MISS DUCK HAS A WORD TO SAY.
Mr. Duck was at breakfast one morning in his eight-roomed house at
Dalston, and his revered sister, Miss Georgina, was pouring out the
first cup of tea in the pot for him, and selecting the worst piece of
bacon and the most suspicious-looking egg from the dish before her.
Having jerked these delicacies on to his plate, and thus ensured the
survival of the fittest, she proceeded to help herself to the
remainder.
‘Jabez,’ said Miss Georgina suddenly, ‘some day you will die!’
‘Lor’, Georgie, don’t!’ exclaimed Jabez, bolting a particularly cindery
piece of bacon, and thereby nearly bringing his sister’s prophecy off
there and then.
When he had coughed and choked and increased in shininess from ten to
thirty candle power, he gradually recovered, and, polishing his
perspiring face with a large red handkerchief, proceeded to expostulate
with Georgina on the impropriety of talking of death to a man with his
mouth full.
‘You are a weak-minded idiot, Jabez!’ answered the lady. ‘All men are.
Do you imagine that you _won’t_ die?’
‘No, my dear; of course not. Only, why remind me of an unpleasant fact
just when I’m having my breakfast?’
‘Because it is only at breakfast I see you, and I think you ought to
make your will while you are in a sound state of mind. You’ve changed
lately, brother Jabez—changed very much for the worse. You don’t come
home to tea, and you have ceased to take me into your confidence.’
‘Nonsense, my dear!’ stammered Mr. Duck, going very red. ‘A little
business has detained me the last night or two, I confess, but——’
‘Jabez Duck, you’re deceiving me. You’re making a fool of yourself.’
‘Georgina—really, upon my word——’
‘Hold your tongue. I’ve looked after you and managed your house for
more than twenty years, and I’m not going to desert you now. I will
protect you against designing minxes with the last drop of my blood.’
Miss Duck waved her teaspoon in the air at an imaginary minx, and
brought it down on her cup with a clang, as though she were striking
her shield with a sword, and inviting the foes of Jabez Duck to come
on.
Jabez grew very uncomfortable, and fidgeted about on his chair. The
eagle eye of Georgina was reading his soul. He knew it was. He felt
that the name of Susan Turvey was written on his guilty brow, and that
Georgina was spelling it out.
He plucked up a little determination, and inquired, in a quavering
voice, if his sister would kindly drop conundrums and come to the
point.
Yes, she would come to the point. There was an old frump of a
housekeeper at Mr. Egerton’s—that was the point.
‘Oh, indeed!’ said Jabez. ‘And pray who has been telling you this fine
cock-and-bull story?’
‘You yourself,’ answered Miss Georgina triumphantly.
Herewith she put her hand into her pocket, and drew forth a crumpled
piece of paper, which she handed to him.
‘I found this in your trousers pocket.’
Jabez rose in wrath. The cloud on his brow quite obscured the skin for
a moment.
‘Georgina, you’ve no business at my trousers pockets! It’s—dash it—it’s
embezzlement!’
Miss Duck laughed, an irritating, satirical little laugh, and, seizing
the piece of paper which her brother held in his hand, she spread it
out and read it aloud.
‘Dear Mrs. Turvey—may I say Susan?—Dr. Birnie tells me, my own, you are
progressing favourably, and may see visitors in a week’s time. I count
the hours. As the poet says:—
‘“Thou wert all the world to me, love,
For which my soul did pine;
A green isle in the sea, love,
To be your valentine.”
Oh, Susan, when reason returns, and health mantles your cheek once
more, may I hope that you will grant the prayer of your ever-devoted
Jabez?’
‘Give it to me!’ shrieked Mr. Duck, making a violent effort to seize
his crumpled _billet-doux_.
‘Certainly,’ said Miss Georgina, tossing it contemptuously across the
table to her brother, who tore it into fragments, and jumped upon it.
‘How dare you, Georgina?’ he exclaimed—how dare you interfere with my
business? It’s a crime to steal a letter. You could be prosecuted by
the Postmaster-General.’
‘Postmaster fiddlestick! I hope you didn’t send any sane woman such
twaddle as that, Jabez.’
‘No, I didn’t; I thought better of it,’ stammered Mr. Duck.
‘That’s nothing. It wasn’t a copy of a letter at all. It was an
exercise of the imagination, that’s all.’
‘Well, don’t leave your exercises in your pockets, Jabez.’
‘I’ll empty my pockets, Georgina—rely on that. Never do you have
another coat or waistcoat of mine to brush till it’s been searched as
if it were a shoplifter brought into the police station. Give me my hat
and coat. I’m going. Good morning, Georgina.’
Mr. Jabez burst out of the room in a towering passion. He brushed his
hat the wrong way and quite took the shine off it; and when he jumped
up on the box seat of his regular omnibus, there was so little shine in
his face that the driver looked round to see if there was any fog
about.
Mr. Duck was excessively annoyed that his sister had found this copy of
his first love-letter in his pocket. He had intended her to know
nothing about the matter till it was all arranged. In fact he wasn’t
quite sure that he should let her know anything about it till the
ceremony was over, and he couldn’t be bullied out of his resolve. He
went in mortal terror of Georgina. She had a sharp tongue and a sharp
eye, and she persisted in looking upon him as a weak-minded man, who
could only prosper with her assistance.
When he had called at Mr. Egerton’s house on the morning after the tea
party, he had only seen Topsey, and Topsey had told him her aunt was
very ill and couldn’t see anybody, because she’d seen a ghost. She,
Topsey, had seen the ghost too, and she described it. Mr. Duck’s horror
was intense when he found the apparition the child described was the
exact counterpart of the firm’s drowned client. It was coming away from
the house that he met Dr. Birnie, and sent him in to see what was the
matter with the housekeeper. From the doctor he learned the particulars
of the case. Mrs. Turvey declared she had seen the ghost of her master,
and the child corroborated her.
It couldn’t be Gurth Egerton in flesh and blood, because he would have
come in and spoken to them. He would have said, ‘Here I am,’ or made
some observation.
But this ghost said nothing, and when Topsey, who had seized her aunt,
and hidden her face, looked up, the door was shut and the ghost was
gone.
Mrs. Turvey came to herself to find Topsey sobbing beside her and white
with terror. They got downstairs the best way they could, and locked
themselves in, and had the gas on full all night.
The next morning Mrs. Turvey was very ill, and Dr. Birnie had attended
her ever since.
Jabez, who could keep very little to himself, had told this ghost
story, with sundry reservations, to his sister, and she, finding the
draft of a tender declaration in the pocket of a pair of trousers he
had left out to be brushed, immediately put two and two together, like
the clever woman that she was, and determined to tackle her brother at
once.
Miss Georgina Duck was a strong-minded, hard-featured damsel, who had
passed sweet seventeen some thirty years ago. She was mistress of a
house without being plagued with a husband. She managed her brother’s
home, and her word was law. She ruled him, and she ruled the lodgers in
the first floor, and she ruled the charwoman who came in to help
occasionally, and she ruled the butcher and the baker and the milkman,
and everybody in the neighbourhood who came within the circle of her
magic influence.
She even ruled the cats. No cats came into _her_ garden, or if by
chance they did cross it _en route_ for the gardens beyond, it was
always in fear and trembling. Before the eye of Georgina Duck the most
daring Tom would quail, and it was wonderful how quickly the whole of
the neighbouring feline colony learned to shun a conflict with Miss
Duck.
Now this was hardly the woman quietly to resign her sceptre after a
long despotic reign just because her elderly idiot of a brother had
taken a fancy to an old woman’s legacy.
‘A pretty thing, indeed,’ said Miss Duck to her bosom friend, Miss
Jackson, from over the road, ‘for him to go making a fool of himself at
his age! The house wouldn’t hold her and me long. I suppose I should be
expected to turn out. Not me!’
The idea of Miss Duck turning out so shocked Miss Jackson that she fell
upon her friend’s neck and wept.
Miss Jackson always wept. Tears with her supplied the place of speech.
‘Don’t be a fool, ‘Lizer,’ said Miss Duck, harshly. ‘There’s nothing to
cry about. He hasn’t done it yet. _And he isn’t going to!’’_
If Mr. Duck had been present he would have accepted his fate there and
then, and resigned Mrs. Turvey without a struggle. Fortunately, he
still believed that he could evade the watchful guardianship of
Georgina, and did not allow his little plans to be disconcerted.