Mr. Rodney beamed with pride and pleasure.
"I hope some day—at Mitching Dean—from which, by the way, I have ventured to order up a supply of grapes for the week. The Mitching Dean grapes are remarkably fine. Here is Mrs. Marriner," as the faithful Marriner appeared, apparently hypnotised by the orchestrion; "she will conduct you. By the way," Mr. Rodney added, turning to Huskinson, "I trust you will allow my man Harry to valet you during the week, since you've not yet succeeded in finding a man to your liking. Harry is——"
"No, no, thank you. You're awfully good; but it's not necessary," replied Chloe with some haste.
"Most efficient," calmly pursued Mr. Rodney, intent on benevolence to the man he heartily hated. "He shaves better than any——"
"Thank you, I always shave myself," said Chloe—"morning and evening."
"So often?" said Mr. Rodney, with a glance of surprise at the smooth face above the tweed coat.
"Once a month—once a week, I mean. Well, I'll go and have a wash;" and she scurried off, leaving Mr. Rodney alone in the purple drawing-room.
He sat down on a purple chair, placed his thin feet on a purple stool, and fell into deep meditation. Since we first met him, in early May, perplexity had almost continually attended him. Mr. Rodney's mainspring was propriety, touched up with the adjective "smart." He believed devoutly in conventionality and titles. Respectability and pedigrees were necessaries to him, and as yet he had never been without them. It is true that he could accept the "right sort of man—or woman," even if he were aware that their lives were not ordered entirely on Nonconformist principles. In fact, he knew a great many rascals of both sexes, but they were rascals who knew everybody and were known by everybody. The women were all received at Court; the men all belonged to the right clubs, and so, according to Mr. Rodney's code, they were eminently respectable. Mr. Rodney had no special objection to people who broke the Ten Commandments, but he had a very great and very deeply-seated horror of people who outraged society. And this was what Mrs. Verulam—whom he admired, after Mitching Dean, more than anything on earth—seemed bent upon doing.
As he sat in the purple drawing-room with his eyes fixed moodily on the orchestrion, he reviewed the events of the last few weeks without gaining any comfort from them. Undoubtedly Mrs. Verulam had succeeded in making herself the talk of the town with the Van Adam. She had never moved without the divorced orange-grower in her pocket. She had taken him to every party; she had continually been alone with him in her opera-box; she had supped with him at the Savoy and at Willis's; she had driven down with him to Ranelagh, and returned after the moon was up; she had been with him on the river, and even in it, for Chloe had caught a crab near Athens, and been rescued by the steam-launch of a Cabinet Minister. All London was talking of her strange indiscretions. All London was talking—would all London presently be acting? That was the horrid thought, the grisly idea, which turned Mr. Rodney cold on the purple brocade and set the orchestrion dancing in front of his eyes. Even his jealousy faded before the spectre of Mrs. Verulam abandoned by society; "out of it," a person reduced to "first nights" and supper parties in shady restaurants. To be obliged to depend on "first nights" for one's gaiety was, to Mr. Rodney, much the same thing as having to keep house in the valley of dry bones. It was immolation. It was more: it was interment. He heard the earth pattering upon Mrs. Verulam's coffin. And the terrible thing was that some evil spirit seemed to have entered into Mrs. Verulam, a spirit that rejoiced in this threatening of disaster. She was with her own hands cutting through the cables that moored her to all that makes life worth living. And for an American! A man mixed up with oranges, the commonest of all fruits, the yellow thing that may be seen on the breakfast-tables of the lower middle classes, the abomination that is sucked in pits, whose pips are flung in showers from a thousand galleries a night! Mr. Rodney turned almost faint at the thought. If this Van Adam had even cultivated nectarines, or made his money in medlars. But no. It might have been nuts, certainly. But even this reflection brought little solace. Mr. Rodney had long since written to his old and valued friend, Lord Bernard Roche, asking a thousand discreet questions about "poor dear old Huskinson." But he had received no reply, no satisfaction to his very natural curiosity about the man so suddenly plunged into the very heart of his heart's life. And though this grave matter so afflicted Mr. Rodney, there was something further to perplex him.
There was James Bush. He was still in a measure shrouded in mystery. Yet Mr. Rodney had sometimes felt his influence upon Mrs. Verulam as one feels a thing in the dark. Since that afternoon when Mr. Rodney practically had a fit on hearing of her intention to abandon society, Mrs. Verulam had not again openly alluded to it, or referred pointedly to Mr. Bush. She thought that to do so might be dangerous, so long as high collars were in fashion for men. Had Mr. Rodney worn a scarf, like a costermonger, she would have been troubled by no such delicacy. But perhaps she had hardly considered that, if Mr. Rodney were seized with convulsions on appreciating the possibility of her abandoning society, he would most probably be attacked by an enemy still more dreadful if he beheld society abandoning her, as now seemed possible. Women are so careless. Mr. Rodney, thinking of Mr. James Bush, drew forth his watch. In something less than a couple of hours that mysterious figure from the Marshes of Bungay, that figure first seen shrouded in the romantic privacy of a reversed meat-safe, was due at the palace. What then? What then? Mr. Rodney, forgetful of lunch, forgetful of his duties as cicerone of Ribton Marches, forgetful of the passing hour that may never return, forgetful even of the orchestrion, and of a life-size and life-like portrait of the Bun Empress in an orange-coloured tea-gown which stared upon him from the opposite wall of the purple drawing-room, plunged into the most solemn meditation, with his chin sunk down upon an opal breast-pin presented to him by an Austrian Archduchess. At length, coming once more to the surface, he recalled the fact that he had not arranged his hair since travelling, and that lunch was imminent. He therefore rose with a sigh to seek the "green bedroom," in which apartment he was to be accommodated during his stay in the palace. But owing to his ignorance of the building, or his absence of mind, or both, he strayed from the right path, and endeavoured to make his way into the upper regions through a side door, and up a staircase which, not having been brought from abroad at an immense cost, was dedicated to the uses of the Bun Emperor's menials. As Mr. Rodney vaguely ascended this staircase, and when he was not quite half-way up, his attention was attracted by the tiny but sharp tinkling of a bell in some hidden place below. He stopped, as one stops when arrested by some triviality in a dream. The tinkling was renewed, and then the following monologue broke upon Mr. Rodney's listening ear: