ladyship, when caught by me with Mr.
Bush a-tampering with one of your machines, sir, made for me, sir, him
helping of her, and she only in a shawl, ma'am, and he anyhow, with his
beard all a-full of your belongings, sir, as I took from him, though
nearly laid low; and she screaming up the stairs with her hands that
full of your Turkish delight as she could hardly walk, and me following
after, and would have got it from her, but Mr. Bush took me unawares
from behind, sir, like a coward; and if I escaped with my life, ma'am,
it is a wonder—oh, most decidedly; yes, indeed, at all times it is a
wonder!"
The groom of the chambers, having perorated, paused. There was a
dead and awful silence. The stricken couple were rendered dumb by
the magnitude of their horror. That the world should contain such
wickedness, and that the Emperor, for a paltry bit of bun-praise,
should have let the home to it! Even the Empress forgot to wail.
She rested her head against the telescope, and closed her eyes as if
to shut out the visions conjured up by Mr. Harrison's recital. Some
minutes must have elapsed before she opened them and whispered, with a
blush that did her the greatest credit, "And her only in a shawl!"
"My dear," said the Emperor, "my love, remember the presence of Mr.
Harrison."
The Empress remembered it, and blushed again. The Emperor now turned
towards the man he had intended to skin, and said, with all the frank
readiness to own a fault which is only found in a noble nature:
"Mr. Harrison, I was mistook. You have done your duty, and myself and
Mrs. Lite shall not forget it. You will receive those perquisites which
are your bounden due."
Mr. Harrison got up and inclined himself.
"Though whatever you meant through the telephone," added the Emperor,
clouding over again, "mercy only knows!"
"Yes, mercy knows!" concurred the Empress.
Mr. Harrison had no idea to what his master was alluding, but he
thought it right and proper to say:
"Through the telephone, sir? I was mad, sir. They had drove me
mad—most decidedly, yes, they had."
"Was you mad when you says, 'Dance away and be damned'?" said the
Emperor.
"Sir!" cried Mr. Harrison, cold with surprise.
"Was you mad when you says to Mrs. Lite, 'Go to blazes'?"
"Oh, most decidedly—oh, undoubtedly I was, sir!"
"And when you tells me to give a bullock sulphur?"
"Did I, sir?" said Mr. Harrison, beaded with perspiration.
"Mr. Harrison, you did," said the Emperor, with pathetic
impressiveness; "and that I was to keep my hair on, look after the
sheep and again be damned, Mr. Harrison."
"It was madness, sir; it was indeed, it must have been; oh, not a doubt
of it! There can be no question—a bullock, sulphur, dance and be——Oh
dear! oh dear! It was madness—oh, most certainly."
"Enough, Mr. Harrison!" said the Emperor with benign condescension.
"Enough! Mrs. Lite and me, believing that you was driven mad, will
overlook the expressions which should not have come from you to such as
us. Enough, Mr. Harrison, enough!"
If Mr. Harrison, touched to the quick by this sublime expression of
pardon, fell at his master's feet, who shall blame him? Who shall
call him servile? Only greatness and gratitude can properly worship
greatness. In the council of war which followed potentate and subject
consulted together on equal terms as to what should be done in
consequence of the dreadful circumstances which had arisen in the
palace from Lady Drake's hereditary instinct for suppers. Measures
were concerted, plans were laid, and the groom of the chambers retired
from the presence at about ten o'clock, primed with so many orders and
injunctions that the madness to which he had falsely sworn seemed not
unlikely soon to come upon him in stern reality.
Meanwhile, although Tragedy flapped one sable wing above the
fishing-cottage, she managed to flap the other over some portion of the
adjacent palace. In the Emperor's magnificent halls, various members of
the wicked tribe which so afflicted the worthy owner were in a state of
agitation. Mr. Rodney, of course, was one. If there was any agitation
going, he was generally in it. That morning he had received a letter
from his excellent friend and most amusing correspondent, Lord Bernard
Roche. From this communication it appeared that Lord Bernard had been,
and still was, away from New York, which accounted for his delay in
replying to Mr. Rodney's letter. But it was not this absence which
agitated Mr. Rodney, and caused those impressive wrinkles which now
seemed permanent dwellers in his long face. No, Lord Bernard went on to
discuss the Van Adam affair, and to say:
"I fail to understand your remarks about poor dear old Huskinson. You
seem to imply that you have met him in England, although you do not
actually say so. But as far as I know he is still in Florida, with the
beloved Boswell for his only companion. Perhaps you have met a relation
of the same name. There are, I fancy, several Huskinson Van Adams.
Huskinson is a family name, and the family are very fond of it, and so
it figures at many Van Adam christenings. My old friend is the best
known of the clan, a fine, strapping fellow, very American, but none
the worse for that—indeed, all the better for it. They are a grand
nation. Just as I am posting this I hear an amazing piece of news,
that Huskinson is just sailing for England with Boswell. It seems that
he has discovered that his wife is innocent of the charge on which he
got his divorce. The Crackers who gave evidence perjured themselves
because they thought he wanted to get rid of his Chloe, and would make
it all right for them. Having found out their mistake, and that poor
old Huskinson only acted hastily in a fit of temper, they have now been
telling the truth with amazing vigour. Mrs. Van Adam is believed to be
in England, and Huskinson means to find her and try to persuade her to
re-marry him. Heaven knows how it will all end."
Reading this missive over a bit of dry toast at breakfast, Mr. Rodney
was mightily perplexed. Huskinson a strapping fellow, and very
American! Huskinson accompanied by Boswell! Huskinson despairingly
searching for his Chloe! Huskinson just sailing for England! What
could this mean? Lord Bernard must be mistaken in some of his items
of information, and must be of an imaginative turn of mind if he
regarded the very slight youth now in Ribton Marches who knew Paris so
intimately, and talked English so like an Englishman, as "strapping"
and "very American." Besides, where was the monkey? Where was the
faithful and fondled Boswell? Mr. Rodney glanced across from his letter
to Chloe, who sat opposite to him eating a poached egg calmly. They
were the only breakfast-eaters.
"A monkey must be a great solace in moments of depression, I imagine,
Van Adam," murmured Mr. Rodney gently.
"Pardon?" said Chloe, drinking some tea.
"I imagine that the companionship of a monkey must be of great
assistance when—when a man has to face a world of—of trouble."
"Gracious me! I hate the little brutes!" cried Chloe, taken off her
guard.
Mr. Rodney jumped, and glanced again at Lord Bernard's letter. "The
beloved Boswell!" There it stood in black and white. What did this mean?
"You hate Boswell?" said Mr. Rodney, fixing his indefinite eyes on
Chloe, and, without knowing it, touching with a tapping forefinger
like a Queen's Counsel the open letter of Lord Bernard. Chloe saw the
gesture, recognised her mistake, and had a cold shiver as she wondered
whom the letter was from.
"Boswell! Oh, he's different!" she said hastily. "He's more like a
monkey than a friend—I mean more like a friend than a monkey. Dear
little Boswell! Oh, he's quite different."
"I almost wonder you could bring yourself to part from him," said Mr.
Rodney smoothly.
"By Jove! so do I. But climate, you know. What suits one monkey doesn't
suit another. If you bring a monkey up in Florida, he can't live over
here. It's what they're accustomed to—like people, you know!"
The close was vague, and, feeling this, Chloe pushed back her chair,
and murmuring something about a "cigarette in the garden," hurried out
of the room. Mr. Rodney observed her confusion, and an awful thought
flashed through his brain-pan. Could it be that Mrs. Verulam was being
tricked by an adventurer? Could——Lady Drake pattered in to breakfast,
followed almost immediately by the Duke of Southborough.
Lady Drake, who looked, if possible, even more acidulated and demure
than usual, was ravenous after the frustrated purpose of the previous
night. She perched upon her chair, and stretched her small hands for
various foods, with difficulty concealing cannibal instincts. The Duke
reposed his lanky frame beside her, and placed his tongue in his cheek
as the clown does when he conceals the red-hot poker from the policeman
who will presently be frizzled. He had long been worried by Lady Drake.
Now he meant to worry her.
"I hope you had a good long night, Lady Drake?" He spoke with sinister
geniality.
"Very," piped Lady Drake, cutting into a cutlet with a knife that
seemed trembling with eagerness.
"You slept well?" said Mr. Rodney, unconsciously backing up his Grace.
"Beautifully. I've got a quiet conscience."
She threw this last at the Duke with a tiny sneer, which curled her
little withered face grotesquely. The Duke got the red-hot poker ready.
"Someone in the house hasn't, I fancy," he said, drawling out his
words, and fixing his eyes like an actor about to make a point to the
gallery; "someone in the house is of a very restless temperament."
Lady Drake looked at him with the sudden sharpness of a mouse on the
alert.
"Oh!" she cried, "there are always noises in a big house at
night—furniture cracks."
"Yes," said the Duke, bringing the poker forward. "And armchairs
scream, don't they? I've often noticed it."
Lady Drake winked her little eyes rapidly, and the pale yellow of her
complexion began to change to a very delicate green, like the leaf of a
blanched lettuce.
"And," his Grace continued, with most delicate raillery, "sofas sit
on the floor, and then run upstairs like express trains if they're
startled, don't they? I should like to see Wardour Street at—let us
say half-past three to four in the morning."
The policeman was frizzling. Lady Drake let her cutlet get as cold as
she was.
"I see you believe in table-turning," said Mr. Rodney to the Duke.
His mind was still in a confusion, and he was only half following the
conversation. "Animal magnetism is very remarkable—very," he added
mildly.
"It is indeed," said the Duke; "if only you touch hands, eh, Lady
Drake?"
"I think there's nothing in it; and if there is, it's exceedingly
wrong," she said, with a violent effort to go on seeming respectable
under the gaze of a Duke who, she now felt, believed her otherwise.
"Your cutlet is cold," the Duke said. "Let me—bring her ladyship a
slice of broiled ham," he added to a footman.
The footman obeyed. Lady Drake pecked at it; even her hunger was
deserting her before she had gratified it.
"Mr. Bush would make a fine medium, I fancy," continued the Duke—"a
fine, steady medium. What do you say, Lady Drake?"
The little creature writhed. She was now quite certain that his Grace
had suffered from insomnia the night before.
"I don't know anything about Mr. Bush," she said, letting her fork drop
with a clatter.
"You have never 'sat' with him?"
"Oh dear no!"
"On the floor?" added the Duke.
Lady Drake laid down her knife and trembled, while Mr. Rodney, smoothly
unaware that anything was wrong, said:
"Is that the last new thing in spiritualism—to sit on the floor?"
"Lady Drake will inform you," said his Grace.
And then, satisfied with his revenge for many an hour of irritation,
and many a searching query into those little matters which he preferred
to keep secret, he applied himself to his breakfast, pleased that the
wretched little old person beside him was now quite unable to manage
hers.