I have never seen a mass of woman so complacent and imperturbable. She sat basking in speechless comfort, and only emitted, at intervals and at large, rich oracular remarks about the food. These might be understood to owe their provocation either to the nice constitution of some particular dish, or dishes, or to one’s unappreciative attitude towards such in their passing. Thus, the dictum “The leg of a pheasant and the wing of a grouse,” pronounced significantly during the game course, may have been interpretable into a general proposition of fitness or a personal admonition—there was no telling from the expression of the speaker, because she was absolutely without any, nor from the direction of her eyes, which she could only move by moving her whole body with them, a process much too laborious for the occasion. I could never get rid, however, of an uncomfortable feeling that there was something in these utterances aimed aggressively at myself and my gastronomic perversity, as when, as if in correction of some spirit of contradictoriness observed in me, she suddenly decreed, “Fry bread-crumbs in butter, but sippets in dripping,” or appeared, when I was in the very act of helping myself from a particular dish, to throw an unfounded aspersion upon my age by asserting with finality, “Crack no nuts at all, if you can’t crack ’em with your teeth.”
Her last remark but one occurred at dessert, when she suddenly asseverated, without looking at anything, “The late Prince Consort always ate his orange with a spoon,” a statement which caused me blushingly to lay down my knife and fork. And finally, having eaten a stupendous dinner, with the large unimpassioned confidence of one who had never yet been mistaken in her digestion, with the observation on her lips that “The late Duke of Wellington used to remark that when it’s time to turn over it’s time to turn out,” she was wheeled from the room by the man called Richard, and disappeared from my ken for ever.
But Johnny (who, by the way, wore a white waistcoat, with real turquoise buttons), put my inward sniggering all to shame by his perfectly natural acceptance of this remarkable parent. He was dutiful, and attentive, and always respectful in his attitude towards her—unconscious of any reason, indeed, why she should figure as something slightly abnormal to alien eyes. It had occurred to me, irresistibly but abominably, how Ira would have regarded such a mother-in-law. Now, hearing the good fellow expatiating on his mamma’s generosity and loving-kindness, I was ashamed of myself and joined warmly in the eulogium.
These two lived in the lap of wealth. The whole flat was alive with gorgeous, soft-stepping flunkeys, whose plush breeches took the doorways with beauty. Mrs Dando herself, for all her bulk, had been caked with diamonds. Yet, I believe, the enormous residuum of that wealth, when the price of its ostentation was deducted, was devoted almost exclusively to good works. Which of us, humbler endowed, could make the same boast relatively? Certainly I had no reason to criticise a display, whose moral, as it affected me alone, was all of a delicate helpfulness and generosity.
Johnny and I sat up pretty late together, discussing my affairs; and when I left my friend, to return to the modest quarters where I had left Geoletti awaiting me, it was only to breach, by a little interval of sleep, the business on whose full tide his wealth, and help, and devotion were to launch me.
At eleven o’clock on the following morning I went to my appointment, accompanied by the Italian. Mr Shapter’s offices were in Lincoln’s Inn Fields; and it gave me my first real inkling, perhaps, of the worldly consequence of my little half-condescended-to old schoolfellow, when I observed with what deference, and with what disregard of the prior claims of lesser waiting clients, he was ushered into the great man’s presence.
I am not going to detail the processes of the interview which followed. It would be merely to retread well-trodden ground. My story and Geoletti’s were heard, and balanced, and compared, and the right inferences drawn from them, with an insight and acumen which gave me a high opinion of the qualities upon which great legal reputations are based. The conclusion is the essential thing, and that is related in a line. It was to be Mother Carey first; and, after her, Aosta and Lapluietonnante.
CHAPTER XXVI.
I REVISIT MOTHER CAREY
The last of the snow was gurgling itself away into the black drain-traps, and the face of the town was smeared like a sweep’s under a dreary drizzle, when Mr Shapter, and I, and a certain hard-faced gentleman, with a habit of rubbing his jaw grittily under reflection, came down to the grimy little tenement in Old Paradise Street. At the door, the hard-faced gentleman, motioning us to one side and bending to the keyhole, gave a call like an itinerant potman’s. The commendable ruse proving successful, brought, after the briefest interview, an old remembered step shuffling along the passage. The key turned and the chain ran gratingly, and, following the unbaring, a filthy claw, grasping a jug, was protruded through the aperture revealed. Quick and soft as the swoop of an owl, the hard-faced man’s fingers closed on the boney wrist, and the jug dropped to the pavement with a crash. And straightway, like a hooked fish’s, the nose and flexuous mouth of old Mother Carey came wobbling and gasping to the light of day. The screech of fear and fury, which she struggled on the instant to omit, sticking in her throat, the detective took quick advantage of that momentary paralysis.
“Come along now,” he said. “I’m the law, do you understand? and you’re wanted on a charge of murder. You’d best let me in, and hear what I’ve got to say.”