physicians and also his bankers had ordered him to visit a lumber
camp in Norway, he feared that he might not be back until the
following day, and he felt it was an excellent opportunity, he said,
for Maisie to go to bed at the same hour as the canaries, and have a
real good rest. Then he called loudly to his man not to forget to
pack his snowshoes, his caribou gun, plenty of ground bait for the
trout, and disinfectants for the riper ryper, and took his departure.
That selfsame night, in about the middle watch, poor Maisie, sleeping
lightly and nervously, fancied that she heard the stairs creak in a
guilty way, and tremblingly got up. Slipping into a tight-fitting
lace dressing-gown with three deep flounces shooting boldly from
below the knees, she crept out upon the stairs in time to see a
familiar form, plainly silhouetted in the moonlight, just one flight
above her, and still climbing. Invernairne had clandestinely
returned!
Though Maisie entertained no Victorian views regarding the fidelity
of husbands, and even knew that in clubland several men who had
lately allowed their hearts to be true to their Polls, had been
expelled on the ground that their conduct was unbecoming gentlemen,
the situation seemed so promising of advantage to herself that she
instinctively followed the figure, keeping close to the wall, where
stairs are quietest. Precisely at the point anticipated, the
spectral Invernairne crossed a landing and laid his hand softly upon
the knob of the long suspected door. As the handle slowly turned and
the door, opening inwards, suffered a strong shaft of light from a
cheerful, crackling fire to cleave the darkness--Maisie, poor,
impulsive fool, shouted imperiously, "STOP!"
Invernairne, with man's inborn craft, stopped instantly, and
accurately grasping the situation, acted without a moment's pause.
Stopping dead upon the threshold of the girl's room, he shouted into
it angrily:
"How _dare_ you burn my coals in this way, you abandoned hussy?
Douse that fire with your water-jug immediately, and prepare yourself
for a bitter reckoning to-morrow!"
Then, turning back towards the stairs, he gasped the old Criterion
gag, "My wife!"
"And pray what brings you here to-night?" Maisie asked, by this time
realising how completely she had sacrificed the position to her own
impetuosity.
"Economy, my love, sheer economy," replied the ready liar. "Found,
when I got to Hull, that the Wilsons owned the boats and the fare was
seven pounds. Far better spend the seven pounds on dear Maisie,
thought I, and write to the Wilsons to send me a complimentary
pass--perpetual free pass, in fact--besides, the Wilsons would never
speak to me again if they ever heard of such a thing as my paying to
travel by their line--preposterous! Back then I came--worn, weary,
jaded, but self-satisfied--only to behold, on approaching the beloved
goal, the unmistakable reflection in the clouds of a huge fire
somewhere in my own dwelling. What great good fortune that I had
turned back! How Providence provides! I adopted my old trapper
tactics--stalking stealthily--from crest to crest--birchbark and
woodcraft--aha! And blest if that Swiss hoyden of yours hadn't got a
fire half way up her chimney, madam, and Cockerell's charging me
thirty-five shillings a ton! Out of this house she goes to-morrow
morning, mark that!"
"May the Lord have mercy on your miserable soul!" was all that Lady
Invernairne could say as, trembling with suppressed agitation, she
motioned him to the spare room and, a moment later, locked him in.
And now the very natural question is What, oh What, will the Harvest
be?
I really cannot conclude without thanking you for the hearty laugh
you gave me by your humorous inquiry about my "going to the Lord
Mayor's Show" next Wednesday. You have evidently not forgotten, dear
soul, that the feeblest manifestation of the undying spirit of
Thackeray's Jenkins never fails to move me to laughter; but really I
prefer to leave to you and your sort the fragrance of the asphalte
and the watermen's garments, also the fat and greasy citizens in furs
and chains. Fortunately, like the pigs in France which have, since
Villon dreamt he was a swine rooting in the streets of Paris, had to
keep outside the fortifications, these dear old civic creatures are,
like the pigs, only brought into these regions to be bled; and I will
wager a fiver that when the worthy alderman who assisted Féo at her
flower stall at the last bazaar is taken round to Dover Street
to-morrow, he will bow to my opinion that she has not spent the last
three weeks getting pinned up in fitting-rooms for nothing!
Thine
VIOLA.
EPISTLE VII
THE LADIES' RAG, _December_ 3_rd._
DEAREST PATRICIA,--
All day long there has been ringing in my ears the immortal
observation of the extremely fastidious and highly cultured damsel
who remarked, you may remember, as she finished her first
riding-lesson, "M'yes, the sensation is agreeable enough, but the
motion is highly ridiculous," for my morning mail is mainly of those
who are hunting the fox. Housed in the Honourable Winnie Brandon's
admirable hunting box--the adjective is justified by her many
excellent domestic rules, one of which, for instance, is to have a
loud gong sounded in the hall at ten minutes to six each morning, so
that when the servants bring up the cups of tea at six precisely,
they may find the guests all in their proper rooms and sound
asleep--at Melton, are some of the smartest people that ever publicly
strained at the most insignificant gnats and privately swallowed the
most enormous camels. Not the least noteworthy among her guests is
Lady Sheila Crampton, who since she got to learn the truth about her
husband's audacious acquaintance with the Honourable Win, has
assiduously made an intimate friend of her, though whether with a
view to cut out in her own spouse's affections the beautiful Diana,
or to effect an economy by the cheaper and easier method of watching
one person instead of paying detectives to keep an unflagging
look-out on two, has not yet been decided in eggshell china circles.
Winnie is, to say the least, dreadfully "raw" over the business,
though less so, in another sense, than Sheila, who, being
unaccustomed to so much occupancy of the saddle, metaphorically moans
in mauve ink for a recipe for restoring lost leather. If hot and
then cold water, and tincture of myrrh, with a final top-dressing of
zinc ointment, will not toughen her cuticle like a sjambok, then has
Bermondsey lost her bearings and the fabled jolly tanner his art; but
what of the lovers meanwhile? Finding it no longer necessary to
outdistance the poor, unpractised lady and her equally bothered
horse--"a-blowin' like a pair o' June brides," as the first said to
the second whip--they may flirt along side by side to the great
amusement of the field and the making of much new history.
And Melton has not yet satisfied itself as to what it was that caused
the Honourable Winnie to miss her hunting for the first five weeks of
last season, though, with truly ingrowing nerve, it has sought for a
whole year to pry open the inscrutable. All it knows is that it saw
on one Autumn evening of twelve months ago, a groom with a petrified
countenance ride out from the stables of Brandon Towers and through
the town, to return, more than an hour later, with the eccentric Dr
Moxon from Swanzey Constable.
Though a bunch of five local practitioners, striving to fill out a
six-day week, mutely resented the intrusion, old Dr Moxon continued
to ride into Melton every afternoon thereafter on the
fifteen-year-old pony which was almost beyond its office. With the
second week he started sporting a white vest, and a neighbouring
parson with elderly daughters thought seriously of asking him to
dinner; but none were quite bold enough to risk a throw-down, and the
mystery of Brandon Towers remained unsolved. Five weeks later, as
the philosophic old doctor was making a hearty breakfast off a cold
grouse which was dead enough to call for disinfectants, a servant
announced Lord Willoughby de Sambre, and was in fact followed into
the little dining-room by that breezy nobleman.
"Beg a thousand pardons for disturbin' you with the nosebag on, sir,"
said the peer, whose lachrymal glands indicated early transactions
with brandy and soda, "but I've called to thank you very heartily for
all you have done for Lady Brandon, and to ask you to accept this
little cheque. Above all, I don't want it known what's been the
matter with her; do you mind recording it in your books as small-pox?
Thanks, awfully! There's one other little matter, sir. Lady
Brandon--to whom I'm, ahem, closely related--tells me your old pony
is none too efficient. Now, I'm putting on the rail to you a little
red Daimler which will buzz you round and keep you more in touch with
events. No--no thanks, you'll get it to-morrow; don't
forget--smallpox!"
And Lord de Sambre vanished. Next day, a glistening little
spark-waggon, as red as sealing-wax, arrived, and old Dr Moxon there
and then christened it, lest he might forget his benefactor's last
request, "VARIOLA," and wheeled it into his stable.
As he was in the act of recrossing his garden in the direction of his
surgery, the elderly medico beheld a tall, military man with a frozen
smile alight from the station fly and advance towards him, hat in
hand.
"Ah, my dear Doctor Moxon," he cried, "this is lavender indeed for
me! Pray accept this small cheque, miserably insufficient as it is,
for all your goodness towards Lady Brandon, my--er, sister-in-law.
It's like violating every principle of gratitude from A to Z to ask a
further favour of you, but _do_ you mind bein' mum--absolutely
G.H.!--as to the exact nature of Lady B.'s indisposition? Could you
refer to it as--say bile or green cussedness of some sort? She is
awfully sick, by the way, at your having to cover the Cosmos on a
perambulating organism too far gone to stand doping, and I'm sending
you--oh, fie, fie, I shall take no denials!--a little Panhard that'll
skim round the corners like the pictures on the screen. Not a word,
not a word; it'll be here to-morrow; but remember--headachy sickness
an' all that caper!"
Long after the stranger had taken his departure, the good old doctor
in his temporary perplexity scratched the shining pate which offended
Nature had tonsured at 69 to resent the overwearing of the halo in
all weathers, and gazed at the cheque which still lay where it had
fallen on the floor. He could salve his conscience, he reflected, by
destroying the superfluous draft; but with the entrancing little
green tonneau which a railway rustic delivered at the door next
morning, it was entirely different. So winsome was the diminutive
car, with its fluted varnished bonnet, its bravely burnished lamps,
and its intricate and interesting steel gear, that no soul only
lately converted to automobilism could possibly have returned
it--even had not the princely donor countered even that feasibility
by scrupulously concealing his identity. So Doctor Moxon accepted
the situation with the sigh of a philosopher, and, naming the green
car "CHLOROSIS" as if by a happy inspiration, he strolled out into
the quiet churchyard to try and forget all about the beautiful Lady
Brandon among the quaint obituary puffs of the old tombstones.
Returning, much relieved, he was surprised to find a genial elderly
gentleman with a ripston-pippin face and silk-lined clothes, sitting
demurely in the cottage surgery and earnestly endeavouring to become
deeply interested in Burckhardt's _Atlas of Electric Cystoscopy_.
"Doctor Moxon, I presume?" said this bland person, laying Burckhardt
aside as the old physician entered; and, receiving an affirmative
nod, continued: "Of course, my dear sir, you haven't the faintest
notion as to who I may be, but it will suffice for me to tell you
that I was--er, eh--yes, yes, Lady Brandon's former ward in
Chancery--eh, no--tut, tut, how very foolish!--I mean, of course,
that she was _mine_--egad, bless her heart, yes!--and--er, in that
case, you will readily understand how deeply grateful I must feel
towards the Galenian genius to whom she probably owes life itself
to-day. Meantime, my dear Doctor Moxon, there are one or two
reasons--purely private and family reasons--why the world at large
should remain in ignorance of the precise nature of Lady Brandon's
indisposition, and I feel sure that you will respect them--aye, that
you will even waive personal veracity as well as professional
etiquette to oblige a very delightful and charming woman, and--er,
eh--be good enough to inform the curious that she has simply been
suffering with a very aggravated attack of--er, toothache!"
"Really, sir----"
"Pray don't interrupt me, doctor!" cried the pippin, warming with
enthusiasm; "but it occurred to dear Lady Brandon in all her dental
agony--ha-ha, ho-ho!--that your slight, but not inconsiderable, delay
in responding to her summons was solely attributable to the poverty
of your horseflesh. Now, my dear sir, you mustn't be offended at
what I am about to say, but what were formerly luxuries for the few
are now necessities for the many, and what a country doctor surely
needs is a swift and reliable motor-car. It fortunately happens----"
"Inexplicable! Do you know, sir----"
"Pray allow me to finish--more especially since dear Lady Brandon
seems to have so accurately divined your necessities. It fortunately
happens that, being seldom out of town, I have recently given up my
12 h.p. De Dion world-beater and gone in for a landaulette; but her
ladyship no sooner mentioned your old pony than I sent the De Dion to
Barker's, who have refitted it with a delightful custard-coloured
brougham body precisely in Lord Lonsdale's style, and therefore just
the very thing to carry you about a hunting country. It should be
here this very evening, and if you will do me the honour to
accept----Good gracious, the poor gentleman is overcome! Clearly the
tension of the past five weeks has been too much for him. Hi,
there--without; come to your master's assistance, somebody! Here,
you, my good woman, apply the usual restoratives and--and I will see
him at some other time!"
Like the gentle, medicinal soul that she was, possessing an
infallible cupboard-remedy for everything between moths and malaria,
the doctor's housekeeper got the old boy round again by the evening
and sent him to the "Lamb" to stand round at bottle pool as fit as
hands could get him, but he wandered up to the station instead and
got there just in time to see the yellow De Dion being unloaded from
a trolley, under the personal supervision of the husky old
stationmaster who had not taken a day off duty in thirty-four years.
Privileged by long acquaintance, this venerable youth got off one or
two satirical cracks about cert'in people a-goin' ahead lately, and
it allus was them as had it as pleaded poverty the loudest--neither
of which vulgar personalities would have made the least impression on
the amiable healer had not the man in blue and braid wound up with,
"An' only this afternoon, when the 4.57 stopped here, His Grace the
Duke o' Croxton himself calls me to the carriage-door to ask me
whether you calls your house 'Oakham Lodge' or 'Oakham Villa,' as he
wants to write to yer to go and see him!"
The mere idea that a live Duke was pining for an audience with him
caused Austin Moxon to stop growing for several minutes. He had no
reason whatever to suspect that the Duke was even aware of his
presence on earth, and he thought it equally unlikely that his Grace
had, after a quarter of a century, discovered who it was that, for
sheer sports sake had kept chi-iking "Lou-der!" during the ducal
effort at the local political meeting in '79. Musing on these things
and the gratifying fact that the stationmaster was too hopelessly a
fool to be guilty of a joke on any subject, Austin Moxon sought
counsel in the excellent old brown brandy at the "Lamb"; though with
grateful memories of his pippin-faced visitor and his agitated
entreaties, he went not to bed until he had seen the yellow
"toothache" car housed safely in his stables and had bestowed upon it
the fitting cognomen "ODONTALGIA."
* * * * * * *
"I ask your Grace to pardon my unpunctuality," stammered the
overwhelmed doctor, on being shown, two days later, into the cream
and gold library at Croxton Castle at exactly three minutes after the
hour named in the Duke's summons, "but a slight accident detained me
on the way. I earnestly hope that my lateness has caused no
inconvenience?"
"It has so seriously disturbed my arrangements, not to mention my
peace of mind," replied the Duke, pleasantly, "that I had not yet
noticed it. But I hope that it was but a slight accident, doctor?"
"So colourless and conventional an affair, your Grace," Doctor Moxon
hastened to say, "that--er--that it is difficult, if not impossible,
for me to imagine its parallel, I assure you."
"Dear me!" exclaimed the Duke, impressed by this comprehensive
disavowal, "then pray what may it have been?"
"My horse put his foot into a rabbit-hole, fell, broke his neck, and
died upon the spot, sir," blurted the doctor.
No sooner did he hear his own words than Dr Moxon realised the
absurdity, the incongruity of his previous denial; but he was wholly
unprepared for the remarkable effect which they produced upon the
Duke. That illustrious person twisted his body so suddenly in his
chair that his pince-nez fell to the floor, and, staring excitedly at
the doctor with an utterly incomprehensible expression of delight
tempered by solicitude, he cried:
"Splendid! Couldn't have been better! What a singularly opportune
and fortunate circumstance!"
This was a poser! What could the Duke mean? Did he design to chide
nonsensical servility by an assumption of supreme irony, or had his
mental balance really been upset by such a juxtaposition of
dissimilars coming from a presumably responsible medical man?
"Forgive my exuberance, doctor," continued the Duke, more seriously,
"and be good enough to draw your chair a little more this way.
That's it. Now, you were sent for the other day by a--ahem, a valued
tenant of mine, whose horse had given her a rather bad fall in the
hunting-field and bruised her pretty severely----"
"I have no recollection of the case whatever!" interposed Moxon,
innocently enough.
"Probably not, sir, probably not," the Duke added, with a broad smile
and a distinctly plebeian wink, "but as a gallant gentleman you will,
I feel sure, permit my diagnosis to supersede your own. You would, I
am firmly convinced, cheerfully die in defence of the austere
morality, the impeccable reputation, the obdurate purity of any one
of the adorable creatures who periodically grace these parts during
the hunting season, and in whose fair hands St Anthony himself would
have been as potter's clay. We will, therefore, please, say it was a
severe, uncompromising bruising which lately affected Lady Winifred
Brandon----"
"Number four!" gasped Moxon beneath his breath.
"But that is not the point, which rather is that although, like the
immortal Gilpin, you rode with speed--the best of which your grey
dobbin, whose loss I formally deplore, was capable--there was
necessarily far more delay than if you had driven over on a
motor-car. This reflection, and a sense of gratitude to you for your
care of my--er, my valued tenant--yes, yes, my valued tenant, impel
me to ask you to accept as a little present, a very pretty
four-cylinder Darracq, just come from Suresnes, which----"
But Dr Moxon had staggered to his feet, his brain reeling with the
drawing of many psychological conclusions, and he moved in a dazed
way and emitting choking noises towards the open French window. A
few turns round the Italian garden served to revive him; but how
could he go back? How could he ever face the Duke after making such
an irrational exit? Thus absorbed, he crept through the quickset
hedge, and took the route through the woods to his home, arriving
with burrs in his hair and garter-snakes in the folds of his
trousers. Next day there arrived the bruise-blue Darracq, now known
as "ECCHYMOSIS"; since when the overstocked doctor has assiduously
advertised the machines on the thirteenth page of the _Telegraph_ as
duplicate wedding presents with all the familiar
allurements--Sacrifice, Unused, Approval before Payment, etc.--and
much against the advice of his prudent housekeeper, who sanguinely
predicts a transference to London and a garage in Long Acre, if only
Lady Winifred hunts from Melton for another season.
I am so pleased to hear, dear, that your sister Aenid's baby is going
on so nicely, though, never even having had the sinister finger of
suspicion directed at me, let alone possessed a baby of any kind, I
have not even a passing notion of what they should endure and what
escape before appearing in public. Reports of cases presenting
specially interesting symptoms usually are concealed by publication
in the "Mother's Corner" of the _Kennel Gazette_, I believe; the
mothers themselves being mysteriously counselled with regard to their
dietetical errors in feeding their offspring, in such cryptic
sentences as "Stop the B.F. diet and report in a month," or, "Give
baby the shredded pin-feathers of a young onion before retiring, and
lie her on her other side." Nor can I express an opinion as to
whether your sister's nurse's panacea for the pain in your sister's
baby's stomach was good or otherwise, since, on reference to the huge
old book of pasted-in recipes for every ill allied to maternity,
which Féo once conscientiously kept up, I find that the point was
raised, but not settled, in the celebrated Salisbury Baby Claimant
case some years ago. As you may or may not have read, a witness
named Jane Lawrence deposed that after the birth of the child she
gave her sister some weak brandy and water. She also gave the baby
some butter and sugar (laughter). It was the usual custom, she said,
to do so.
Mr Justice Hawkins asked Mr Jelf whether that was so.
Mr Jelf appealed to his learned friend, Mr Dickens, whether that was
_not_ so.
Mr Dickens had received no instructions upon the point; in fact, he
protested that he knew nothing about it.
Thereupon Mr Justice Hawkins said that the case must clearly be
adjourned till eleven o'clock on the following morning.
Immediately beneath this cutting there appears in pencil: "Gt.
Eastern Handicap, Amandier, Missal, Royal Mask. Twelve ran"; not
that any affinity could possibly exist between the two events.
Marshall has just brought to me an imperious command to join Lady
Thursa Rosacre at Lowndes Square in twenty minutes' time to mote to
Brighton, her husband, probably considering his freedom cheap at the
sacrifice, having lent her his car for the week on condition that she
drives it herself. An atmosphere of steam is a daily necessity of
life to the Rosacres; and I daresay you remember how, when the
Zoological Society proposed to send its leading elephant on tour to
help expenses, how Thursa drove straight off to the offices in
Hanover Square, and offered to ride the dear pachyderm three times
round Regent's Park on the Saturday afternoon before Ascot, attired
as Lady Godiva--purely in the cause of charity, of course. She
reckoned it would bring in, she said, enough money to keep the Zoo
out of the hole for two hundred years at least, if, indeed, it didn't
create such a stampede at the turnstiles that such points as
Gloucester and Clarence Gates would be over a week burying their dead.