THE INNOCENT LADY.
The paragon took no notice whatever of their approach. With an
immovable countenance and half-shut eyes, he continued to job his spade
into the mould, lift it out, throw the excavated earth to either side
of him, knock any lumps that there chanced to be to pieces, level the
surface, and job the spade in again with mechanical regularity, while
Mr. Minnidick hoed in silence at his side, munching the air without
cessation. Beyond the hedge the boy with the sharply-pointed nose lay
back in the basket-work chaise wrapped in a seraph's slumber, while
the white pony nibbled hedgerow grass contentedly in the sunshine. It
was upon this exquisitely peaceful and divinely rustic scene that the
ruthless Duke now murderously advanced, carrying a hoe in each hand,
and attended by the agitated owner of Mitching Dean, who endeavoured
to assume the expression of a fanatic, while his gait suggested abject
fear tempered by creeping paralysis. Such, however, is the influence of
supreme intrepidity upon the soul of man, that even the Duke stopped
short on arriving at the sprouts, and gazed for a moment in astonished
silence at Mrs. Verulam's idea of Agag thus pursuing the chosen
vocation of his existence upon the very edge of the tomb. The rattle of
the falling earth would have recalled to a coward soul the sad music
that accompanies the burial of even the bravest. But Mr. Bush's nerves
were surely made of steel. He did not glance aside. He did not flutter
so much as an eyelid, conscious though he was of the Duchess crouching
among his mushrooms, and of the infuriated husband waiting for him
with the most formidable hoe that the resources of the Elephant and
Drum could afford. In fact, he rather suggested an unusually heavy and
lethargic person on the verge of slumber than a desperate Don Juan on
the point of being slain in a duel.
"Don't you think," whispered Mr. Rodney in the Duke's ear—"don't you
think you'd better put it off for a few hours? It seems almost—almost
indecent to—to kill a man when—when he's laying out his—his garden."
"I intend to lay him out," returned the Duke. "Mr. Bush!"
The paragon calmly dug on.
"Mr. Bush!" repeated the Duke in a very loud voice. "Are you deaf,
sir?—are you deaf and blind, sir?"
"Give over!" muttered the paragon, removing a root and dividing a pink
worm into two parts, both of which hastened to places of comparative
safety.
"How dare you speak to me like that, sir!" said the Duke. "How dare you
do it, sir! Do you suppose that because you have me out here in the
depths of the country you can intimidate me, sir?"
"Get along with you!" muttered the paragon, patting the earth on the
head with majestic condescension.
The visage of the Duke became empurpled.
"I shall do nothing of the kind, sir!" he exclaimed. "Take a hoe,
sir—take a hoe, and stand to your defence this instant!"
"For Heaven's sake, Duke, be calm!" cried Mr. Rodney. "Don't make a
scene!"
"Rodney," said his Grace, "you are an egregious ass! Take a hoe—do you
hear me, sir?"
"Pull up them weeds, Jacob," said the paragon to Mr. Minnidick, "or
they'll choke the rhubub."
"Darn 'em!" rejoined Mr. Minnidick composedly.
"And lay down a bit o' marl along the sparrowgrass."
Mr. Minnidick moved to carry out this last command.
"Lock her in—d'yer hear? Lock her in, and lose the key," whispered Mr.
Bush, as Mr. Minnidick was moving off.
Mr. Minnidick munched violently and answered naught, but as he passed
the mushroom-house he turned the key on the Duchess, who now believed
that her last hour was indeed approaching. Now, Mr. Bush at all times
found it difficult to moderate his voice, and even his whisper as a
rule was powerful and sonorous. Consequently, the Duke heard what he
said, and became even more violently enraged than before.
"Lock her in, d'you say, you villainous ruffian!" he exclaimed. "So
you've trapped some other wretched creature into your clutches, have
you? You can't even stand by your partner in guilt or stick to one
criminal at a time! I daresay," his Grace added, turning sharply on
Mr. Rodney—"I daresay that house is positively swarming with degraded
females at this very moment."
And he pointed up at the windows of the Farm, from one of which the
heads of Mrs. Verulam and Chloe abruptly disappeared.
"Swarming!" said Mr. Rodney deprecatingly. "Oh, Duke, I scarcely
think—the house, indeed, hardly appears to—to swarm. You may be
in—in error. Take time—do pray take a little time to—to learn more
of——"
"Rodney, I am not addressing myself to you!" said his Grace, telling a
fairly obvious lie. "I have nothing to say to you. My business is with
this gentleman. Stop digging this moment, sir, or I shall not wait for
you to fight. I shall kill you where you are gardening without further
parley! Stop digging!"
At this juncture Mr. Minnidick calmly approached with the "bit o' marl."
"Where d'ye wish it a-laid?" he asked his master. "Darn it all! where
d'ye wish it a-laid?"
"Along the sparrowgrass, I tell yer. And then get to mulchin'."
"Mulchin'!" said Mr. Minnidick severely. "Whativer fur? Darn it all!
mulchin' harbours the vermin—mulchin' harbours the vermin. It'll spile
the dahlias, I tell ye!"
All this conversation, in which he had no part, and from which it
seemed that he was almost insolently excluded, drove the Duke to the
very top of his temper.
"Marl and mulching be damned!" he shouted in a passionate voice, and
presenting one of the hoes which he carried, he seemed about to go for
the paragon and slay him where he stood.
"Save yourself!" cried Mr. Rodney, while Mr. Bush moved backwards with
a certain amount of lumbering agility.
"Rodney!" exclaimed his Grace, "how dare you interfere?"
"Duke, I am your second," said Mr. Rodney, pale as ashes, but plucking
up a semblance of spirit. "I act for you at your own request. Fight it
out like—like men, but don't murder a gentleman in cold blood among
his own vegetables."
"I'll murder him where I choose. Will you be killed or will you
fight?" the Duke exclaimed frantically to the paragon.
"I won't be a-killed," replied he sulkily.
"Then order your second to stop mulching or marling, or whatever the
devil he's doing over there. Come out onto the grass, and we'll have it
out fairly."
Mr. Bush scratched his head with his right thumb, looked sleepy, and
then called out in a prodigious voice:
"Jacob! Jacob!"
"Darn it all, I hear ye!" retorted Mr. Minnidick, who was following
some mysterious profession connected with manure in the middle
distance. "What d'ye want a-now?"
"Give over, Jacob!"
Mr. Minnidick gave over, and stood idle with a bitter face.
"Come here, I tell yer!" continued Mr. Bush.
Mr. Minnidick came rheumatically.
"Well?" said the paragon to the Duke—"well?"
"Take your hoe and follow me, sir," said the Duke, and he marched in
grim silence to a plot of grass adjacent to the mushroom-house, slowly
followed by the rest of the party.
"Chloe, what are they going to do?" said Mrs. Verulam anxiously in Mr.
Minnidick's attic. "What are those horrid-looking weapons for? And why
is the Duke so angry?"
"I expect Mr. Bush is going to show them how he gardens," said Chloe.
"They will see Boswell in a moment. He's just eating a stock. Oh, how
shall I manage to change my trousers before Huskinson sees me?"
"But people don't garden on a lawn, do they?"
"Oh yes, anywhere."
"Well, but what's the Duke doing now? He's measuring the ground with a
pocket-handkerchief."
"Oh, that's for drillings, I expect."
"Drillings! But they're none of them in the army."
"I mean making drills for sowing."
"Would a Duke sow in summer?"
"He might. One can never tell what a man will do."
"No, indeed! How Mr. Rodney is trembling! And what an extraordinary
state his hat is in!"
"I suppose it's his gardening hat. I am sure Boswell will be ill if he
mixes his plants like that. And if he's ill Huskinson will go crazy."
"Now Mr. Rodney is handing Mr. Bush a spade. No, it's something else.
What is it?"
"A flail, perhaps, or a spud."
"How they are talking now! I wish I could hear what they're saying. I
am certain the Duke's in a passion. Look how he shakes his head and
clenches his fist. He's lifting his spud now just as if he were going
to hit Mr. Bush. Ah, Chloe, I'm frightened!"
So was the paragon, who was considering where he could run away to,
when the duel was stayed for a moment by Mr. Minnidick, who suddenly
said:
"Darn it all! look at that there monkey a-feedin' on them there
pansies!"
At this speech the duelling party assumed attitudes of distinct
surprise, and Mr. Rodney said nervously:
"A moment, Duke—a moment, I beg! What do you say is eating pansies?"
"That there monkey—darn it all!" replied Mr. Minnidick, pointing to
Boswell with the favourite hoe.
"I will not be interrupted by any monkey!" exclaimed the Duke angrily.
"No doubt it has been purposely introduced to balk me of my vengeance.
Rodney, it was your business, as my second, to clear the ground."
"I—really I—I must positively decline to clear the—ground of
monkeys," said Mr. Rodney, driven to bay at last. "I am ready to—to do
anything in—in reason, but I have never been accustomed to handle wild
animals, and—no, Duke, I will not begin now at my age—no, not even to
oblige you."
And he endeavoured to look dignified and firm.
"Very well, then," cried the Duke. "Then I shall act for myself, since
my friend deserts me."
And, with this unmerited accusation, he furiously made towards Boswell
with his hoe.
"Oh, Daisy," cried Chloe in the attic—"oh, the Duke is going to kill
Boswell—the brute! Oh, it will break Huskinson's heart! What shall I
do—oh, what shall I do?"
And she leaned out of the attic window till she nearly fell into the
garden of the paragon.
"Chloe, for Heaven's sake, don't! You will be seen. They will see you!"
"I don't care. Let them! There! He's struck at Boswell. He's hit him!
Oh, oh! No, Boswell dodged just in time! Now the Duke—oh, he's climbed
up a rose-tree!"
"The Duke! Get out of the way, Chloe! Let me see!"
"And now he's coming down head first!"
"What will the Duchess say? And he used to be a Cabinet Minister!"
"He _is_ agile! I never saw anything go so quick. He's making for the
shrubbery now on all fours!"
"Chloe, I will see him doing it. Make room for me at once!"
"He's up an acacia! Oh, oh! And now he's jumped into an elm!"
"He'll be killed! No Duke can go on so without being killed."
"The Duke! Don't be so absurd! It's Boswell! He's got away! He's
escaped! Heaven be praised! He's got away! How thankful Huskinson will
be! The Duke's returning. He's all over green stuff, and foaming at the
mouth. I'm glad of it—cruel wretch, to hunt an innocent little monkey
so!"
At this point in the panorama Mrs. Verulam forced her way to the window
and beheld his Grace, in the very extremity of baffled fury, cursing
and swearing at the pitch of his voice, returning to the duelling
party, who had been attentively observing his endeavours to clear the
ground of monkeys from the shadow of the mushroom-house—in which,
by the way, the Duchess was now beginning steadily to suffocate. The
noise occasioned by the chase of Boswell had awakened the boy with the
sharply-pointed nose from his seraph's slumber, and, anxious to join in
the larks that seemed going forward, he now proceeded to swarm over the
hedge, and joined the group on the lawn just as his Grace returned to
it, and, with many oaths, assumed a posture of attack and presented his
hoe at Mr. Bush.
"Come on!" cried the Duke. "Your blasted monkeys sha'n't save you! Come
on!"
The paragon honestly believed that his last hour on earth had now
arrived, when another providential interruption took place.
"Help!" cried a feeble, failing bass voice. "Help! Murder! murder!"
"Whatever's that?" said Mr. Rodney, endeavouring to turn paler, but
failing, since Providence has made no provision for any colour whiter
than chalk. "What is it?"
"Help, help!" repeated the bass voice with a fainter accent.
"Crikey!" cried the boy with the sharply-pointed nose, making use of
the emblematic word of extreme childhood—"crikey! if it isn't the
innercent lydy stifling! My eye! what a lark!"
And he gave free vent to the very natural sense of humour roused in
his youthful breast by so auspicious an occurrence. Now, the Duke was
nothing if not chivalrous, and, on hearing the small boy's cheerful
pronouncement, he exclaimed in a voice of thunder:
"An innocent lady stifling! Where—where is she?"
The boy with the sharply-pointed nose was unable to speak for laughing,
but he indicated the mushroom-house with one hand, which he removed for
the purpose from his little right knee, on which he had placed it as an
assistance to his timely mirth.
"In there! An innocent lady in such a hole as that!" cried the Duke.
"You scoundrel!"
And seizing the paragon by the throat, he shook him to and fro a dozen
times or more, and then, throwing him aside, sprang to the door of the
mushroom-house and endeavoured to tear it open.
"It's locked! It's bolted! Where's the key? Rodney, why don't you fetch
the key?"
"Because I don't know where it is!" cried the miserable owner of
Mitching Dean.
"And you call yourself a man!" roared the Duke. "She'll be dead in
another minute!"
And he shook the door furiously.
"Try your hoe, Duke—try your hoe!" cried Mr. Rodney.
"By Jove! I will!"
And so saying, he tried it with such skill, address, and physical
strength that the door gave way, and he beheld his Duchess in the early
Victorian dressing-gown fainting upon the dibble-holes.
"Cleopatra!" he cried, and stood as if changed to stone.
But this was only for a moment. He turned. The paragon saw the
movement, and fled for his life. Across the garden he moved with the
speed and noise of a fire-engine. He gained the house. He leaped up the
narrow stairs. He plunged into the inmost recess of the building, which
chanced to be Mr. Minnidick's attic.
"Get out o' ther way!" he roared to Chloe and Mrs. Verulam, "or I'll
throw yer out o' the winder!"
"Really, Mr. Bush——" began Mrs. Verulam.
"'Really, Mr. Bush,' be blasted!" he roared, and flinging himself upon
the ground with a noise like thunder, he endeavoured to conceal himself
beneath the truckle-bed of his retainer.
But the paragon was large, and the truckle-bed was small, and as the
less cannot contain the greater, Mr. Bush's situation when the Duke
bounded into the chamber was merely that of the ostrich. His head,
it is true, was concealed from sight, but the whole of his gigantic
body was visible and to be got at. The Duke got at it, and despite
Mrs. Verulam's cries of alarm, rolled with it down the staircase into
the garden, just as a large bus, containing the Bun Emperor, Mr.
Harrison, the four remaining detectives and four police-constables in
full uniform, their truncheons drawn in their hands, drove up to the
wicket-gate.
"Help!" roared Mr. Bush, while Mr. Rodney leaned up against the
mushroom-house half dead with terror at the vision of Mrs. Verulam and
the orange-grower fluttering forth from the paragon's abode. "Help!"
"There's your man—oh, indeed; most certainly; by all means—there he
lies!" cried Mr. Harrison to the police-constables, pointing to Mr.
Bush.
"Arrest him! arrest him!" shouted the Bun Emperor. "Take my property
from him!"
The constables pulled the Duke off the paragon.
"Let me kill him!" said his Grace. "Let me kill the scoundrel!"
"Not till he's been hanged for stealing my property!" shouted the
Emperor, ablaze with passion.
"For Heaven's sake, don't make a scene before the ladies!" shrieked Mr.
Rodney.
"Rely on me—oh, indeed, most certainly, in all circumstances rely on
me!" cried Mr. Harrison, doing nothing, with starting eyes.
The police stood firm. They planted the paragon on his feet, held him
by the scruff of his neck, turned out his pockets, and revealed the
silver whisky-bottle and the gold presentation cigar-case.
"What did I say?" cried Mr. Harrison—"what did I at all times and ever
say? Oh, indeed!"
Nobody seemed to know or care, and at this moment attention was
diverted by the appearance of the Duchess from the mushroom-house and
the faithful Marriner from the wicket-gate. The Duchess tottered feebly
forward, grasping the early Victorian dressing-gown with both hands.
"Crikey!" cried the boy with the sharply-pointed nose; "it's the
innercent lydy! She ain't stifled!"
And he nearly dropped with childish disappointment.
"Yes," bellowed her Grace, "I am an innocent lady. Oh, Southborough!"
And she proceeded to explain the cause of her situation. "He wouldn't
speak for me. He fled—the base one fled!" she shouted pathetically,
pointing at the paragon. "He's not a man!"
"No more am I!" cried Chloe, who had been engaged in whispering with
the faithful Marriner, and who now came forward blushing very much and
trying to look very composed.
"Chloe!" said Mrs. Verulam.
"Daisy, it's all up! Huskinson knows everything, and is just coming up
the road. He traced me to Park Lane, and Francis has told him all. He
is staying at the Elephant and Drum, and met Marriner by chance. He
forgives me. And I trust you will," she added, turning to the Duke and
Duchess.
They listened to her succeeding remarks with dropped jaws.
"This gentleman a lady!" cried Mr. Rodney, pressing his hand to his
heart and sitting down in a bed of stinging-nettles.
"This man a woman!" shrieked the Duchess. "But then," she added,
staring at Mrs. Verulam, "you—you are——"
"Respectable," said Mrs. Verulam, with a rather malicious intonation.
"Mr. Van Adam a female!" her Grace reiterated. "But—but—Pearl—I
shall have to afford to send her to Carlsbad this summer, after all,
unless Mr. Ingerstall——" She paused abruptly. "Southborough," she
cried, "come away!"
And she led off the astounded Duke to the pony-carriage, made him
get into it, and drove away with him, followed by the boy with the
sharply-pointed nose, who ran vociferously behind, objurgating those
who thus usurped his position of coachman at the top of his shrill
treble voice.
Meanwhile Mrs. Verulam had begged off the paragon, for the Bun Emperor,
on being confronted with a pretty woman almost in tears, developed
unexpected susceptibilities, and became almost polite.
"Let him go, Mr. Harrison," said the Emperor to the groom of the
chambers, who was nowhere near Mr. Bush—"let the ruffian go!"
"Rely on me, sir," was the groom of the chambers' apt reply.
"We do, Mr. Harrison, we do. Me and Mrs. Lite is not insensible of your
services."
The groom of the chambers inclined himself and stepped into the bus, to
which he was shortly followed by the detectives, the constables, and
the Emperor, who said to Mrs. Verulam in parting:
"Frederick is picking the bullets"—Miss Bindler's—"out of the palace
walls, ma'am. When this is done, me and Mrs. Lite would be obliged if
we could return to the home. Your time is nearly up."
"I consider it quite up," said Mrs. Verulam, who had no very pleasant
recollections of Ribton Marches. "Pray return whenever you please."
The Emperor drove away in high feather, after excusing himself to Mr.
Rodney for breaking his word, and breaking out of the fishing-cottage.
The paragon and Mr. Minnidick had now returned to their interrupted
avocations. Mr. Bush was sulkily digging among the sprouts. Mr.
Minnidick was busy with the mulching and the marl. Mrs. Verulam looked
towards her idea of Agag.
"I suppose I ought to say good-bye to him," she said rather tremulously.
"To a thief and a coward!" murmured Mr. Rodney, in a reproachful and
yet tender tone.
"To a man who wanted to throw you out of the window!" said Chloe.
"He was my guest and my hero."
"Very well."
Mrs. Verulam advanced to the bed of sprouts.
"Good-bye, Mr. Bush," she said.
The paragon turned up a worm.
"Mr. Bush, good-bye."
"Jacob!" called the paragon.
"Darn it all, I hear ye!" piped Mr. Minnidick. "What d'ye want a-now?"
"Get to dressin' the earth round them hornbeam hedges with soap-ash.
D'yer hear?"
Mrs. Verulam turned away and took Mr. Rodney's arm.
"You will not leave society?" he whispered. "You will not take to these
horrible pursuits?"
"Perhaps—perhaps not. I must think. I must ponder."
"Come and ponder at Mitching Dean."
She smiled at him. They joined Chloe and the faithful Marriner. Chloe
had just run to the corner of the lane.
"He's coming, Daisy!" she whispered excitedly. "I've seen him in the
distance. He's coming. Boswell is sitting on his shoulder. Oh, oh!"
"Dear Chloe!" said Mrs. Verulam. "And society?"
"I've had enough of it. I only want Florida and—and him. And you,
Daisy?"
"I'm not particularly anxious for Florida."
And again she smiled at Mr. Rodney.
"Ma'am," said the faithful Marriner to Mrs. Verulam, "might I speak?"
"Certainly, Marriner. What is it?"
"With your permission, ma'am, I desire to enter matrimony."
"Indeed! With Francis, I suppose?"
"No, ma'am; with Mr. Harrison."
"Who is that?"
"The gentleman in the bus with the bald head, ma'am."
"Oh!"
"I feel that I can rely upon him, ma'am," said the faithful Marriner.
THE END.
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION
VOL. 4357
THE LONDONERS. By ROBERT HICHENS
IN ONE VOLUME
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
By the same Author,
FLAMES 2 vols.
THE SLAVE 2 vols.
FELIX 2 vols.
THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN 2 vols.
THE GARDEN OF ALLAH 2 vols.
THE BLACK SPANIEL, ETC. 1 vol.
THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 2 vols.
A SPIRIT IN PRISON 2 vols.
BARBARY SHEEP 1 vol.
BELLA DONNA 2 vols.
THE SPELL OF EGYPT 1 vol.
THE DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD 1 vol.
THE FRUITFUL VINE 2 vols.
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