Volume One – Chapter Seven.
Eccentric Guests
“That’s right – I adore punctuality,” said Dr Stonor, as John Huish was ushered into the drawing-room of Laurel Hall. For, having mastered the repugnance which had made him feel disposed to send a message to put off his visit, he had chartered a hansom, and run up to the doctor’s house.
There was nothing new about it externally, for it was one of those old red-brick buildings that our ancestors knew so well how to contrive, and which they always surrounded with iron railings with great gates about double their height. This was evidently for protection; but why the gates were made so high and the railings so low has never been yet found out.
So John Huish rang and was admitted, starting slightly on finding himself face to face with Daniel; but as that individual acted as if they had never met before, and asked him his name, the visitor felt more composed, and entered, and was announced.
“My sister, Miss Stonor,” said the doctor. “Selina, my dear, this is one of my oldest patients. I prescribed for him for infantile colic when he was a month old, and lanced his gums at six.”
John Huish found himself face to face with a thin, prim little lady in tightly-fitting black silk with white collar and cuffs. She was rather pale, had perfectly grey hair in smooth bands, and looked mild and wistful, but she saluted their guest with a quiet smile, and then he was led off to be introduced to the others present.
“This is Captain Lawdor, Mr Rawlinson, Mr Roberts,” continued the doctor. “My old friend John Huish.” And he introduced Huish in turn to a rather bluff-looking, florid man with grey whiskers; a heavy, stern and stubborn looking man with iron-grey hair and a closely-trimmed beard; and a slight, delicate man with rather a sad expression, which, however, lit up with a genial smile.
John Huish was very soon engaged with Captain Lawdor on the question of yachting, and found his new acquaintance somewhat of an enthusiast upon the build and rig of sea-going boats, his preference being for the yawl. But, all the same, he found time to exchange a few words with the thin, pensive-looking Mr Roberts, who chatted about the politics of the hour, and with Mr Rawlinson, whose speech quite carried out the stubborn appearance of his knotty forehead and short iron-grey hair. He was very indignant about a railway accident mentioned in the daily paper, and gave it as his opinion that there would be no safety until heavy penalties were inflicted upon the companies, or else until the lines were in the hands of the Government.
Then Daniel came in and announced dinner, and Mr Roberts taking down Miss Stonor, Huish found himself with the doctor.
“Patients not well enough to show up, doctor?” he said quietly, as they went towards the dining-room.
“Eh?”
“I said, ‘Patients not well enough to show up’?”
“Hist! Don’t mention them,” said the doctor; and Huish gave a sigh of relief as he thought how much better the dinner would pass off without such company.
A minute later and they were seated at table, John Huish on the doctor’s right, and the captain on his right again. The stubborn, heavy man was upon Miss Stonor’s right, and the pensive-looking man facing Huish. Grace was said, the cover of the soup-tureen was lifted with a flourish by Daniel, and Miss Stonor ladled out the clear brown julienne, half hidden herself behind the tureen, till all were helped but Mr Rawlinson and the doctor.
Mr Rawlinson passed his hands through his iron-grey hair, and smiled as he watched the ladle go down into the steaming fluid and come up again to be emptied into the plate held by Daniel.
“And so, Rawlinson, you would heavily fine the companies?” said the doctor.
“Indeed I would,” was the reply. “Would you mind, Miss Stonor,” he continued insinuatingly, “half a ladleful more? Delicious soup. Thanks.”
Miss Stonor smiled, and the soup was placed before him, when, to the amazement of Huish, Mr Rawlinson sent his chair back with a quick motion, deftly-lifted the soup-plate on to the Turkey carpet, and, as if it were a footpan, composedly placed the toes of his patent-leather shoes therein.
Miss Stonor did not move a muscle – she might have been a disciple of Daniel; while the doctor said quietly: “Head hot, Rawlinson?”
“Yes, very,” was the reply, as the eccentric guest smiled and nodded.
“I’d go and lie down for an hour,” said the doctor gently.
“Would you – would you?” said Mr Rawlinson, smiling pleasantly. “Well, I will.”
“Come and join us presently if you feel better,” said the doctor.
“Certainly I will,” said Mr Rawlinson. “Miss Stonor, you’ll excuse me?”
Miss Stonor bowed, and he turned upon Daniel.
“A napkin, Daniel,” he said rather severely. “I cannot leave the room with my shoes in this state.”
He lifted his feet from the soup-plate as he spoke, and sat with his legs at right angles to his body, while in the most matter-of-fact way Daniel stooped down, wiped the patent-leather shoes, and, sticking his thumbs into his armholes, Mr Rawlinson calmly left the room.
“Suppose you ease off a little to the left, Roberts,” said the doctor, as the soup-plate was removed. “Rawlinson will not be back to dinner.”
“No,” said the captain, smiling. “Poor fellow!” he continued, turning to Huish; “you would not have thought he was a little wrong, I suppose?”
“Indeed I should not,” said Huish eagerly.
“No,” said the captain. “He looks as sane as I am; but he breaks out now and then, poor fellow!”
Just then Daniel was helping the guests to sherry, and Huish noticed that the captain’s glass was passed.
It seemed strange, but the conversation took off his attention, and he thought no more of it till Daniel set down the decanter, when, picking up the little round roll that lay by his napkin, the captain threw it with so good an aim that he hit the solid servitor a smart crack on the back of the head.
“Now, Captain Lawdor,” said Miss Stonor, in tones of bland reproof, “have I not told you that if you will persist in doing that you must not dine with us?”
“Hush! hush!” he whispered apologetically. “Don’t scold me before the company. Poor fellow! I don’t like to see a new patient upset. That fellow always passes me with the sherry.”
John Huish’s countenance was so ludicrous at being taken for a new patient that the doctor exchanged glances with his sister, and it was all they could do to keep from bursting into a hearty fit of laughter. The doctor, however, suppressed his, and said quietly:
“My sister is quite right, Lawdor, and you must get rid of that habit.”
The captain drew out his pocket-handkerchief, shed tears, wiped his eyes, and ended by taking out a half-crown, which he slipped into Daniel’s hand as he removed his empty plate.
John Huish felt a little disturbed as he saw the real state of affairs, but he tried to appear at his ease, and plunged into conversation with Miss Stonor, not, however, before he had directed an uneasy glance or two at his quiet, pensive companion across the table, who, however, was carrying on a discussion with the doctor.
Huish could not help thinking of the knives as the captain turned to him with a pleasant smile lighting up his ruddy face, from which all trace of sorrow had now passed.
“That’s a nasty trick,” he said; “but I never knew a man without some bad habit or another. I could hit him, though, with a biscuit at fifty paces.”
“Indeed,” said Huish.
“Yes, that I could. If I’ve hit Daniel once, I’ve done it a hundred times. But we were talking about yachting. Now, I’ve got a plan for a ship which I have submitted to the Admiralty.”
“Oh,” said Huish to himself, “here, then, is the sore place.” Then aloud, “Indeed!”
“Yes; a splendid idea. But, by the way, you know how fond we sailors are of talking about pitching a biscuit?”
“To be sure,” said Huish.
“Excuse me a few moments. A sailor always eats when he has a chance. May be called on deck at any moment. Would you oblige me?” said the captain suddenly to Huish.
“I beg your pardon, certainly,” said Huish; and, partly from habit, he placed his glass in his eye and brought it to bear on the speaker.
“This is rather a good story – eh, doctor?”
“Yes. Go on, Captain Lawdor.”
“Well, you see, I had been communicating with the Admiralty for six years about my invention when – would you oblige me by taking that glass out of your eye?” said the captain, breaking off short in his narrative. “It irritates me, and makes me feel as if I must throw something at it.”
John Huish’s eyeglass dropped inside his vest, while, in spite of all his efforts to master his emotions, he glanced uneasily at the door.
“But you would not do anything so rude, Lawdor,” said the doctor gravely, as he fixed his eye upon the captain.
“Thank you, doctor. No; of course I would not. I should be extremely sorry to insult a patient of yours.”
Huish began to feel for his glass, but remembered himself, and listened eagerly to the captain, while Mr Roberts seemed to have sunk into a pensive, thoughtful state, paying no heed to what was going on at the table.
“If I had danced attendance in Whitehall once,” said Captain Lawdor, “I had hung about that entrance a thousand times, and it was fill up forms, make minutes, present petitions to my Lords, address this department and come back to that, till it nearly drove me – till,” he added hastily, “I was very wroth with them, and one day – let me see, I think I told you,” he continued, rolling up a piece of new bread into a marble, “that I was an excellent shot with a biscuit?” and he stared hard at Huish.
“Yes, you did,” said Huish, smiling.
“Don’t laugh, sir,” exclaimed the captain. “This is not a ribald jest.”
“Breakers ahead, captain,” said the doctor, holding his glass to be refilled.
“To be sure, of course, doctor. Wear ship – you are listening, sir?”
“With the greatest attention,” replied Huish, who was becoming reconciled to his position.
“Well, sir, one day I went with my pockets filled with the roundest, smallest, and hardest ships’ biscuits I could procure, and – you are not attending, Roberts,” he exclaimed, filliping the bread marble at John Huish’s vis-à-vis, who bowed and smiled.
“Well, sir, as I told you, I went loaded with the biscuits, and marched straight into a board room, or a committee room, or something of the kind, and there I stormed them for quite ten minutes before they got me out. Ha, ha, ha! I emptied my pockets first, and the way I rattled the biscuits on one bald-headed fellow’s pate was something to remember. I did not miss him once, Mr Huish,” he said, turning sharply round.
“Indeed?” he said, smiling.
“In – deed, in – deed,” said the captain. “It was such a head! He was one of those youngish men whose heads are so aggravatingly white and smooth and shiny that they do not look bald, but perfectly naked. He was a Junior Lord of the Admiralty, and I declare to you, sir, that his head was perfectly indecent till I coloured it a little with the biscuits.”
“Yes, an amusing story,” said the doctor, as the dinner went on. “Come, Roberts, you are very quiet. Have a glass of that dry champagne?”
“And once again I see that brow,” said Mr Roberts in a low, soft, sweet voice: “no bridal wreath is there, a widow’s sombre cap conceals – thank you, doctor,” he continued, sighing as he altered the position of the glass.
The dinner passed off without any further incident, save that Mr Rawlinson returned looking very quiet and calm, and in time for the second course, of which he partook heartily, rising after the dessert to open the door for Miss Stonor to leave the room, and all in the most natural manner.
“Suppose we go into my room a bit now,” said the doctor. “We can have a cigar there;” and Daniel entering at that moment with coffee, it was taken into the doctor’s sanctum, the patients following the tray, the doctor hanging back with his principal guest.
“Well, my dear John, do you think you are going mad now?”
“No,” was the quick reply.
“Of course not. You see now what even a mild form of mania is.”
“I do,” was the reply. “But look here, doctor,” said Huish earnestly; “this feeling has troubled me terribly just lately.”
“And why?” said the doctor sharply, for Huish hesitated.
“Well, the fact is, doctor, it is possible that I may marry some day, and I felt – ”
“Yes, of course, I know,” said the doctor; “you felt, and quite rightly, that it would be a crime to marry some sweet young girl if you had the seeds of insanity waiting to develop themselves in your brain.”
“Yes, doctor, that was it.”
“My dear John Huish, you are a bit of a favourite of mine, and I like you much.”
“Thank you, doctor, I – ”
“I made the acquaintance of your father and mother in a peculiar manner, and they have always trusted me since.”
“Yes; I have heard something of it from it my father, but – ”
“Just hold your tongue and listen to me, sir. You have, I am sure, chosen some sweet, gentle, good girl; nothing else would suit you. So all I have to say is this: your brain is as right as that of any man living. Marry her, and the sooner the better. I like these young marriages, and hang all those musty old fogies who preach about improvidence and so many hundreds a year! Marry early, while you and the woman you love are in the first flush of your youth and vigour. It’s nature – it’s holy – and the good God smiles upon it. Damn it all, sir! it makes me savage to see a wretched, battered old fellow being chosen by a scheming mother of the present day as a husband for her child. Money and title will not compensate for youth. It’s a wrong system, John Huish, a wrong system. I’m a doctor, and I ought to know. Marry, then, my dear boy, as soon as you like, and God bless you!”
“Thank you, doctor, thank you,” said Huish, smiling. “But I say, doctor, if it is not impertinence, why didn’t you marry young?”
“Because I was a fool. I wanted to make money and a name in my profession, and did not calculate what would be the cost. They cost me thirty years, John Huish, and now I am an old fogey, content to try and do some good among my poor patients. But come away; they will think me rude. Eh, going now? Well, I will not say stop, as you have so far to go back. One more word: think your head’s screwed on right now?”
“Yes, doctor.”
“So do I. If it ever goes wrong, come to me, and I’ll turn it back.”
But John Huish did not feel quite satisfied, all the same.
Volume One – Chapter Eight.
In Borrowed Plumes
There was a good deal of excitement in the Hampton Court dovecote, and a general touching up of plumage, for Lady Littletown, who resided at Hampton, so as to be near her dear old friend Lady Anna Maria Morton, who had rooms up a narrow dingy stone staircase in the corner of a cloistered court, in the private apartments at the Palace, had sent out cards for her dinner-party and “at home.”
Lady Littletown was rich, and her position in the society of the neighbourhood was that of queen. A widow for many years, she was always thinking of marriage. Not for herself. She had been through the fire, and found it hot. In fact, she bore her mental scars to her elderly age, for it was a well-known fact that the late Viscount Littletown was the extreme opposite of an angel. He had possessed a temper which grew and blossomed in wild luxuriance, and the probabilities are that he inoculated her ladyship with this peculiarity of spirit, for more than one of her domestics had been known to have declared that they would not live with the “old devil” any longer.
This was very wicked, and the domestic young ladies who had made use of such expressions were much to be censured. But certain it was that the Viscountess was far from perfect, and that she was an inveterate match-maker.
Probably she was of opinion that it would be a pleasant little piece of revenge on human nature to inveigle as many of her sex as possible on to the stormy sea of matrimony. At all events, a good many fashionable marriages resulted from plans laid by her ladyship and her female friends.
Lady Littletown’s friends were many, and included Lady Millet, whom she always addressed as “my dear,” in spite of a pique which had arisen consequent upon the latter marrying her eldest daughter to that wealthy parvenu, Mr Frank Morrison.
Now, according to Lady Littletown’s code, this was not correct. Dear friends as they had been, Lady Millet should have obtained her help, seeing that marriages were her métier; but she had obstinately gone her own way, invited her to the wedding, and latterly had actually shown that she was scheming something about two gentlemen whom Lady Littletown had marked down for her own – to wit, Lord Henry Moorpark and Mr Elbraham, the great financier.
“But, poor thing! she did not know how to manage Elbraham,” said Lady Littletown to herself; “and as for dear Lord Henry, not if I know it, dearest I think I can manage that, and you may marry pink-and-white wax-doll Gertrude to someone else.”
So her ladyship issued her cards most discriminatingly and well, in her determination to let no rival in her circle interfere with her rights as high-priestess of Hymen to her dearest friends.
Lady Littletown’s invitations on this occasion had included the Honourable Misses Dymcox and their nieces Clotilde and Marie Riversley; and, like Cinderella of the story, Ruth had rather a hard time with her cousins. For, to the astonishment of the latter, a fashionable dressmaker had been down expressly from London, and their excitement over the handsome robes that had arrived knew no bounds.
Their aunts had been a long time in making a move, and divers had been the consultations with Viscountess Littletown and Lady Anna Maria Morton. When at last that step was taken, it was with firmness and judgment combined.
Poor Ruth was divided between longings to go to the dinner-party and admiration of her cousins’ appearance, which, when they stood at last dressed, an hour before the time, parading the shabby bedroom and sweeping the skimpy pieces of Kidderminster carpet here and there with their stiff trains, was dazzling.
Certainly a handsomer pair of women rarely graced a party, and the Honourable Misses Dymcox, after a careful inspection through their square florid gold-edged eyeglasses, uttered sighs of satisfaction.
For the modiste had done her duty well. The dresses were in the latest style, they fitted to perfection, and the girls’ youth and the luxuriance of their hair quite made up for the want of jewellery to enhance their charms.
The Honourable Misses Dymcox were almost as excited as their nieces, for they, too, managed to get dressed an hour before time in their lavender silk straight-up-and-down garments, to which were tacked a few old pieces of very yellow lace, supposed to be an heirloom, but certainly very unattractive, whatever it may have been when young.
A very weak cup of tea had been taken, the elder ladies being in fear and trembling all the while.
“No, no, children, wait!” exclaimed Miss Philippa. “Joseph, put down the cups, and tell Markes to bring here two large pocket-handkerchiefs.”
In due time Markes appeared.
“Now, children,” said Miss Philippa, “stand up. Markes, have the goodness to tie a handkerchief by two of the corners just under the young ladies’ chins. It would be ruin to those dresses if they spilt any of their tea.”
“If you please, aunt, I don’t want any tea,” said Clotilde.
“Neither do I, aunt,” said Marie.
“Hush, children! You must take your tea. It is imperative that you should enter Lady Littletown’s drawing-room calm, self-possessed, and without any sign of being flushed. Markes, tie on those handkerchiefs.”
A red spot burned in the girls’ cheeks as they submitted to the childish indignity, and when they were duly provided with their bibs they were allowed to drink their thin, washy, half-cold tea, exchanging glances the while, for their emancipation had not yet arrived.
“Ruth, ring the bell,” said Miss Philippa, as soon as the tea was finished, and the handkerchiefs, which had been rising and falling in a troubled fashion, had been removed.
“Take away these teacups, Joseph,” said Miss Philippa. “Has the carriage arrived?”
“No, mum. It wants more than half an hour to the time. Buddy hasn’t been in yet.”
“Hush! Silence!” cried Miss Philippa harshly; “and dear me, Joseph, there is a large place on the back of your head not powdered.”
Joseph was heard to mutter something, and then he went forth in his best livery of pale blue with yellow facings and black knee-breeches, to finish his toilet for the night.
“Oh, here you are, then,” exclaimed Joseph, upon reaching his pantry, a peculiarly close, stuffy little room, smelling very strongly of sink, and furnished with two cupboards, a bracket-flap, and what looked like a third detached cupboard, but which was really the turn-up bedstead on which Joseph slept.
“Yes, here I am, Joey,” said a husky-voiced little red-nosed man, with a very blotchy, pimply face, to wit Isaac Buddy, the sole proprietor of a roomy old-fashioned Clarence fly, which was drawn by a very small shambling horse.
This conveyance was Mr Isaac Buddy’s means of livelihood, for it was to let, as his cards said, “by the day, night, or job,” and the hiring of Mr Isaac Buddy’s fly meant not only, as a matter of course, the hire of the horse to draw it, but of Mr Isaac Buddy himself.
For, out of deference to the feelings and aristocratic ideas of certain of the ladies residing in the private apartments, Mr Buddy had become an actor, who played many parts, and though the fiction was perfectly well understood, nobody ever thought of smiling if they saw Mr Isaac Buddy in a hat with a tarnished gold band on Mondays as Lady Anna Maria Morton’s coachman, or in a hat with a silver band on Tuesday, as Miss Tees’, or on Wednesday in a very hard shiny glazed hat without any nap, as Mrs Mongloff’s, or on other days in costumes to suit.
The Clarence fly of course remained the same, but it was always disguised in a more sounding name, and became “the carriage.”
“There ain’t a drop o’ nothing about handy, is there, Joey?” said Mr Buddy, as the thin footman set the tray down upon the bracket-flap.
“No, that there ain’t,” said Joseph, “without you’d like the pot filled up and have a cup o’ tea.”
“G’orn with yer. Did you ever know me wash myself out with warm water? How’s the old gals?”
“Old style,” replied Joseph; “but I say, Buddy, just cast your eye round as they’re getting in: the young ladies have been done up to rights.”
“I wish someone would find the money to get my old fly done up to rights,” said Mr Buddy, who, apparently quite at home, was standing before a shaving-glass hung against the wall, persuading, with Joseph’s brush, a couple of very obstinate little whiskers to stand out straight forward in the direction their owner wished. “’Spose there’ll be a wedding, then, some day.”
“Well, I dunno,” said Joseph.
“Looks like it, if they’re having ’em fresh painted,” said Mr Buddy, who now touched up his very greasy grey hair, making it stick up in points, in unconscious imitation of that of a clown.
“Here, you’d better look sharp, old man,” said Joseph, “they’re all ready and waiting, and time’s getting on.”
“Which we ain’t, Joey, or we should be doing better than we are, eh?”
“Ah, we should,” said Joseph, making a powder-box squeak as he unscrewed the top; and then taking out the puff, he placed a tea-cloth over his shoulders, and gave his hair a few dabs. “Now then, old man. Have the tea-cloth on?”
“Ah, you may as well,” was the reply; and the cloth having been adjusted by Joseph, the little man stood blinking solemnly while his dingy hair was duly powdered and turned white.
“Why, you might stand a bit o’ wilet powder cump’ny nights, Joey,” said the flyman, solemnly removing a little white meal from amongst the ruddy pimples of his face with the corner of the cloth in regular use for wiping the tea and breakfast service.
“How am I to stand best vi’let powder out o’ what they allow?” replied Joseph. “Flour’s just as good, and don’t cost me nothing. Now then, look sharp.”
As he spoke Joseph pulled open a drawer, from which he drew a drab greatcoat, inside which the little man placed himself, for it was manifestly so much too large that he could hardly be said to have put it on. Then a blue hat-box was pushed off the top of one of the cupboards, out of which a rather ancient hat was extricated, and mounted by the flyman, whose head seemed to have become suddenly wonderfully small; for it was an imposing structure of beaver with very curly brims, apparently kept from coming uncurled by a rigging or series of stays of tarnished silver cord, which ran from the lining up to a Panjandrum-like round button at the top, also of tarnished silver; while a formidable-looking and very spiky black cockade rose something like a patent ventilator from one side.
“That’s about the ticket, ain’t it, Joey?” said the little man, shaking his head so as to get the big hat in a good state of balance, and buttoning himself to the chin.
“Yes, that will do, old man.”
“The ladies want to know if the carriage has come, Joseph,” said Markes, suddenly making her appearance.
“Which you may take your solemn oath it ain’t,” said Mr Buddy, “for not one inch will that there horse stir till I wakes him up.”
“Then do for goodness’ sake, man, look sharp and fetch it,” exclaimed Markes. “I’m sure it’s past the time!”
“Wants five minutes,” said Mr Buddy, nodding his head, and having to dart one hand up to save the hat, which came down over his nose, and would have continued its course to the floor. “I say, your old coachman must have had a head like a bull, to have worn that hat without stuffing. There, I’m off. Soon be back. I say, though,” he whispered, thrusting back his head, and this time holding on by the rigging of the hat, “if it comes to a wedding, the old gals ought to stand some new togs.”
Within a quarter of an hour Mr Isaac Buddy, who had entered the private apartments as flyman, and came out the Honourable Misses Dymcox’s coachman, was at the door with the transformed fly. The ladies were duly packed inside, with many tremors as to their dresses, and Joseph, also in a drab greatcoat and a fearful and wonderful hat – the twin-brother of that upon Mr Buddy’s head – mounted to the seat. Then the carriage jingled and jangled off – a dashing brougham and pair, with flashing lights and the windows down, rattling by them, making Buddy’s nervous nag shy to the near side, as if he meant to mount the side walk out of the way.
“Rie,” whispered Clotilde, with her ruddy lips touching her sister’s ear.
“Yes.”
“That funny little officer was inside.”
“Yes,” muttered Marie to herself, “and the tall one as well; and you know it. I wonder who they are?”