A WEEK-END AT SHONTS
§ 1
The week-end visit is a form of entertainment peculiar to Great Britain.
It is a thing that could have been possible only in a land essentially
aristocratic and mellow, in which even the observance of the sabbath has
become mellow. At every London terminus on a Saturday afternoon the
outgoing trains have an unusually large proportion of first class
carriages, and a peculiar abundance of rich-looking dressing-bags
provoke the covetous eye. A discreet activity of valets and maids
mingles with the stimulated alertness of the porters. One marks
celebrities in gay raiment. There is an indefinable air of distinction
upon platform and bookstall. Sometimes there are carriages reserved for
especially privileged parties. There are greetings.
“And so _you_ are coming too!”
“No, this time it is Shonts.”
“The place where they found the Rubens. Who _has_ it now?” ...
Through this cheerfully prosperous throng went the Lord Chancellor with
his high nose, those eyebrows of his which he seemed to be able to furl
or unfurl at will and his expression of tranquil self-sufficiency. He
was going to Shonts for his party and not for his pleasure, but there
was no reason why that should appear upon his face. He went along
preoccupied, pretending to see nobody, leaving to others the
disadvantage of the greeting. In his right hand he carried a small
important bag of leather. Under his left arm he bore a philosophical
work by Doctor MacTaggart, three illustrated papers, the _Fortnightly
Review_, the day’s _Times_, the _Hibbert Journal_, _Punch_ and two blue
books. His Lordship never quite knew the limits set to what he could
carry under his arm. His man, Candler, followed therefore at a suitable
distance with several papers that had already been dropped, alert to
retrieve any further losses.
At the large bookstall they passed close by Mrs. Rampound Pilby who,
according to her custom, was feigning to be a member of the general
public and was asking the clerk about her last book. The Lord Chancellor
saw Rampound Pilby hovering at hand and deftly failed to catch his eye.
He loathed the Rampound Pilbys. He speculated for a moment what sort of
people could possibly stand Mrs. Pilby’s vast pretensions—even from
Saturday to Monday. One dinner party on her right hand had glutted him
for life. He chose a corner seat, took possession of both it and the
seat opposite it in order to have somewhere to put his feet, left
Candler to watch over and pack in his hand luggage and went high up the
platform, remaining there with his back to the world—rather like a
bigger more aquiline Napoleon—in order to evade the great novelist.
In this he was completely successful.
He returned however to find Candler on the verge of a personal conflict
with a very fair young man in grey. He was so fair as to be almost an
albino, except that his eyes were quick and brown; he was blushing the
brightest pink and speaking very quickly.
“These two places,” said Candler, breathless with the badness of his
case, “are engaged.”
“Oh ve-_very_ well,” said the very fair young man with his eyebrows and
moustache looking very pale by contrast, “have it so. But do permit me
to occupy the middle seat of the carriage. With a residuary interest in
the semi-gentleman’s place.”
“You little know, young man, _whom_ you are calling a semi-gentleman,”
said Candler, whose speciality was grammar.
“Here he is!” said the young gentleman.
“Which place will you have, my Lord?” asked Candler, abandoning his case
altogether.
“Facing,” said the Lord Chancellor slowly unfurling the eyebrows and
scowling at the young man in grey.
“Then I’ll have the other,” said the very fair young man talking very
glibly. He spoke with a quick low voice, like one who forces himself to
keep going. “You see,” he said, addressing the great jurist with the
extreme familiarity of the courageously nervous, “I’ve gone into this
sort of thing before. First, mind you, I have a far look for a vacant
corner. I’m not the sort to spoil sport. But if there isn’t a vacant
corner I look for traces of a semi-gentleman. A semi-gentleman is one
who has a soft cap and not an umbrella—his friend in the opposite seat
has the umbrella—or he has an umbrella and not a soft cap, or a
waterproof and not a bag, or a bag and not a waterproof. And a half
interest in a rug. That’s what I call a semi-gentleman. You see the
idea. Sort of divided beggar. Nothing in any way offensive.”
“Sir,” said the Lord Chancellor, interrupting in a voice of concentrated
passion, “I don’t care a _rap_ what you call a semi-gentleman. _Will_
you get out of my way?”
“Just as you please,” said the very fair young gentleman, and going a
few paces from the carriage door he whistled for the boy with the
papers. He was bearing up bravely.
“_Pink ’un?_” said the very fair young gentleman almost breathlessly.
“_Black and White._ What’s all these others? _Athenæum?_ _Sporting and
Dramatic?_ Right O. And—Eh! What? Do I _look_ the sort that buys a
_Spectator_? You don’t know! My dear boy, where’s your _savoir faire_?”
§ 2
The Lord Chancellor was a philosopher and not easily perturbed. His
severe manner was consciously assumed and never much more than
skin-deep. He had already furled his eyebrows and dismissed his
vis-a-vis from his mind before the train started. He turned over the
_Hibbert Journal_, and read in it with a large tolerance.
Dimly on the outskirts of his consciousness the very fair young man
hovered, as a trifling annoyance, as something pink and hot rustling a
sheet of a discordant shade of pink, as something that got in the way of
his legs and whistled softly some trivial cheerful air, just to show how
little it cared. Presently, very soon, this vague trouble would pass out
of his consciousness altogether....
The Lord Chancellor was no mere amateur of philosophy. His activities in
that direction were a part of his public reputation. He lectured on
religion and æsthetics. He was a fluent Hegelian. He spent his holidays,
it was understood, in the Absolute—at any rate in Germany. He would
sometimes break into philosophy at dinner tables and particularly over
the desert and be more luminously incomprehensible while still
apparently sober, than almost anyone. An article in the Hibbert caught
and held his attention. It attempted to define a new and doubtful
variety of Infinity. You know, of course, that there are many sorts and
species of Infinity, and that the Absolute is just the king among
Infinities as the lion is king among the Beasts....
“I say,” said a voice coming out of the world of Relativity and coughing
the cough of those who break a silence, “you aren’t going to Shonts, are
you?”
The Lord Chancellor returned slowly to earth.
“Just seen your label,” said the very fair young man. “You see,—_I’m_
going to Shonts.”
The Lord Chancellor remained outwardly serene. He reflected for a
moment. And then he fell into that snare which is more fatal to great
lawyers and judges perhaps than to any other class of men, the snare of
the crushing repartee. One had come into his head now,—a beauty.
“Then we shall meet there,” he said in his suavest manner.
“Well—rather.”
“It would be a great pity,” said the Lord Chancellor with an effective
blandness, using a kind of wry smile that he employed to make things
humorous, “it would be a great pity, don’t you think, to anticipate that
pleasure.”
And having smiled the retort well home with his head a little on one
side, he resumed with large leisurely movements the reading of his
_Hibbert Journal_.
“Got me there,” said the very fair young man belatedly, looking boiled
to a turn, and after a period of restlessness settled down to an
impatient perusal of _Black and White_.
“There’s a whole blessed week-end of course,” the young man remarked
presently without looking up from his paper and apparently pursuing some
obscure meditations....
A vague uneasiness crept into the Lord Chancellor’s mind as he continued
to appear to peruse. Out of what train of thought could such a remark
arise? His weakness for crushing retort had a little betrayed him....
It was, however, only when he found himself upon the platform of
Chelsome, which as everyone knows is the station for Shonts, and
discovered Mr. and Mrs. Rampound Pilby upon the platform, looking
extraordinarily like a national monument and its custodian, that the
Lord Chancellor, began to realize that he was in the grip of fate, and
that the service he was doing his party by week-ending with the Laxtons
was likely to be not simply joyless but disagreeable.
Well, anyhow, he had MacTaggart, and he could always work in his own
room....
§ 3
By the end of dinner the Lord Chancellor was almost at the end of his
large but clumsy endurance; he kept his eyebrows furled only by the most
strenuous relaxation of his muscles, and within he was a sea of silent
blasphemies. All sorts of little things had accumulated....
He exercised an unusual temperance with the port and old brandy his host
pressed upon him, feeling that he dared not relax lest his rage had its
way with him. The cigars were quite intelligent at any rate, and he
smoked and listened with a faintly perceptible disdain to the
conversation of the other men. At any rate Mrs. Rampound Pilby was out
of the room. The talk had arisen out of a duologue that had preceded the
departure of the ladies, a duologue of Timbre’s, about apparitions and
the reality of the future life. Sir Peter Laxton, released from the eyes
of his wife, was at liberty to say he did not believe in all this stuff;
it was just thought transference and fancy and all that sort of thing.
His declaration did not arrest the flow of feeble instances and
experiences into which such talk invariably degenerates. His Lordship
remained carelessly attentive, his eyebrows unfurled but drooping, his
cigar upward at an acute angle; he contributed no anecdotes, content now
and then to express himself compactly by some brief sentence of pure
Hegelian—much as a Mahometan might spit.
“Why! come to that, they say Shonts is haunted,” said Sir Peter. “I
suppose we could have a ghost here in no time if I chose to take it on.
Rare place for a ghost, too.”
The very fair young man of the train had got a name now and was Captain
Douglas. When he was not blushing too brightly he was rather good
looking. He was a distant cousin of Lady Laxton’s. He impressed the Lord
Chancellor as unabashed. He engaged people in conversation with a
cheerful familiarity that excluded only the Lord Chancellor, and even at
the Lord Chancellor he looked ever and again. He pricked up his ears at
the mention of ghosts, and afterwards when the Lord Chancellor came to
think things over, it seemed to him that he had caught a curious glance
of the Captain’s bright little brown eye.
“What sort of ghost, Sir Peter? Chains? Eh? No?”
“Nothing of that sort, it seems. I don’t know much about it, I wasn’t
sufficiently interested. No, sort of spook that bangs about and does you
a mischief. What’s its name? Plundergeist?”
“Poltergeist,” the Lord Chancellor supplied carelessly in the pause.
“Runs its hand over your hair in the dark. Taps your shoulder. All
nonsense. But we don’t tell the servants. Sort of thing I don’t believe
in. Easily explained,—what with panelling and secret passages and
priests’ holes and all that.”
“Priests’ holes!” Douglas was excited.
“Where they hid. Perfect rabbit warren. There’s one going out from the
drawing-room alcove. Quite a good room in its way. But you know,”—a note
of wrath crept into Sir Peter’s voice,—“they didn’t treat me fairly
about these priests’ holes. I ought to have had a sketch and a plan of
these priests’ holes. When a chap is given possession of a place, he
ought to be given possession. Well! I don’t know where half of them are
myself. That’s not possession. Else we might refurnish them and do them
up a bit. I guess they’re pretty musty.”
Captain Douglas spoke with his eye on the Lord Chancellor. “Sure there
isn’t a murdered priest in the place, Sir Peter?” he asked.
“Nothing of the sort,” said Sir Peter. “I don’t believe in these
priests’ holes. Half of ’em never had priests in ’em. It’s all pretty
tidy rot I expect—come to the bottom of it....”
The conversation did not get away from ghosts and secret passages until
the men went to the drawing-room. If it seemed likely to do so Captain
Douglas pulled it back. He seemed to delight in these silly particulars;
the sillier they were the more he was delighted.
The Lord Chancellor was a little preoccupied by one of those irrational
suspicions that will sometimes afflict the most intelligent of men. Why
did Douglas want to know all the particulars about the Shonts ghosts?
Why every now and then did he glance with that odd expression at one’s
face,—a glance half appealing and half amused. Amused! It was a strange
fancy, but the Lord Chancellor could almost have sworn that the young
man was laughing at him. At dinner he had had that feeling one has at
times of being talked about; he had glanced along the table to discover
the Captain and a rather plain woman, that idiot Timbre’s wife she
probably was, with their heads together looking up at him quite
definitely and both manifestly pleased by something Douglas was telling
her....
What was it Douglas had said in the train? Something like a threat. But
the exact words had slipped the Lord Chancellor’s memory....
The Lord Chancellor’s preoccupation was just sufficient to make him a
little unwary. He drifted into grappling distance of Mrs. Rampound
Pilby. Her voice caught him like a lasso and drew him in.
“Well, and _how_ is Lord Moggeridge now?” she asked.
What on earth is one to say to such an impertinence?
She was always like that. She spoke to a man of the calibre of Lord
Bacon as though she was speaking to a schoolboy home for the holidays.
She had an invincible air of knowing all through everybody. It gave
rather confidence to her work than charm to her manner.
“Do you still go on with your philosophy?” she said.
“No,” shouted the Lord Chancellor, losing all self-control for the
moment and waving his eyebrows about madly, “no, I go _off_ with it.”
“For your vacations? Ah, Lord Moggeridge, how I envy you great lawyers
your long vacations. _I_—never get a vacation. Always we poor authors
are pursued by our creations, sometimes it’s typescript, sometimes it’s
proofs. Not that I really complain of proofs. I confess to a weakness
for proofs. Sometimes, alas! it’s criticism. Such _undiscerning_
criticism!...”
The Lord Chancellor began to think very swiftly of some tremendous lie
that would enable him to escape at once without incivility from Lady
Laxton’s drawing-room. Then he perceived that Mrs. Rampound Pilby was
asking him; “Is that _the_ Captain Douglas, or his brother, who’s in
love with the actress woman?”
The Lord Chancellor made no answer. What he thought was “Great Silly
Idiot! How should _I_ know?”
“I think it must be _the_ one,—the one who had to leave Portsmouth in
disgrace because of the ragging scandal. He did nothing there, they say,
but organize practical jokes. Some of them were quite subtle practical
jokes. He’s a cousin of our hostess; that perhaps accounts for his
presence....”
The Lord Chancellor’s comment betrayed the drift of his thoughts. “He’d
better not try that sort of thing on here,” he said. “I
abominate—clowning.”
Drawing-room did not last very long. Even Lady Laxton could not miss the
manifest gloom of her principal guest, and after the good-nights and
barley water and lemonade on the great landing Sir Peter led Lord
Moggeridge by the arm—he hated being led by the arm—into the small but
still spacious apartment that was called the study. The Lord Chancellor
was now very thirsty; he was not used to abstinence of any sort; but Sir
Peter’s way of suggesting a drink roused such a fury of resentment in
him that he refused tersely and conclusively. There was nobody else in
the study but Captain Douglas, who seemed to hesitate upon the verge of
some familiar address, and Lord Woodenhouse, who was thirsty, too, and
held a vast tumbler of whisky and soda, with a tinkle of ice in it, on
his knee in a way annoying to a parched man. The Lord Chancellor helped
himself to a cigar and assumed the middle of the fireplace with an air
of contentment, but he could feel the self-control running out of the
heels of his boots.
Sir Peter, after a quite unsuccessful invasion of his own hearthrug—the
Lord Chancellor stood like a rock—secured the big arm-chair, stuck his
feet out towards his distinguished guest and resumed a talk that he had
been holding with Lord Woodenhouse about firearms. Mergleson had as
usual been too attentive to his master’s glass, and the fine edge was
off Sir Peter’s deference. “I always have carried firearms,” he said,
“and I always shall. Used properly they are a great protection. Even in
the country how are you to know who you’re going to run up
against—anywhen?”
“But you might shoot and hit something,” said Douglas.
“Properly used, I said—properly used. Whipping out a revolver and
shooting _at_ a man, that’s not properly used. Almost as bad as pointing
it at him—which is pretty certain to make him fly straight at you. If
he’s got an ounce of pluck. But _I_ said properly used and I _mean_
properly used.”
The Lord Chancellor tried to think about that article on Infinities,
while appearing to listen to this fool’s talk. He despised revolvers.
Armed with such eyebrows as his it was natural for him to despise
revolvers.
“Now, I’ve got some nice little barkers upstairs,” said Sir Peter. “I’d
almost welcome a burglar, just to try them.”
“If you shoot a burglar,” said Lord Woodenhouse abruptly, with a gust of
that ill-temper that was frequent at Shonts towards bedtime, “when he’s
not attacking you, it’s murder.”
Sir Peter held up an offensively pacifying hand. “I know _that_,” he
said; “you needn’t tell me _that_.”
He raised his voice a little to increase his already excessive
accentuations. “_I_ said properly used.”
A yawn took the Lord Chancellor unawares and he caught it dexterously
with his hand. Then he saw Douglas hastily pull at his little blond
moustache to conceal a smile,—grinning ape! What was there to smile at?
The man had been smiling all the evening.
Up to something?
“Now let me _tell_ you,” said Sir Peter, “let me _tell_ you the proper
way to use a revolver. You whip it out and _instantly_ let fly at the
ground. You should never let anyone see a revolver ever before they hear
it—see? You let fly at the ground first off, and the concussion stuns
them. It doesn’t stun you. _You_ expect it, _they_ don’t. See? There you
are—five shots left, master of the situation.”
“I think, Sir Peter, I’ll bid you good-night,” said the Lord Chancellor,
allowing his eye to rest for one covetous moment on the decanter, and
struggling with the devil of pride.
Sir Peter made a gesture of extreme friendliness from his chair,
expressive of the Lord Chancellor’s freedom to do whatever he pleased at
Shonts. “I may perhaps tell you a little story that happened once in
Morocco.”
“My eyes won’t keep open any longer,” said Captain Douglas suddenly,
with a whirl of his knuckles into his sockets, and stood up.
Lord Woodenhouse stood up too.
“You see,” said Sir Peter, standing also but sticking to his subject and
his hearer. “This was when I was younger than I am now, you must
understand, and I wasn’t married. Just mooching about a bit, between
business and pleasure. Under such circumstances one goes into parts of a
foreign town where one wouldn’t go if one was older and wiser....”
Captain Douglas left Sir Peter and Woodenhouse to it.
He emerged on the landing and selected one of the lighted candlesticks
upon the table. “Lord!” he whispered. He grimaced in soliloquy and then
perceived the Lord Chancellor regarding him with suspicion and disfavour
from the ascending staircase. He attempted ease. For the first time
since the train incident he addressed Lord Moggeridge.
“I gather, my lord,—don’t believe in ghosts?” he said.
“No, Sir,” said the Lord Chancellor, “I don’t.”
“They won’t trouble me to-night.”
“They won’t trouble any of us.”
“Fine old house anyhow,” said Captain Douglas.
The Lord Chancellor disdained to reply. He went on his way upstairs.
§ 4
When the Lord Chancellor sat down before the thoughtful fire in the fine
old panelled room assigned to him he perceived that he was too disturbed
to sleep. This was going to be an infernal week-end. The worst week-end
he had ever had. Mrs. Rampound Pilby maddened him; Timbre, who was a
Pragmatist—which stands in the same relation to a Hegelian that a small
dog does to a large cat—exasperated him; he loathed Laxton, detested
Rampound Pilby and feared—as far as he was capable of fearing
anything—Captain Douglas. There was no refuge, no soul in the house to
whom he could turn for consolation and protection from these others.
Slinker Bond could talk only of the affairs of the party, and the Lord
Chancellor, being Lord Chancellor, had long since lost any interest in
the affairs of the party; Woodenhouse could talk of nothing. The women
were astonishingly negligible. There were practically no pretty women.
There ought always to be pretty young women for a Lord Chancellor,
pretty _young_ women who can at least seem to listen....
And he was atrociously thirsty.
His room was supplied only with water,—stuff you use to clean your
teeth—and nothing else....
No good thinking about it....
He decided that the best thing he could do to compose himself before
turning in would be to sit down at the writing-table and write a few
sheets of Hegelian—about that Infinity article in the Hibbert. There is
indeed no better consolation for a troubled mind than the Hegelian
exercises; they lift it above—everything. He took off his coat and sat
down to this beautiful amusement, but he had scarcely written a page
before his thirst became a torment. He kept thinking of that great
tumbler Woodenhouse had held,—sparkling, golden, cool—and stimulating.
What he wanted was a good stiff whisky and a cigar, one of Laxton’s
cigars, the only good thing in his entertainment so far.
And then Philosophy.
Even as a student he had been a worker of the Teutonic type,—never
abstemious.
He thought of ringing and demanding these comforts, and then it occurred
to him that it was a little late to ring for things. Why not fetch them
from the study himself?...
He opened his door and looked out upon the great staircase. It was a
fine piece of work, that staircase. Low, broad, dignified....
There seemed to be nobody about. The lights were still on. He listened
for a little while, and then put on his coat and went with a soft
swiftness that was still quite dignified downstairs to the study, the
study redolent of Sir Peter.
He made his modest collection.
Lord Moggeridge came nearer to satisfaction as he emerged from the study
that night at Shonts than at any other moment during this ill-advised
week-end. In his pocket were four thoroughly good cigars. In one hand he
held a cut glass decanter of whisky. In the other a capacious tumbler.
Under his arm, with that confidence in the unlimited portative power of
his arm that nothing could shake, he had tucked the syphon. His soul
rested upon the edge of tranquillity like a bird that has escaped the
fowler. He was already composing his next sentence about that new
variety of Infinity....
Then something struck him from behind and impelled him forward a couple
of paces. It was something hairy, something in the nature, he thought
afterwards, of a worn broom. And also there were two other things softer
and a little higher on each side....
Then it was he made that noise like the young of some large animal.
He dropped the glass in a hasty attempt to save the syphon....
“What in the name of Heaven—?” he cried, and found himself alone.
“Captain Douglas!”
The thought leapt to his mind.
But indeed, it was not Captain Douglas. It was Bealby. Bealby in panic
flight from Thomas. And how was Bealby to know that this large, richly
laden man was the Lord Chancellor of England? Never before had Bealby
seen anyone in evening dress except a butler, and so he supposed this
was just some larger, finer kind of butler that they kept upstairs. Some
larger, finer kind of butler blocking the path of escape. Bealby had
taken in the situation with the rapidity of a hunted animal. The massive
form blocked the door to the left....
In the playground of the village school Bealby had been preëminent for
his dodging; he moved as quickly as a lizard. His little hands, his
head, poised with the skill of a practised butter, came against that
mighty back, and then Bealby had dodged into the study....
But it seemed to Lord Moggeridge, staggering over his broken glass and
circling about defensively, that this fearful indignity could come only
from Captain Douglas. Foolery.... Blup, blup.... Sham Poltergeist.
Imbeciles....
He said as much, believing that this young man and possibly confederates
were within hearing; he said as much—hotly. He went on to remark of an
unphilosophical tendency about Captain Douglas generally, and about army
officers, practical joking, Laxton’s hospitalities, Shonts.... Thomas,
you will remember, heard him....
Nothing came of it. No answer, not a word of apology.
At last in a great dudgeon and with a kind of wariness about his back,
the Lord Chancellor, with things more spoilt for him than ever, went on
his way upstairs.
When the green baize door opened behind him, he turned like a shot, and
a large foolish-faced butler appeared. Lord Moggeridge, with a
sceptre-like motion of the decanter, very quietly and firmly asked him a
simple question and then, then the lunatic must needs leap up three
stairs and dive suddenly and upsettingly at his legs.
Lord Moggeridge was paralyzed with amazement. His legs were struck from
under him. He uttered one brief topographical cry.
(To Sir Peter unfortunately it sounded like “Help!”)
For a few seconds the impressions that rushed upon Lord Moggeridge were
too rapid for adequate examination. He had a compelling fancy to kill
butlers. Things culminated in a pistol shot. And then he found himself
sitting on the landing beside a disgracefully dishevelled manservant,
and his host was running downstairs to them with a revolver in his hand.
On occasion Lord Moggeridge could produce a tremendous voice. He did so
now. For a moment he stared panting at Sir Peter, and then emphasized by
a pointing finger came the voice. Never had it been so charged with
emotion.
“What does this _mean_, you, Sir?” he shouted. “What does this mean?”
It was exactly what Sir Peter had intended to say.
§ 5
Explanations are detestable things.
And anyhow it isn’t right to address your host as “You, Sir.”
§ 6
Throughout the evening the persuasion had grown in Lady Laxton’s mind
that all was not going well with the Lord Chancellor. It was impossible
to believe he was enjoying himself. But she did not know how to give
things a turn for the better. Clever women would have known, but she was
so convinced she was not clever that she did not even try.
Thing after thing had gone wrong.
How was she to know that there were two sorts of philosophy,—quite
different? She had thought philosophy was philosophy. But it seemed that
there were these two sorts, if not more; a round large sort that talked
about the Absolute and was scornfully superior and rather irascible, and
a jabby-pointed sort that called people “Tender” or “Tough,” and was
generally much too familiar. To bring them together was just mixing
trouble. There ought to be little books for hostesses explaining these
things....
Then it was extraordinary that the Lord Chancellor, who was so
tremendously large and clever, wouldn’t go and talk to Mrs. Rampound
Pilby, who was also so tremendously large and clever. Repeatedly Lady
Laxton had tried to get them into touch with one another. Until at last
the Lord Chancellor had said distinctly and deliberately, when she had
suggested his going across to the eminent writer, “God forbid!” Her
dream of a large clever duologue that she could afterwards recall with
pleasure was altogether shattered. She thought the Lord Chancellor
uncommonly hard to please. These weren’t the only people for him. Why
couldn’t he chat party secrets with Slinker Bond or say things to Lord
Woodenhouse? You could say anything you liked to Lord Woodenhouse. Or
talk with Mr. Timbre. Mrs. Timbre had given him an excellent opening;
she had asked, “Wasn’t it a dreadful anxiety always to have the Great
Seal to mind?” He had simply _grunted_.... And then why did he keep on
looking so _dangerously_ at Captain Douglas?...
Perhaps to-morrow things would take a turn for the better....
One can at least be hopeful. Even if one is not _clever_ one can be
that....
From such thoughts as these it was that this unhappy hostess was roused
by a sound of smashing glass, a rumpus, and a pistol shot.
She stood up, she laid her hand on her heart, she said “_Oh!_” and
gripped her dressing-table for support....
After a long time and when it seemed that it was now nothing more than a
hubbub of voices, in which her husband’s could be distinguished clearly,
she crept out very softly upon the upper landing.
She perceived her cousin, Captain Douglas, looking extremely fair
and frail and untrustworthy in a much too gorgeous kimono
dressing-gown of embroidered Japanese silk. “I can assure you, my
lord,” he was saying in a strange high-pitched deliberate voice,
“on—my—word—of—honour—as—a—soldier, that I know absolutely nothing
about it.”
“Sure it wasn’t all imagination, my lord?” Sir Peter asked with his
inevitable infelicity....
She decided to lean over the balustrading and ask very quietly and
clearly:
“Lord Moggeridge, please! is anything the matter?”
§ 6
All human beings are egotists, but there is no egotism to compare with
the egotism of the very young.
Bealby was so much the centre of his world that he was incapable of any
interpretation of this shouting and uproar, this smashing of decanters
and firing of pistol shots, except in reference to himself. He supposed
it to be a Hue and Cry. He supposed that he was being hunted—hunted by a
pack of great butlers hounded on by the irreparably injured Thomas. The
thought of upstairs gentlefolks passed quite out of his mind. He
snatched up a faked Syrian dagger that lay, in the capacity of a paper
knife, on the study table, concealed himself under the chintz valance of
a sofa, adjusted its rumpled skirts neatly, and awaited the issue of
events.
For a time events did not issue. They remained talking noisily upon the
great staircase. Bealby could not hear what was said, but most of what
was said appeared to be flat contradiction.
“Perchance,” whispered Bealby to himself, gathering courage, “perchance
we have eluded them.... A breathing space....”
At last a woman’s voice mingled with the others and seemed a little to
assuage them....
Then it seemed to Bealby that they were dispersing to beat the house for
him. “Good-night _again_ then,” said someone.
That puzzled him, but he decided it was a “blind.” He remained very,
very still.
He heard a clicking in the apartment—the blue parlour it was
called—between the study and the dining-room. Electric light?
Then some one came into the study. Bealby’s eye was as close to the
ground as he could get it. He was breathless, he moved his head with an
immense circumspection. The valance was translucent but not transparent,
below it there was a crack of vision, a strip of carpet, the castors of
chairs. Among these things he perceived feet—not ankles, it did not go
up to that, but just feet. Large flattish feet. A pair. They stood
still, and Bealby’s hand lighted on the hilt of his dagger.
The person above the feet seemed to be surveying the room or reflecting.
“Drunk!... Old fool’s either drunk or mad! That’s about the truth of
it,” said a voice.
Mergleson! Angry, but parroty and unmistakable.
The feet went across to the table and there were faint sounds of
refreshment, discreetly administered. Then a moment of profound
stillness....
“Ah!” said the voice at last, a voice renewed.
Then the feet went to the passage door, halted in the doorway. There was
a double click. The lights went out. Bealby was in absolute darkness.
Then a distant door closed and silence followed upon the dark....
Mr. Mergleson descended to a pantry ablaze with curiosity.
“The Lord Chancellor’s going dotty,” said Mr. Mergleson, replying to the
inevitable question. “_That’s_ what’s up.” ...
“I tried to save the blessed syphon,” said Mr. Mergleson, pursuing his
narrative, “and ’e sprang on me like a leppard. I suppose ’e thought I
wanted to take it away from ’im. ’E’d broke a glass already. ’_Ow_,—I
_don’t_ know. There it was, lying on the landing....”
“’Ere’s where ’e bit my ’and,” said Mr. Mergleson....
A curious little side-issue occurred to Thomas. “Where’s young Kicker
all this time?” he asked.
“Lord!” said Mr. Mergleson, “all them other things; they clean drove ’im
out of my ’ed. I suppose ’e’s up there, hiding somewhere....”
He paused. His eye consulted the eye of Thomas.
“’E’s got behind a curtain or something,” said Mr. Mergleson....
“Queer where ’e can ’ave got to,” said Mr. Mergleson....
“Can’t be bothered about ’im,” said Mr. Mergleson.
“I expect he’ll sneak down to ’is room when things are quiet,” said
Thomas, after reflection.
“No good going and looking for ’im now,” said Mr. Mergleson. “Things
upstairs,—they _got_ to settle down....”
But in the small hours Mr. Mergleson awakened and thought of Bealby and
wondered whether he was in bed. This became so great an uneasiness that
about the hour of dawn he got up and went along the passage to Bealby’s
compartment. Bealby was not there and his bed had not been slept in.
That sinister sense of gathering misfortunes which comes to all of us at
times in the small hours, was so strong in the mind of Mr. Mergleson
that he went on and told Thomas of this disconcerting fact. Thomas woke
with difficulty and rather crossly, but sat up at last, alive to the
gravity of Mr. Mergleson’s mood.
“If ’e’s found hiding about upstairs after all this upset,” said Mr.
Mergleson, and left the rest of the sentence to a sympathetic
imagination.
“Now it’s light,” said Mr. Mergleson after a slight pause, “I think we
better just go round and ’ave a look for ’im. Both of us.”
So Thomas clad himself provisionally, and the two man-servants went
upstairs very softly and began a series of furtive sweeping
movements—very much in the spirit of Lord Kitchener’s historical
sweeping movements in the Transvaal—through the stately old rooms in
which Bealby must be lurking....
§ 8
Man is the most restless of animals. There is an incessant urgency in
his nature. He never knows when he is well off. And so it was that
Bealby’s comparative security under the sofa became presently too
irksome to be endured. He seemed to himself to stay there for ages, but
as a matter of fact, he stayed there only twenty minutes. Then with eyes
tempered to the darkness he first struck out an alert attentive head,
then crept out and remained for the space of half a minute on all fours
surveying the indistinct blacknesses about him.
Then he knelt up. Then he stood up. Then with arms extended and cautious
steps he began an exploration of the apartment.
The passion for exploration grows with what it feeds upon. Presently
Bealby was feeling his way into the blue parlour and then round by its
shuttered and curtained windows to the dining-room. His head was now
full of the idea of some shelter, more permanent, less pervious to
housemaids, than that sofa. He knew enough now of domestic routines to
know that upstairs in the early morning was much routed by housemaids.
He found many perplexing turns and corners, and finally got into the
dining-room fireplace where it was very dark and kicked against some
fire-irons. That made his heart beat fast for a time. Then groping on
past it, he found in the darkness what few people could have found in
the day, the stud that released the panel that hid the opening of the
way that led to the priest hole. He felt the thing open, and halted
perplexed. In that corner there wasn’t a ray of light. For a long time
he was trying to think what this opening could be, and then he concluded
it was some sort of back way from downstairs.... Well, anyhow it was all
exploring. With an extreme gingerliness he got himself through the
panel. He closed it almost completely behind him.
Careful investigation brought him to the view that he was in a narrow
passage of brick or stone that came in a score of paces to a spiral
staircase going both up and down. Up this he went, and presently
breathed cool night air and had a glimpse of stars through a narrow
slit-like window almost blocked by ivy. Then—what was very
disagreeable—something scampered.
When Bealby’s heart recovered he went on up again.
He came to the priest hole, a capacious cell six feet square with a
bench bed and a little table and chair. It had a small door upon the
stairs that was open and a niche cupboard. Here he remained for a time.
Then restlessness made him explore a cramped passage, he had to crawl
along it for some yards, that came presently into a curious space with
wood on one side and stone on the other. Then ahead, most blessed thing!
he saw light.
He went blundering toward it and then stopped appalled. From the other
side of this wooden wall to the right of him had come a voice.
“Come in!” said the voice. A rich masculine voice that seemed scarcely
two yards away.
Bealby became rigid. Then after a long interval he moved—as softly as he
could.
The voice soliloquized.
Bealby listened intently, and then when all was still again crept
forward two paces more towards the gleam. It was a peephole.
The unseen speaker was walking about. Bealby listened, and the sound of
his beating heart mingled with the pad, pad, of slippered footsteps.
Then with a brilliant effort his eye was at the chink. All was still
again. For a time he was perplexed by what he saw, a large pink shining
dome, against a deep greenish grey background. At the base of the dome
was a kind of interrupted hedge, brown and leafless....
Then he realized that he was looking at the top of a head and two
enormous eyebrows. The rest was hidden....
Nature surprised Bealby into a penetrating sniff.
“Now,” said the occupant of the room, and suddenly he was standing
up—Bealby saw a long hairy neck sticking out of a dressing-gown—and
walking to the side of the room. “I won’t stand it,” said the great
voice, “I won’t stand it. Ape’s foolery!”
Then the Lord Chancellor began rapping at the panelling about his
apartment.
“Hollow! It all sounds hollow.”
Only after a long interval did he resume his writing....
All night long that rat behind the wainscot troubled the Lord
Chancellor. Whenever he spoke, whenever he moved about, it was still;
whenever he composed himself to write it began to rustle and blunder.
Again and again it sniffed,—an annoying kind of sniff. At last the Lord
Chancellor gave up his philosophical relaxation and went to bed, turned
out the lights and attempted sleep, but this only intensified his sense
of an uneasy, sniffing presence close to him. When the light was out it
seemed to him that this Thing, whatever it was, instantly came into the
room and set the floor creaking and snapping. A Thing perpetually
attempting something and perpetually thwarted....
The Lord Chancellor did not sleep a wink. The first feeble infiltration
of day found him sitting up in bed, wearily wrathful.... And now surely
someone was going along the passage outside!
A great desire to hurt somebody very much seized upon the Lord
Chancellor. Perhaps he might hurt that dismal _farceur_ upon the
landing! No doubt it was Douglas sneaking back to his own room after the
night’s efforts.
The Lord Chancellor slipped on his dressing-gown of purple silk. Very
softly indeed did he open his bedroom door and very warily peep out. He
heard the soft pad of feet upon the staircase.
He crept across the broad passage to the beautiful old balustrading.
Down below he saw Mergleson—Mergleson again!—in a shameful
deshabille—going like a snake, like a slinking cat, like an assassin,
into the door of the study. Rage filled the great man’s soul. Gathering
up the skirts of his dressing-gown he started in a swift yet noiseless
pursuit.
He followed Mergleson through the little parlour and into the
dining-room, and then he saw it all! There was a panel open, and
Mergleson very cautiously going in. Of course! They had got at him
through the priest hole. They had been playing on his nerves. All night
they had been doing it—no doubt in relays. The whole house was in this
conspiracy.
With his eyebrows spread like the wings of a fighting cock the Lord
Chancellor in five vast noiseless strides had crossed the intervening
space and gripped the butler by his collarless shirt as he was
disappearing. It was like a hawk striking a sparrow. Mergleson felt
himself clutched, glanced over his shoulder and, seeing that fierce
familiar face again close to his own, pitiless, vindictive, lost all
sense of human dignity and yelled like a lost soul....
§ 9
Sir Peter Laxton was awakened from an uneasy sleep by the opening of the
dressing-room door that connected his room with his wife’s.
He sat up astonished and stared at her white face, its pallor
exaggerated by the cold light of dawn.
“Peter,” she said, “I’m sure there’s something more going on.”
“Something more going on?”
“Something—shouting and swearing.”
“You don’t mean—?”
She nodded. “The Lord Chancellor,” she said, in an awe-stricken whisper.
“He’s at it again. Downstairs in the dining-room.”
Sir Peter seemed disposed at first to receive this quite passively. Then
he flashed into extravagant wrath. “I’m _damned_,” he cried, jumping
violently out of bed, “if I’m going to stand this! Not if he was a
hundred Lord Chancellors! He’s turning the place into a bally lunatic
asylum. _Once_—one might excuse. But to start in again.... _What’s
that?_”
They both stood still listening. Faintly yet quite distinctly came the
agonized cry of some imperfectly educated person,—“’Elp!”
“Here! Where’s my trousers?” cried Sir Peter. “He’s murdering Mergleson.
There isn’t a moment to lose.”
§ 10
Until Sir Peter returned Lady Laxton sat quite still just as he had left
her on his bed, aghast.
She could not even pray.
The sun had still to rise; the room was full of that cold weak inky
light, light without warmth, knowledge without faith, existence without
courage, that creeps in before the day. She waited.... In such a mood
women have waited for massacre....
Downstairs a raucous shouting....
She thought of her happy childhood upon the Yorkshire wolds, before the
idea of week-end parties had entered her mind. The heather. The little
birds. Kind things. A tear ran down her cheek....
§ 11
Then Sir Peter stood before her again, alive still, but breathless and
greatly ruffled.
She put her hands to her heart. She would be brave.
“Yes,” she said. “Tell me.”
“He’s as mad as a hatter,” said Sir Peter.
She nodded for more. She knew that.
“Has he—_killed_ anyone?” she whispered.
“He looked uncommonly like trying,” said Sir Peter.
She nodded, her lips tightly compressed.
“Says Douglas will either have to leave the house or he does.”
“But—Douglas!”
“I know, but he won’t hear a word.”
“But _why_ Douglas?”
“I tell you he’s as mad as a hatter. Got persecution mania. People
tapping and bells ringing under his pillow all night—that sort of
idea.... And furious. I tell you,—he frightened me. He was _awful_. He’s
given Mergleson a black eye. Hit him, you know. With his fist. Caught
him in the passage to the priest hole—how they got there _I_ don’t
know—and went for him like a madman.”
“But what has Douglas done?”
“I know. I asked him, but he won’t listen. He’s just off his head....
Says Douglas has got the whole household trying to work a ghost on him.
I tell you—he’s off his nut.”
Husband and wife looked at each other....
“Of course if Douglas didn’t mind just going off to oblige me,” said Sir
Peter at last....
“It might calm him,” he explained.... “You see, it’s all so infernally
awkward....”
“Is he back in his room?”
“Yes. Waiting for me to decide about Douglas. Walking up and down.”
For a little while their minds remained prostrate and inactive.
“I’d been so looking forward to the lunch,” she said with a joyless
smile. “The county—”
She could not go on.
“You know,” said Sir Peter, “one thing,—I’ll see to it myself. I won’t
have him have a single drop of liquor more. If we have to search his
room.”
“What I shall say to him at breakfast,” she said, “I don’t know.”
Sir Peter reflected. “There’s no earthly reason why you should be
brought into it at all. Your line is to know nothing about it. _Show_
him you know nothing about it. Ask him—ask him if he’s had a good
night....”