"This gentleman has brought me news of my father, aunt," replied Kate tremulously. "He's afraid, I'm afraid, that father has been made a prisoner by blackmailers, and that he won't be released until money has been paid for ransom."
"How absurd!" said the other lady, and in spite of the seriousness of the situation, it was as much as I could do to refrain from laughing, so irresistibly, so ludicrously, did her voice remind me of Mr. Penley in Charley's Aunt.
Then, like a bell which pauses for a moment between its chimes, she boomed again, "How very absurd!"
Miss Carleton turned appealingly to me. "Will you please tell my aunt what you have just told me?" she said.
Haltingly and half-heartedly I repeated my story, the elder lady pursing up her fleshy lips, rolling her eyes, and indulging in long-drawn sniffs, so plainly indicating an incredulity which was lost in admiration and wonder at its own magnificent power of control, that I bungled the thing sadly, and was not surprised when, at the end of the narrative, she rose majestically from her chair, and rang a rich peal of warning and command.
"Clara, leave the room. I will join you, shortly."
She spoke as before, on one note, until she came to the last few words, when her voice suddenly dropped an entire octave, and then sank in rumbling silence, by falling, first one, and then another, note. This, I found, was her invariable way of speaking. In effect, it reminded me of a person walking with even step along a corridor, until he reaches a flight of stairs, down eight of which he suddenly falls, at one flight, recovering himself sufficiently, at the ninth, to rise and stalk majestically down the last two or three.
If, in the course of my story, I do not again allude to this peculiarity, it will not be because she ever lost the mannerism in question, but because, the mannerism having already been fully described, a repeated description of it in detail would, I fear, soon become wearisome. It is so much easier, so much cheaper, if I may use the word, to caricature a mannerism than to indicate character—to describe a personal eccentricity than to indicate a type—that I am not a little shamefaced at having written at such length regarding this peculiarity of one of my characters. So marked a feature could not, however, be passed over in silence, for I do not recall one solitary occasion when she failed to drop her voice in the way I have described when coming to the end of what she had to say.
Miss Carleton gone, her aunt, regarding me majestically, rang the bell. When the man-servant appeared, she pointed at me.
"I wish to confer with my niece, Metcalfe. Meanwhile, that person must not leave the house or this room. If he attempts to do so, call up the other men-servants, and secure him."