In Belgrave Square Mrs. Eustace Greyne was beginning to get slightly
uneasy. Several things combined to make her so. In the first place,
Mademoiselle Verbèna had never returned from her mother’s Parisian
bedside, and had not even written a line to say how the dear parent
was, and when the daughter’s nursing occupation was likely to be over.
In the second place, Adolphus, in consequence of the Levantine’s
absence, had totally lost his grasp, always uncertain, upon the
irregular verbs. In the third place, Darrell, the valet, had returned
to London the day after his departure from it, minus not only his
master’s dressing-case, but minus everything he possessed. His story
was that, while waiting at the station in Paris for his master’s
appearance, he had entered into conversation with an agreeable
stranger, and been beguiled into the acceptance of an absinthe at a
café just outside. After swallowing the absinthe he remembered nothing
more till he came to himself in a deserted waiting-room at the Gare
du Nord, back to which he had been mysteriously conveyed. In his
pocket was no money, no watch, only the return half of a second-class
ticket from London to Paris. He, therefore, wandered about the streets
till morning broke, and then came back to London a crestfallen and
miserable man, bemoaning his untoward fate, and cursing “them blasted
Frenchies” from the bottom of his British heart.
Mrs. Greyne’s anxiety on her husband’s behalf, now that he was thrown
absolutely unattended upon the inhospitable shores of Africa, was not
lessened by a fourth circumstance, which, indeed, worried her far more
than all the others put together. This was Mr. Greyne’s prolonged
absence from her side. Precisely one calendar month had now elapsed
since he had buried his face in her prune bonnet strings at Victoria
Station, and there seemed no prospect of his return. He wrote to her,
indeed, frequently, and his letters were full of wistful regret and
longing to be once more safe in the old homestead in Belgrave Square,
drinking barley water, and pasting Romeike & Curtice notices into the
new album which lay, gaping for him, upon the table of his sanctum. But
he did not come; nay, more, he wrote plainly that there was no prospect
of his coming for the present. It seemed that the wickedness of Africa
was very difficult to come at. It did not lie upon the surface, but
was hidden far down in depths to which the ordinary tourist found it
almost impossible to penetrate. In his numerous letters Mr. Greyne
described his heroic and unremitting exertions to fill the Merrin’s
note-books with matter that would be suitable for the purging of
humanity. He set out in full his interview with Alphonso at the office
of Rook, and his definite rejection by that cosmopolitan official.
According to the letters, after this event he had spent no less than a
fortnight searching in vain for any sign of wickedness in the Algerian
capital. He had frequented the cafés, the public bars, the theatres,
the churches. He had been to the Velodrome. He had sat by the hour in
the Jardin d’Essai. At night he had strolled in the fairs and hung
about the circus. Yet nowhere had he been able to perceive anything but
the most innocent pleasure, the simple merriment of a gay and guileless
population to whom the idea of crime seemed as foreign as the idea of
singing the English national anthem.
During the third week it was true that matters—always according to Mr.
Greyne’s letters home—slightly improved. While walking near the quay,
in active search for nautical outrage, he saw an Arab dock labourer,
who had been over-smoking kief, run amuck, and knock down a couple of
respectable snake-charmers who were on the point of embarkation for
Tunis with their reptiles. This incident had filed up a half-score of
pages in exercise-book number one, and had flooded Mr. Greyne with
hope and aspiration. But it was followed by a stagnant lull which had
lasted for days, and had only been disturbed by the trifling incident
of a gentleman in the Jewish quarter of the town setting fire to a
neighbour’s bazaar, in the very natural endeavour to find a French
half-penny which he had chanced to drop among a bale of carpets while
looking in to drive a soft bargain. As Mrs. Greyne wired to Algiers,
such incidents were of no value to “Catherine.”
A very active interchange of views had gone on between the husband
and wife as time went by, and the book was at a standstill. At first
Mrs. Greyne contented herself with daily letters, but latterly she
had resorted to wires, explanatory, condemnatory, hortatory, and even
comminatory. She began bitterly to regret her husband’s well-proven
innocence, and wished she had despatched an uncle of hers by marriage,
an ex-captain in the Royal Navy, who, she began to feel certain, would
have been able to find far more frailty in Algiers than poor Eustace,
in his simplicity, would ever come at. She even began to wish that
she had crossed the sea in person, and herself boldly set about the
ingathering of the material for which she was so impatiently waiting.
Her uneasiness was brought to a head by a letter from a house agent,
stating that the corner mansion in Park Lane next to the Duke of
Ebury’s was being nibbled at by a Venezuelan millionaire. She
wired this terrible fact at once to Africa, adding, at an enormous
expenditure of cash:
This will never do. You are too innocent, and cannot see what lies
before you. Obtain assistance. Go to the British consul.
Mr. Greyne at once cabled back:
Am following your advice. Will wire result. Regret my innocence,
but am distressed that you should so utterly condemn it.
Upon receiving this telegram at night, before a lonely dinner, Mrs.
Eustace Greyne was deeply moved. She felt she had been hasty. She
knew that to very few women was it given to have a husband so free
from all masculine infirmities as Mr. Greyne. At the same time there
was “Catherine,” there was the mansion in Park Lane, there was the
Venezuelan millionaire. She began to feel distracted, and, for the
first time in her life, refused to partake of sweetbreads fried in
mushroom ketchup, a dish which she had greatly affected from the time
when she wrote her first short story. While she was in the very act of
waving away this delicacy a footman came in with a foreign telegram.
She opened it quickly, and read as follows:—
British consul horrified; was ignominiously expelled from
consulate; great scandal; am much upset, but will never give in,
for your sake. +Eustace.+
As the dread meaning of these words penetrated at length to Mrs.
Greyne’s voluminous brain a deep flush overspread her noble features.
She rose from the table with a determination that struck awe to the
hearts of the powdered underlings, and, drawing herself up to her full
height, exclaimed:
“Send Mrs. Forbes at once to my study, if you please—at once, do you
understand?”
In a moment Mrs. Forbes, who was the great novelist’s maid, appeared on
the threshold of the oracle’s lair. She was a sober-looking, black-silk
personage, who always wore a pork-pie cap in the house, and a Mother
Hubbard bonnet out of it. Having been in service with Mrs. Greyne ever
since the latter penned her last minor poetry—Mrs. Greyne had been a
minor poet for three years soon after she put her hair up—Mrs. Forbes
had acquired a certain literary expression of countenance and a manner
that was decidedly prosy. She read a good deal after her supper of an
evening, and was wont to be the arbiter when any literary matter was
discussed in the servants’ hall.
“Madam?” she said, respectfully entering the room, and bending the
pork-pie cap forward in an attentive attitude.
Mrs. Greyne was silent for a moment. She appeared to be thinking
deeply. Mrs. Forbes gently closed the door, and sighed. It was nearly
her supper-time, and she felt pensive.
“Madam?” she said again.
Mrs. Greyne looked up. A strange fire burned in her large eyes.
“Mrs. Forbes,” she said at length, with weighty deliberation, “the
mission of woman in the world is a great one.”
“Very true, madam. My own words to Butler Phillips no longer ago than
dinner this midday.”
“It is the protecting of man—neither more nor less.”
“My own statement, madam, to Second Footman Archibald this self-same
day at the tea-board.”
“Man needs guidance, and looks for it to us—or rather to me.”
At the last word Mrs. Forbes pinched her lips together, and appeared
older than her years and sourer than her normal temper.
“At this moment, Mrs. Forbes,” continued Mrs. Greyne, with rising
fervour, “he looks for it to me from Africa. From that dark continent
he stretches forth his hands to me in humble supplication.”
“Mr. Greyne has not been taken with another of his bilious attacks, I
hope, madam?” said Mrs. Forbes.
Mrs. Greyne smiled. The ignorance of the humbly born entertained her.
It was so simple, so transparent.
“You fail to understand me,” she answered. “But never mind; others have
done the same.”
She thought of her reviewers. Mrs. Forbes smiled. She also could be
entertained.
“Madam?” she inquired once more after a pause.
“I shall leave for Africa to-morrow morning,” said Mrs. Greyne. “You
will accompany me.”
There was a dead silence.
“You will accompany me. Do you understand? Obtain assistance from
the housemaids in the packing. Select my quietest gowns, my least
conspicuous bonnets. I have my reasons for wishing, while journeying to
Africa and remaining there, to pass, if possible, unnoticed.”
Again there was a pause. Mrs. Greyne looked up at Mrs. Forbes, and
observed a dogged expression upon her countenance.
“What is the matter?” she asked the maid.
“Do we go by Paris, madam?” said Mrs. Forbes.
“Certainly.”
“Then, madam, I’m very sorry, but I couldn’t risk it, not if it was
ever so⸺”
“Why not? Why this fear of Lutetia?”
“Madam, I’m not afraid of any Lutetia as ever wore apron, but to go
to Paris to be drugged with absint, and put away in a third-class
waiting-room like a package—I couldn’t madam, not even if I have to
leave your service.”
Mrs. Greyne recognised that the episode of the valet had struck home to
the lady’s maid.
“But you will not leave my side.”
“They will absint you, madam.”
“But you will travel first in a sleeping-car.”
Mrs. Forbes put up her hand to her pork-pie cap, as if considering.
“Very well, madam, to oblige you I will undergo it,” she said at
length. “But I would not do the like for another living lady.”
“I will raise your wages. You are a faithful creature.”
“Does master expect us, madam?” asked Mrs. Forbes as she prepared to
retire.
A bright and tender look stole into Mrs. Greyne’s intellectual face.
“No,” she replied.
She turned her large and beaming eyes full upon the maid.
“Mrs. Forbes,” she said, with an amount of emotion that was very rare
in her, “I am going to tell you a great truth.”
“Madam?” said Mrs. Forbes respectfully.
“The sweetest moments of life, those which lift man nearest heaven, and
make him thankful for the great gift of existence, are sometimes those
which are unforeseen.”
She was thinking of Mr. Greyne’s ecstasy when, upon the inhospitable
African shore where he was now enduring such tragic misfortunes, he
perceived the majestic form of his loved one—his loved one whom he
believed to be in Belgrave Square—coming towards him to soothe, to
comfort, to direct. She brushed away a tear.
“Go, Mrs. Forbes,” she said.
And Mrs. Forbes retired, smiling.
An epic might well be written on the great novelist’s journey to
Africa, upon her departure from Charing Cross, shrouded in a black
gauze veil, her silent thought as the good ship _Empress_ rode
cork-like upon the Channel waves, her ascetic lunch—a captain’s biscuit
and a glass of water—at the buffet at Calais, her arrival in Paris when
the shades of night had fallen. An epic might well be written. Perhaps
some day it will be, by herself.
In Paris she suffered a good deal on account of Mrs. Forbes, who,
in her fear of “absint,” became hysterical, and caused not a little
annoyance by accusing various inoffensive French travellers of
nefarious designs upon her property and person. In the Gulf of Lyons
she suffered even more, and as, unluckily, the wind was contrary
and the sea prodigious during the whole of the passage across the
Mediterranean, both she and Mrs. Forbes arrived at Algiers four hours
late, in a condition which may be more easily imagined than properly
described.
Genius in thrall to the body, and absolutely dependent upon green
chartreuse for its flickering existence, is no subject for even a
sympathetic pen. Sufficient to say that, when the ship came in under
the lights of Algiers, the crowd of shouting Arabs was struck to
silence by the spectacle of Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes endeavouring
to disembark, in bonnets that were placed seaward upon the head instead
of landward, unbuttoned boots, and gowns soaked with the attentions of
the waves.
After being gently and permanently relieved of their light
hand-baggage, the mistress and maid, who seemed greatly overwhelmed
by the sight of Africa, and who moved—or rather were carried—as in a
dream, were placed reverently in the nearest omnibus, and conveyed to
the farthest hotel, which was situated upon a lofty hill above the
town. Here a slightly painful scene took place.
Having been assisted by the staff into a Moorish hall, Mrs. Greyne
inquired in a reticent voice for her husband, and was politely informed
that there was no person of the name of Greyne in the hotel. For a
moment she seemed threatened with dissolution, but with a supreme
effort calling upon her mighty brain she surmised that her husband was
possibly passing under a pseudonym in order to throw America off the
scent. She, therefore, demanded to have the guests then present in the
hotel at once paraded before her. As there was some difficulty about
this—the guests being then at dinner—she whispered for the visitors’
book, thinking that, perchance, Mr. Greyne had inscribed his name
there, and that the staff, being foreign, did not recognise it as
murmured by herself. The book was brought, upon its cover in golden
letters the words: “Hôtel Loubet et Majestic.” Then explanations of a
somewhat disagreeable nature occurred, and Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes,
after a heavy payment had been exacted for their conveyance to a place
they had desired not to go to, were carried forth, and consigned to
another vehicle, which at length brought them, on the stroke of nine,
to the Grand Hotel.
Having been placed reverently in the brilliantly-lighted hall, they
were surrounded by the proprietor, the _mâitre d’hôtel_ and his
assistants, the porters, and the chasseurs, with all of whom Mr. Greyne
was now familiar. Brandy and water having been supplied, together with
smelling-salts and burnt feathers, Mrs. Greyne roused herself from an
acute attack of lethargy, and asked for Mr. Greyne. A joyous smile ran
round the circle.
“Monsieur Greyne,” said the proprietor, “who is living here for the
winter?”
“Mr. Eustace Greyne,” murmured the great novelist, grasping her bonnet
with both hands.
The _mâitre d’hôtel_ drew nearer.
“Madame wishes to see Monsieur Greyne?” he asked.
“I do—at once.”
A blessed consciousness of Mother Earth was gradually beginning to
steal over her. She even strove feebly to sit up on her chair, a
German-Swiss porter of enormous size assisting her.
“But Monsieur Greyne is out.”
“Out?”
“Yes, madame. Monsieur Greyne is always out at night.”
The eyes of the little chasseur who knew no better began to twinkle.
Mrs. Forbes gave a slight cough. Tears filled the novelist’s eyes.
“God bless my Eustace!” she murmured, deeply touched by this evidence
of his devotion to her interests.
“Madame says⸺” asked the proprietor.
“Where does Mr. Greyne go?” inquired the novelist.
“To the Kasbah, madame.”
“I knew it!” cried Mrs. Greyne, with returning animation. “I knew it
would be so!”
“Madame is acquainted with Monsieur Greyne?” said the _mâitre d’hôtel_,
while the little crowd gathered more closely about the wave-worn group.
“I am Mrs. Eustace Greyne,” returned the great novelist recklessly. “I
am the wife of Mr. Eustace Greyne.”
There was a moment of supreme silence. Then a loud, an even piercing
“_Oh, là, là!_” broke upon the air, succeeded instantaneously by a
burst of laughter that seemed to thrill with all the wild blessedness
of boyhood. It came, of course, from the little chasseur; it came, and
stayed. Nothing could stop it, and eventually the happy child had to
be carried forth upon the sea-front to enjoy his innocent mirth at
leisure and in solitude beneath the African stars. Mrs. Greyne did not
notice his disappearance. She was intent upon important matters.
“At what time does Mr. Greyne usually set forth?” she asked of the
proprietor, whose face now bore a strangely twisted appearance, as if
afflicted by a toothache.
“Immediately after dinner, madame, if not before. Of late it has
generally been before.”
“And he stays out late?”
“Very late, madame.”
The twisted appearance began to seem infectious. It was visible upon
the faces of most of those surrounding Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes.
Indeed, even the latter showed some signs of it, although the large
shadow cast over her features by the hind side of her Mother Hubbard
bonnet to some extent disguised them from the public view.
“Till what hour?” pursued Mrs. Greyne in a voice of almost yearning
tenderness and pity.
“Well, madame”—the proprietor displayed some slight confusion—“I really
can hardly say. The _maître d’hôtel_ can perhaps inform you.”
Mrs. Greyne turned her ox-like eyes upon the enlarged edition of
Napoleon the First.
“Monsieur Greyne seldom returns before seven or eight o’clock in the
morning, madame. He then retires to bed, and comes down to breakfast at
about four o’clock in the afternoon.”
Mrs. Greyne was touched to the very quick. Her husband was sacrificing
his rest, his health—nay, perhaps even his very life—in her service.
It was well she had come, well that a period was to be put to these
terrible researches. They should be stopped at once, even this very
night. Better a thousand literary failures than that her husband’s
existence should be placed in jeopardy. She rose suddenly from her
chair, tottered, gasped, recovered herself, and spoke.
“Prepare dinner for me at once,” she said, “and order a carriage and a
competent guide to be before the door in half-an-hour.”
“Madame is going out? But madame is ill, tired!”
“It matters not.”
“Where does madame wish to go?”
“I am going to the Kasbah to find my husband.”
“I will escort madame.”
The proprietor, the _maître d’hôtel_, the waiters, the porters, the
chasseurs, Mrs. Greyne and Mrs. Forbes, all turned about to face the
determined speaker.
And there before them, his dark eyes gleaming, his long moustaches
bristling fiercely—there stood Abdallah Jack.