Frivolities Part 40

"How dare you, sir, try to shut the door in my face!"

"They're coming, Mr. 'arland! They'll murder me! You've spilt the cart!"

Mr. Bindon's agitation was extreme. There was a rush of feet along the pa.s.sage, a sound of many skirts. A whirlwind of excited women dashed through the study door.

"Where's Mr. Bindon?" cried Louisa Brown--that was.

"I see him! He's underneath the table!"

"Fetch him out!" exclaimed the thick-set woman. They fetched him.

IV.

The procession left Mulberry House in the following order: the first fly contained all that was left of Mr. Bindon. The seats were occupied by four ladies--excited ladies. Mr. Bindon--all, we repeat, that was left of him--stood up between the four. He had not much standing room.

Around the first fly circled a crowd of boys. The crowd consisted of twelve--twelve sons! They hurrahed and shouted, they jumped and ran.

Their proceedings gave to the procession an air of triumph. Eight young ladies walked beside the fly, the driver of which had received instructions not to proceed above a walking pace. These young ladies wept.

The second fly contained seven ladies, five inside and two upon the box. The language of these ladies was both fluent and fervid. They beguiled the tedium of the way by making personal remarks which must have been distinctly audible to at least one person in the fly in front. This person was kept in a perpendicular position by the points of four umbrellas.

"I hope," observed Mrs. Harland, when the procession had started, "that they won't murder him."

"I don't think you need be afraid of that, my love. They will merely escort him back, in the bosom of his family, to the City of the Saints."

Mr. Harland examined a cheque, which was written in a trembling hand, and the ink on which was scarcely dry. And the procession pa.s.sed from sight.

A Burglar Alarm

I must confess that the idea appealed to Leila more strongly than it did to me. I do not deny that it struck me as original. But it does not follow that because an idea is original it is of much practical value. Leila thought that it was just the thing which was wanted to calm her condition of nervous disquietude. So, of course, I said nothing.

At that time we were living at The Larches, and had only just discovered what a striking difference there is in a house, which is nine miles away from anywhere, in the summer and in the winter. In the summer the place was a perfect paradise. The house was embowered in trees. Within a stone's-throw was a little stream, which murmured as it meandered, singing, as it were, songs of Arcady. But as the nights grew longer, and the mornings further off, it was even painful to observe what a different aspect The Larches began to wear. The winds howled through the leafless corpses of the trees like souls in agony.

The stream rose till it flooded all the neighbourhood. During the long evenings the feeling of solitude was really most depressing. As Leila justly remarked, if anything happened in the dead of the night, and we were in need of a.s.sistance, where should we be? The nearest doctor was thirteen miles off. A policeman seven. The only servants we could induce to stay with us were an old woman, who was so old that she had to choose between us and the workhouse, and a young girl who had come to us out of the workhouse, and who was undoubtedly meditating returning whence she came. She said that it was livelier at the workhouse than at The Larches. Of that, personally, I have not the slightest doubt.

One day in November I was reading a paper. We did get a paper, now and then, though I trust that not many people have realised what it means to drive, in English November weather, in an open basket-carriage, perhaps eighteen miles to get one. In this paper a paragraph caught my eye, which was headed, "A Burglar Alarm." I read it. The idea of the thing was this. You were to cover the hall, and the stairs, and the banisters, and any other place where anybody was likely to tread, with open newspapers. Then, if a burglar came into the house in the middle of the night, he would step on the newspapers, and you would hear them rustle, and would know that he was there. The idea rather struck me. I mentioned it to Leila. Indeed, I read the paragraph to her there and then. She was quite ecstatic.

"We'll try it to-night," she said.

I did not see the exact _sequitur_. Nor why we should lay traps for burglars because paragraphs appeared in papers. I told her so.

"If a burglar did break in, where should we be?" she asked.

That was her favourite form of inquiry. I really could not tell her, though I strongly suspected that I, for one, should be in bed. Nor did I see how, in that respect, the situation would be altered, although the house was covered with newspapers, both within and without.

"My dear Frederic, how dense you are! Don't you understand that we should at least know that the man was there, and that would be some relief at any rate."

I was not so sure of this myself, although I did not care to interrupt her flow of eloquence to tell her so.

"I'll hunt up all the newspapers I can find, and, to-night, we'll cover the stairs."

We did. Leila is of a sanguine temperament. When she has made up her mind on a subject I generally acquiesce. I acquiesced then.

Shortly before nine, which hour, as a rule, was our bedtime at The Larches, except on those occasions when we retired earlier, we commenced our operations.

We endeavoured to enlist the servants' sympathy and a.s.sistance; but Mrs. Perkins evidently regarded the whole affair as savouring of lunacy, and Eliza did nothing else but giggle. So Leila and I had, practically, to do it all. I think that we made a very fair job of it, on the whole. We laid between a dozen and twenty newspapers down in the hall. We covered the stairs.

By the way, it was only after we had covered the stairs that we discovered that it would be difficult, not to say impossible, for anyone to ascend them without disarranging all that we had done; so as we ourselves, and Mrs. Perkins and Eliza were all below, the stairs had to be done over again. The servants went up first. We followed.

And, as we followed, we covered the treads with the papers as we went.

We even hung newspapers over the banisters, so that if a burglar, alarmed at the noise which he found he made by stepping on the stairs, caught hold of the banisters, he would not find that there was safety there.

I rather fancy that the preparations which we had made for an enemy who might or might not come acted on our own nervous systems.

Anyhow, hardly had we got into our bedroom and locked the door, than there came a noise as if all the newspapers we had just laid down were being stepped upon at once. And not only stepped but jumped on. Leila was immediately in an almost painful state of agitation. I, of course, was not so much affected. Still, I own that, even to me, the thing seemed curious.

"Did you lock the door?" she gasped.

"Certainly. Didn't you see me lock it?"

"Don't let him come in!"

"Don't let who come in, my dear?"

Leila did not say. She stood listening, trembling like a leaf. All was still.

"Frederic, who can it be?"

"I think, my dear, that perhaps I had better go and inquire."

Scarcely had I spoken than there came the noise again. This time it was louder than before, and more prolonged. Leila threw her arms about my neck. She was almost in hysterics.

"Frederic, it's a burglar!"

I did not see very well how it could be. If it was, then the fellow must have been secreted in the house. He must have watched us to our bedrooms, and then have instantaneously taken advantage of the fact of our backs being turned to indulge in acrobatic performances which were scarcely in accordance with received burglarious traditions.

"Nonsense, my dear, it is nothing of the kind."

As a matter of fact, it was not. It was the cat. Or rather, to be quite accurate, the kitten. Our cat, whose name, although the animal was of the feminine persuasion, was Simon, had recently had an addition to her family. In fact, five additions. Four of them, within a very short time of their birth, had pa.s.sed from life--and into a pail of water. One of them remained alive. I really cannot say why. I imagine that a white eye had something to do with the matter. The small creature was like a lump of soot, except about the region of one eye. There it was as white as the driven, or the undriven--I don't know which it is, but I know it is one or the other--snow. Leila had announced that the creature was to be named Macgregor. I can only repeat that, again, I cannot say why. Leila has a somewhat peculiar habit of naming, or, perhaps, it would be more correct to write, misnaming, the animals which come into her possession. She called the pony we had at The Larches the Duke of Liverpool. She said she did so because there was not a Duke of Liverpool. That seemed to me an insufficient reason why the t.i.tle should have been conferred upon a spavined, ill-groomed little brute, with a nasty temper, and only three sound legs to move, or, as was more frequently the case, to stand upon.

It seems that Macgregor had mistaken us. He seems to have supposed that Leila and I had occupied the better part of an hour, and taken the stiffening out of our backs, in order to provide him with a novel form of amus.e.m.e.nt, by means of which he might while away, to his own satisfaction, the witching hours of the stilly night. It appears, too, that Simon, his masculinely-named female parent, had shared in his delusion. At any rate, when Leila was beginning to think that all the burglars in England were dancing breakdowns on those newspapers, and I went out to see what really was the matter, with a revolver which was not loaded, and which never had been loaded, in one hand, and a hairbrush in the other, I found Macgregor das.h.i.+ng up and down the stairs in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment, while his wretched parent, forgetting the respect which she owed to herself, and the example which she owed to him, was rus.h.i.+ng and raging after him. I threw the revolver at Simon and the hairbrush at Macgregor.

Of course Macgregor had to be captured. Also Simon, his mother. It was absurd to suppose that we had covered the house from the top to the bottom with newspapers in order that these two animals might render life not worth the living. But Macgregor was not easy to catch. Leila and I had to hunt him single-handed; though, perhaps, double-handed would have been the better expression. We endeavoured to summon the servants to our a.s.sistance. But Mrs. Perkins, who was more than a little deaf when wide awake, was stone deaf when fast asleep. We never entertained any hopes of being able to make her hear. Our idea was to rouse Eliza, then to induce Eliza to prod Mrs. Perkins with her elbow in the side, and so to establish a chain of communication.

However, directly we began to rap at the bedroom door, Eliza seemed to be developing strong symptoms of hysterics, apparently under the impression that we were burglars. So, since the girl was always more or less of an idiot, and we thought it would, perhaps, not be worth our while to send her into fits, we resolved, as has been said, to hunt Macgregor single-handed.

A kitten is a lively animal. One has an object-lesson on this interesting fact in natural history, when, with the aid of a single candle, two persons endeavour to catch a kitten in a large, rambling, old-fas.h.i.+oned house in the darkness of the night. We almost had Macgregor several times. Never quite. We followed him all over the house with untiring and, one might almost write, increasing zeal. Up the stairs and down the stairs. Then up again, then down again. I doubt if, in his short life, Macgregor had ever enjoyed himself so much before. For my part I vowed that never again should a _lusus naturae_, in the shape of a white eye, keep a kitten out of a pail.