Lady Maude's Mania

For Sir Grantley Wilters was to dine in Portland Place that evening, and he arrived in good time.

The baronet was quite bright in spirits and youthful in appearance, having got the better of his late ailment, and Lady Barmouth smiled pensively at him when she was not watching Lord Barmouth, and seeing if he was surreptitiously supplied with wine.

Tom dined at home, and was morosely civil, being puzzled how to act towards his future brother-in-law.

Sir Grantley knew of the trouble between her ladyship and her lord, but religiously avoided all allusion thereto; he, however, found time and opportunity to mention to her ladyship the last scandal that he had heard concerning Melton.

“No?” exclaimed her ladyship, laying her plump hand upon his arm.

“Yas; fact, I assure you,” he said. “I had it from three fellows at the club, and they were present. It was at a place in Jermyn street.”

“How dreadful!” exclaimed her ladyship in a low tone.

“They are retailing scandal about poor old Charley, Maude,” said Tom, leaning over the back of her chair in the drawing-room. “You think he’s quite square, eh?”

“If you mean by that, Tom, that I think him an honourable gentleman; yes, I do,” said Maude quietly.

“That’s right. He’s fond enough of you to keep him right, so never you mind what scraggy Wilters says.”

Maude did not reply, but her face flushed, and she sat looking proud and content in her faith.

Meantime her ladyship had been furnished with the last new piece of gossip regarding the young man who had gone to the bad, and was supremely happy.

In spite of her ladyship’s watchfulness Tom managed that his father should have a little wine, and the consequence was that he became very garrulous, making some personal remarks to Sir Grantley about matters of the past which the baronet wished to be considered too youthful to remember, and suffering at last from such decided twinges of his old complaint that he had to leave the table. Maude at once seized the excuse to be freed for the rest of the evening from a presence she detested, and went to attend upon her father, while Tom started to have a quiet cigar and a game of billiards, leaving her ladyship and Sir Grantley together to discuss a few more of the preliminaries of the wedding; Sir Grantley going so far, when he left, as to say that this was about the pleasantest evening he had had at the house in Portland Place, “don’t you know.”

But those below stairs were not above talking at dinner and supper in the servants’ hall, while Mademoiselle Justine sat like a smiling sphinx and listened, but said nothing.

“For my part,” said Robbins, “I think her young ladyship bears it admirably, as a well-bred lady should. She’s getting to know that people in the upper classes can’t marry as they like, and behaving quite right.”

“Ah, poor girl,” said Mrs Downes; “but under that there quiet look who knows what a volcano is a-busting in her breast. Ah, I have a heart of my own.”

“It seems to me,” said Dolly Preen, who during the past few weeks had been growing thin and acid consequent upon slighted love, much banter, the threatened loss of her situation, and genuine feminine jealousy of Justine, who had been intrusted with the task of accompanying her young mistress in her walks – “it seems to me that Lady Maude is finding consolation somewhere.”

Justine, who had been sitting so sphinx-like, suddenly flashed into life.

“You – you lil bébé of a girl, say what you mean,” she cried angrily.

“I was not talking of her ladyship, ma’amselle,” retorted Dolly, who had aptly picked up the London ways of her fellows. “It only seemed to me that Lady Maude had taken to liking music very much.”

“Ah, yes!” said Robbins. “Miss Preen is right there.”

“Some people found fault with me for liking to listen to the organ,” said Dolly, spitefully, “but nobody says nothing about my betters.”

“Lil bébé!” ejaculated Justine scornfully.

“Not quite such a little baby as you think for, ma’amselle,” retorted Dolly, tossing her head. “I’m not blind.”

“But you are lil miserable,” said Justine, scornfully. “What can you see, pray say?”

“Lady Maude giving money to that Italian musician, and listening to him very often from the balcony.”

“Ah,” said Mrs Downes, “but it’s different there, Miss Preen. Some one I know used to look out of the window at the man, Lady Maude looks out to console herself with the music, and you knows music hath charms.”

“See how right is Madame Downes,” said Justine, smiling and nodding. “My faith, Dolly Preen, but how you are bête.”

“I don’t know French,” said Dolly, rising, “but I did look in Lady Maude’s dictionary to see what that word meant, and I won’t sit here to be called a beast by a foreigner, so there.”

“Lil bébé,” said Justine, as Dolly moved toward the door.

“One moment, Miss Preen,” said the butler, speaking in an elderly, paternal tone. “Just you take my advice.”

“I don’t want anybody’s advice, Mr Robbins,” said the girl with asperity.

“Yes, you do, my dear, and what I wanted to say was, don’t you talk so free. You’ve had one narrow escape of losing a good situation through looking weak on Italian lazy ronies, don’t go and run another risk by hinting as a young lady of the highest aristocracy is giving her attention to such a thing as a black-bearded, plaster image selling man who grinds tunes in a box, because if you do you’ll find yourself wrong.”

“Thank you, Mr Robbins,” said Dolly, tartly. “I only know what I see, and I’m not afraid to speak my mind, whatever other people may be. I’m English, I am, and not French, and if I am from the country, as I said before, I’m not blind.”

Exit Miss Dolly Preen as Justine exclaimed once more, “Lil bébé,” and became so sphinx-like that she appeared deep as a knowledge mine.

“Well, such things have happened,” said Mrs Downes, sighing.

“Mrs Downes, don’t make me blush for you,” said the butler, sternly. “I’m ashamed to sit here and listen to such hints.”

“Ah, well, I’ll say no more,” said the cook, oracularly; “but I have a heart of my own, and I know what hearts is.”

“Trumps,” exclaimed the buttons.

“Henery! silence!” cried the butler sternly. “You go and see to the things in the pantry. Mrs Downes, as the oldest servant in her ladyship’s establishment, I have a right to take the lead. Such remarks as these are not seemly.”

“I only want to say, Mr Robbins,” cried the stout lady, with her heart doing its work well, “that if you check true love in one direction, out it comes in another. It will have its way. There, look at that.”

The demon of Portland Place was at the edge of the pavement turning the handle of his organ, and as a matter of fact, Maude Diphoos stepped slowly out of the French window in the drawing-room, and stood looking down at the Italian’s swarthy, smiling face.

Chapter Seventeen.

Lady Barmouth puts down her foot

Lady Maude sat in her dressing-room once more with her back hair down, listening to the strains of Luigi’s organ as it discoursed a delicious waltz, while Dolly Preen, who was rapidly developing a vicious-looking mouth, brushed away at the beautiful golden cascade, which rippled quite to the ground. The lady’s head swerved softly to the rhythm of the music, and it proved infectious; for though Dolly knew little of dancing, the music was pleasant to her soul, and she swayed her head and brushed softly with an accentuated beat at the beginning of every bar.

Just in the middle of the most sostenuto strain, and just as the ivory-backed brush was descending low, its long bristles dividing the golden threads, which crackled again in the warm air of that gloriously sunshiny day, there was a sharp tap at the dressing-room, and her ladyship entered.

“Ah, just in time,” she exclaimed, raising her gold-rimmed eye-glass. “I wanted to see your hair, Maude.”

“My hair, mamma?”

“Yes, child. Let me see; you went to Monsieur Launay’s yesterday?”

“Yes, mamma.”