The reply--a note from Gertrude, the ink hardly dry on it, written from
the Egyptian tomb of the Misses Carstairs--came directly to me that
evening; and Mrs. Parrot was the messenger. Her expression, as she
mutely handed me the note, was ineffable. I read the note with
sensations of suffocation; an answer was requested.
"Tell Mrs. Hunt," I said firmly to Mrs. Parrot, "that it was she who
left me, and I am stubbornly determined to make no advances. If she
cares to see me I shall be glad to see her. She has only to walk a few
yards, climb a few easy steps, and ring the bell."
My courtesy was truly elaborate as I conducted Mrs. Parrot to the door.
Her response was disturbing.
"It's not for me to make observations," said Mrs. Parrot, "the situation
being delicate, and not likely to improve. But if I was you, Mr. Hunt,
I'd not be too stiff. No; I'd not be. I would not. No. Not if I valued
the young lady's reputation."
Like the Pope's mule, Mrs. Parrot had saved her kick many years. I can
testify to its power.
Thirty minutes later this superkick landed me, when I came crashing back
to earth, at the door of the Egyptian tomb.
"How hard it is," says Dante, "to climb another's stairs," and he might
have added to ring another's bell, under certain conditions of spiritual
humiliation and stress. Thank the gods--all of them--it was not Mrs.
Parrot who admitted me and took my card!
I waited miserably in the large, ill-lighted reception vault of the
tomb, which smelt appropriately of lilies, as if the undertaker had
recently done his worst. How well I remembered it, how long I had
avoided it! It was here of all places, under the contemptuous eye of old
Ephraim Carstairs, grim ancestral founder of this family's fortunes,
that Gertrude had at last consented to be my wife. And there he still
lorded it above the fireplace, unchanged, glaring down malignantly
through the shadows, his stiff neck bandaged like a mummy's, his hard,
high cheek bones and cavernous eyes making him the very image of bugaboo
death. What an eavesdropper for the approaching reconciliation; for that
was what it had come to. That was what it would have to be!
It was not Gertrude who came down to me; it was Lucette. Lucette--all
graciousness, all sympathetic understanding, all feline smiles! Dear
Gertrude had 'phoned her on arriving, and she had rushed to her at once!
Dear Gertrude had such a desperate headache! She couldn't possibly see
me to-night. She was really ill, had been growing rapidly worse for an
hour. Perhaps to-morrow?