Chapter IX: Mrs. Verulam's Idea of Agag

That curious cerebral condition which we call excitement affects men and women in very different ways. At 3.15 on this Monday afternoon it caused a nervous restlessness in Mrs. Verulam, a hectic calm in Mr. Rodney, and an apoplectic irritability in Mr. Harrison. The first of these victims of the nervous system talked incessantly; the second said nothing at all; the third abused the powdered Frederick, had a "few words"—fifty thousand or thereabouts—with the cook of Ribton Marches, and fell foul of the second housemaid, with whom, in moments of condescension, he was rather apt than otherwise to keep company. And all these circumstances were brought about by Mr. James Bush, at that very moment driving from the Sunningdale station to the palace, with his very large feet up on the cushions of the carriage, and his very small bag of necessaries up on the box. However, he was kept awake by no warning instinct which told him of the turmoil cast before him by his personality, but, on the contrary, slept profoundly, and even snored, with his great head well back on the hood of the barouche. He was awakened by the stoppage of the carriage before the palace door. Inside, in the baronial hall, the crunching of the gravel was heard, and Mrs. Verulam had just said with elaborate indifference:

"Dear me! Can this be Mr. Bush already?"

Mr. Rodney had looked at his watch, and answered:

"I fancy so."

And Chloe had exclaimed:

"By Jove! Bungay Marshes to the front!" a remark which she considered manly, and calculated to impress Mr. Rodney, which it did—with horror.

The palace menials advanced at the double, accompanied by Mr. Harrison, who proceeded with an air of extraordinary precaution, and the drawn expression of one who believes himself to be on the point of catching a murderer red-handed. The mighty portals flew slowly open, and the carriage was revealed, with Mr. Bush laid out in it, his mouth wide open in a yawn, and his fists in his eyes rubbing the slumber out of them, while his snort of astonishment at the sudden interruption of his delicious reveries was distinctly audible in the still summer air.

"What's all this? What the devil is it all?" he said in a huge and rumbling voice to the menials who came forward to assist him from the barouche.

"Ribton Marches, sir," said the powdered Frederick, while Mr. Harrison looked as if doubtful whether it were not his duty to run Mr. Bush in upon the spot without further ado.

"Marchuss?" retorted Mr. Bush—"Marchuss?"

"Yes, sir. Won't you get out, sir?"

Mr. Bush rolled out, rather as a barrel rolls out of a dray down an inclined plane into a vault. Planting his feet upon the marble steps, he turned round and said:

"Lay hold of that bag!"

Frederick laid hold of it with the arms of a man anticipating a considerable weight. As the bag, however, appeared to contain nothing of much greater bulk than a collar-stud, the footman was nearly thrown down by the unexpected triviality of his labour. He almost dropped the bag.

"You'd better!" said Mr. Bush—"you'd better!"

The alarmed menial met the Bungay Marshes eye, and apparently thought he had better not, for he ascended the steps with some rapidity, and vanished into the interior of the palace in the twinkling of an eye.

Mr. Bush lethargically moved onward into the baronial hall, in which Mrs. Verulam, Mr. Rodney, and Chloe were seated.

"Oh, Mr. Bush," cried the former, rising with a lovely blush, and coming forward to meet him, "I am so glad to see you!"

That gentleman grunted, and permitted her to take his hand.

"It is so good of you to come and leave your lovely garden, and all your sheep, and—and bees. Let me introduce you to Mr. Rodney and Mr. Van Adam. The rest of the party come this afternoon."

Mr. Bush threw a couple of nods at Mr. Rodney and Chloe. Then he abruptly exclaimed:

"What are you after, eh?"

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Bush," said Mrs. Verulam in some surprise.

"What are you after?" pursued her gracious guest, with a very sinister intonation.

"Oh, nothing, sir, not at all, by no means!" replied a rather hurried voice, and Mr. Harrison somewhat hastily retreated from a shadowy nook in which he had been taking observations, until that moment erroneously supposed by him to be secret.

"Really, Mr. Rodney," said Mrs. Verulam rather petulantly, "that man is becoming very unnecessary. Can't you keep him in order?"

"I will endeavour—I will certainly endeavour to do so," returned Mr. Rodney in some disorder, turning to pursue Mr. Harrison. Mrs. Verulam had a way of behaving as if he were responsible for everything and everybody in the palace which he began to find distinctly trying.

"Yes, please do," said Mrs. Verulam. "Would you like to go to your room at once, Mr. Bush, or will you rest a little first?"

"I'll rest there. I'll have a lay down," he replied, yawning—"a good lay down."

And, without further parley, he set out for the upper regions of the palace, his boots squeaking as he walked. When the squeaking had died away, Mrs. Verulam turned rapturously to Chloe.

"Well, dear?" she said—"well?"

"Well," responded Chloe, with a good deal of hesitation.

"Isn't he simple? Isn't he straightforward and natural?"

"Oh, quite—quite."

"Yes. And isn't it a relief to find a man like that after all the shams and hypocrisies of society? One is never in doubt about what Mr. Bush is thinking, or what he means. One _knows_ it."

"I should think so."

"Yes; I knew you would agree with me. Oh, how delightful it is to have one friend who feels in all things as one does oneself!"

"Daisy, don't! You forget—you mustn't kiss me."

"Oh, heavens! Could anybody have seen?"

She glanced apprehensively round.

"No; it is all right. But I knew you would. A large, frank nature like that seems to go straight to all that is good and right in one. Oh, do let us take advantage of our opportunity this week! Do—do let us make the most of it."

"Do you mean that Mr. Bush is our opportunity?"

"Yes—yes."

"Well, dear, I don't mind, I'm sure. But the most of Mr. Bush is a great deal. I think he is the largest human being I have ever seen. Now I'm going to wander about the garden and see what the Bun Emperor's plants are like."

And Chloe went off wondering greatly at her friend's enthusiasm for the gentleman from Bungay. She herself could at present see nothing in him but a mountain of humanity, with that face, head, beard, and expression already described as appearing to Mrs. Verulam in the imaginary mirror of the cotillon of her fancy. Nor could his manner—essentially truthful as no doubt it was—be called precisely pleasing. Chloe picked a rose or two and lost herself in wonder. Meanwhile, Mrs. Verulam wandered ecstatically about the palace. Mr. Harrison was busy with the Bun Emperor at the telephone. Mr. Rodney was plunged once more in terrible meditation in the purple drawing-room, and Mr. Bush was enjoying to the utmost his good lay down on one of the Empress's largest spring-mattresses. He woke soon after the arrival of the rest of the party, and strolled heavily forth alone into the grounds to take the air, which had not circulated very freely beneath the quilt with which his head had been completely covered during the last hour and a half.

Meanwhile the baronial hall looked fuller of people than it had ever looked before. Tea was going on, but Mrs. Verulam had declined to allow Mr. Bush to be disturbed.

"He will come in his own good time," she said, "I don't wish to bother him. He is accustomed to perfect liberty."

She addressed the company generally. The Duke of Southborough, who resembled an unusually tall pantaloon in appearance, but was not entirely unlike a clown in manner, said in reply:

"Ah, then, I suppose he's a bachelor."

"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Verulam, with a secret glance at Chloe.

"Poor chap! poor chap!" said the Duke, with his funny demeanour of an actor being remarkably successful in his part. "What a sad business this anti-matrimonial bias that is growing up in the present generation of Englishmen is! Eh, Lady Drake?"

Lady Drake, who was the human equivalent of the most perfect sort of acid-drop that the power of the sugar-plum manufacturer has yet produced, shook her head, on which the hair reposed in bandeaux.

"Men are more selfish than the lower animals, I fear," she said, sweetening her tea with some modern preparation which she always carried about with her in a good-sized phial.

"Oh, Mr. Bush is a most self-sacrificing man, I assure you," said Mrs. Verulam quickly.

"Then why is he a bachelor? That's what Lady Drake means," said the Duke, with a Drury Lane pantomime wink at the company.

"I think the French way of doing things by far the best," cried Mr. Ingerstall, lifting a muffin to his mouth as a juggler poises a billiard-ball on the rounded tip of a cue. "The Frenchman marries as a matter of course, and with no more intention of curtailing his full liberty of action than——"

"The French point of view in that matter is scarcely a suitable subject for discussion, Mr. Ingerstall," said the Duchess of Southborough very severely, while the Duke chuckled to himself. "Full liberty of action! Very good! very good indeed! Ha, ha, ha!" Mr. Ingerstall violently engaged her Grace—began to worry the Duchess, as Chloe said to herself—while Miss Bindler, a wiry lady of about five-and-thirty, who had a face like a horse, a tailor-made manner and boots with spats, turned to Mr. Rodney and asked him what he was going to back on the following day.

"I expect to make a bit on Cubicle in the first race," she said.

"Indeed!" said Mr. Rodney. "I trust I may do the same."

"Did you get a good price?"

"What for?" said Mr. Rodney. "Did I say that I had sold anything?"

This remark shows that the pressure of circumstances was becoming rather too much for the owner of Mitching Dean. In fact, he was considerably agitated. Since her arrival the Duchess had taken him aside and indulged him with some very dreadful confidences. Her Grace had been pleased to tell him, "as an old friend," that she had been on the very point of telegraphing at the last moment to Mrs. Verulam to give up her visit.

"She has been going too far, Mr. Rodney," said the Duchess in a whispering bass. "She has disgusted London."

"Disgusted London!" cried the appalled confidant. "Oh, no; impossible!"

"You think nothing could; but you are wrong. There is a limit even in our world, and she has overstepped it. You will see that to-morrow in the enclosure. Old Martha Sage intends to cut her."

"Impossible!" reiterated Mr. Rodney, the perspiration starting in beads upon his narrow forehead.

"Nothing is impossible to Martha Sage. I assure you it is the fact."

"It must be prevented," cried Mr. Rodney. "It must, it shall!"

He felt as Curtius probably did when he found that he really was in the gulf.

"I don't see how it can be," said the Duchess. "You don't know Martha Sage."

"But indeed I do," said Mr. Rodney. "She has often dandled me in her arms."

"What, recently?"

"Yes, yes," he rejoined distractedly; "often and often."

"Possibly you may have some influence over her then," said the Duchess; "and, indeed, if what you say is true, I hardly think Martha Sage has the right to take the initiative in such an affair."

"When I was a little boy—when I was a child," said Mr. Rodney, recovering himself in time to save Lady Sage's vanishing reputation with the Duchess.

"Oh, that's nothing. She has dandled everybody at that age. But she doesn't allow anybody to influence her decisions for all that."

"Then Mrs. Verulam must be kept out of the enclosure," cried Mr. Rodney, wringing his hands together. "She must and shall!"

"That will only delay the matter," said her Grace calmly. "In fact, Mr. Rodney—but this I tell you in the strictest confidence—if I don't observe a very great change in Mrs. Verulam's behaviour during this week, I am very much afraid that I shall be obliged to agree with Martha Sage. Oh, is it tea-time?"

It was this terrible conversation which had reduced Mr. Rodney to making a _mal-àpropos_ reply, a thing he had scarcely ever done before in the whole course of his social life. He was immersed in thought, considering whether he ought not solemnly to warn Mrs. Verulam of her danger, or whether, on the other hand, he should go privately to Lady Sage, recall the dandling incident to her Crimean War recollection, and implore her, for her old intimacy's sake, to be merciful, and to bow to the Ribton Marches party on the morrow. He could not decide. He could not come to a conclusion. And Miss Bindler very soon gave him up in despair, and took to a close and exhaustive study of her betting-book. This study, Mr. Rodney's gloomy agonies, the Duke's jokes, Mr. Ingerstall's recollections of Parisian life and art, and, indeed, everything that was going on in the baronial hall, was, however, interrupted very shortly by the sudden entry of Mr. James Bush, with disordered and earthy costume, breathing stertorously, and looking rather puffy about the cheeks. Mrs. Verulam greeted him with a delighted smile, and was about to make him known to the fresh arrivals, when he broke in upon her "Oh, Mr. Bush, let me intro——" with the loud and rather startling exclamation, uttered in evident bitter sarcasm, "You've got nice company here!"

"What!" said Mrs. Verulam, while the assembled magnates joined in a simultaneous start of astonishment.

"Well, I'm blowed!" continued Mr. Bush. "You've got nice company!"

"I hope so, indeed!" murmured Mrs. Verulam. "Let me make you known to them. Mr. Bush—the Duchess of Southborough, Lady Pearl McAndrew——" She named her guests.

Mr. Bush plunged his head in their direction, without deigning to glance at them.

"Mad, I s'pose!" he resumed to Mrs. Verulam. "Mad as Moses!"

Consternation now reigned among the inmates of the palace, who began to fear that Mr. Bush was giving a name to his own private affliction. Even Mrs. Verulam felt a certain diffidence steal over her at so definite an inclusion of all her party within the sad circle of a supposititious lunacy. But she guessed Mr. Bush to be a bit of a wag, like most great men. Doubtless he was only having his little joke. Still, she felt quite definitely that this fact should be made apparent to the Duchess and others with as short a delay as possible, so she hastened to reply:

"Ah, Mr. Bush, you mustn't make a joke on so serious a subject as madness."

"Joke! There's no joke! Where's the joke of being potted at like a rook in January? Joke, indeed—joke!"

He blew forth a perfect volume of angry breath.

"A rook in January?" said poor Mrs. Verulam, in consummate perplexity, and really beginning to have her fears for her guest's reason.

"Aye. If I'd have stayed he'd have had me. I wasn't eight paces off him."

"Unless the other gentleman was an unusually indifferent shot," remarked the Duke, glancing at Mr. Bush's gigantic bulk, "I must say I think Mr. Bush must have stood in some slight danger. Did you not stay, then?" his Grace added, addressing himself to the narrator.

"Stay? Not I! I just ducked down on all fours, and came back like a beast through the rhododendrons."

"Indeed!" continued the Duke pleasantly. "A very sensible posture and mode of exit under the circumstances. Who's your sportsman?" he added, turning to Mrs. Verulam.

"I have no idea, indeed!" she replied, in perplexity unutterable. "Oh, Mr. Bush!" she added, with a most tender accent of commiseration, "I can scarcely tell you how grieved, how horrified I am that you should have been so nearly murdered—and so soon after your arrival, too!"

"I should think so!" Mr. Bush rejoined angrily. "A nice thing to happen to a respectable man!"

His tacit refusal to be mollified reacted upon his hostess, who, as usual in untoward circumstances, turned instantly upon the man who she thought loved her.

"Mr. Rodney," she said with bitter reproach, "you never told me there was a murderer living in this neighbourhood."

"I never knew it!" cried Mr. Rodney. "It never occurred to me, I do assure you. Where were you?" he exclaimed to Mr. Bush, with the poignant accent of a man whose reputation is at stake.

"I was walkin' in the garden, a-lookin' at the mistakes the gardener here's been makin'," said Mr. Bush sulkily.

"Yes, yes!" chorused the company.

"Presently I came to a bit of a pond, with flowers a-floatin' on it."

"Ah!" suddenly cried Mr. Rodney, in an illuminated manner. "And a cottage on the farther side?"

"Aye; where he fires from."

"The Bun Emperor!" exclaimed Mr. Rodney, as if the matter was settled.

"Very unsportsmanlike behaviour," said Miss Bindler, "to shoot from such cover as that. The game haven't a ghost of a chance."

"You're right, mum," said Mr. Bush, "they haven't—not unless they're as quick at droppin' on all fours as I am."

"But I can't understand it even yet," pursued Mr. Rodney. "The Emperor's really not a bad sort of man, as a general rule. Did you do anything in particular by the pond, Mr. Bush?"

"Not I. I only stood a-lookin' at the little house. I saw a fattish, smallish feller, with a fattish, smallish woman by his side, starin' out——"

"The Empress, too!" said Mr. Rodney. "Well, Mr. Bush?"

"But I didn't take any account of them at first. I put out my stick across the water to lay hold of some of the lilies, when what does the fattish man do but shout out, "If you do it, I'll skin you!" I didn't choose to notice his nonsense, and I'd just got hold of a lily, when what do I see but him with a gun at his shoulder firin' straight at me. So, as I say, I came away like a beast through the bushes."

Mr. Rodney seemed perfectly at ease.

"Mr. Lite always is a little hasty," he said. "The matter is perfectly clear to me. He doesn't like anything being interfered with."

"A defender of the rights of property," said the Duke approvingly. "A good Conservative."

"Still, he goes too far," said Mrs. Verulam, in considerable agitation. "Mr. Rodney, I must ask you to be kind enough to tell Mr. Lite that I cannot have my house-party shot at. Make it perfectly clear, please. As a hostess, I cannot and will not permit anything of that kind."

"Certainly, certainly," said Mr. Rodney; "I see your point of view."

"If you won't have any more tea, it would be very good of you to go to the fishing-cottage at once," said Mrs. Verulam. "Some of us might like to stroll about the grounds presently, and I am sure we shall all prefer to have Mr. Lite's solemn promise of amendment before we do so."

These words were received with an emphatic chorus of unfeigned assent, so poor Mr. Rodney, who had only half finished his first cup, was obliged to get up and fare forth into the afternoon. He went gloomily, feeling that his Ascot this year was evidently to be a period of hard labour, and that Mrs. Verulam, like many women, was inclined to make mountains out of mole-hills. Not that James Bush could be accurately described as a mole-hill. Nevertheless, under the circumstances, Mr. Rodney's sympathies lay very decidedly with Mr. Lite. Indeed, as he walked tealess in the sun, he gradually worked himself up into a perfect fever of perfervid pity for the wrongs of the outraged exile, practically homeless by the waterside, and forced to behold the assaults of such an enemy as the man who had so foully influenced Mrs. Verulam against society. Moved by this wild access of emotion, Mr. Rodney burst into the fishing-cottage like a well-bred volcano, leapt into the tiny parlour which for the moment accommodated the unfortunate Lites, and, seizing Mr. Lite by the hand, exclaimed in a voice that trembled with feeling:

"You have all my sympathy; I am entirely—entirely on your side. If you had hit him, I don't think I could blame you—I don't, indeed!"

The Bun Emperor, who had an enormous pair of strong field-glasses in one hand, and was in the very act of ringing the telephone-bell to summon Mr. Harrison with the other, looked for an instant petrified by this intrusion; and the Empress cried out in shrill alarm from her station in the minute bay-window built to fit a fisherman. Mr. Rodney breathlessly continued:

"I know what you—what any man worthy of the name—must feel on seeing such a—such a—a spectacle, yes, as that man daring to make away with the flowers that have been floating on those waters perhaps for centuries."

The pond was exactly two years and three months old.

"What d'you mean?" gasped Mr. Lite, at length getting in an ejaculation edgewise. "Are you mad?"

"I wish you had shot him—yes, I do!" cried Mr. Rodney, frantically eulogising British assassination; and he threw himself into an adjacent wicker-chair in a most Corsican manner.

The Empress wailed again from her embrasure.

"Oh, Perry, save me—save me!" was her natural cry.

"I will, Henrietta—I will, my love," said the Emperor. "Keep up." After these reassuring words he advanced in a threatening manner upon Mr. Rodney, and remarked: "Give over! D'you hear me? Give over!"

"I beg your pardon," murmured Mr. Rodney, exhausted by his unwonted vocal exertions.

"Give over, or I'll lay my hands on you—I will."

"But I am sympathising with you—I am——"

"Sympathising!" said the Emperor, still maintaining a posture of protection and defence; "what for? what over?"

"Your manly attempt to shoot James Bush," said Mr. Rodney, giving himself away with extraordinary indifference to the opinion of the civilised world on criminal affairs.

At the name the Emperor's manner changed. His black eyes blazed, and he shook the field-glass as if it had been a fist.

"It was him, then," he cried—"it was him as I saw through the telescope!"

"The telescope!" said Mr. Rodney, suddenly penetrated by a ray of light.

He turned rapidly in the wicker-chair, and threw a distracted glance towards the embrasure. In it, reposing upon a window-seat, was an enormous telescope. Mr. Rodney began to comprehend, and to see the necessity of reconsidering his position under these much less violent circumstances.

"Then you didn't fire at him?" he said, with an abrupt lamb-like serenity.

"Fire at him!" said the Emperor. "What are you talking about? When he went for Mrs. Lite's lilies I said I'd skin him; and so I would have, or telephoned Mr. Harrison to, if he hadn't dropped into the ground for all the world like a mole or a badger. I don't know where he went to, though I had my eye to the telescope, and Mrs. Lite she was looking through the field-glasses."

"He behaved like vermin," remarked the Empress at this juncture. "Like a rat he went, he did. Never did I see a Christian demean himself so till this day—never, no!"

"The man's a coward," said Mr. Rodney with firmness—"an arrant coward. I shall inform Mrs. Verulam."

And he suddenly broke from the Emperor and Empress and absconded towards the palace, leaving them immersed in helpless astonishment.

Returning with rapid steps into the baronial hall, he found the party preparing to set forth into the grounds on receiving his assurances that the Emperor had laid aside his gun for the time being.

"You are perfectly safe," said Mr. Rodney, with unwonted sarcasm, and calmly waving one white hand towards the estate; "you will not be hurt, I can promise you. Nobody will attempt to injure you."

The guests were obviously relieved, and they began at once to evaporate, Mr. Ingerstall escorting the Duchess, the Duke with Lady Drake, Chloe accompanying the Lady Pearl, and Miss Bindler bringing up the rear in sturdy solitude. Mr. Bush remained because he had not nearly finished munching his tea, and Mrs. Verulam stayed because she loved to see him munch.

"You have persuaded him, then?" she said approvingly to the ambassador. "I knew you would have weight with him."

But even this compliment could not divert Mr. Rodney from his purpose of unmasking the man who had behaved like a badger in the moment of supposed peril.

"My dear lady," he said, glancing with elaborate pity towards Mr. Bush, who was closely engaged with a tea-cake, "there was nothing to persuade. I am happy to say that you have been totally misinformed as to the circumstances."

"Eh?" growled Mr. Bush, stirring his spoon vigorously in his tea-cup—"eh?"

"Totally and absolutely misinformed," repeated Mr. Rodney with the greatest decision.

"Really, Mr. Rodney," said Mrs. Verulam, preparing to fire up, "what are you saying? Mr. Bush has been shot at."

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Rodney very blandly—"I beg your pardon."

"If I hadn't a dropped, I shouldn't be here now," said Mr. Bush, in a voice whose timbre was slightly obscured by tea-cake.

Mr. Rodney turned towards him.

"I assure you, my dear Mr. Bush," he said, "that you are labouring under an entire delusion; you might with perfect safety have retained an upright posture. It's true that Mr. Lite made use of some hasty, inconsiderate words about skinning."

"There!" roared Mr. Bush; "what did I say?"

"But even they were no doubt rather metaphorical than strictly truthful. As to the firing, however, you were quite mistaken. What you took for a gun was merely a telescope. When you thought you were being shot at, you were only being looked at. There is an appreciable difference between the two operations. I think you will allow that."

And the owner of Mitching Dean calmly dropped into a chair, and prepared to continue his interrupted tea. Mr. Bush looked remarkably sulky under this light of truth.

"Telescope, indeed!" he muttered; "telescope—I daresay!"

"So you see, Mr. Lite can hardly be blamed after all," said Mr. Rodney cheerfully to Mrs. Verulam.

"Perhaps not," she said, a little doubtfully. "However, he should be more careful how he looks at people."

And then she rather hastily dropped the subject. In her secret heart she was sorry to find that the Emperor was not so given to murder as Mr. Bush had led her to suppose. Women love their heroes to stand uprightly even in moments of imminent danger. They infinitely prefer them not to quail before a telescope, however suddenly handled.

Mrs. Verulam could not entirely banish from her heart the uneasy conviction that on this occasion Mr. Bush had scarcely lived up to what she confidently expected of the man who was her idea of Agag.