Lady Maude's Mania Part 29

"_Non_, M'sieu," said the Frenchman, smiling. "You have been too capable an a.s.sistant, 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 chere_ 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 pa.s.sed he saw a white packet drop from the window and fall upon the pavement, where it burst like a sh.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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.

But if there was love-making in Portland Place there was despair in Duke Street, human and canine, for Joby more than once proved himself to be a terrible nuisance at the chambers by uttering low snuffling whines upon the stairs and landings, which, being interpreted, meant, "Why doesn't master come home?" But by degrees he smothered his feelings on finding that an open avowal of his trouble only resulted in boots, boot-jacks, empty soda-water bottles, and other missiles being flung at him from open doors, while he was reviled as being a beast.

His retort upon receiving such forcible salutations was very often a display of his teeth, and so threatening an action in the direction of legs that he generally caused his a.s.sailants to beat a retreat; but at last he performed the same strategic evolution himself, consequent upon having to deal with the unknown. In fact, science conquered him. He stood shot, and dodged them bravely. So clever was he indeed upon this point, that it was almost impossible to hit him with hair-brush, boot, or lump of coal; but one day an angry occupant of the chambers, upon hearing a very long-drawn howl, opened his door suddenly and hurled a bottle at the dog.

It was this bottle which puzzled Joby, for instead of being empty, it was full of the water known as soda, highly charged with gas by one Schweppe, and though it missed the dog, it struck upon a partly filled coal-scuttle, and exploded with such violence, and so great a scattering of fragments, that for two days Joby preferred to sleep in the park, and had a very narrow escape from a dog-stealer, who tried every blandishment he knew to get the animal to follow him, but without effect.

Sometimes he would go and hang about the great house in Portland Place, but there was no admission. Attempts to glide past or between the legs of the servants dismally failed; but he had a look or two at Lord Barmouth, and followed him when he went out, giving sundry sniffs at his pocket, and more than once coming in for a bone. But this was very exceptional, and Joby's was just now a very unsatisfactory and useless life.

His lordship swore a little softly and in private about the organ, but ceased as he saw that his daughter took a little interest in the music.

"But it's doosed bad taste, Tom, doosed bad taste, my boy; and dear me, how I do long for a gla.s.s of port."

"Yes, and you'll have to long, governor."

"Yes, my boy. Seen Charley Melton lately?"

"Yes, looking as if he were going to be hung."

"Did he though, my boy? What did you say to him?"

"Told him he was a fool."

"Oh, Tom, my boy, you shouldn't have done that. I hope he don't think that I'm behaving badly to him. I'd go and see him, but her ladyship would be sure to know. Be civil to him, my boy, for my sake. His father was such an old friend."

"Humph, don't seem like it," growled Tom.

"But why did you call him a fool, Tom?"

"For not making a bolt of it with Maudey."

"Oh, no--no--no--no, my boy, that would be very wrong. But what did he say?"

"Nothing. Shook his head and walked off."

"Yes, yes. Quite right, my boy, quite right. Charley Melton would not do anything to degrade our Maudey like that."

"Well, I would if I had a chance," said Tom, "and if I hadn't I'd make one."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

TOM AND THE TARTAR.

All the same though, consequent upon thinking so much about his sister, Tom made very little progress with his own love affairs.

Tryphie Wilder's was not a very pleasant life at Lady Barmouth's. She felt that she had been adopted out of charity, and in her bitterness she would sometimes call herself her ladyship's abuse block, for that lady would call her "little wretch" in private with as much vigour as there was sweetness in the "my dear" of public life. Her ladyship had before now gone so far as to strike her. That very day Tryphie had her revenge, for, going into the drawing-room, she found Tom fast asleep on the sofa, and snipped off the ends of his moustache, wax and all. Tom awoke, and caught and kissed her, and she flew at him, boxed his ears, and then ran out of the room and upstairs, to strike her hand against the wall for being so cruel.

The girl's bright spirits and unvarying tenderness to his father, for whom she was always buying Bath buns or finding snacks, made Tom desperately in love with her, but he had only received chaff as his amatory food in return. Tryphie meantime went on as a sort of upper servant, with the _entree_ of the drawing-room; and while Justine was the repository of much that was false in Lady Barmouth, she alone was admitted to the secrets of her aunt's first and second sets of teeth, which she had to clean in her own room with the door locked, it being supposed that it was her ladyship's diamond suite then undergoing a renovating brush, while poor Tryphie all the time was operating upon what looked like a ghastly grin without any softening smile given by overhanging lips.

"I tell you what it is, Tryphie," said Tom one day, as he met her on the stairs--"but I say, what's that?" and he pointed to a little case which she tried to conceal.

"Don't ask impertinent questions, sir," was the reply. "Now then, what is it?"

"Well, I was going to say--oh, I say, how pretty you look this morning."

"You were not going to say anything of the kind, sir."

"Well then, I was going to say if I am worried much more, I shall hook it."

"Slang!" cried Tryphie.

"Well, I must slang somebody. I mustn't swear. I'm half mad, Tryphie."

"Poor fellow! you have been smoking yourself so."