Part 7
This so impressed me with the virtues of the little board that, in the week before Goodwood, being sick of the sweet sisterhood which sticks to the Plantation, and yet needing the golden pinions with which to fly to the Ring, I hunted up dear old Phyllis Waring, who has made it up with Eustace, and is living in Knightsbridge in a delightful flat whose back windows overlook the Park, and begged her to get a _planchette_ between us. Neither she nor I had the faintest notion where such things were sold, but after much searching, Phyllis found one in a small _bric-à-brac_ shop in that queer neighbourhood which lies between the Royalty and Palace theatres, where Madonna-like ladies, attired chiefly in white tarlatan chemisettes, peep out of upper windows, and where black bearded men loll about the doorways of little pink and gold restaurants as though perpetually waiting for something to happen. Did not the Reverend Somebody, of the Church and Stage Guild, once have a chapel here in which the choristers appeared in tights? I fancy so.
Anyhow, Phyllis no sooner got it home than she summoned me to inspect it--a small wooden disc, dear, resembling nothing so much as an artist's palette. For an alleged novelty, it struck me as being rather soiled and dusty, but Phyllis assured me that we had the veritable thing; that the ancients knew it well, the two best remembered apothegms of Terence being "You can always make a market with a bear _planchette_," and _Actum ne agas_, or, "Don't overdo it." Upon a small table placed in the centre of the room, Phyllis deposited the little board and switched off the electric light. For several minutes an awful and oppressive stillness reigned, broken only by a faint, half-stifled feminine voice exclaiming, "You _will_ marry me, won't you?" which Phyllis said came from the Park at the back, and was no part of the séance whatever. Slowly, very slowly, the moments dragged along; then presently there came a slight sound as of a penholder tapping on a pill box, and Phyllis said, hoarsely and in sepulchral tones:
"The spirit of Madame Rachel asks the loan of an ear. She might as well bowl her hoop without wasting our time, I think; what with electric rollers and frown plasters we've got her ticketed as a mummy?"
I nodded assent, and many more moments of silence elapsed, followed by a grating noise as of the run down of a musical box.
"According to the old woman at the shop," said Phyllis, "the spirits notify that it's up to us to tilt back to them."
"Do they take this for a jackpot?" I asked, quite inoffensively.
"Never mind what they take it for," snapped Phyllis, "let us get them to give us an option in something on the Stock Exchange that is going to go a bit higher."
"Oh, fiddles to _that_!" said I, having no more desire to know anything of the kind than How-to-tell-the-gas-meter, illustrated by diagrams. "Rather get them to slip us the winner of the Steward's Cup?"
Sullenly, Phyllis amended her pleadings and submitted my question. In about five minutes, during which period the low plumbean purring of a marking-pencil was distinctly audible, there came the click which denotes the termination of a message, and Phyllis, snatching up the prize, carried it out into the light. Bristling with joyous anticipation, I followed, but only in time to hear her swear and see her smash the wooden thing across her knee and pitch it out of the window on to the moonlight prowlers in the Park.
"You were quite right about that dust, Vi," she said, sourly. "I have been lumbered on to a fake that was timed to strike seventeen years ago. The thing napped 'Crafton, win and shop!'"
Did I tell you, I wonder, in my last how those awful people, the Invernairne's, had fallen out again? Everyone is saying how worn and rundown she is beginning to look, and how much better it would be if only she could go away for a time. I don't mean to one of those dreadful places where seemingly intelligent old gentlemen caterwaul and hide themselves in mignonette beds, and perfectly blameless old ladies disrobe suddenly at the dinner-table and weep copiously into the soup tureen, because they are not as pure and unsullied as new milk-cans, but to some nerve-restoring retreat where she could recuperate without having strangers stare holes in her. Poor Maisie! when she married the middle-aged Invernairne she was quite one of the wits of the smart set, and, if not exactly a belle of letters herself, she had received many and many a bushel from the beaux of literature, principally respecting appointments. Never an ardent advocate of the tied-house system, her cultured soul and innate good taste had rebelled against the constant and vulgar propinquity of matrimony, which she had endeavoured to vary by bolting on seven different occasions with men who were all that could be desired, socially. Her prosaic husband had followed her up on each occasion, however, and, begging her to give marriage a fair and dispassionate trial, had brought her back again and again, until her once pellucid spirit became crushed and broken, and she was no more fun to talk to than a Trappist.
Quite lately she imported from Lausanne a tall, dark Swiss maid who had repented of some early rashness, and vowed that her future life should be one unending struggle against the promptings of nature. Gowned demurely in some simple clinging material which, as the _Family Herald_ says, accentuated rather than hid her graceful outline, Fanchon flitted lightly and swiftly up and down the Invernairne staircases, save when the Earl detained her on a landing to tell her how nicely her new bodice fitted her.
One fine morning at breakfast, the Earl remarked that as his physicians and also his bankers had ordered him to visit a lumber camp in Norway, he feared that he might not be back until the following day, and he felt it was an excellent opportunity, he said, for Maisie to go to bed at the same hour as the canaries, and have a real good rest. Then he called loudly to his man not to forget to pack his snowshoes, his caribou gun, plenty of ground bait for the trout, and disinfectants for the riper ryper, and took his departure. That selfsame night, in about the middle watch, poor Maisie, sleeping lightly and nervously, fancied that she heard the stairs creak in a guilty way, and tremblingly got up. Slipping into a tight-fitting lace dressing-gown with three deep flounces shooting boldly from below the knees, she crept out upon the stairs in time to see a familiar form, plainly silhouetted in the moonlight, just one flight above her, and still climbing. Invernairne had clandestinely returned!
Though Maisie entertained no Victorian views regarding the fidelity of husbands, and even knew that in clubland several men who had lately allowed their hearts to be true to their Polls, had been expelled on the ground that their conduct was unbecoming gentlemen, the situation seemed so promising of advantage to herself that she instinctively followed the figure, keeping close to the wall, where stairs are quietest. Precisely at the point anticipated, the spectral Invernairne crossed a landing and laid his hand softly upon the knob of the long suspected door. As the handle slowly turned and the door, opening inwards, suffered a strong shaft of light from a cheerful, crackling fire to cleave the darkness--Maisie, poor, impulsive fool, shouted imperiously, "STOP!"
Invernairne, with man's inborn craft, stopped instantly, and accurately grasping the situation, acted without a moment's pause. Stopping dead upon the threshold of the girl's room, he shouted into it angrily:
"How _dare_ you burn my coals in this way, you abandoned hussy? Douse that fire with your water-jug immediately, and prepare yourself for a bitter reckoning to-morrow!"
Then, turning back towards the stairs, he gasped the old Criterion gag, "My wife!"
"And pray what brings you here to-night?" Maisie asked, by this time realising how completely she had sacrificed the position to her own impetuosity.
"Economy, my love, sheer economy," replied the ready liar. "Found, when I got to Hull, that the Wilsons owned the boats and the fare was seven pounds. Far better spend the seven pounds on dear Maisie, thought I, and write to the Wilsons to send me a complimentary pass--perpetual free pass, in fact--besides, the Wilsons would never speak to me again if they ever heard of such a thing as my paying to travel by their line--preposterous! Back then I came--worn, weary, jaded, but self-satisfied--only to behold, on approaching the beloved goal, the unmistakable reflection in the clouds of a huge fire somewhere in my own dwelling. What great good fortune that I had turned back! How Providence provides! I adopted my old trapper tactics--stalking stealthily--from crest to crest--birchbark and woodcraft--aha! And blest if that Swiss hoyden of yours hadn't got a fire half way up her chimney, madam, and Cockerell's charging me thirty-five shillings a ton! Out of this house she goes to-morrow morning, mark that!"
"May the Lord have mercy on your miserable soul!" was all that Lady Invernairne could say as, trembling with suppressed agitation, she motioned him to the spare room and, a moment later, locked him in. And now the very natural question is What, oh What, will the Harvest be?
I really cannot conclude without thanking you for the hearty laugh you gave me by your humorous inquiry about my "going to the Lord Mayor's Show" next Wednesday. You have evidently not forgotten, dear soul, that the feeblest manifestation of the undying spirit of Thackeray's Jenkins never fails to move me to laughter; but really I prefer to leave to you and your sort the fragrance of the asphalte and the watermen's garments, also the fat and greasy citizens in furs and chains. Fortunately, like the pigs in France which have, since Villon dreamt he was a swine rooting in the streets of Paris, had to keep outside the fortifications, these dear old civic creatures are, like the pigs, only brought into these regions to be bled; and I will wager a fiver that when the worthy alderman who assisted Féo at her flower stall at the last bazaar is taken round to Dover Street to-morrow, he will bow to my opinion that she has not spent the last three weeks getting pinned up in fitting-rooms for nothing!
Thine VIOLA.
EPISTLE VII
THE LADIES' RAG, _December_ 3_rd._
DEAREST PATRICIA,--
All day long there has been ringing in my ears the immortal observation of the extremely fastidious and highly cultured damsel who remarked, you may remember, as she finished her first riding-lesson, "M'yes, the sensation is agreeable enough, but the motion is highly ridiculous," for my morning mail is mainly of those who are hunting the fox. Housed in the Honourable Winnie Brandon's admirable hunting box--the adjective is justified by her many excellent domestic rules, one of which, for instance, is to have a loud gong sounded in the hall at ten minutes to six each morning, so that when the servants bring up the cups of tea at six precisely, they may find the guests all in their proper rooms and sound asleep--at Melton, are some of the smartest people that ever publicly strained at the most insignificant gnats and privately swallowed the most enormous camels. Not the least noteworthy among her guests is Lady Sheila Crampton, who since she got to learn the truth about her husband's audacious acquaintance with the Honourable Win, has assiduously made an intimate friend of her, though whether with a view to cut out in her own spouse's affections the beautiful Diana, or to effect an economy by the cheaper and easier method of watching one person instead of paying detectives to keep an unflagging look-out on two, has not yet been decided in eggshell china circles. Winnie is, to say the least, dreadfully "raw" over the business, though less so, in another sense, than Sheila, who, being unaccustomed to so much occupancy of the saddle, metaphorically moans in mauve ink for a recipe for restoring lost leather. If hot and then cold water, and tincture of myrrh, with a final top-dressing of zinc ointment, will not toughen her cuticle like a sjambok, then has Bermondsey lost her bearings and the fabled jolly tanner his art; but what of the lovers meanwhile? Finding it no longer necessary to outdistance the poor, unpractised lady and her equally bothered horse--"a-blowin' like a pair o' June brides," as the first said to the second whip--they may flirt along side by side to the great amusement of the field and the making of much new history.
And Melton has not yet satisfied itself as to what it was that caused the Honourable Winnie to miss her hunting for the first five weeks of last season, though, with truly ingrowing nerve, it has sought for a whole year to pry open the inscrutable. All it knows is that it saw on one Autumn evening of twelve months ago, a groom with a petrified countenance ride out from the stables of Brandon Towers and through the town, to return, more than an hour later, with the eccentric Dr Moxon from Swanzey Constable.
Though a bunch of five local practitioners, striving to fill out a six-day week, mutely resented the intrusion, old Dr Moxon continued to ride into Melton every afternoon thereafter on the fifteen-year-old pony which was almost beyond its office. With the second week he started sporting a white vest, and a neighbouring parson with elderly daughters thought seriously of asking him to dinner; but none were quite bold enough to risk a throw-down, and the mystery of Brandon Towers remained unsolved. Five weeks later, as the philosophic old doctor was making a hearty breakfast off a cold grouse which was dead enough to call for disinfectants, a servant announced Lord Willoughby de Sambre, and was in fact followed into the little dining-room by that breezy nobleman.
"Beg a thousand pardons for disturbin' you with the nosebag on, sir," said the peer, whose lachrymal glands indicated early transactions with brandy and soda, "but I've called to thank you very heartily for all you have done for Lady Brandon, and to ask you to accept this little cheque. Above all, I don't want it known what's been the matter with her; do you mind recording it in your books as small-pox? Thanks, awfully! There's one other little matter, sir. Lady Brandon--to whom I'm, ahem, closely related--tells me your old pony is none too efficient. Now, I'm putting on the rail to you a little red Daimler which will buzz you round and keep you more in touch with events. No--no thanks, you'll get it to-morrow; don't forget--smallpox!"
And Lord de Sambre vanished. Next day, a glistening little spark-waggon, as red as sealing-wax, arrived, and old Dr Moxon there and then christened it, lest he might forget his benefactor's last request, "VARIOLA," and wheeled it into his stable.
As he was in the act of recrossing his garden in the direction of his surgery, the elderly medico beheld a tall, military man with a frozen smile alight from the station fly and advance towards him, hat in hand.
"Ah, my dear Doctor Moxon," he cried, "this is lavender indeed for me! Pray accept this small cheque, miserably insufficient as it is, for all your goodness towards Lady Brandon, my--er, sister-in-law. It's like violating every principle of gratitude from A to Z to ask a further favour of you, but _do_ you mind bein' mum--absolutely G.H.!--as to the exact nature of Lady B.'s indisposition? Could you refer to it as--say bile or green cussedness of some sort? She is awfully sick, by the way, at your having to cover the Cosmos on a perambulating organism too far gone to stand doping, and I'm sending you--oh, fie, fie, I shall take no denials!--a little Panhard that'll skim round the corners like the pictures on the screen. Not a word, not a word; it'll be here to-morrow; but remember--headachy sickness an' all that caper!"
Long after the stranger had taken his departure, the good old doctor in his temporary perplexity scratched the shining pate which offended Nature had tonsured at 69 to resent the overwearing of the halo in all weathers, and gazed at the cheque which still lay where it had fallen on the floor. He could salve his conscience, he reflected, by destroying the superfluous draft; but with the entrancing little green tonneau which a railway rustic delivered at the door next morning, it was entirely different. So winsome was the diminutive car, with its fluted varnished bonnet, its bravely burnished lamps, and its intricate and interesting steel gear, that no soul only lately converted to automobilism could possibly have returned it--even had not the princely donor countered even that feasibility by scrupulously concealing his identity. So Doctor Moxon accepted the situation with the sigh of a philosopher, and, naming the green car "CHLOROSIS" as if by a happy inspiration, he strolled out into the quiet churchyard to try and forget all about the beautiful Lady Brandon among the quaint obituary puffs of the old tombstones.
Returning, much relieved, he was surprised to find a genial elderly gentleman with a ripston-pippin face and silk-lined clothes, sitting demurely in the cottage surgery and earnestly endeavouring to become deeply interested in Burckhardt's _Atlas of Electric Cystoscopy_.
"Doctor Moxon, I presume?" said this bland person, laying Burckhardt aside as the old physician entered; and, receiving an affirmative nod, continued: "Of course, my dear sir, you haven't the faintest notion as to who I may be, but it will suffice for me to tell you that I was--er, eh--yes, yes, Lady Brandon's former ward in Chancery--eh, no--tut, tut, how very foolish!--I mean, of course, that she was _mine_--egad, bless her heart, yes!--and--er, in that case, you will readily understand how deeply grateful I must feel towards the Galenian genius to whom she probably owes life itself to-day. Meantime, my dear Doctor Moxon, there are one or two reasons--purely private and family reasons--why the world at large should remain in ignorance of the precise nature of Lady Brandon's indisposition, and I feel sure that you will respect them--aye, that you will even waive personal veracity as well as professional etiquette to oblige a very delightful and charming woman, and--er, eh--be good enough to inform the curious that she has simply been suffering with a very aggravated attack of--er, toothache!"
"Really, sir----"
"Pray don't interrupt me, doctor!" cried the pippin, warming with enthusiasm; "but it occurred to dear Lady Brandon in all her dental agony--ha-ha, ho-ho!--that your slight, but not inconsiderable, delay in responding to her summons was solely attributable to the poverty of your horseflesh. Now, my dear sir, you mustn't be offended at what I am about to say, but what were formerly luxuries for the few are now necessities for the many, and what a country doctor surely needs is a swift and reliable motor-car. It fortunately happens----"
"Inexplicable! Do you know, sir----"
"Pray allow me to finish--more especially since dear Lady Brandon seems to have so accurately divined your necessities. It fortunately happens that, being seldom out of town, I have recently given up my 12 h.p. De Dion world-beater and gone in for a landaulette; but her ladyship no sooner mentioned your old pony than I sent the De Dion to Barker's, who have refitted it with a delightful custard-coloured brougham body precisely in Lord Lonsdale's style, and therefore just the very thing to carry you about a hunting country. It should be here this very evening, and if you will do me the honour to accept----Good gracious, the poor gentleman is overcome! Clearly the tension of the past five weeks has been too much for him. Hi, there--without; come to your master's assistance, somebody! Here, you, my good woman, apply the usual restoratives and--and I will see him at some other time!"
Like the gentle, medicinal soul that she was, possessing an infallible cupboard-remedy for everything between moths and malaria, the doctor's housekeeper got the old boy round again by the evening and sent him to the "Lamb" to stand round at bottle pool as fit as hands could get him, but he wandered up to the station instead and got there just in time to see the yellow De Dion being unloaded from a trolley, under the personal supervision of the husky old stationmaster who had not taken a day off duty in thirty-four years. Privileged by long acquaintance, this venerable youth got off one or two satirical cracks about cert'in people a-goin' ahead lately, and it allus was them as had it as pleaded poverty the loudest--neither of which vulgar personalities would have made the least impression on the amiable healer had not the man in blue and braid wound up with, "An' only this afternoon, when the 4.57 stopped here, His Grace the Duke o' Croxton himself calls me to the carriage-door to ask me whether you calls your house 'Oakham Lodge' or 'Oakham Villa,' as he wants to write to yer to go and see him!"
The mere idea that a live Duke was pining for an audience with him caused Austin Moxon to stop growing for several minutes. He had no reason whatever to suspect that the Duke was even aware of his presence on earth, and he thought it equally unlikely that his Grace had, after a quarter of a century, discovered who it was that, for sheer sports sake had kept chi-iking "Lou-der!" during the ducal effort at the local political meeting in '79. Musing on these things and the gratifying fact that the stationmaster was too hopelessly a fool to be guilty of a joke on any subject, Austin Moxon sought counsel in the excellent old brown brandy at the "Lamb"; though with grateful memories of his pippin-faced visitor and his agitated entreaties, he went not to bed until he had seen the yellow "toothache" car housed safely in his stables and had bestowed upon it the fitting cognomen "ODONTALGIA."
* * * * * * *
"I ask your Grace to pardon my unpunctuality," stammered the overwhelmed doctor, on being shown, two days later, into the cream and gold library at Croxton Castle at exactly three minutes after the hour named in the Duke's summons, "but a slight accident detained me on the way. I earnestly hope that my lateness has caused no inconvenience?"
"It has so seriously disturbed my arrangements, not to mention my peace of mind," replied the Duke, pleasantly, "that I had not yet noticed it. But I hope that it was but a slight accident, doctor?"
"So colourless and conventional an affair, your Grace," Doctor Moxon hastened to say, "that--er--that it is difficult, if not impossible, for me to imagine its parallel, I assure you."
"Dear me!" exclaimed the Duke, impressed by this comprehensive disavowal, "then pray what may it have been?"
"My horse put his foot into a rabbit-hole, fell, broke his neck, and died upon the spot, sir," blurted the doctor.
No sooner did he hear his own words than Dr Moxon realised the absurdity, the incongruity of his previous denial; but he was wholly unprepared for the remarkable effect which they produced upon the Duke. That illustrious person twisted his body so suddenly in his chair that his pince-nez fell to the floor, and, staring excitedly at the doctor with an utterly incomprehensible expression of delight tempered by solicitude, he cried:
"Splendid! Couldn't have been better! What a singularly opportune and fortunate circumstance!"
This was a poser! What could the Duke mean? Did he design to chide nonsensical servility by an assumption of supreme irony, or had his mental balance really been upset by such a juxtaposition of dissimilars coming from a presumably responsible medical man?