‘I hope, after this, your wife will take her proper place,’ said Mr. Holmes. ‘Of course, everyone knows the Duchess came here to tea.’
He lit a cigarette, and I heard the banister tremble slightly, as if from an infinitesimal earthquake.
‘It is so kind of you to have taken so much trouble,’ said I firmly.
‘It was nothing. I am sure you need have no further anxiety.’
I went back to the drawing-room. Helen’s face was buried in a sofa-cushion, and Legs came downstairs in three jumps.
So we laughed till it was time to dress for dinner. Occasionally we seemed to be recovering, but then somebody said ‘Creak,’ or ‘Baronet,’ and a fresh relapse took place.
I pity all poor souls who do not know Mr. Holmes. It is so sad for them—sadder than the lady with the cork foot. Oh, think of it! This triumphant vindication of Helen (which is all wrong, by the way) will last him a long, long time. It has been a campaign, triumphantly concluded, and I should not in the least wonder if he has half a bottle of champagne to-night. And after a time the excitement will die away, fading like a golden sunset, and he will settle down to his ordinary life again, and read the paper in the morning, and go for a little drive in the afternoon, and have tea and toast at the club afterwards. And in the spring the Panama hat will come out, and the rich fur coat be put away, and he will hand strawberries instead of buns, and iced coffee instead of tea, and perhaps play a little croquet. But this week has been a great week for him—it really has. If you want to understand the gloriousness of Mr. Holmes, you must take my word for it that nothing so engrossing has happened to him for months.
DECEMBER
THIS once-happy family has suddenly returned to the pit whence it was digged, and it is impossible to imagine any more depressing spectacle than we present. Dawn in faint flickers is beginning to shine on the wreck, and occasionally for a moment or two, though we may be over-sanguine, Helen and I can dimly imagine being happy again. Legs cannot do that yet; it is still midnight gloom with him.
The intelligent reader will scarcely need to be told that it is the influenza that has blackened the world like this. Helen began, and Legs and I followed within twenty-four hours. That, somehow, is a relief to her, since she feels she did not give it us. As if it mattered where it came from! Besides, personally I would rather catch it from her than anyone else. Legs has had the worst visitation, because, after it was quite certain he had got it, he persisted in attending the last night of the autumn opera season, did not enjoy it at all, of course, by reason of a splitting headache, and was really ill for a day or two. I was infinitely wiser. As soon as the nymph touched me with her fairy hand I went firmly to bed, turned my face to the wall like Hezekiah, and stopped there till the fever was over. After five days I tottered downstairs to find an old, old woman sitting by the fire. It was Helen.