A KISS ON THE STAIRS
Mr Boxall was standing in his bedroom preparatory to dressing for
dinner. Mr Boxall, though a Member of Parliament, and very rich, went in
omnibuses to save cab fares, and his tips to servants were a disgrace to
the giver and receiver. He also had a nasty and dictatorial way with him
which made him disliked.
Mr Boxall having looked around him for something he failed to find, rang
the bell. The bell not being answered immediately, he opened the door
and looked out on the corridor, where Patsy was passing along with a
huge can of hot water.
“Hi, you, boy!” cried Mr Boxall.
“Yes, sir?” replied Patsy.
“What do you mean by not attending to my bell?”
“Attending to your which, sir?”
“My bell—are you deaf?”
“I didn’t know you’d brought one wid you, sir,” replied Patsy, with an
air of injured innocence. “I was afther fetchin’ this water for Mr
Fanshawe. Did yiz ring it in your room or in the passidge?”
“Good heavens!” cried Mr Boxall, “does the boy think I carry a bell
about with me like a muffin man? My bedroom bell, you oaf!”
“Oh, your bidroom bell,” replied the servitor. “Sure, it’s ears as long
as some people I could name I’d want to hear it, for it rings in the
kitchen four flights of stairs and twinty-siven passidges away.”
“Hold your tongue,” replied Mr Boxall. “And now that you are here, go
and fetch me my dressing-bag.”
“All your luggage is in your room, sir,” replied Patsy, “for I helped
William, the under-gardner, with it.”
“Come here,” said Mr Boxall, smothering the resentment with which Patsy
as the red-headed embodiment of the Irish race filled his Anglo-Saxon
spirit. “Now stand in the doorway, stand fair and square and look around
you, and—if you have eyes in your head—point me out my dressing-bag.”
“There it is, sir,” said Patsy, pointing to the dressing-bag, which was
standing in a shady corner, with a travelling rug half covering it.
“Get out!” said Mr Boxall. He shut the door in the red-headed one’s
face, and Patsy took up his can of hot water.
“I’ll be even wid yiz yet, ould glass eyes!” said Patsy, as he carried
the can towards Mr Fanshawe’s room.
Mr Fanshawe had not yet returned from the chase. Patsy put the hot water
can down by the wash-stand, and then looked around to see what more he
could do. Patsy in a few hours had attached himself to Mr Fanshawe just
as a dog attaches himself to a man. He would have gone through fire and
water for Mr Fanshawe, but as that was not required of him, he expended
his energy in the polishing of his boots and the brushing of his
clothes.
Having looked around and seen that everything was trim, he went
downstairs to help James, the butler. Half an hour afterwards, coming up
the main staircase on some errand and hearing the swish of silk, he
glanced up and caught a glimpse of a spacious and portly dame descending
the stairs. It was Lady Molyneux in all her glory—low evening dress,
tiara of diamonds, necklace of diamonds, bracelets and all.
Lady Molyneux, with rather questionable taste, invariably put on all her
diamonds for dinner. She looked like a jeweller’s shop in motion, and
Patsy, alarmed at having to face so much magnificence, popped himself
behind the arras on the landing.
The arras was old and dusty and smelt of rats; it was a bit tattered,
too, and through a hole in it Patsy watched Lady Molyneux pass by, and
gasped at the magnificence of the spectacle.
The remembrance of Paddy Murphy came to him with a cold chill; to-night,
to-morrow night, any night now the knock might come to the window and he
would be bound to open it. He stood reviewing this frightful certainty
and watching the back view of Lady Molyneux as she descended the stairs.
The thought which had been comforting him for some days past, that,
though he had sworn to open the window for the burglars he had not sworn
not to tell, came to him, coupled with the recollection of Mr Fanshawe’s
guns.
He was just on the point of leaving his hiding-place when the sound of
some one else descending the stairs made him pause. It was Miss
Lestrange, looking very beautiful in a black evening dress, and with a
rose worn Spanish fashion in the clouds of her dark hair.
Patsy was gazing in admiration at this beautiful vision which was
descending towards him when a hurried step coming _up_ the stairs was
heard. It was Dicky Fanshawe, plastered with mud from top to toe; he was
coming up the stairs two steps at a time. His left coat sleeve was
nearly ripped out of the coat, and his face was a mask of mud. He had
come a barbed wire cropper, and had been bogged beyond Shepherd’s Cross;
but he did not seem hurt, and he did not seem particularly depressed
with his misfortunes, for he was whistling a tune, and he had nearly
cannoned against Miss Lestrange before he saw her.
“Violet!” cried the young man, drawing suddenly back.
“Dicky—Mr Fanshawe!” cried the girl.
Then their hands met, and Patsy, behind the arras, wished that he were
somewhere else.
“I knew you were coming,” he said.
“I knew you were here,” said she.
“How did you know?”
“The children told me that a Mr Fanshawe was here who was awfully jolly,
and—very ugly, so I knew it must be you.”
“You did not get any of the letters I wrote to you,” he said. “My uncle
wrote to me and told me frankly he had intercepted them, and if I wrote
again he would put you in Chancery or some nonsense; he’s always
blustering and bellowing—Violet!”
“Don’t, Dicky—_don’t_, Mr Fanshawe—some one may be looking, and your
face is all mud.”
“So it is,” said Dicky, rubbing it and looking at his hand.
“Is there any on my cheek?” asked she.
“Let me look—closer——”
“_Dicky!_”
“Go it!” murmured Patsy, behind the arras. “Give her another wan—she
stickin’ her cheek out for it and thin pretendin’ to be surprised!
Musha! but wimmen are all the same.”
The roar of a gong and a step coming down the stairs brought matters to
a swift conclusion. Miss Lestrange swept downstairs, and Mr Fanshawe
rushed upstairs, nearly running into the arms of Mr Boxall on the way.
When Mr Boxall had passed, and the coast was clear, Patsy left his
hiding-place and betook him to Mr Fanshawe’s room.
“Come in—who’s there?” cried Dicky, at the knock.
“It’s me, sir; can I be getting you anything?” replied Patsy, opening
the door.
“Yes—here you are!” cried Dicky, who seemed in wildly high spirits.
“Fetch my evening clothes out of that drawer there—that was the last
gong, was it?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Patsy. “The dhressing gong went half an hour ago.”
“There’s no time for a bath, then,” said Mr Fanshawe, scrubbing at
himself with a towel. “How have the children been behaving?”
“All right, sir. After the meet we met the wagginette with some of the
quality in it coming from the station, and the young lady wid the black
hair got into the tub and drove home with us.”
“Oh, she did, did she?” said Mr Fanshawe in an interested voice, as he
brushed away at his hair.
“Yes, sir; and the big Mimber of Parlimint wid the white face wanted to
get in and drive her, an’ she up and give him a slap in the face.”
“She _what_?” asked Mr Fanshawe, pausing with a brush in either hand.
“Not with her fist but her tongue, sir,” replied the informant. “‘You
can put the childer in the wagginette, if there’s not room. Let _me_
dhrive you,’ says he. ‘It’s the childer I wants to talk to,’ says she;
and with that he shut up like a tiliscope, glass eye and all, for they
say, sir, he’s got a glass eye in his head.”
Mr Fanshawe chuckled.
“Mr Robert,” continued Patsy, speaking in an apparently aimless manner,
“he says, ‘That gintleman seems very sweet on you,’ says he; and with
that she blushed up red wid vixation——”
“You seem to have very sharp eyes,” said Mr Fanshawe. “How do you know
when a lady blushes with ‘vixation,’ as you call it?”
“Be the sparks that came into her eyes,” replied the observer.
“Well, now, spark off downstairs,” said Mr Fanshawe, “and tell them I’ll
be down in a minute, and not to wait dinner for me.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Patsy, and he “sparked.”
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