Chapter XIV: The Duchess in Aspic

When ten people, eight of whom are labouring under delusions or suffering from engrossing mental complications, dine in company, and the banquet is supervised by a gentleman who is almost off his head, complete calm and the perfection of easy gaiety are not certain to ensue. There was, in fact, a good deal of constraint prevalent that night at Ribton Marches, constraint, however, varied by strange outbursts that kept things going, but scarcely kept them going in the average way of ordinary society. Only Miss Bindler and Mr. Ingerstall were fairly fancy-free that Wednesday night. Mrs. Verulam was abstracted because she wanted terribly to speak in private to Chloe, and inform her of Lord Bernard's letter to Mr. Rodney and of its strange contents. Chloe was abstracted because of the paragraph in the _World_, and the probable presence of the fatal Huskinson in England. The Duchess of Southborough was glowering with respectable fury against her hostess, and solicitude over the supposed wrongs of her gouty girl. The Lady Pearl was in a condition of highly-wrought sensibility to the fascinations of Chloe. Lady Drake was petrified by the knowledge that the Duke thought her what she wasn't, and that Mr. Bush had beheld her in an Indian shawl at half-past three in the morning. The Duke could think of nothing with any comfort except the five self-conscious gardeners now engaged, as he supposed, in ruining the Emperor's domain. Mr. Rodney, who believed himself to be in the incipient stage of rheumatic fever, looked like a corpse whose mind was seriously affected, and spoke like a voice reverberating from a sepulchre. And Mr. James Bush, who was seated next to the Duchess, was rent asunder by two contending passions, a desire to hint delicately to her Grace that she was supposed to be in love with him, and a desire to flee at once from the machinations of policemen to the marshy solitudes of peaceful Bungay. Pride and cowardice in fact contended in the paragon's mighty bosom, and almost succeeded in rendering him slightly volcanic. To crown the tragic humours of the feast, Mr. Harrison, very near to madness, stood during its progress with his feet turned out in the first position in the neighbourhood of an enormous sideboard, his face contorted into an expression of hysterical vigilance, his hands straying hither and thither among the glittering knives and forks which the Bun Emperor always had displayed as dining-room ornaments, even if Mrs. Lite were only eating a piece of thin bread and butter alone in the cedar-wood parlour.

The conversation round the dinner-table languished at first, then rose in fitful and confusing gusts. Only Mr. Ingerstall chatted continuously to Miss Bindler about Art and Paris, and she talked incessantly to him about bets and racing stables.

"I hope you are none the worse for your immersion at tea this afternoon?" said Mrs. Verulam to Mr. Rodney, with her eyes fixed steadily on Chloe.

"I fear I cannot hope to escape rheumatic fever," he answered. "To do so would indeed be foolish optimism."

"Quite so," she answered; "you are perfectly right."

"It is not every man who can say, with truth, that he has been followed by detectives almost continuously for five-and-forty years," said the Duke with unusual dignity to Lady Drake.

Unable to meet his eyes, she piped in return: "It is not every man who can say anything at all with truth."

"Do you doubt my word?" he asked her, pursuing his train of thought.

She suddenly thought she perceived an opening into which she might insert an explanation of the preceding night's affair.

"I'll believe yours if you'll believe mine!" she cried.

"What!" said the Duke, "then you're followed by detectives, too!"

At this appalling corollary her ladyship collapsed. Evidently nothing on earth would ever convince his Grace that she was sinned against and not a sinner, if he thought her conduct so outrageous that she was habitually shadowed by the police! Although almost starving, she could not eat another morsel.

"Do you think it right to be happy, Mr. Van Adam?" asked the Lady Pearl, in her cooing, thunderous voice, inherited from her mother. "Do you think we are meant to have any joy here? Oh, tell me, tell me!"

"Oh dear no!" Chloe replied, thinking of her hour of triumph—so soon to be over.

She shook her head mournfully.

"No, no! When we think all is going well we are sure to see the gardeners. The gardeners are certain to come upon us."

"Gardeners!" said the Lady Pearl, mystified. "Do you think that the misery of the world is caused by gardeners?"

"I do, indeed," answered Chloe, intent on her fate, and speaking with poignant conviction; "I am perfectly certain of it now."

"How strange! I wonder why it should be so; but perhaps we are not meant to know here."

"I do know; I know very well," said Chloe.

"Then why is it?" asked the Lady Pearl.

"Because"—Chloe suddenly recollected herself and paused—"because we are all gardeners," she said, assuming the portentous air of one who deals in allegories. "Do we not garden in each other's souls?"

"How exquisitely thoughtful you are!" said the Lady Pearl with ecstasy; "so different from a Guardsman!"

"Well, Mr. Bush," the Duchess said heavily, while she ate a cutlet, "how do you like the great world?"

Her Grace had heard Mrs. Verulam say that this was the paragon's first experience of that remarkable collection of absurdities.

"Eh?" said Mr. Bush, thrusting a cautious glance at the Duke—"eh?"

"Do you find it very different from your marshes?" continued the Duchess. "I suppose there are only frogs there?"

"When I catch a frog about," replied Mr. Bush, "I go for it."

"Indeed!" said her Grace, trying to seem amiably interested in these rustic pursuits. "And where does the frog go?"

"Not far," rejoined the paragon—"not far!" And he laughed like Fee-faw-fum.

"Dear me!" said the Duchess, "I am afraid you're quite a bloodthirsty person, like most men. But you're all the same; you must kill something. One man stalks a deer, another a—a frog. You shoot, I suppose?"

"No, I don't," said Mr. Bush. "Frog-shootin' wouldn't pay; they go too slow."

At this point in his dissertation on English sport, her Grace suddenly started, caught hold of the table with both hands, and passionately struggled for breath.

"Got the staggers?" enquired Miss Bindler, who was sitting just opposite. "Keep your head up."

Mr. Rodney hastily began to pour cold water into a champagne glass, with a view to using it medicinally.

"Take it away!" gasped the Duchess. "Oh, take it away!" And she moved as a serpent moves when it thinks of casting its skin.

"Take what?" said Mr. Rodney. "What is it?"

"The aspic on my left shoulder—oh, take it away!"

"The asp on your left shoulder!" he cried, preparing for flight.

"No, no! The cutlet in aspic. Oh!"

A rapid search enabled Mr. Rodney to discover a jellied cutlet lodged upon her Grace's person. He endeavoured hastily to remove it with a fork, and in doing so nearly inflicted a severe wound.

"Use your hands, man!" said Miss Bindler, "always use your hands in such cases."

She spoke with authority, having attended many veterinary classes. Mr. Rodney hesitated; he had never handled a cutlet in his life, and he feared to begin a new career in middle age.

"Oh, take it away!" reiterated the Duchess; "it has been in ice! Oh, take it from me!"

"I—really——" stammered poor Mr. Rodney, while the Duchess leaned far forward, bending down her head and shutting her eyes in anticipation of the operation. "Duke, I think it would be better if you——"

But the Duke was busily engaged in having fits of laughter, so Mr. Rodney, flushing a brick red, hovered his long white hands above the unwelcome intruder.

"Oh, be quick!" cried the Duchess. "For Heaven's sake be quick; it feels like leeches."

"Here, clear out!" bellowed Mr. Bush to Mr. Rodney, who still shrank from clasping an edible, and seizing her Grace with his huge hands, he tore the cutlet from her with manly resolution. The Duchess breathed again, while Mrs. Verulam's eyes became dewy with happy tears that sprang unbidden at this fresh instance of her hero's valour. How different from Mr. Rodney's pusillanimity! Mr. Bush threw the cutlet to a manservant and burst out a-guffawing. It seemed he really had a delicate sense of humour. The Duchess turned to him.

"Thank you!" she said with genuine emotion. "It would have killed me in another moment. Thank you—thank you, Mr. Bush!"

Mr. Bush still roared with all the grand simplicity of a homely nature.

"But how did it happen?" said Mrs. Verulam.

"One of the servants did it," said the Duchess, sending her eye among the menials in search of the culprit.

"T't! t't!" said Mr. Rodney, with all the testiness of a man who has failed in the moment of danger; "it is as bad as the gardener. Mr. Lite really should get proper characters with his servants."

The conversation here became general, and so when the Duchess suddenly exclaimed to Mr. Bush, her sonorous outcry was only heard by him.

"Heavens!" she said, "it was a gardener! The gardeners are all waiting at table."

Mr. Bush bounced; he rolled his eyes upon the servants in much confusion.

"They are," continued her Grace; "that creature with the sauce-boat was managing the roller, and that——"

"Hush!" said the paragon in a heavy whisper; "give over!"

"Why? They——"

"Give over, I tell yer!" Mr. Bush repeated, with an assumption of portentous mystery.

Dominated by his manhood, her Grace gave over, and whispered:

"What is it?"

The paragon, with gestures of secrecy such as might well have attracted the attention of a universe, impended over her, and mumbled into her ear:

"They ain't gardeners."

"What! They are really footmen? Then why do they dig, and——"

"They ain't footmen."

"Not footmen! Then what sort of servants are they?"

"They ain't servants. Give over! Don't talk so loud," said Mr. Bush, talking very loud himself.

Her Grace was now growing alarmed, but she endeavoured to force her bass voice to become tenor as she whispered:

"Not servants? Then what are they here for?"

"They're here for us," he rumbled.

"For us?"

"You and me—me and you!"

"Me and you!" said the Duchess, with the accent of petrification.

"Aye, it's a go, ain't it?" And he shook his head at her heavily.

"But what on earth are they? Not—not——" She searched for a possible profession, and could only think of dentists.

"They're coppers!" he puffed in her ear. "Don't holler!"

She nearly did, never having been waited upon by anything of the kind before.

"Coppers?" she gasped.

"Policemen!"

"Policemen?"

"A-watching of you and me—detectives! Give over now; here's one a-comin'."

At this moment, indeed, a detective handed her Grace ice-pudding. She took it as if it was handcuffs, and trembled.

"But who put them to watch us?" she whispered in a hoarse voice.

"It's his doin'," rejoined the paragon, shovelling his head at the Duke.

"The Duke!"

Mr. Bush leant right over her as he uttered the fearful answer:

"He thinks you and me is a-goin' on together."

At this point the Duchess uttered a note such as proceeds from a thirty-foot organ-pipe, and burst into a heavy swoon.

Now, the Duke had been observing the extraordinary secrecy of the colloquy that preceded the Duchess's seizure, the heavy pantomime of the paragon, and his elaborate efforts to remain unheard. All this, succeeded as it was by her Grace's shout and collapse, and added to the Duke's belief that Mr. Bush was a wicked dog and up to any amount of secret rascality—witness the Lady Drake affair—worked together in the ducal mind, and gave rise to a large number of sudden and terrible suspicions, such as had never marred the Southboroughs' married life until this moment. In short, the Duke believed that Mr. Bush had been whispering soft words into his wife's ear, and that she, overwhelmed with emotion, had uttered her soul in one tremendous and unpremeditated note, and fainted away. He therefore sat considering whether he should at once seize the nearest carving-knife and acquaint Mr. Bush of his surmises, or whether he would be more ingenious if he governed himself for awhile and allowed these disgraceful vipers to take their course. While he was working out this problem, the five detectives, Mr. Harrison, and the house-party were taking all possible measures to recover the Duchess from her swoon, which was of the most determined character. Her Grace, never accustomed to do things by halves, for a long time resisted every blandishment that Miss Bindler's wide knowledge of veterinary surgery, Mr. Bush's intimate acquaintance with the sudden illnesses of cattle, and Mr. Ingerstall's violent appreciation of French methods of recovering the drowned could suggest. Indeed, it was only when the groom of the chambers made an application of cold iron, in the form of the Ribton Marches cellar-key, to her person that she struggled feebly, heaved some dozen sighs, and, after requiring to be told where she was in the orthodox manner, sat up and opened her eyes. They fell on the five detectives, and she nearly shrieked again. Indeed, had not Mr. Bush given her a secret but exceedingly powerful shove, there is no saying what course hysteria might not have led her to take. The Duke observed that secret shove, and his veins swelled with the decent fury of the outraged husband. But he controlled himself until the Duchess had been supported to the purple drawing-room, accompanied by the other ladies. Then, unable to remain any longer inactive under the insult which he supposed was being offered to his ancient name and honour, he rather curtly released himself from Mr. Ingerstall, who was just saying, "It is a most extraordinary thing to me that anybody can be found to go to the Royal Academy when the Art Nouveau is within a few hours' journey of London," and proceeded to carry out a little plan which he had formed in his head. This plan led him to call a footman, which he did in the baronial hall, at present deserted. A very thin man, with a grey face and small eyes like marbles, responded to his summons. The Duke assumed an affable air:

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Bliggins, sir," was the rather unexpected reply.

The Duke found it decidedly curious. The man gave his surname and did not say "Grace." However, these were petty details in this stress of terrible circumstance.

"Very well, Bliggins," said the Duke. "Can you keep a quiet tongue in your head?"

He chanced to show the gleam of a sovereign under the electric light—Bliggins may have noticed it. At any rate, he suddenly looked very hungry, and replied:

"I can be dumb, sir, when necessary."

"How nice to command infirmities at will!" said the Duke. "You don't go blind when you go dumb, eh?"

"I can prevent it, sir, if I try hard," responded Bliggins.

"Do you know which of the gentlemen here is Mr. James Bush?" said the Duke, lowering his voice to a whisper.

"Ain't he the thin gent as Smithers set to and soaked this afternoon, sir?" murmured Bliggins.

The Duke jumped, and casting a searching glance upon Bliggins, was suddenly aware that he was the self-conscious gardener who had been behaving with levity among the sunflowers in the afternoon. His Grace bit his moustache and pulled his pantaloon's beard. This fact certainly complicated the situation.

"H'm!" he muttered.

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"Can you serve two masters, Mr. Bliggins?" asked the Duke.

"I can, sir," replied Bliggins, again looking very hungry—"if I'm paid in a proper manner for so doing, as you might say."

The Duke suddenly made up his mind.

"Very well," he said. "First let me say I know you; you're a detective, and you've been put here to watch me. Be quiet, man! I ought to know a third-rate detective by this time, considering that for five-and-forty years——But that is no matter. Lord Arthur Kempton's your employer, no doubt, or Sir John Milton. Hold your tongue; I've no time to hear your lies! Watch me as much as you like, but"—here his Grace let Mr. Bliggins feel the sovereign—"keep an eye on the gentleman with the red beard and——"

"Him as pulled the cutlet off the lady as Wilker dropped on her?"

"The very man—watch him!"

"I will, sir."

"Day and night."

"The charge for night duty——"

The Duke allowed the self-conscious gardener to feel a second sovereign.

"I will, sir, day and night."

"Now go away and get dumb," said his Grace, returning softly to the cedar-wood parlour.

As things did not seem very lively that evening in the purple drawing-room, Mrs. Verulam sent for the powdered Frederick, and told him to set the orchestrion going. This order quickly produced Mr. Harrison, in a state of mania.

"The employment of the instrument, ma'am, is against Mrs. Lite's orders, oh, most certainly!" he exclaimed in great excitement.

Mrs. Verulam turned to Mr. Rodney.

"Will you please send him away?" she murmured. "I cannot bear this sort of thing to-night."

Mr. Rodney, whose nervous system was in tatters owing to the combination of misfortunes through which he had recently passed, faced round on Mr. Harrison like a hyena.

"Be off with you!" he cried in a piercing manner. "If you dare to argue with me, I'll—I'll——"

He seized a small wooden paper-knife, and the groom of the chambers made an exit that called forth the critical approval of Miss Bindler.

"For an old man, he's in good training," she remarked. "I believe he could still do a mile in under the ten minutes!"

The orchestrion began to deal vigorously with "Cavalleria Rusticana," and under cover of the music the company made various attempts to bring off what Miss Bindler would have called "events." Lady Drake, for instance, sidled up to the Duke, determined to lead up to her continued respectability, and Chloe was on the look-out for the chance of a quiet moment with Mrs. Verulam. But this moment she could not secure, on account of the tiresome behaviour of the Duchess, who was now in the irritable stage of incipient convalescence, and was throned on a purple armchair at Mrs. Verulam's side. Her Grace's horror at the revelation of James Bush, her amazement that her husband should suspect her of unchristian flirtation with a man bred up among bees, drove her into a fit of temper which she proceeded to vent against her hostess. The suspected respectable woman determined to take it out of the woman whom she believed to be what Martha Sage affirmed "a baggage, my dear, an arrant little baggage!" She began by making several ostentatious double chins at Mrs. Verulam, who received the attention with calmness. Then, growing exhausted with this physical exercise, for which she was a little out of training, she resolved to put her vexed and suspected soul into language.

"I have known you for a long time, Mrs. Verulam," she began; "I remember you as a toddler."

"Thank you!"

"Not everyone can say as much."

"I daresay not. No."

"Those were innocent days," continued the Duchess, with an attempt at pathos that resembled the efforts of a partially imaginative elephant to become a fairy.

"Yes, toddlers are generally innocent, I suppose."

"Innocent and open-hearted."

"Yes. They wear their hearts on their frills, don't they?"

"In after-life it is different."

"What a pity!"

"The respectability of childhood becomes impaired."

"Does it?"

"Does it not?"

And here the Duchess stared hard, first at Mrs. Verulam, then at Chloe, and then again at Mrs. Verulam who sweetly smiled.

"I don't know."

"I should have thought you did," said the Duchess beginning to bring up her heavy artillery.

"Why?"

The orchestrion was preparing for the "Intermezzo." The Duchess was preparing for conflict, rendered reckless by the self-conscious gardeners, the cutlet and the swoon. If she was to be wrongly suspected of levity, she would at least take it out of this wicked little person whom she had known as a toddler.

"Let me give you a piece of advice," she began, with sonorous subtlety.

"With pleasure."

"Get rid of Mr. Van Adam. I speak as a true friend."

And her Grace, purple with true friendship as the furniture on which she sat, made a really successful double chin, and paused for a reply.

"Why should I get rid of him?" asked Mrs. Verulam, making an angel's face at the double chin.

"There are many reasons," said the Duchess, with growing fury.

"I know of none. Poor boy! He needs me in his loneliness." And she shot a tender glance at Chloe.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the Duchess. "Gracious heavens!"

"We ought to be kind to those whom the world has treated cruelly," Mrs. Verulam continued, with high morality and a rather episcopal demeanour. "Poor dear Mr. Van Adam! Poor dear fellow!" And she breathed an effective, though quite gentle sigh.

To say that this sigh extracted a snort from the Duchess would be ridiculous. She expressed her feeling in a blast, suddenly heaved herself out of her chair, announced like a thunder-clap afflicted with the _vibrato_: "I'm very ill! I'm much upset!" and marched out of the purple drawing-room with all the gestures appropriate to an enormous soul in the accesses of acute affliction.

"Shock to the system," observed Miss Bindler. "I had an Arab once, from the Crabbet Park stud; it was like the Duchess—behaved just like that in sudden cold. Give her mustard." And she returned to the "_Pink Un_."

"An application of aspic on the left shoulder must be trying," piped Lady Drake.

The Duke said nothing; but as he looked towards Mr. Bush he appeared to be stripped of the tinsel. The pantaloon was merged in the husband. His expression was like the third act of a melodrama.