“Dora Bittholz is coming on Thursday,” said Mrs. Sangrail.
“This next Thursday?” asked Clovis
His mother nodded.
“You’ve rather done it, haven’t you?” he chuckled; “Jane Martlet has only
been here five days, and she never stays less than a fortnight, even when
she’s asked definitely for a week. You’ll never get her out of the house
by Thursday.”
“Why should I?” asked Mrs. Sangrail; “she and Dora are good friends,
aren’t they? They used to be, as far as I remember.”
“They used to be; that’s what makes them all the more bitter now. Each
feels that she has nursed a viper in her bosom. Nothing fans the flame
of human resentment so much as the discovery that one’s bosom has been
utilised as a snake sanatorium.”
“But what has happened? Has some one been making mischief?”
“Not exactly,” said Clovis; “a hen came between them.”
“A hen? What hen?”
“It was a bronze Leghorn or some such exotic breed, and Dora sold it to
Jane at a rather exotic price. They both go in for prize poultry, you
know, and Jane thought she was going to get her money back in a large
family of pedigree chickens. The bird turned out to be an abstainer from
the egg habit, and I’m told that the letters which passed between the two
women were a revelation as to how much invective could be got on to a
sheet of notepaper.”
“How ridiculous!” said Mrs. Sangrail. “Couldn’t some of their friends
compose the quarrel?”
“People tried,” said Clovis, “but it must have been rather like composing
the storm music of the ‘Fliegende Holländer.’ Jane was willing to take
back some of her most libellous remarks if Dora would take back the hen,
but Dora said that would be owning herself in the wrong, and you know
she’d as soon think of owning slum property in Whitechapel as do that.”
“It’s a most awkward situation,” said Mrs. Sangrail. “Do you suppose
they won’t speak to one another?”
“On the contrary, the difficulty will be to get them to leave off. Their
remarks on each other’s conduct and character have hitherto been governed
by the fact that only four ounces of plain speaking can be sent through
the post for a penny.”
“I can’t put Dora off,” said Mrs. Sangrail. “I’ve already postponed her
visit once, and nothing short of a miracle would make Jane leave before
her self-allotted fortnight is over.”
“Miracles are rather in my line,” said Clovis. “I don’t pretend to be
very hopeful in this case but I’ll do my best.”
“As long as you don’t drag me into it—” stipulated his mother.
* * * * *
“Servants are a bit of a nuisance,” muttered Clovis, as he sat in the
smoking-room after lunch, talking fitfully to Jane Martlet in the
intervals of putting together the materials of a cocktail, which he had
irreverently patented under the name of an Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It was
partly compounded of old brandy and partly of curaçoa; there were other
ingredients, but they were never indiscriminately revealed.
“Servants a nuisance!” exclaimed Jane, bounding into the topic with the
exuberant plunge of a hunter when it leaves the high road and feels turf
under its hoofs; “I should think they were! The trouble I’ve had in
getting suited this year you would hardly believe. But I don’t see what
you have to complain of—your mother is so wonderfully lucky in her
servants. Sturridge, for instance—he’s been with you for years, and I’m
sure he’s a paragon as butlers go.”
“That’s just the trouble,” said Clovis. “It’s when servants have been
with you for years that they become a really serious nuisance. The ‘here
to-day and gone to-morrow’ sort don’t matter—you’ve simply got to replace
them; it’s the stayers and the paragons that are the real worry.”
“But if they give satisfaction—”
“That doesn’t prevent them from giving trouble. Now, you’ve mentioned
Sturridge—it was Sturridge I was particularly thinking of when I made the
observation about servants being a nuisance.”
“The excellent Sturridge a nuisance! I can’t believe it.”
“I know he’s excellent, and we just couldn’t get along without him; he’s
the one reliable element in this rather haphazard household. But his
very orderliness has had an effect on him. Have you ever considered what
it must be like to go on unceasingly doing the correct thing in the
correct manner in the same surroundings for the greater part of a
lifetime? To know and ordain and superintend exactly what silver and
glass and table linen shall be used and set out on what occasions, to
have cellar and pantry and plate-cupboard under a minutely devised and
undeviating administration, to be noiseless, impalpable, omnipresent,
and, as far as your own department is concerned, omniscient?”
“I should go mad,” said Jane with conviction.
“Exactly,” said Clovis thoughtfully, swallowing his completed Ella
Wheeler Wilcox.
“But Sturridge hasn’t gone mad,” said Jane with a flutter of inquiry in
her voice.
“On most points he’s thoroughly sane and reliable,” said Clovis, “but at
times he is subject to the most obstinate delusions, and on those
occasions he becomes not merely a nuisance but a decided embarrassment.”
“What sort of delusions?”
“Unfortunately they usually centre round one of the guests of the house
party, and that is where the awkwardness comes in. For instance, he took
it into his head that Matilda Sheringham was the Prophet Elijah, and as
all that he remembered about Elijah’s history was the episode of the
ravens in the wilderness he absolutely declined to interfere with what he
imagined to be Matilda’s private catering arrangements, wouldn’t allow
any tea to be sent up to her in the morning, and if he was waiting at
table he passed her over altogether in handing round the dishes.”
“How very unpleasant. Whatever did you do about it?”
“Oh, Matilda got fed, after a fashion, but it was judged to be best for
her to cut her visit short. It was really the only thing to be done,”
said Clovis with some emphasis.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” said Jane, “I should have humoured him in
some way. I certainly shouldn’t have gone away.”
Clovis frowned.
“It is not always wise to humour people when they get these ideas into
their heads. There’s no knowing to what lengths they may go if you
encourage them.”
“You don’t mean to say he might be dangerous, do you?” asked Jane with
some anxiety.
“One can never be certain,” said Clovis; “now and then he gets some idea
about a guest which might take an unfortunate turn. That is precisely
what is worrying me at the present moment.”
“What, has he taken a fancy about some one here now?” asked Jane
excitedly; “how thrilling! Do tell me who it is.”
“You,” said Clovis briefly.
“Me?”
Clovis nodded.
“Who on earth does he think I am?”
“Queen Anne,” was the unexpected answer.
“Queen Anne! What an idea. But, anyhow, there’s nothing dangerous about
her; she’s such a colourless personality.”
“What does posterity chiefly say about Queen Anne?” asked Clovis rather
sternly.
“The only thing that I can remember about her,” said Jane, “is the saying
‘Queen Anne’s dead.’”
“Exactly,” said Clovis, staring at the glass that had held the Ella
Wheeler Wilcox, “dead.”
“Do you mean he takes me for the ghost of Queen Anne?” asked Jane.
“Ghost? Dear no. No one ever heard of a ghost that came down to
breakfast and ate kidneys and toast and honey with a healthy appetite.
No, it’s the fact of you being so very much alive and flourishing that
perplexes and annoys him. All his life he has been accustomed to look on
Queen Anne as the personification of everything that is dead and done
with, ‘as dead as Queen Anne,’ you know; and now he has to fill your
glass at lunch and dinner and listen to your accounts of the gay time you
had at the Dublin Horse Show, and naturally he feels that something’s
very wrong with you.”
“But he wouldn’t be downright hostile to me on that account, would he?”
Jane asked anxiously.
“I didn’t get really alarmed about it till lunch to-day,” said Clovis; “I
caught him glowering at you with a very sinister look and muttering:
‘Ought to be dead long ago, she ought, and some one should see to it.’
That’s why I mentioned the matter to you.”
“This is awful,” said Jane; “your mother must be told about it at once.”
“My mother mustn’t hear a word about it,” said Clovis earnestly; “it
would upset her dreadfully. She relies on Sturridge for everything.”
“But he might kill me at any moment,” protested Jane.
“Not at any moment; he’s busy with the silver all the afternoon.”
“You’ll have to keep a sharp look-out all the time and be on your guard
to frustrate any murderous attack,” said Jane, adding in a tone of weak
obstinacy: “It’s a dreadful situation to be in, with a mad butler
dangling over you like the sword of What’s-his-name, but I’m certainly
not going to cut my visit short.”
Clovis swore horribly under his breath; the miracle was an obvious
misfire.
It was in the hall the next morning after a late breakfast that Clovis
had his final inspiration as he stood engaged in coaxing rust spots from
an old putter.
“Where is Miss Martlet?” he asked the butler, who was at that moment
crossing the hall.
“Writing letters in the morning-room, sir,” said Sturridge, announcing a
fact of which his questioner was already aware.
“She wants to copy the inscription on that old basket-hilted sabre,” said
Clovis, pointing to a venerable weapon hanging on the wall. “I wish
you’d take it to her; my hands are all over oil. Take it without the
sheath, it will be less trouble.”
The butler drew the blade, still keen and bright in its well-cared for
old age, and carried it into the morning-room. There was a door near the
writing-table leading to a back stairway; Jane vanished through it with
such lightning rapidity that the butler doubted whether she had seen him
come in. Half an hour later Clovis was driving her and her
hastily-packed luggage to the station.
“Mother will be awfully vexed when she comes back from her ride and finds
you have gone,” he observed to the departing guest, “but I’ll make up
some story about an urgent wire having called you away. It wouldn’t do
to alarm her unnecessarily about Sturridge.”
Jane sniffed slightly at Clovis’ ideas of unnecessary alarm, and was
almost rude to the young man who came round with thoughtful inquiries as
to luncheon-baskets.
The miracle lost some of its usefulness from the fact that Dora wrote the
same day postponing the date of her visit, but, at any rate, Clovis holds
the record as the only human being who ever hustled Jane Martlet out of
the time-table of her migrations.