A fortnight later Jeannie, Miss Fortescue, and Arthur were all staying
at the Black Eagle Hotel, employed in settling in. Morton had been let,
but let unfurnished, and in order to avoid the expense of storing, it
was laid upon them that they should cram as much furniture into 8 Bolton
Street as it would possibly hold. Thus from morning to night the greater
part of the street was congested with Pantechnicon vans, and Jeannie and
Arthur might be seen many hours a day measuring wardrobes, and finding
for the most part that they would not go into any of the rooms. Miss
Fortescue sat in a large chair in the middle of the street and made
scathing comments on the appearance and behaviour of the others.
“I little thought,” said this magisterial lady one day, “that the time
would come when I should see my nephew in his shirt-sleeves wrestling
with towel-horses in the Queen’s highway.”
“No, dear Aunt,” said Arthur, “and if you will look round you will see a
distressed bicyclist who wants to pass. You must move.”
Miss Clifford, in fact, was approaching. She did not ride with any
overpowering command over her machine, and from the desire to avoid Miss
Fortescue was making a beeline for her. A collision was just avoided by
Miss Fortescue’s extreme agility in removing herself and her chair.
A wardrobe was just blocking the front door, and Arthur threw himself
down in another unoccupied chair for a moment’s rest. Jeannie’s voice
sounded in passionate appeal from inside the hall, but till the wardrobe
had been passed it was impossible to go to her aid.
“Oh, it is hot!” he said. “Why on earth did we move in this broiling
weather? Aunt Em, dear, I’m going to send for some beer from that
wine-merchant’s opposite, and if you don’t like to see me drink it in
the Queen’s highway you must look in the other direction.”
“The Aveshams have no sense of dignity,” said Miss Fortescue,
sweepingly.
“No, but it doesn’t matter; they’ll think that I’m not me, but the
footman.”
“You’re much too badly dressed for any footman,” said Aunt Em.
“Well, they’ll think you are the cook and I’m your young man,” said
Arthur.
Arthur sent one of the Pantechnicon men to get some beer, and while he
was gone:
“They told me there was so little traffic here,” he said, “and the
street is crowded with vans. Oh, there’s that man again! He has passed
and repassed a dozen times this morning, besides standing at the corner
for ever so long. Is he a friend of yours, Aunt Em?”
The man in question was Colonel Raymond, no less, strutting and swelling
down the other side of the street, and bursting with uneasy curiosity.
He had, as Arthur said, passed and repassed a dozen times, longing to
speak to one of them, and manage to introduce himself in some way. Once
he had given a hand to one of the van-men with a bookcase, but as
ill-luck would have it, all three of the house-party, as he called it,
were inside at the moment, and when the danger of the bookcase falling
on a washing-stand was over there was no excuse for lingering. On
another occasion he had waited a full two minutes while the foot-path
was congested, and on it being made possible for him to pass, he had
raised his hat with a gallant flourish to Jeannie, who stood at the
door. But she had appeared quite unconscious of his salute, and the
Colonel was working himself into a fever of impatience. It was one thing
to be able to say at the club that he had spent his morning in Bolton
Street, where his cousins had taken Number 8, but it was another to have
them definitely established in Wroxton, not knowing him from Adam. The
trying climate of India was nothing compared to the sultriness which
loomed over his prospects.
The amiable and kindly interest in the minutest dealings of others,
which is known as curiosity, was not wanting in the town of Wroxton.
Miss Clifford had hardly passed on her bicycle when she realized that it
was idle to struggle with so overmastering an emotion, and dismounted at
the end of the street, for she was no adept at turning round, and rode
straight back again. She would have done so if only to get another look
at the furniture which was being unloaded, though, as they had got on to
a bed-room layer of it, it might not have seemed engrossing to the
ordinary mind; but this was not all. She would get another look at the
lady who sat in the middle of the road, and at the young man in his
shirt-sleeves. She might even, if lucky, catch a glimpse of Miss Avesham
herself, whom she had not yet seen.
So she rode slowly back, and when about thirty yards distant saw Arthur
drinking out of a pewter mug. The disappointment was intense, for he
might even have been Lord Avesham himself, come to help his brother and
sister in the settling in. But this beer-drinking in public made it
impossible. It could only be the foreman of the Pantechnicon, or
perhaps--this would be better than nothing--the footman or a valet of
peers. But as she passed she distinctly heard him say, “Do have some
beer, Aunt Em.”
Miss Clifford rode on towards the High Street, away from the direction
of her home, lost and stupefied in a whirl of conjecture and perplexity.
If he was the footman, what was his Aunt Em doing there, unless--and
this was just possible--his Aunt Em was the cook? If, on the other hand,
he was the foreman, the presence of his aunt was still more difficult,
for that foremen of furniture companies should bring their aunts with
them to superintend seemed a proposition which might almost be negatived
offhand. Could it be--No, it was not possible, and Miss Clifford, by
this time having reached the High Street, dismounted again and
determined to go home without more delay. The shortest way home lay down
Bolton Street--at least to go down Bolton Street was so little longer
that the excellence of the road quite made up for it--and a minute
afterward she was again opposite the house. No very great change had
taken place since she saw it last. The possible footman was still
standing in the doorway with the pewter pot in his hand, and his Aunt Em
was sitting on a low black oak chest, which suggested to Miss Clifford’s
romantic mind all sorts of secret drawers and unsuspected wills,
confessions of crime, and proofs of innocence. As a matter of fact, it
contained Jeannie’s boot-trees and a knife-board, but Miss Clifford did
not know this. But her perseverance had its reward. Even as she passed,
a voice of lamentation sounded from the inside of the house.
“Oh, Arthur,” it wailed, “you said it was only four foot six, and it’s
four foot nine, and won’t go in. Do come here.”
And the possible footman put his pewter pot on the black oak chest and
went inside.
The chain of evidence was growing massive. Supposing, as before, Aunt Em
was the cook and Arthur’s aunt, whose was the wailing voice inside?
Could it be the lady’s-maid’s or the house-maid’s? Miss Clifford’s
masculine intellect decided that it scarcely could. Again, had not she
and her sister spent an hour last night in following the history of the
Avesham family in Debrett’s Peerage into all its ramifications and
collateral branches? “Sons living, Hon. Arthur John Talbot, b. 1873, ed.
at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford”--how was it possible for a person
of intelligence not to connect the subject of that entry with the person
called Arthur who lounged with a pewter pot? The coincidence was too
glaring to be overlooked. One thing would settle it, and Miss Clifford
cursed her defective memory. If either Lord Avesham or his wife had a
“sister living called Emma or Emmaline, that must be the Aunt Em” who
had sat so truculently in the highway and been offered beer. Miss
Clifford turned quite cold at the thought that she had perhaps been
within an ace of running into a sister or a sister-in-law of a peer.
What would her mother have said if she had been alive to see such a day?
Miss Clifford wasted no more time, but went home like a positive
race-horse, arriving in a breathing heat. She went straight to the room
called by her and her sister “the libry,” and took the Peerage from its
shelf.
No, the late Lord Avesham had only one sister living, who was called
Lucy, which could not possibly be abbreviated into Em, but he married
Frances Mary Fortescue, second daughter of late Mr. John Fortescue. It
was but the work of a moment to turn to the Fs in the landed gentry and
find John Lewis Fortescue, Esq., son of late John Fortescue, Esq., who
had one sister living, Emma Caroline. The thing was as good as proved,
and Miss Clifford was practically face to face with the fact that peers
(at any rate, the brothers of peers) drank beer in shirts, and that she
had nearly run down the sister of a peeress. It had been a most exciting
morning, and she waited with weary impatience for the return of her
sister, who was out, to pour into her horror-struck ears these
revelations about the aristocracy. “No wonder many people turn Radical,”
she said to herself.
Colonel Raymond’s temper at lunch that day bordered on the diabolical,
and when he savagely announced that he should take the children for a
walk afterward, the hearts of those unfortunate infants sank in their
shoes. They well knew what kind of an afternoon was in store for them.
While on the level they would be able to keep up, but they knew from
experience that when their father was in the state of mind which Mrs.
Raymond referred to in their presence as “looking worried” that their
way would be dark and slippery, and that their father would march up the
steep sides of the downs as if he was storming a breach. Long before the
most active of them was half-way up he would be there, and he would
revile them with marrowy and freezing expressions. Then as soon as their
aching legs had scaled the summit he would be off again, and ten minutes
later the same scene would be re-enacted with the same trembling and
breathless mutes. Occasionally, on the worst days, he would take one by
the hand and--“he called it helping”--drag her along in a grasp of iron.
Poor Mrs. Raymond always looked more than usually insignificant when her
husband was looking worried, but when things were very bad indeed
sometimes a strange sort of recklessness came over her. If you can
imagine a mouse or some soft feathered bird in a reckless humour, you
will have some picture of Mrs. Raymond when the Colonel was looking
worried. She had asked him some question about where he had been this
morning, and had been treated to a reply of this kind:
“Where have I been? Did you ask where I have been, Constance? You are
devoured by curiosity--devoured; and it would be better if you tried to
check it sometimes. But I’ll tell you--oh, I’ll tell you. I’ve been
hanging about Bolton Street all morning, and not one of those infernal
aristocrats had a word to say to me.”
“Do you mean the Aveshams, Robert?” asked his wife.
“Yes, I mean the Aveshams, and why shouldn’t I mean the Aveshams? Eh?”
“I don’t suppose they recognised you.”
“Not recognised me? I tell you, they cut me. Cut me, Constance. Blood is
thicker than water--thicker than water--and it’s a motto that I’ve
always stuck to myself, and it would be a good thing if others did the
same.”
Then Mrs. Raymond began to be reckless.
“You’re not a very near relative, Robert,” she said, in her meaningless
voice.
“Not a near relation?” stormed her husband. “Do you mean to put me in my
place? Confound it all, your brother-in-law’s sister, your sister-in-law
in fact, indeed my sister-in-law, was the late Lady Avesham. If we don’t
hang together it’s the ruin of England!”
Mrs. Raymond’s recklessness increased.
“If I were you I shouldn’t go about talking of the Aveshams as your
relatives, particularly now they’ve come to live in the town,” she said;
“it will only make people laugh.”
The Colonel glared at her a moment; he could literally not find words.
“Anything else, madam, anything else?” he asked at length.
The fit of recklessness was passed.
“No, that is all, Robert,” she said, listlessly; “I didn’t mean to make
you worried.”
“I shall call there this afternoon,” he said, “and you will go with me.”
Mrs. Raymond brightened.
“Then you won’t take the children out?” she asked, with a ray of hope in
her voice.
“Certainly I shall take them out,” he said, “and--and they shall come
and call, too. Go and get your things on, all of you.”
“You won’t go far then, if you are to be back in time to call?” asked
his wife.
“We shall go a good brisk walk,” he said, grimly, “and we shall be home
by four. Now, am I to wait all day?”
Dismal, faltering feet came down the passage outside, and the three
little victims appeared in the doorway.
“Now then, march,” said the Colonel.
It was some little while after four when the hot and jaded expedition
returned. The walk had been more severe than usual, and even the Colonel
flung himself with an air of fatigue into a chair.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said; “I shall not go near the house. Not go
near it. At least, I sha’n’t go to-day. Tea--isn’t tea ready? Let it be
brought.”
Even the friends of the Colonel might have felt inclined to accuse him
of a slight duplicity for his action on this occasion. He had returned
by way of Bolton Street, like the burned moth to the candle, and sending
the children on with instructions to go home after waiting for five
minutes at the end of the street, he had rung the bell, which was opened
by a surprised maid. The hall was full of miscellaneous furniture, and
the maid had to go warily among pictures and stools to the drawing-room,
bearing his card. Jeannie’s voice was what is known as “carrying,” and
she did not reflect how near the front door was to the drawing-room,
where an agonizing measurement of a carpet was going on. Her words were
distinctly audible.
“Colonel who? Colonel Raymond. I never heard of him. Fancy calling when
we are in this state! Tell him we are all out. Did you say fifteen foot
six or fifteen foot eight, Arthur? It makes just the whole difference.”
Then somebody said “Hush!” and Jeannie’s voice said “Oh!”
A moment afterward the maid came out of the drawing-room, shutting the
door carefully after her.
“Not at home, sir,” she said, without a blush or a tremor in her voice.
The children did not have to wait long at the corner. The pace home was
perfectly appalling.