‘As if I could dine! Tell Hopkins to make up a little basket of something to eat on the way. One mustn’t give any extra trouble. Oh dear, oh dear; and my maid’s out! I shall have to take Emily. You must send Harper on at once when she comes in.’
However, no feats of heroism were demanded of Lady Lillico. She found Mr. Cato and Huxtable waiting for her with a comfortable meal—Lady Wyse stayed with Dwala—for though the servants’ hall was all agog with the events of the afternoon, and the butler darkly prognosticated ‘the worst,’ things above stairs were in their usual train. And when she presented herself an hour later, almost gay with fine emotion, in a ‘business-like costume,’ cap and pinafore complete, in the darkened sick-room, Lady Wyse, who hurried to the door to check her entry—her violet eyes grown nearly black, and looking ‘very wicked,’ as Lady Lillico said afterwards—told her baldly that she would not be wanted till the morning.
XXXVII
When the sun cast his cold inquiring eye on England in the morning, and the innocent fields awoke in their grey shifts of dew, the trains that shot North, West, and South from London over the landscape, like worldly thoughts in a house of prayer, bore the tidings of Dwala’s disgrace. Trainloads of newspapers, the white wax sweated forth by the grimy bees in the sleepless hives of the big city, rattled past answering loads of milk and meat, gifts of the country, making the daily exchange. Squires and parsons were too shocked to eat their breakfast; their wives raced against the doctor to carry the news from house to house; the schoolmasters told the children; the children carried the tidings with the handkerchief of dinner to their fathers under the trees in the field. There was no room for hesitation; verdict and judgment were pronounced already. The country had been made the victim of a hideous hoax. Dwala and all his works must perish.
And yet, when the Biologist blurted his hint of a tail, a roomful of people turned and rent him! It is the way of the world; it is part of good manners. A partial revelation, a timid hint, an indiscretion, is smothered ignominiously; when the whole blatant truth brays out, men welcome it with ferocious joy. So, in the ancient days, tactless young angels in Heaven were sent to Coventry who alluded to Lucifer’s tail, or noticed anything odd about his feet; but when his tumbling-day came at last, the Seraphim were in the very front of the crowd which stood pelting meteors and yelling Caudate! ungulate! down from the clouds.
Men shut up their shops in London and gathered about taverns and corner-posts to unravel the sense of the bewildering news. Public Opinion, deserting the grass of the Parks, slouched into the streets to learn what it must do.
When Joey ran down into the street to fetch the morning milk, the news stared out at her from the boards in pink and black: ‘Dwala, the Missing Link!’
‘Golly!’ said her pals; ‘what’s your bloke been up to now?’
Joey was a heroine every day—the greatness of her acquaintance had a savour in Seven Dials which it had lacked in Park Lane; but this morning she soared altogether out of sight. What were milk-jugs and breakfast to such a thing as this? The milk penny went in a couple of newspapers, and she darted off with them across country for Dwala’s house. Who knew but she might be the first to bring him the great news?
Everybody was in the streets, as happens when public events are astir; and every street sent forth a thin stream that trickled in the same direction, till it formed a full river in Park Lane. A posse of policemen guarded the spiked gates.