And he went off sniggering to the billiard-room, leaving Mr. Bush in some perplexity. The paragon, unaware of his Grace's insomnia on the previous night, did not comprehend these delicately masked allusions to the Lady Drake episode. He sat down heavily to consider them on a garden-seat, and before he fell into the doze which always eventually followed his assumption of a sitting posture, he had put two and two together with this result: Detective police were swarming about the garden. They were there for the Duke. The Duke considered that he, James Bush, was a bit of a dog and wanted watching, and held the opinion that the husband who would trust him, James Bush, would soon find himself in Queer Street. Ergo the Duke had engaged gardeners to spy on him and her Grace of Southborough. It took the paragon exactly half an hour to reason all this out, having done which he fell asleep, murmuring gently, "Here's a rum go! Here's a bit of fun!" and proceeded to dream that gardeners were always detectives.
And the six self-conscious gardeners, now reduced to five, went on rooting up respectable plants and rolling innocent flowers till the twilight glided into night, and the Londoners went indoors and presently sat down to dinner.
THE DUCHESS IN ASPIC.
When ten people, eight of whom are labouring under delusions or suffering from engrossing mental complications, dine in company, and the banquet is supervised by a gentleman who is almost off his head, complete calm and the perfection of easy gaiety are not certain to ensue. There was, in fact, a good deal of constraint prevalent that night at Ribton Marches, constraint, however, varied by strange outbursts that kept things going, but scarcely kept them going in the average way of ordinary society. Only Miss Bindler and Mr. Ingerstall were fairly fancy-free that Wednesday night. Mrs. Verulam was abstracted because she wanted terribly to speak in private to Chloe, and inform her of Lord Bernard's letter to Mr. Rodney and of its strange contents. Chloe was abstracted because of the paragraph in the World, and the probable presence of the fatal Huskinson in England. The Duchess of Southborough was glowering with respectable fury against her hostess, and solicitude over the supposed wrongs of her gouty girl. The Lady Pearl was in a condition of highly-wrought sensibility to the fascinations of Chloe. Lady Drake was petrified by the knowledge that the Duke thought her what she wasn't, and that Mr. Bush had beheld her in an Indian shawl at half-past three in the morning. The Duke could think of nothing with any comfort except the five self-conscious gardeners now engaged, as he supposed, in ruining the Emperor's domain. Mr. Rodney, who believed himself to be in the incipient stage of rheumatic fever, looked like a corpse whose mind was seriously affected, and spoke like a voice reverberating from a sepulchre. And Mr. James Bush, who was seated next to the Duchess, was rent asunder by two contending passions, a desire to hint delicately to her Grace that she was supposed to be in love with him, and a desire to flee at once from the machinations of policemen to the marshy solitudes of peaceful Bungay. Pride and cowardice in fact contended in the paragon's mighty bosom, and almost succeeded in rendering him slightly volcanic. To crown the tragic humours of the feast, Mr. Harrison, very near to madness, stood during its progress with his feet turned out in the first position in the neighbourhood of an enormous sideboard, his face contorted into an expression of hysterical vigilance, his hands straying hither and thither among the glittering knives and forks which the Bun Emperor always had displayed as dining-room ornaments, even if Mrs. Lite were only eating a piece of thin bread and butter alone in the cedar-wood parlour.
The conversation round the dinner-table languished at first, then rose in fitful and confusing gusts. Only Mr. Ingerstall chatted continuously to Miss Bindler about Art and Paris, and she talked incessantly to him about bets and racing stables.
"I hope you are none the worse for your immersion at tea this afternoon?" said Mrs. Verulam to Mr. Rodney, with her eyes fixed steadily on Chloe.
"I fear I cannot hope to escape rheumatic fever," he answered. "To do so would indeed be foolish optimism."