Chapter XVI

Bo, returning into the house, met Betsy Broom. Betsy had not yet recovered from her shock (remember that the morning was still very young), she had but that moment left the Professor’s presence. She gave another little shriek, and was prepared to do another Cinquevalli trick with the dustpan and broom, when Bo dominated her.

“Doan be a li’l fool!” said Bo, pulling her up. “What’s a-matter with ye? Scared?”

“Oh, ma’am! Oh, miss! I thought it was IM again. There! I’m that dazed. I thought ’is lordship was IM I did, when I found ’im telephoning. I’m not meself.”

Bo pounced on the strategic point.

“Which lordship?” she said.

“Lord ’Ambourne, miss. ’E were telephoning all about it” (for thus did Betsy earn the heavy bribe she had received to remain silent).

“Oh, he was, was he?” said Bo grimly.

She remembered Lord Hambourne’s notorious connection with _The Howl_, and how that other eminent peer and colleague, Lord Toronto, was his paymaster.

“Thank you, Betsy,” she said. She had given away her wallet in a fine gesture—as the newspapers have it; but she felt in the pocket of the little garden coat she was wearing, to shield her from the cold of that morning. She seemed to remember there was something there. And so there was. And she pulled out yet another crumpled ten-shilling note.

Betsy took it gratefully, and curtseyed.

“Oh, thank you, ma’am—miss, I mean!” she said. There entered into Betsy’s young life for the first and the last time an experience of that operation which politicians, share-shufflers, black-mailers, and other candidates for the House of Lords know in their own peculiar language as the “Double Cross.” She had had her palm greased by both sides. Alas! poor innocent child, she went away none the wiser! She made no use of it. With a little more opportunity she might have been in the Cabinet; for such accidents of special knowledge and special payment lead anywhere nowadays.

* * * * *

Remember, my sweet reader, that this book is written in 1927. What Bo did next never would have been done in 1917. And in 1907 it would have meant what they called in the horrible jargon of their day (still retained by Lord Hambourne) “social ostracism.” And in 1897 (but there I am back in my boyhood) it would have been, in the still more horrible jargon of _their_ day, “unthinkable.”

She went straight up to the passage on the first floor. She waited a moment, listening keenly—and hearing nothing—outside the patient’s room. She went on ten yards, and whispered through the keyhole of the room where John had just, after hours of struggle, begun to feel drowsy. She dared not knock.

“Dog-Man,” was the undertone, “come out.”

“What? What? What?” said John loudly, starting up.

“Hush!” she whispered again through the keyhole, “come out.”

He staggered out, with his fatigue full upon him, and it crossed Bo’s mind for a moment that he was, if possible, on such an occasion less of a god. A young beard had begun; his eyes were drooping; and the corners of his mouth showed strain. But she was loyal, and saw him as he was really, the divine Jacko, even through this disguise. She put her finger to her lip, as she had during the conspiracy of the day before, and led him tip-toe along the thick carpet to her own room in the other wing.

There she sat him down.

“Jacko,” she said, “listen to me. An’ get your piece word-perfect. I’m telling you. You see there’s going to be a break-up?”

“Oh, yes,” said John.

“We’ve won, haven’t we?”

“So far.... I wish, Bo, that I hadn’t....”

“Pack that away into your old kit-bag. As you say—so far. Now ye’ve got to hear the rest. Fat Matt’s gotten an ambulance from London. It’ll buzz up here at nine. Then there’ll be the great retreat, an’ the Thunder of the Captains, an’ the Shouting ... as it says in the Good Book. Then Aunt Hilda’ll be all alone, and jest wanderin’ around. That’s the time to play the card.”

“What card?” asked John.

“I’m telling you,” answered Bo. “Hambone’s ’phoned _The Howl_. The help told me all about it. She heard him. Told them over the wire. And they’ve had a picture-man down here snapping the place already. It’ll be all over London, Jacko. And what’s Aunt Hilda to do then?”

“Yes, but what am _I_ to do?” said John.

“What you’re to do, Bone-head, is to walk in and win. There’s no selling the place for her now. And if she’s still steely-hearted, work her with your Voice.”

“I don’t see how I could haunt Aunt Hilda in broad daylight.”

“No matter. The Lord will find a way. Only follow up, Jacko; follow up. Have you got the carbons of those letters here?”

“Yes, in my pocket. She has the originals.”

“Well, tell her _The Howl’s_ got the story. Rattle her more, someway. Then she’ll sign.”

“You think she will?” said John doubtfully.

Bo nodded with decision.

“Trust the Young Heiress,” she said. “The child has never failed.”

But even as she spoke there was commotion on the gravel beneath the window. It was the ambulance from London, and the whole house was astir.

The lovers slipped downstairs by the back staircase, reached the hall, and all the turmoil was upon them.

Down the main stairs, moving like funeral bearers under a coffin, staggered sundry males—the driver of the ambulance, his assistant, the footman, the atheist Gaul—even the local doctor lent a hand. While the Specialist from London waddled slowly sideways, downwards, next to the banisters, by way of inept superintendence: for he got the biggest fee.

On the stretcher under which they staggered lay the unfortunate First Baron Mere de Beaurivage, still muttering, still raving.

Bringing up the rear from the head of the stairs and commanding all things, his spouse, Presiding Goddess, herself storming, dominated the storm.

“Ow, tike ’im gently!” she cried. “Treat him tender! ’Andle ’im like a child!” But even as she spoke the sufferer rent the air with “A-r-r-r-h!”

“Don’t jerk ’im, pore lamb!” the peeress went on—the procession had allowed her to gain three steps downwards. “Don’t jerk ’im, whatever yer do! Don’t give him a Hoick! Keep his ’ed up, pore dear! Keep the blood from a-flowing to ’is ’ed!”

The foremost of the bearers had reached the bottom stair, Amathea, presiding from above, was half-way down, the doors were fully open, Corton was flinging wide the entry to the ambulance, when poor Hilda Maple, a wreck from lack of sleep and all the attention which women of her age need before they can appear before human kind, made the error of attempting a pacification.

“Amathea,” she bleated, “_dearest_ Amathea!...”

But her adversary blazed out in terrible wrath.

“You shet yer ’ed!” she yelled, without reserve. “It’s you did all the ’arm, it is!” Then to the procession. “Ow, ’andle him gentler, ’ear him groan—ow!” Then to her hostess, “Look on wot yer done!”

“I don’t see what I’ve done,” began Mrs. Maple, but Amathea interrupted her again.

“Yer down’t see?” she cried madly. “Yer down’t see orl the ’arm yer’ve done with yer Demonds and yer Obgoblings and yer lying laow an’ tryin’ to pass off this ’ouse on us an’ orl?”

“Amathea ...” began Mrs. Maple again.

“Don’t you Amathea me, Mrs. Miple!” shouted the peeress, with all the subtle charm of Aristocracy, as she crashed one hand on a table still sordid with last night’s glasses, and stretched the other in wild denunciation. “Don’t you Amathea me! I wish yer’d never been born, nor I to meet yer! With yer ’umbug and yer lies and yer Black Devil, and all! Yus, and ’id and concealed from our eyes! But I’ll let yer know! I’ve priced yer! Yer profiteeress!”

Poor Hilda tried to stem the torrent, but the peeress’s voice filled all heaven, and if its owner had had anything to throw she would have thrown it.

“Down’t yer mike answer to me, Ilda Miple! I’m Mattie Huggins, I am, and I’d have yer to know that I could take on a dozen of yer! Any dy of the week!”

She put her right arm akimbo and snapped the fingers of her left hand finely in the air, “That for yer damn Rackham Catchings!” She put her left arm akimbo and snapped the fingers of her right hand with still nobler violence, “That for yer old Drury Lane stige barn!” She put both arms akimbo and leant forward over the end of the banisters shouting with titanic power, “Burn it down for the insurance, you bitch! Burn it an’ keep quiet! For yer’ll never get a penny out of hus! And so I tells yer strite!”

Her face was crimson, panting and sweating; her voice almost exhausted. But she had the strength to add, before she turned to the ambulance and to the last attentions due to her dear one: “Jest you wite till I tells the Prime Minister about you, Hilda Maple! You’ll see what ’e’ll do to yer! Yus, he will! Not arf!” And with that, amid the embarrassed, the horrified, the discreet crowd about her, she sobered down to give still breathless but intelligible orders, sat herself down in the ambulance beside her husband, against all rules, and was gone.

* * * * *

Rackham Catchings was as quiet as the dusty scene of an explosion when the rumble is over: but it was as wrecked. And Hilda Maple sat down, a wreck herself, her elbow upon the table of the hall, her dizzy head supported in her left hand.

Lord Hambourne did not fail—he could not fail—upon such an occasion.

“I’ve c-c-come to say g-g-good-bye,” he grinned, as though it were the most ordinary morning that ever had dawned. Hilda Maple could hardly manage to be civil. She half rose, she asked him if he had a vehicle, she mechanically said she hoped he would come again.

Hardly had he gone when footsteps approached. It was the cook, heading her phalanx once again.

“Not as I’d disturb any Lady in your Circumstances, ma’am,” she declaimed, “but if you please, ma’am, I must be going this very day. Ow, never mind the month’s wages,” she added loftily, as Hilda attempted to speak. “And all these poor things,” waving at the herd, “they say the same as me.”

“Not Alphonse?” asked poor Hilda of the crowd, feebly.

“Not that Toad!” said Mrs. Fry. “Not that I knows on. I won’t speak for him—I’ll have nothing to do with him. But this day we goes, ma’am, all of us. We’re all resolved. We won’t sleep under this roof again—for sleep we can’t.” And there were murmurs and groaning exclamations of assent from the rest.

“Not Corton?” said poor Hilda, in a still lower voice.

“Mr. Corton,” said Mrs. Fry with dignity, “has informed us that he prefers to speak to you privately. He will then say whatever he has to say.”

And with that she sailed out, and with her followed her attendant nymphs and gentlemen-in-waiting.

Hilda had hardly time for breathing space when John in his turn appeared.

“John,” said the unfortunate woman, “I feel faint.”

“Of course, Aunt Hilda,” he said sympathetically. “I must give you some brandy.”

“It’s a thing I never do,” said Aunt Hilda, as her nephew poured out a stiff dose from a derelict decanter of the night’s debauch, and squirted a sufficiency of soda into it.

“Drink that, Aunt Hilda,” he said.

“I suppose it’ll do me good,” she answered in a voice still faint. “I feel more dead than alive.”

She was breathing heavily. Then she said:

“Well, John....”

“I’m still here, Aunt Hilda,” said John dutifully. “Whatever you want me for, I’m still here. And.... And, Aunt Hilda, I’ll still buy Rackham.”

“You’ll still what?” said Aunt Hilda, with the ghost of her former energy reviving.

“What I said,” doggedly repeated John, in an echo of so many insistencies. “I’ll buy Rackham. You’ve got the papers, Aunt Hilda, and I’ve got a copy of them here.”

There worked in Hilda Maple’s mind, violently surging one against the other like opposing strong tides in a strait, the two currents which have shaken men and women since first they dealt with buying and selling. She was ruined—no one would buy the place. Her reason told her in a flash that she was lucky to have such a chance even as this. It would clear her, at any rate.

And the other current was her pride—after having stood out for so long, and after having felt such contempt for the foolish boy. Above them the figure of the Ancestor grinned fatuously, and the young man of twenty-three and the woman of fifty sat silent under its gaze.

John put the papers down upon the table, and his fountain-pen by the side.

Then in that silence the Ancestor spoke from his frame. He spoke in a deep voice, and with a gravity that belied his features.

“Woman! Woman!” he boomed.

Aunt Hilda swerved round, stared a moment at the incredible Thing, gave a little squeak like a bird.

“Woman! Woman!” boomed on Sir Harry Murtenshaw, Knight, from the depths of his painted chest. “Is he not the Rightful Heir?”

“Oh, sir!” came abruptly and strongly in sharp agony from Hilda Maple’s lips. She sank suddenly upon the floor to her knees and clasped her fingers convulsively, imploring the clemency of her dreadful visitant, “Oh, sir, I am a sinful woman!” She buried her face in her hands. Even as she did so she heard that solemn voice, again for the third time, and in yet deeper tones:

“Is he not the Rightful Heir?”

She reeled a little. John Maple helped her up and seated her. She signed.

* * * * *

“John,” sighed the unfortunate woman, as she laid down the pen, and when he had handed her his acknowledgment—the instrument of her release, the paper that would stop the Esthonian’s bark—“leave me, dear boy. Leave me!”

“Can’t I...?” he began.

“No, my dear,” she said feebly. She had never been a tithe so affectionate to him in all these years, as now when he had done her so ill a service; and it burnt him with remorse—but there was the strong image of Bo in the background to keep him to the mark. “Leave me,” she said. And he walked out with bent head.

* * * * *

Hilda Maple broke into a flood of tears, putting her head down upon her crossed arms, and sobbing freely. She gave full vent to her relief; and minutes passed before she raised her face again, stained, distraught—hideous, she was sure. And when she raised it, there stood respectfully at the door, hesitating whether he should come in, the tall figure of Lord Hellup. Alone of that household the night vigil had not ruffled him at all. He had simply changed from his evening dress to his morning clothes, with all the creases where they should be. He had shaved, he was as fresh as a daisy. No wonder they make money, and keep it. But then, they also have hearts of gold.

As she raised her face he knew at once that he was intruding, and turned to go. But she, the unfortunate, was on her feet.

“Hannibal!... I mean, Hamilcar!” she cried, stretching forth her extended hands.

He returned. She tottered. And fifty fell into the arms of sixty years. But there! What difference does ten years make at that time of life?

Transcriber’s Notes:

• Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
• Perceived typographical errors have been corrected:

Page Before After
24 that than
31 premanent permanent
56 £17,324 “£17,324
70 franfreluches fanfreluches
86 Rastaqouère Rastaquouère
99 effectionate affectionate
100 tomorrow to-morrow
113 stagged staged
138 At As
142 gaze( gaze,
172 Beaurevage Beaurivage
209 Jocko Jacko
214 figure's figures ??
215 pitient patient ??
215 eart ’eart
234 or of