AT THE MANOR HOUSE.
"What about to-day, Mallow?" asked Aldean, as with his friend and
mentor he enjoyed a morning pipe, pacing the terrace of Kingsholme.
"The day is right enough," replied Laurence, morosely; and he looked
with a jaundiced eye on the green country stretching beyond a fringe
of trees towards the blue and distant hills.
"I don't think you are," retorted his lordship; "you have not spoken
two words the whole of breakfast."
"I'm never fit for rational conversation till noon, Aldean. I should
be tied up this morning."
"Liver!" grunted Aldean, with a fond look at his pipe. "Let's get out
the 'gees,' and shake ourselves into good humour."
Mallow placed his hands on the young man's shoulders and swayed him
to and fro. "That is all the shaking you need, Jim," said he, in a
more amiable tone. "If I were as good-humoured as you I should be
content--all the same, I wish you would confine yourself to the
Queen's English."
"Your speech is like a hornet, the sting's in the tail. Have you read
the papers this morning?"
"No," replied Mallow, listlessly. "What's in them?"
"The usual nothing. France is abusing us, Germany is envying us,
Russia is warning us, and the U.S.A. are beginning to see that blood
is thicker than foreign ditch-water."
"And what are we doing?"
"Holding our tongues and picking up unconsidered geographical trifles.
Silence is ever golden annexation with us."
"Upon my word, Jim," said Mallow, with good-humoured astonishment,
"you are getting beyond words of one syllable. You can actually
construct a sentence with a visible idea in it."
"I am growing up, Mallow; age is coming upon me."
"Well, Jim, suppose we take a walk."
Aldean laughed, and pointed with the stem of his pipe towards the red
roofs of the distant manor house, "Over there, I suppose?"
"Jim, you have no tact. If our steps do tend in that direction,
wandering in devious ways, I--I--well, I have not forgotten that Miss
Ostergaard is paying a visit to--to--Miss Slarge."
"True enough," replied Jim, winking. "Let us pay a visit to--to--Miss
Slarge."
"We might do worse," said Mallow; and sighed.
"I expect we'll do better," was Aldean's response.
Mallow groaned. "Oh, Jim, Jim, I am a fool. I know that she is going
to marry this Carson; and yet--and yet I cannot help making myself
miserable by calling to see her."
"Buck up, old man, she isn't spliced yet!"
"James, you are incurably vulgar."
"If you pay me any more compliments, Mallow, I shall forget the
respect to my former tutor, and chuck you out of this gangway. Come
for a walk."
So Mallow allowed himself to be persuaded, and in due time, as he knew
they inevitably would do, they found themselves in the grounds of the
Manor House.
Striding up and down the lawn was an elderly lady with a lack-lustre
eye and the gait of a grenadier.
"How do you do, Miss Slarge," said the visitors, almost
simultaneously. And they waited for the priestess of Minerva to wake
up and return their salutation.
Miss Rubina Slarge was a maiden of forty-five years. She was
sufficiently well-looking to have married a score of times. However,
early in life she had become convinced that it was her mission to
expose the errors of the Romish Church, and she felt that for this
purpose she should dispense with a husband. Her knowledge was
extensive, but apt to be inaccurate. It was her firm impression that
the idol worship of Babylon still existed in the Papal Church, and she
was writing a voluminous book to prove this. Nimrod and his wife
Semiramis were still worshipped, she declared, and the festivals and
ritual of modern Rome were identical with those of ancient Babylon.
She thought of little else, and lived in a world of Biblical prophecy
and mythological lore. Therefore, although she was supposed ostensibly
to look after Olive, that clear-headed young lady looked after her,
and the house to boot. Olive called her Aunt Ruby, but she was really
only a distant cousin, connected by blood with the late Mrs. Bellairs.
Absent-minded and dogmatic, Aunt Ruby was nevertheless amiable and
kindly, and Olive was really fond of her. But it was rare for her to
leave Rome or Babylon to speak on commonplace subjects. She was
difficult to manage, and required no little humouring.
On seeing two young men standing bareheaded before her, she stopped
and looked bewildered. Then she recognized them both and smiled.
Finally she pointed a lean finger at Lord Aldean.
"Septem alta jugis toti quæ presidet orbi,'" said Miss Slarge,
solemnly. "What does that mean, Lord Aldean?"
"Great Scott!" gasped Jim, cramming his hat on his head, "I don't
know."
"Yet you call yourself a scholar, sir?"
"No, I don't, Miss Slarge. I call Mr. Mallow a scholar. What is it,
Mallow?"
"The lofty city with seven hills which governs the whole world,"
translated Mallow.
"I know that," snapped Miss Slarge; "it is a simple sentence from
Virgil. But what city?"
"Rome, of course; what other city has seven hills?"
"I was certain of it," cried Miss Slarge, triumphantly; "the chief
seat of idolatry under the New Testament. Mystery, Babylon the
great--that is Rome!"
"Is it indeed," said Aldean, for her eyes were fastened upon him.
"What a rum idea!"
"Jim, Jim," reproved Mallow, smiling.
"It is a very wonderful idea," said Miss Slarge, reproachfully. "Do
you know, Mr. Mallow, I made a most remarkable discovery last week?
The two-horned mitre of the Romish bishops is nothing but the mitre
worn by Dagon, the fish-god of the Babylonians."
"I do not quite understand, Miss Slarge."
"It is not difficult," replied the lady. "Dagon was depicted as half
man, half fish."
"I know," cried Aldean; "he had a fish's tail, like a mermaid."
"True enough," assented Mallow; "but that does not explain the mitre."
Miss Slarge became excited. "The head of the fish, with open jaws, was
worn on the god's head!" she cried, "and the scales and tail formed a
cloak. The bishops of the papal church don't wear the tail, but they
place the open-jawed head on their brows, and call it a mitre. Now do
you see?"
"Oh yes. It is truly wonderful, Miss Slarge."
"Osiris also wore such a mitre, Mr. Mallow. How then can you doubt
that the Pope of Rome is not the modern representative of the
Philistine, of the Babylonian deity. Why, if----"
By this time Miss Slarge was taking a breather on her hobby horse, and
might be expected to gallop that tiresome animal for a considerable
time; so, leaving Mallow to endure the martyrdom, Lord Aldean edged
away from the pair by degrees. The cunning rascal had caught a glimpse
of Miss Ostergaard out of the tail of his eye, and, preferring
flirtation to instruction, managed to place himself by her side whilst
she was filling a small basket with roses. All this apparently without
her knowledge.
The young lady from New Zealand was one of the most charming of young
ladies; and Aldean went so far as to make no reservation in favour of
any one. She had been sent to England to be educated, and, having gone
to the same school as Olive, a close friendship had sprung up between
them as rapidly as had grown Jonah's gourd. Happily the friendship was
more enduring than the plant, and for three or four years these two
had been like Helena and Hermia, two cherries on one stem. Miss
Ostergaard, whose Christian, or rather Maori name, was Tui, loved
Olive as her other self, and frequently came to stay at the Manor
House. She was now twenty years of age, and so pretty that she won
every heart left uncaptured by Olive. With dark hair, dark complexion,
and two wonderful dark eyes like wells of liquid light, she made such
havoc amongst young and susceptible males that she should have been
shut up as a too delightful damsel dangerous to the youth of the
community. Her last victim was the hapless Aldean. Having impaled him
on a pin, she was watching him wriggle. Not that Jim objected to the
process--indeed, he rather liked it--for if he wriggled on the pin no
one else could, for the time being; and thus he secured all the sweet
torment unto himself: a most gratifying monopoly.
Of course Tui knew that Olive was in love with Mallow, and equally, of
course, Olive was aware of Aldean's passion for Tui; and of course
both of them discussed their lovers to their hearts' content. Tui was
distinctly in favour of Mallow as a suitor for her darling Olive, and
was enraged at the mere thought of her friend being handed over, with
fifty thousand pounds, to an unknown suitor from the back of beyond.
Therefore she was glad to see him, and she hoped that he would rescue
Olive from the Indian dragon as a true knight should; for Olive was
very wretched and very tearful, and had been so ever since the
departure of Mr. Dimbal.
"Poor dear!" sighed Miss Ostergaard, thinking of her friend.
"That is me, isn't it?" asked the artful Aldean.
"You?" said the lady, snipping vigorously--"as if I was thinking of
you, Lord Aldean. Oh, you men, you men!--and they say that women are
vain!"
"You have something to be vain about," said Aldean, seeing his way to
a compliment.
"I have, indeed--with you. No, I was thinking of Olive. You know that
she is going to be married?"
Aldean cast a commiserating look at his friend, who was still being
assailed with Babylonic information by Miss Slarge, and nodded.
"But she may not marry the chap after all, you know?"
"Oh yes, she will. Mr. Carson is coming down here in three days, and
Olive has fully made up her mind to accept him. I am so enraged,"
cried Tui, "that I could (snip) cut his (snip) head off (snip, snip)."
"She has never seen Carson, has she?"
"No; that's the worst of it. Fancy marrying a veiled prophet--a
Mokanna!"
"Never heard of the Johnny, Miss Ostergaard. Who is he?"
"He is a fable, Lord Aldean."
"Pity this Carson man isn't," said his lordship, with a grin.
"I wish he were," sighed Tui, walking towards the house. "I am sure he
is a beast--a beast with a big, big B!"
"Who deserves a big, big D!" cried Aldean, emphatically. "Oh, what a
beast!"
"Are you talking of the beast from the Persian Gulf," cried Miss
Slarge, who, having pulverized Mallow, had glided behind them; "the
beast who taught the Babylonians arts and sciences?"
"This beast comes from India," said Aldean, smiling at Tui, and with a
side glance at Mallow; "he is called Car----"
"Oh, there is Olive," interrupted Miss Ostergaard, waving her hand;
"Olive, here are two visitors!" and Olive, pale and listless,
descending the steps, turned yet paler at the sight of the man she
loved and who loved her.