§ 5
When William arrived with the water-cart, he brought also further proofs of the Professor’s organizing ability. He brought various bottles of wine, red Burgundy and sparkling hock, two bottles of cider, and peculiar and meritorious waters; he brought tinned things for hors d’œuvre; he brought some luscious pears. When he had a moment with Bealby behind the caravan he repeated thrice in tones of hopeless sorrow, “They’ll eat um all. I knows they’ll eat um all.” And then plumbing a deeper deep of woe, “Ef they don’t they’ll count um. Ode Goggles’ll bag um.... E’s a bagger, ’e is.”
It was the brightest of luncheons that was eaten that day in the sunshine and spaciousness above Winthorpe-Sutbury. Everyone was gay, and even the love-torn Bealby, who might well have sunk into depression and lethargy, was galvanized into an activity that was almost cheerful by flashes from the Professor’s glasses. They talked of this and that; Bealby hadn’t much time to attend, though the laughter that followed various sallies from Judy Bowles was very tantalizing, and it had come to the pears before his attention wasn’t so much caught as felled by the word “Shonts.”... It was as if the sky had suddenly changed to vermilion. All these people were talking of Shonts!...
“Went there,” said Captain Douglas, “in perfect good faith. Wanted to fill up Lucy’s little party. One doesn’t go to Shonts nowadays for idle pleasure. And then—I get ordered out of the house, absolutely Told to Go.”
(This man had been at Shonts!)
“That was on Sunday morning?” said Mrs. Geedge.
“On Sunday morning,” said Mrs. Bowles suddenly, “we were almost within sight of Shonts.”
(This man had been at Shonts even at the time when Bealby was there!)
“Early on Sunday morning. Told to go. I was fairly flabbergasted. What the deuce is a man to do? Where’s he to go? Sunday? One doesn’t go to places, Sunday morning. There I’d been sleeping like a lamb all night and suddenly in came Laxton and said, ‘Look here, you know,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to oblige me and pack your bag and go. Now.’ ‘Why?’ said I. ‘Because you’ve driven the Lord Chancellor stark staring mad!’”
“But how?” asked the Professor, almost angrily, “how? I don’t see it. Why should he ask you to go?”
“I don’t know!” cried Captain Douglas.
“Yes, but—!” said the Professor, protesting against the unreasonableness of mankind.
“I’d had a word or two with him in the train. Nothing to speak of. About occupying two corner seats—always strikes me as a cad’s trick—but on my honour I didn’t rub it in. And then he got it into his head we were laughing at him at dinner—we were a bit, but only the sort of thing one says about anyone—way he works his eyebrows and all that—and then he thought I was ragging him.... I don’t rag people. Got it so strongly he made a row that night. Said I’d made a ghost slap him on his back. Hang it!—what can you say to a thing like that? In my room all the time.”
“You suffer for the sins of your brother,” said Mrs. Bowles.
“Heavens!” cried the captain, “I never thought of that! Perhaps he mistook me....”
He reflected for a moment and continued his narrative. “Then in the night, you know, he heard noises.”
“They always do,” said the Professor nodding confirmation.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“A sure sign,” said the Professor.
“And finally he sallied out in the early morning, caught the butler in one of the secret passages—”
“How did the butler get into the secret passage?”
“Going round, I suppose. Part of his duties.... Anyhow he gave the poor beggar an awful doing—awful—brutal—black eye,—all that sort of thing; man much too respectful to hit back. Finally declared I’d been getting up a kind of rag,—squaring the servants to help and so forth.... Laxton, I fancy, half believed it.... Awkward thing, you know, having it said about that you ragged the Lord Chancellor. Makes a man seem a sort of mischievous idiot. Injures a man. Then going away, you see, seems a kind of admission....”
“Why did you go?”
“Lucy,” said the captain compactly. “Hysterics.”
“Shonts would have burst,” he added, “if I hadn’t gone.”
Madeleine was helpful. “But you’ll have to do something further,” she said.
“What is one to do?” squealed the captain.
“The sooner you get the Lord Chancellor certified a lunatic,” said the Professor soundly, “the better for your professional prospects.”
“He went on pretty bad after I’d gone.”
“You’ve heard”
“Two letters. I picked ’em up at Wheatley Post Office this morning. You know he hadn’t done with that butler. Actually got out of his place and scruffed the poor devil at lunch. Shook him like a rat, she says. Said the man wasn’t giving him anything to drink—nice story, eh? Anyhow he scruffed him until things got broken....
“I had it all from Minnie Timbre—you know, used to be Minnie Flax.” He shot a propitiating glance at Madeleine. “Used to be neighbours of ours, you know, in the old time. Half the people, she says, didn’t know what was happening. Thought the butler was apoplectic and that old Moggeridge was helping him stand up. Taking off his collar. It was Laxton thought of saying it was a fit. Told everybody, she says. Had to tell ’em Something, I suppose. But she saw better and she thinks a good many others did. Laxton ran ’em both out of the room. Nice scene for Shonts, eh? Thundering awkward for poor Lucy. Not the sort of thing the county expected. Has her both ways. Can’t go to a house where the Lord Chancellor goes mad. One alternative. Can’t go to a house where the butler has fits. That’s the other. See the dilemma?...”
“I’ve got a letter from Lucy, too. It’s here”—he struggled—“See? Eight sheets—pencil. No Joke for a man to read that. And she writes worse than any decent self-respecting illiterate woman has a right to do. Quivers. Like writing in a train. Can’t read half of it. But she’s got something about a boy on her mind. Mad about a boy. Have I taken away a boy? They’ve lost a boy. Took him in my luggage, I suppose. She’d better write to the Lord Chancellor. Likely as not he met him in some odd corner and flew at him. Smashed him to atoms. Dispersed him. Anyhow they’ve lost a boy.”
He protested to the world. “I can’t go hunting lost boys for Lucy. I’ve done enough coming away as I did....”
Mrs. Bowles held out an arresting cigarette.
“What sort of boy was lost?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Some little beast of a boy. I daresay she’d only imagined it. Whole thing been too much for her.”
“Read that over again,” said Mrs. Bowles, “about losing a boy. We’ve found one.”
“That little chap?”
“We found that boy”—she glanced over her shoulder, but Bealby was nowhere to be seen—“on Sunday morning near Shonts. He strayed into us like a lost kitten.”
“But I thought you said you knew his father, Judy,” objected the Professor.
“Didn’t verify,” said Mrs. Bowles shortly, and then to Captain Douglas, “read over again what Lady Laxton says about him....”