Lady Maude's Mania

“Mutiny?”

“Yes, sir, I said mutiny; but after Maude is married – then!”

The door closed behind her, and Lord Barmouth looked piteously up at his little son.

“You have got me into a devil of a scrape, Tom, my boy,” he faltered.

“Never mind, gov’nor. Tip that up. The old girl left us this.”

“But – but it is champagne, Tom.”

“All the better, gov’nor. Here’s to you.”

Lord Barmouth hesitated for a few moments, and then raised his glass.

“Your health, my dear boy,” he said. – “Yes, that’s a very nice glass of wine. I haven’t tasted champagne for a couple of months.”

“Then you shall taste it again,” said Tom. “Now, I mean to go it. Gov’nor, you should come and dine with me to-night, and we’d try and forget all about old Maude, only I have no money.”

“But I have, my boy – ten pounds.”

“You have, gov’nor? – Yes so you have.”

“Take – take it, my boy.”

“But where did you get it, gov’nor?”

“Well – er – never mind that, Tom. I – er – I borrowed it; but I shall pay it again some day.”

“But, gov’nor – ”

“Take the money, Tom, my boy. You need not mind, and if I can get away to-night I should like to dine with you.”

“Then you shall, old fellow; I’ll manage that.”

“But her ladyship?”

“Leave it to me, gov’nor.”

“And about Charley Melton, Tom, my boy – is there any hope?”

“Not a bit, gov’nor. He’s a poor thing, and not worthy of her.”

“Oh, dear, dear, dear,” sighed Lord Barmouth. “But I’m afraid I couldn’t get away.”

“You leave it to me, and we’ll dine at nine, gov’nor. Don’t take anything at ours.”

“No, Tom, no.”

“Now go down.”

The old man finished his champagne, thinking of her ladyship’s word —then.

After that he went downstairs, and that night, as good as his word, Tom shuffled him out as soon as the ladies had left the dining-room.

It was easily done, and the door was just being quietly closed as they stood under the portico, when from just outside and beyond the pillar there came the sudden burst of music from an organ, as the man who had been playing changed the tune, and as the pair hurried away they brushed against the player, who stood by the area railings in his slouched hat and ragged attire.

“What the – ”

“Devil” his lordship was going to say, for something struck him on the top of his gibus hat.

“Copper,” said Tom, as the object fell with a pat on the pavement. “Come along.”

“Yes, halfpence,” whispered his lordship, nervously, as he tottered on; “but I do wish Maudey wouldn’t be so free with her money to those vagabonds. That scoundrel makes quite an income out of our house.”

“Never mind, gov’nor, it won’t last long. Poor girl, the game’s nearly up. Now for what the Yankees call a good square meal.”

“With a drop of port, Tom, my boy.”

“Yes; you shall have a whole bottle. Barker’s, Jermyn Street,” he cried to the cabman, who drew up; and then as the cab drove off – “There, gov’nor, we’ll forget home troubles for one night.”

“Yes, my boy, we will,” said the old man, eagerly.

“I do wish Tryphie wouldn’t be so hard again,” sighed Tom, “and just too when she was growing so soft. Sympathy for Maudey, I suppose.”

“What say, Tom, my boy?”

“Thinking aloud, gov’nor.”

“What about, Tom?”

“Charley Melton, gov’nor. He’s a regular flat.”

Chapter Twenty One.

Sad Proceedings

All the servants remarked that “the poor dear” from the very first bore up like a suffering martyr, and then discoursed upon the vanity of human hopes; and Mrs Downes, who was of a pious turn of mind, and went miles “per ’bus” on Sundays to be present at religious services in theatres, said that it was a “vale of tears,” and wiped one tear out of her eye, looked at it, wrapped it up very carefully in her handkerchief, and put it in her pocket, as if fully aware of the fact that it was a sympathetic pearl.

“They might well call it the last day,” sighed the same lady, for to her mind it was as if heaven and earth had come together.

“She is bête, this woman,” said Mademoiselle Justine, who had descended for hot water; and she stood and purred softly to herself, and looked so like a cat that she only needed to have squatted down upon a chair, and begun licking her trim dress, to have completed the likeness.

It was the last day of Maude’s girlhood; the next was to see her what the fashionable gossips would call a happy wife. The previous fortnight had been spent in a whirl of busy doings. Dressmakers had been to and fro, milliners consulted, Justine and Dolly had been kept up late at night to see to packing, and so anxious was her ladyship that her child should look her best that she insisted upon Maude visiting her dentist, and seeing Dr Todd again and again. Maude tried to expostulate, but her ladyship was inexorable, and spared herself no pains. The consumption of spirits of red lavender was startling, but she bore up wonderfully; went with that dear Sir Grantley to the coachmaker’s in Long Acre, and herself selected the new brougham that was one of the baronet’s wedding presents, and declared the horses which she twice over went into the stable to see were “loves.”

Then, too, she aided in the re-decorating of her daughter’s new home; in fact, spared herself in no way to bring about the happy event, while “that wretched Lord Barmouth prowled about the house doing nothing but thinking of gluttony.” In fact, she found him one day sitting behind the curtains in the drawing-room spreading potted tongue upon an Abernethy biscuit, with a pearl paper-knife, when he ought to have been helping her, for in these days his lordship’s wolf, which constantly bade him feed, was unusually active.

Perhaps it was a natural instinct similar to that which directs wild animals to seek certain places at times to lick salt. At all events, tongue had a wonderfully attractive effect upon Lord Barmouth: he would steal or buy tongue in any shape to eat surreptitiously, and evidently from a natural effort to provide homoeopathically against that from which he suffered so much.