Lady Maude's Mania

Chapter Six.

Not at Home

For Charley Melton’s father was better, hence his presence in town, where he had sped as soon as he found that the Diphoos family had left the Hurst, where Lady Barmouth hatched matrimony.

That cut in the Park was unpleasant, but nothing daunted in his determination not to be thrown over, the young man made his way next day to Portland Place, eager, anxious, and wondering whether Maude would be firm, or allow herself to be influenced by her ladyship to his downfall.

Robbins unclosed the door at the great family mansion looking very severe and uncompromising. So stern was his countenance, and so stiff the bristles on his head, that any one with bribery in his heart would have felt that silver would be an insult.

“Not at home.”

He left his card, and called next day.

“Not at home.”

He waited two days, and called again.

“Not at home.”

Another two days, and another call. The same answer.

“Not at home.”

Charley Melton turned away with his brow knit, and then thought over the past, and determined that, come what might, he would not be beaten.

The next day he went again, with his dog trotting closely at his heels. He knocked; the door was opened by Robbins the butler, and to the usual inquiry, that individual responded as before —

“Not at home, sir.”

As Melton left his card and turned to go away, Joby quietly walked in, crossed the hall, and went upstairs, while his master, who was biting his lips, turned sharply back and slipped half a sovereign into the butler’s hand.

“Look here, Robbins,” he said; “you may trust me; what does this mean?”

The butler glanced behind him, and let the door swing nearly to as he stood upon the step.

“Fact is, sir, her ladyship said they was never to be at home to you.”

A curious smile crossed Melton’s lip as he nodded shortly and turned away, going straight back to his chambers in Duke Street, Saint James’s, and walking impatiently up and down till he was fain to cease from utter exhaustion, when he flung himself impatiently in his chair, and sat trying to make plans for the future.

Meanwhile Joby, feeling himself quite at home in the Portland Place mansion, had walked straight into the dining-room, where the luncheon was not yet cleared away. The dog settled himself under the table, till, hearing a halting step, he had come slowly out to stand watching Lord Barmouth, who toddled in hastily, and helped himself to three or four slices of cold ham, which he was in the act of placing in his pocket as the dog touched him on the leg.

“Eh! I’m very sorry, Robbins – I – eh? Oh dear, how you frightened me, my good dog,” he said; “I thought it was the butler.”

He was hurrying out when, thinking that perhaps the visitor might also like a little extra refreshment, he hastily took up a couple of cutlets and threw them one by one to the dog, who caught them, and seemed to swallow them with one and the same movement, pill-fashion, for they disappeared, and Joby waited for more.

“I dare not take any more, my good dog,” said his lordship, stooping down and patting him; and then, feeling that there was nothing more to be done here, Joby quietly trotted upstairs into the drawing-room, where Maude was seated alone, with her head resting upon her hand, and the tears silently stealing down her cheeks.

She uttered a faint cry, for the dog’s great blunt muzzle was laid upon her soft white hand, when, seeing who it was, the poor girl, with a hysterical sob, threw herself down upon her knees beside the great ugly brute, flung her arms round his neck, and hugged him to her breast. “Oh Joby, Joby, Joby, you dear good dog,” she sobbed, “how did you come here?” and then, with flushed cheeks, and a faint hope in her breast that the dog’s master might be at hand, she paused with her head thrown back, listening intently.

But there was not a sound to be heard, and she once more caressed the dog, who, with his head resting upon her shoulder, blinked his great eyes and licked his black muzzle as if he liked it all amazingly.

Maude sobbed bitterly as she knelt by the dog, and then a thought seemed to strike her, for she felt its collar, and hesitated; then going to the table she opened a blotter, seized a sheet of note paper, and began to write.

At the end of a few moments she stopped though.

“I dare not – I dare not,” she sighed. “It would certainly be found out, and what would he think of me? What does he think of me?” she wailed. “He must believe me not worth a thought. I will send – just a line.”

She wrote a few words, folded the paper up small, and was taking some silk from her work-basket, when a cough on the stairs made her start and return to her chair.

“She will see the dog and be so angry,” thought Maude, as the rustling of silk proclaimed the coming of her ladyship, when, to her great joy Joby uttered a low growl and dived at once beneath the couch, where he curled himself up completely out of sight.

“Maude,” said her ladyship, in an ill-used tone, “you are not looking so well as you should.”

“Indeed, mamma?”

“By no means, child; and as I am speaking to you, I may as well say that I could not help noticing last night that you were almost rude to Sir Grantley Wilters. I must beg that it does not occur again.”

“Mamma!”

“There, there, there, that will do,” said her ladyship, “not a word. I am going out, and I cannot be made nervous by your silly nonsense.”

“Indeed, mamma, I – ”

“I will not hear excuses,” cried her ladyship. “I tell you I am going out. If Sir Grantley Wilters calls, I insist upon your treating him with proper consideration. As I have told you, and I repeat it once for all, that silly flirtation with Mr Melton is quite at an end, and now we must be serious.”

“Serious, mamma!” cried Maude, rising; “I assure you – ”

“That will do, child, that will do. You must let older people think for you, if you please. Be silent.”

Lady Barmouth sailed out of the room, and with a flush upon her countenance Maude returned to her work-basket for the silk, starting as she did so, for something touched her, and there was Joby’s great head with the prominent eyes staring up at her, as if to say, “Are you ready?”

Folding her note very small, she tied it securely to the inside of the dog’s collar, and then, laying her hands upon his ears, kissed his great ugly forehead.

“There, good dog, take that to your master,” she said. “Go home.”

The dog started up, uttered a low bark, and, as if he understood her words, made for the door.

“No, no,” cried Maude, who repented now that she had gone so far; “come back, good dog, come back. What will he think of me? What shall I do!”

She ran to the door, but the dog had disappeared, and to her horror she heard the front door open as the carriage wheels stopped at the door. Trembling with dread she ran to the window and saw that the carriage was waiting for Lady Barmouth; but what interested her far more was the sight of Joby trotting across the wide thoroughfare, and evidently making his way straight off home, where he arrived in due course, and set to scratching at the door till Charley Melton got up impatiently and let him in.

“Ah, Joby,” he said, carelessly; and then, heedless of the dog – “But I’ll never give her up,” he said sharply, as he rose and took an old pipe from the chimney-piece, which he filled and then sat down.

As he did so, according to custom, Joby laid his head in his master’s hand, Melton pulling the dog’s ears, and patting him with one hand, thinking of something else the while. His thoughts did not come back, even when his hand came in contact with the paper which now came off easily at his touch.

Melton’s thoughts were with the writer, and he had a pipe in the other hand; but his brain suggested to him that he might just as well light the pipe, incited probably thereto by the touch of the paper which he began to open out, after putting his meerschaum in his mouth; and he was then dreamily doubling the note, when his eyes fell upon the characters, his pipe dropped from his lips and broke upon the floor, as he read with increasing excitement —

“I am driven to communicate with you like this, for I dare not try to post a note. Pray do not think ill of me; I cannot do as I would, and I am very, very unhappy.”

That was all; and Charley Melton read it through again, and then stood looking puzzled, as if he could not comprehend how he came by the letter.

“Why, Joby must have stayed behind to-day,” he cried, “and – yes – no – of course – here are the silken threads attached to his collar, and – and – oh, you jolly old brute! I’ll never repent of giving twenty pounds for you again.”

He patted Joby until the caresses grew too forcible to be pleasant, and the dog slipped under his master’s chair, while the note was read over and over again, and then carefully placed in a pocket-book and transferred to the owner’s breast – a serious proceeding with a comic side.

“No, my darling,” he said, “I won’t think ill of you; and as for you, my dear Lady Barmouth, all stratagems are good in love and war. You have thrown down the glove in casting me off in this cool and insolent manner; I have taken it up. If I cannot win her by fair means, I must by foul.”

He walked up and down the room for a few minutes in a state of intense excitement.

“I can’t help the past,” he said, half aloud. “I cannot help what I am, but win her I must. I feel now as if I can stop at nothing to gain my ends, and here is the way open at all events for a time. Joby, you are going to prove your master’s best friend.”

Chapter Seven.

Down Below

“If I had my way,” said Mr Robbins, “I’d give orders to the poliss, and every one of ’em should be took up. They’re so fond of turning handles that I’d put ’em on the crank. I’d make ’em grind.”

“You have not the taste for the music, M’sieur Robbins,” said Mademoiselle Justine, looking up from her plate at dinner in the servants’ hall, and then glancing side wise at Dolly Preen, who was cutting her waxy potato up very small and soaking it in gravy, as she bent down so as not to show her burning face.

“Haven’t I, ma’amselle? P’r’aps not; but I had a brother who could a’most make a fiddle speak. I don’t call organs music, and I object on principle to a set of lazy ronies being encouraged about our house.”

Dolly’s face grew more scarlet, and Mademoiselle Justine’s mouth more tight as a couple of curious little curves played about the corners of her lips.

“Well, all I can say,” said the cook, “is, that he’s a very handsome man.”

“Handsome!” exclaimed Robbins, “I don’t call a man handsome as can’t shave, and never cuts his greasy hair. Handsome! Yah, a low, macaroni-eating, lazy rony, that’s what he is. There’s heaps of ’em always walking about outside the furren church doors, I’ve seen ’em myself.”

“But some of ’em’s exiles, Mr Robbins,” said the stout, amiable-looking cook. “I have ’eared as some on ’em’s princes in disguise.”

“My faith!” ejaculated Mademoiselle Justine, sardonically.

“Yes, ma’amselle, I ayve,” said cook, defiantly, “I don’t mean Frenchy exiles, with their coats buttoned up to their chins in Leicester Square, because they ain’t got no washing to put out, but Hightalian exiles.”

“Bah!” ejaculated Mademoiselle Justine, “that for you! What know you?” and she snapped her fingers.

“Pr’aps a deal more than some people thinks, and I don’t like to sit still and hear poor people sneered at because they are reduced to music.”

“But I don’t call that music,” said Robbins, contemptuously.

“Don’t you, Mr Robbins? – then I do.”

At this stage of the proceedings Dolly could bear her feelings no more, but got up and left the hall to ascend the back stairs to her own room, and sit down in a corner, and cover her face with her natty apron.

“Pore gell,” exclaimed the cook. “It’s too bad.”

“What is too bad, Madame Downes?” said Mademoiselle Framboise.

“To go on like that before the pore thing. She can’t help it.”

“Bah!” ejaculated the French maid, “it is disgust. An organ man! The child is affreusement stupide.”

“I have a heart of my own,” sighed the cook.

“Yais, but you do not go to throw it to a man like that, Madame Downes.”

“Hear, hear!” said the butler, and there was a chorus of approval.

“I say it is disgust – disgrace,” continued Mademoiselle Justine. “The girl is mad, and should be sent home to the bon papa down in the country.”

“I have a heart of my own,” said Mrs Downes again. “Ah, you needn’t laugh, Mary Ann. Some people likes footmen next door.”

The housemaid addressed tossed her head and exclaimed, “Well, I’m sure!”

“And so am I,” replied the cook, regardless of the sneers and smiles of the rest of the domestics at the table. “As I said before, I have a heart of my own, and if some people follow the example of their betters,” – here Mrs Downes stared very hard at the contemptuous countenance of the French maid, – “and like the furren element, it’s no business of nobody’s.”

Madame Justine’s eyes flashed.

“Did you make that saying for me, Madame Downes?” she flashed out viciously.

“Sayings ain’t puddens,” retorted cook.

“I say, make you that vairy witty jeer for me?” cried Mademoiselle Justine viciously.

“What I say is,” continued the cook, who, having a blunter tongue, stood on her defence, but heaping up dull verbiage round her position as a guard against the Frenchwoman’s sharp attack, “that a man’s a man, and if he’s a furrener it ain’t no fault of his. I should say he’s a count at least, and he’s very handsome.”

“Counts don’t count in this country,” said Robbins smiling, and waiting for the applause of the table.

“Count indeed!” cried Mademoiselle Justine. “Count you the fork and spoons, Mr Robbins, and see that these canaille music men come not down the air —ree. As for that green-goose girl Preen – Bah! she is a little shild for her mamma to vip and send to bed wizout her soop —paire. Madame Downes, you are a vairy foolish woman.”

Mademoiselle Justine rose from her seat, and made a movement as if to push back a chair; but she had been seated upon a form which accommodated half a dozen more domestics, and in consequence she had to climb out and glide toward the door, through which she passed with a rustle like that of a cloud of dead leaves swept into a barn.

“You’ve put ma’amselle out, Mrs Downes,” said Robbins with condescension.

“That’s easy enough done, Mr Robbins. It’s her furren blood. I don’t like young people to be sneered at if they’re a bit tender. I’ve got a heart of my own.”

“And a very good heart too, Mrs Downes,” said the butler.

“Hear, hear,” said Joseph the footman.

“Hear, hear, hear, hear, hear!” cried the page-boy, a young gentleman who lived in a constant state of suppression, and consequently in his youthful vivacity was always seeking an opportunity to come to the surface. This appeared to him to be one. His chief had paid a compliment which had been cheered by the said chief’s first-lieutenant Joseph, so Henry, the bearer of three rows of buttons, every one of which he longed to annex for purposes of play, cried “hear, hear, hear,” as the footman’s echo, and rapped loudly upon the table with the haft of his knife.

A dead silence fell upon the occupants of the servants’ hall, and Henry longed to take flight; but the butler fixed him as the Ancient Mariner did the wedding guest, and held him with his glittering eye.

“There, I knowed you’d do it,” whispered the footman. “You’re always up to some of your manoeuvres.”

“Henry,” said the butler in his most severe tones, and with the look upon his countenance that he generally reserved for Lord Barmouth, “I don’t know where you were brought up, my good boy, and I don’t want to know, but have the goodness to recollect that you are now in a nobleman’s service, where, as there is no regular steward’s room for the upper servants, you are allowed to take your meals with your superiors. I have before had occasion to complain of your behaviour, eating with your knife, breathing all over your plate, and sniffing at the table in a most disgusting way.”