Lady Maude's Mania

“I have been telling Justine that I shall not go to any further expense over it. I have just sent him a cheque for his account, and your head looks so much better that I think we may be satisfied now.”

Maude’s cheeks turned scarlet, and so did her temple and neck, but her beautiful hair made a magnificent veil, and hid her confusion from her ladyship’s view as she examined the parting, drew it away from the temples and poked it about just at the poll.

“Don’t you think, mamma, I had better keep on for a little longer?”

“No,” said her ladyship, peremptorily. “Your hair is in beautiful condition. I grudged paying that man; but he has saved your hair, and he deserves what he has received. He is very clever.”

“I should like to continue a little longer, mamma.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said her ladyship tartly. “Your hair is perfect.”

“I must go and say that I am not about to continue his course of treatment.”

“No, you must not. I shall write to Monsieur Launay myself and tell him. I cannot afford these expenses, the demands for money are dreadful. I am always spending. Go away, Preen.”

“Yes, my lady,” said the little maid, and she “made a face” as she left the room.

“The preparations for your marriage will be more than I can afford.”

“Oh, mamma, must that go on?” cried Maude.

“Now, now, now, Maude, no more of that, please. I will not have it. Silence. The expenses will be terrible, and I shall be very glad when it is over, and so will you be, and I must say I am pleased to find you are coming more to your senses. Oh, that odious wretch. Go away, do!”

Her ladyship crossed to the window and shut it down with a crash, deadening the sound of Luigi’s minstrelsy as she returned to her daughter’s side.

“Really the expenses of our establishment are maddening. I have had the wine merchant’s bill in this morning, and it is outrageous. The man must be a swindler. Case after case of dry champagne charged for that I cannot remember having. But I must see into it at once; and, yes: I am quite satisfied there is no need for you to go to the hairdresser’s any more.”

Her ladyship gave a quick glance round the room – a glance that took in everything, the furniture, the davenport at which her daughter wrote, the books she had been reading, even to the tiny cobweb left by a careless housemaid in one corner, and then in a very dissatisfied frame of mind she descended to write to Mr Launay, leaving her daughter looking speechless with misery, and gazing wildly at the closed window.

“Shall I finish your hair, ma’am?” said a voice which made her start, for she had not heard the door opened.

“If you like, Dolly,” said Maude despairingly; and with a curiously furtive glance at her mistress, caused by her wonder what her ladyship had said, the girl went on with her interrupted work till she had done; and then when certain hooks had been persuaded to enter certain eyes, and as many buttons to pass through their button-holes, as she could obtain no further orders, Dolly left the room, and Maude walked to the window, opened it, and sat down with her elbow on the sill to listen to the distant strains of music which came from the top end of the place near Park Crescent, and as she listened the tears stole down her cheeks, for the fiat must be obeyed. There would be no more pleasant visits to the coiffeur’s – those little trips which relieved the monotony of her life so deliciously, and made her better able to bear the coming of Sir Grantley Wilters.

No more – no more! she was to be a prisoner now till she was to be decked out with garlands, and sent like a lamb to the sacrifice, and served up with mint sauce, for Sir Grantley was going to be very rich. Life was becoming an empty void with nothing to fill it. No Charley Melton allowed to visit; no assistant to arrange her hair – and Monsieur Hector Launay’s aide was so very, very nice.

Maude’s sad musings were interrupted by the door being opened quickly, and the head of Justine thrust in.

“Oh, mademoiselle —chère miladi, have you heard?”

“Yes, Justine. It is all over.”

“All ovaire, miladi? c’est atroce, but not ovaire; I will take counsel wiz M’sieu Hector, and all will be well.”

“Justine! Justine!”

“Coming, milady; I descend directly. Have a good heart, still yet, and all shall be well. Oui, milady, I come.”

Justine descended, and Maude melted into tears.

Chapter Eighteen.

The Chance looks bad

That same afternoon Monsieur Hector Launay’s assistant entered the business place hurriedly, followed by Joby, and exclaimed —

“I am rather late. Has she come?”

“Come, non, M’sieu; she comes no more.”

“What?”

“I have a letter from my lady in which she say I have done her daughter’s hair so much good that the visits will cease. I am paid, and voilà tout.”

“Good heavens! Does she suspect?”

“Non, M’sieu,” said the Frenchman, smiling. “You have been too capable an assistant, and the occasion has ceased; but I will think, and M’sieu shall see the lady again. I will take counsel with Justine, and we will have a new plan. I am a Frenchman, and spirituel. I cannot live wizout I see ma chère sometimes. Justine must come, so be of good hope; we must wait.”

Charley Melton walked out of the reception-room, followed by Joby, who kept looking up at his master in a curious manner, as if half-pitying and wholly divining his feelings. There was a curious leer too in one eye, which seemed to look maliciously at his proprietor, who took the greatest care that he, Joby, should not form any canine intimacies of a tender nature, and Joby’s leering eye seemed to say, “How do you like being morally chained up, my boy?”

Charley Melton went homeward, turned, and walked right up to the Euston Road, where he made for Park Crescent, and then walked straight down Portland Placc, so as to try and catch a glimpse of his inamorata.

He was blessed and yet annoyed, for Maude was at one of the windows with a book in her hand, apparently reading, but really looking down at Luigi, the Italian, who was turning the handle of his baize-covered chest in the most diligent manner, producing sweet sounds according to taste, and smiling and bowing to the lady.

“Lucky brute!” muttered Charley, as he went by without venturing to salute. For as he passed he saw a white packet drop from the window and fall upon the pavement, where it burst like a shell, scattering bronze discs in all directions, so that the organ-grinder had hard work to collect them laden as he was, while the tune he played was broken up into bits.

“Lucky brute!” sighed Charley Melton again, “allowed to stand upon the edge of the pavement to gaze up at her, and then paid for so doing. Ah, I’d better give it up. She won’t bolt with me. I seem as if I can get no help from Tom, and I cannot go there. Hang it all, I shall do something desperate before I’ve done. She was yielding, but the game’s up now.”

Poor Joby in the days which followed was far from happy, for his master was a great deal away from home, and the dog was shut out often enough from his rooms as well as from his confidence.

People said that Charley Melton, being crossed in love, was going to the bad – taking to drink and gambling, and steadily gliding down the slide up which there is no return; and certainly his habits seemed to indicate this to be the case, so much so that Joby thought a good deal in his dense, thick-brained fashion upon the problem that puzzled his head as well as several wiser ones – a problem that he was to solve though for himself when the due time came, for Joby could not make out his master.

Time glided on, and Charley Melton’s case seemed to grow more and more hopeless, while Maude appeared to be going melancholy mad, and passed a great portion of her time gazing dreamily down at the purveyor of tunes set afloat upon the air by the mechanical working of a large set of bellows, and the opening and shutting by a toothed barrel of the mouths of so many graduated pipes.

Everybody was miserable, so it appeared, saving Sir Grantley Wilters, whose joy approached the weird in the peculiarity of its developments. He took medicine by the bucketful, so his valet told Mr Robbins in confidence, “and the way he talks about your young lady is wonderful.”

It was wonderful, for in his amatory madness he chuckled and chattered and praised the lady’s charms, and he even went so far at times as to sing snatches of love songs in a voice that suggested the performances of a mad – or cracked – clarionet in a hilarious fit, during which it was suffering from a dry reed.

Love ruled the day at Portland Place, and Sir Grantley came and made it in the drawing-room as often as he liked, while when she could escape to the balcony, Maude stood and listened to the strains of Trovatore, and, “poor dear, seemed to get wuss and wuss.”

The last was cook’s remark, and it was received with a feminine chorus of “Ah’s!”

“Oh, that wretched Italian, why does he persist in coming here?” cried her ladyship one day. “Maude, you’ll drive me mad if you keep on encouraging him so.”

Maude looked at her mother dreamily and said nothing, but the next time the man came she wrapped some coppers in a piece of paper, and dropped them out, to be caught deftly in the soft felt hat.

“Poor fellow,” she sighed, “it may make him happy.”

“Ah, bella signora,” cried Luigi in mellifluous tones, and he ground, and smiled, and showed his white teeth till the lady retired.