She now told the silent butler to fetch one of the duke’s hats, so that I might have at least some decent covering to my bare head thus unscrupulously stripped by the unclean Andrew. The butler returned with a very smart hat of the duke’s. It had apparently never been worn. It fitted me to perfection. In this vicarious coronet I regained my carriage. I felt almost kindly towards the duke now that I was wearing his best hat.
Next day I placed the ducal hat in a befitting hat-box and, having put on another hat of my own, was starting for the scene of the downfall of Lord Andrew. At my door a note was handed me. It was from the suburban doctor. He very courteously pointed out that I had taken his hat by mistake, and said he would be glad if I would return it at my convenience, as he had no other, and my hat came down over his eyes. It was a dreadful picture, that of a respected practitioner going his rounds with a hat resting on the bridge of his nose; but at least it cleared up the mystery of the new hat. The butler was right. In my anxiety at being late on the previous afternoon I was evidently not conscious that I was wearing a hat which must have looked like a thimble on the top of an egg.
On reaching the ducal residence I was received by the butler. He said nothing; but it seemed to me that he smiled immoderately for a butler. The two hats, the new and the dirty, were still on the table, but the duchess made no appearance. I returned the duke’s hat with appropriate thanks and expressed regret for the stupid mistake I had made on the occasion of my last visit. I then placed the doctor’s new hat I had repudiated in the hat-box ready for removal.
The full mystery was still unsolved, while the butler stood in the hall like a hypnotized sphinx. I said, in a light and casual way, “And what about Lord Andrew? Did his lordship answer the note?” The butler replied, with extreme emphasis, “He did indeed!” Poor duchess, I thought, what a pity she had been so violent and so hasty.
Still the dirty hat remained shrouded in mystery, so, pointing to it, I said to the butler, “By the way, whose hat is that?” “That hat, sir,” he replied, adopting the manner of a showman in a museum, “that hat is the duke’s. It is the hat His Grace always wears when he goes out in the morning.” “But then,” I asked, “why did you not tell the duchess so yesterday?” He replied, “What, sir! After Her Grace had said that the hat was enough to poison the house! Not me!”
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Footnotes:
[1] British Medical Journal, Dec., 1886, and April, 1890.
[2] Fisher Unwin, London, 1922.
[3] The name is fictitious.