Finally, in the back kitchen, while making a frenzied dash at him, I missed Macgregor, and knocked the candle over. In endeavouring to save it I cannoned into Leila. I had not previously been aware that she was in my near neighbourhood. With such force did I strike her that I sent her flying backwards, until, reaching the floor, she found a resting-place amidst the pots and the pans. She fell with such a clatter, and with such a din, that, in the darkness, my blood ran cold. And, having fallen, she began to scream in a manner which deprived me of the little self-possession I had left.
"Is that you, Leila?" I inquired.
I felt morally persuaded that it was. I did not see who else it could be. Still, I imagined that I might as well make sure. She did not tell me in so many words. But the voice which screamed was the voice of Leila.
"Are you hurt?" I asked.
Again she did not answer. She only screamed. I was in darkness. I had not saved the candle. I could not see her. I could not feel, because every time I moved I seemed to hit her with another saucepan. I had no matches. I knew of none nearer than the bedroom. I had to leave Leila screaming there. I had to find my way out of that back kitchen, stumbling, as it seemed to me, over all the contents of an ironmonger"s shop, and almost knocking out my brains against the partly-opened door. I had to grope my way along the newspaper-covered pa.s.sages, across the newspaper-covered hall, up the newspaper-covered stairs. I had to hang on to the newspaper-covered banisters.
If ever there was a burglar alarm I sounded it. I heard Macgregor and Simon, his mother, indulging in their little playful pranks, above and below me, and everywhere at once. But the servants did not seem to hear anything. No, nothing. I had no means of knowing if Eliza had frightened herself into a fit, and if Mrs. Perkins was dead. As I entered the bedroom I swept a jug and basin off the wash-hand-stand.
It sounded as if I had broken the contents of a china shop. But no one seemed to notice it--not even Simon and Macgregor. Such was my state of agitation, and such the confusion of my mind, that I floundered into the middle cupboard of the wardrobe, which, in some mysterious manner, must have opened of its own accord. I had dragged all Leila"s dresses off the hooks and half smothered myself beneath them before I discovered where I was. But I found the matches. Oh, yes, I found them after all.
I also found Leila. She was sitting up on the kitchen floor, in the midst of the pots and pans, in a frame of mind which, by me, was unexpected. She seemed to be under the impression that my conduct had been base, not to say heartless. She appeared to be under the, to me, extraordinary delusion that I had scrambled in the darkness up the newspaper-covered stairs, and fallen over everything which I could fall over, because I hated her. She wept. It was all I myself could do to refrain from tears.
However, we managed to secure Macgregor and his mother in the drawing-room, in which apartment we felt morally persuaded that they would break everything that was worth the breaking. Then Leila insisted upon me rearranging the ingenious little trap which we had laid to catch a burglar.
"What," she remarked, as she wiped away a final tear, "was the use of doing a thing at all if we didn"t do it properly?"
There was wisdom in her unanswerable inquiry, though I could not but feel thankful as I reflected that there were no more cats in the house who could mistake our intentions, and, under an entire misapprehension, turn them topsy-turvy once again.
Leila seemed to think that it was all owing to me that the newspapers had become disarranged. I do not know what could have put such an idea into her head. But it was obviously because she thought so that she insisted upon my doing all the work, while she stood three stairs above me and issued her instructions.
I am of a plethoric habit, and by the time I had done all the stooping which Leila thought was indispensable if the burglar alarm was to be all that a burglar alarm ought to be, I was, I am convinced, within a measurable distance of apoplexy. Indeed, I hinted to Leila that burglars might take up their permanent residence at The Larches before I should ever again be persuaded to make such arrangements for their reception. As for that paragraph in the paper, the stuff which some of the papers do contain is really monstrous. If I ever do encounter the editor of that particular journal in private life, I care not where nor when, I shall have to be bound over by the magistrates in at least two sureties, I know I shall.
When Leila, on entering the bedroom, stepped on the handle of the broken jug and perceived the rest of the remains, and that there was about half an inch of water on the floor, I must say that I found her behaviour not a little trying. I had not informed her of the accident which, when I was searching for the matches, I had had, because, such was my state of agitation, it had slipped my mind--though, I know, she doubts it to this hour.
I was aware that she was bound to discover what had happened, therefore why should I have attempted to conceal it? Under the circ.u.mstances it is a mere absurdity to imagine that I could have proposed to myself to do anything of the kind; nor was it necessary for her to inform me, especially in the way in which she did inform me, that that toilet set had been one of her wedding presents. If a wedding present is to be regarded as a fetish in a family, and made a sort of little G.o.d of, then all I can say is that I wish she had had fewer wedding presents even than she did have.
I regret to have to write that Leila did not hesitate to suggest that I had broken that toilet set on purpose. According to her it was all part of my heartlessness and the hatred which I bore her. That I had almost killed myself while hunting for the matches was nothing to her.
Nor did she pause to consider how I could have done it on purpose, when, such was the Egyptian nature of the darkness, I did not even know that the toilet set was there. We mopped the water up with the towels. Then Leila knelt down and pieced the fragments of the toilet set together as best she could, and continued to address me as if I had been guilty, at the very least, of treason felony. When she discovered that during my unfortunate search for those mislaid and miserable matches I had also accidentally and quite unintentionally visited the wardrobe, I thought that she would have thrown something at me, even though she would have had to use as missiles pieces of the broken ware.
It appeared that in dragging Leila"s dresses off the hooks I had had what one is bound to confess was the singular ill-fortune to tear holes in most, if not in all of them. Insignificant holes they were for the most part. Really hardly worth the mentioning, though you would not have thought they were hardly worth the mentioning if you had heard Leila. True, I had made rather a lengthy incision in the back of her best silk, and ripped the waistband off her tailor-made; but the rest of the garments were scarcely, that is to say, from my point of view, not appreciably damaged. And when you consider that in my agitation I had struggled as for my life in that death-trap of a wardrobe, surely an allowance might have been made. Leila, however, made absolutely none.
That was not upon the whole a restful night. Neither Leila nor I wooed sweet sleep in that equable, at-peace-with-all-the-world frame of mind in which she should be wooed. It was some time before I ventured into bed at all. When at last I insinuated myself between the sheets Leila"s observations followed me. Indeed, if I may be allowed to say so, they more than followed me. I had to coax her with all the power of coaxing that was in me before she could be induced to even think of slumber. Seating herself upon a chair, she announced her unalterable determination to spend the night there rather than consent to share her couch with the being who had torn her dresses. I perceived quite plainly that that burglar alarm was not going to prove an economical contrivance. The little mishaps which I had had were likely to prove a more serious matter than any injury which mere burglars might have caused. But no matter. Leila protests that upon that fateful night I promised, as some slight solatium to her injured feelings, not to speak of her damaged vestments, to present her with six new dresses.
This sounds to me almost incredible. I scarcely think that under any circ.u.mstances I can have gone so far as that. And when she adds, as she does add, that I gave her my solemn a.s.surance that she should be allowed to select and to purchase at my expense any toilet set which she might see, and which might take her fancy when she next went up with me to town, I can only declare that if I did give such an undertaking it was only because I had firmly and finally resolved, in my own mind, that while such a prospect stared me in the face she never should go up with me to town again. But, as I have said already, no matter. I daresay that I did promise something. Now, I do not care what I promised. Whatever it was, the promise was extracted from me under pressure. I never meant to keep it. That I earnestly affirm.
When finally, having for all I know promised to present her with the contents of half the shops in Regent Street and of all the shops in Piccadilly, I had succeeded in persuading her to come to bed, the excitement she had undergone told upon her slight and fragile frame, and ere long my Leila was asleep. I, too, slept at her side. Nor during the remaining silent watches of the night did aught disturb our rest.
We were roused by someone knocking at our bedroom door. I awoke with the immediate consciousness that we had overslept ourselves. As a matter of fact we had, by about two hours.
"Frederic!" exclaimed Leila, in that nervous way of hers which is apt to convey to those who do not know her the impression that the last trump has sounded. "There"s someone at the door!"
"Who"s there?" I asked.
The voice which answered was the voice of Eliza.
"If you please, sir, there"s been robbers in the house!"
"Robbers! Don"t talk such nonsense!"
"If you please, sir, it ain"t nonsense. Mrs. Perkins says there have!"
And what Mrs. Perkins said was true. There had been robbers in the house; or, at any rate, a robber; a midnight felon; a rifler of the homes of honest men. He had made his entry by way of the back kitchen window. He had had his supper in the front kitchen. A hearty meal it must have been. There were the remains of the feast still on the board. He seemed to have eaten all that there was worth eating. He had drunk all that there was worth drinking. He had certainly taken away with him on his departure all that there was worth taking. He had stripped the house of all its valuables. True, they were not many; but they were our all. And they were gone.
I imagine that few burglaries have been better carried through. He was a conscientious and observant workman of his kind. The ruthless villain! I hope one day to lay hands upon him somewhere. The county constabulary, I am certain, never will.
As for the burglar alarm--the burglar alarm was arranged in a neat heap in a corner of the hall. It had not fulfilled the purpose it had been intended to fulfil. Like Macgregor and Simon, his mother, the burglar had misunderstood the intentions which had actuated our bosoms, Leila"s and mine, when we had placed it there. He cannot have read the paragraph we had noticed in the paper.
I suspect that that burglar must have been, in his way--his own way--a humorist. He had seen those newspapers apparently; and, if you reflect, it was not strange: he had wondered what they meant by being there. Possibly he had supposed that they had been placed there to save the oilcloth and the carpets from being stepped upon. Anyhow, being certain that at any rate his boots were clean, and that he stepped lightly, he picked up the newspapers carefully one by one, folded them neatly into four, and placed them, as I have said, in a little heap in a corner of the hall.
A Lesson in Sculling
MISS WHITBY WRITES TO HER MOTHER
"My Dearest Mamma,--I have had the most delightful time you can possibly think of. Everybody and everything has been so nice! And Jack has been teaching me sculling. And--oh, what do you think?--he drowned me! Yes--completely! Only, of course, it was all my fault. And he pulled me out of the water by the hair of my head--or something; I don"t know what, or how. Wasn"t it n.o.ble of him? I never enjoyed anything so much in all my life!
"But I will tell you all about it. I know you must feel anxious. Only don"t think I"m dead, because I"m not. I haven"t even caught a cold.
All owing to Charlie. He says I wasn"t in the water long enough; that"s what he says. I a.s.sure you I was in the water quite long enough for me!
"You know, ever since we"ve been down here we"ve been on the river every day, Charlie and I. His mother--Mrs. Mason, you know--doesn"t care for the water; she says it"s damp. But I think that"s because she knows that two are company, and is tender-hearted--like you, my dearest Momkins! Besides, she likes fussing about and paying visits, and she is so good--I hope that I shall be as good as she is one of these fine days! But you can never tell!
"Of course it was very nice being pulled about. Only Charlie was so aggravating! He wouldn"t do in the least bit what you told him. I would say to him before we started:
""Charlie, do take me for a long row--now, promise me!" And he would say:
""Certainly. Fourteen miles out and fifteen in."
""Don"t be silly! I wish you would--I do so like to be pulled."
"He would be standing on the bank with his back to the water, and with me just in front of him. He would stretch out his arm.
""Tip us your flipper!" He meant, "Give me your hand." When he chooses Charlie can be slangy. "I"ll pull you into the river."
"It was not the slightest use my talking. I would sigh, and get into the boat and hope for the best. But I never got it. No!
"As soon as we had gone three or four hundred yards Charlie would pull towards a little island, which is just beyond the bend in the river--I don"t know who put it there; I know that I often wished that it was further--and row right round it into a sort of little creek which was on the other side, which was just large enough to hold the boat, and where no one could see us because of the trees. So far as privacy was concerned we might as well have been in the heart of a virgin forest.
And there Charlie would stop, and do nothing else but talk; though I"m bound to confess that he chose interesting subjects of conversation as a rule, because generally, when he wasn"t talking of himself, he was talking of me. And it is such a help to conversation when one is well acquainted with the topic under discussion. But he did so annoy me, because he would never do what I told him. I wanted him to row me to Oxford, or somewhere. But he said it was so hot--I didn"t feel hot!--and Oxford was twenty miles away, and more. That was nonsense, because quite little electric launches go there and back in a day. At least, I am nearly sure they do.
"But what irritated me more than anything else was because he kept on asking me why, if I was so fond of rowing, with the thermometer four hundred degrees above bursting point--I don"t believe it was anything like so hot as that, but that is what he said--I didn"t row myself. He knew I couldn"t. But I made up my mind that I would learn, and, what is more, I would teach myself: I would show him what I could do.
"So one morning I got up, all alone, quite early, without breathing a single word to anyone. I don"t know how early it was, but I know it was early, because, when I let myself through the dining-room window--French window--into the garden, there was not a creature in sight. The garden runs right down to the river. The boat is kept tied to the bank. I pulled it close and got into it--and directly I got into it it wobbled.
"Dearest mamma, even at that last moment--or at that first moment, whichever it was--I almost wished I hadn"t come. Suppose I should upset! I do believe I should have gone straight back again to bed, only I couldn"t. The boat had drifted to the end of the string and was ever so far from the land, and how to get it back again I didn"t know.
So I sat still, and scarcely dared to breathe. But it did seem so silly to sit still like that. If anybody saw me what should I say? I had a pair of nail-scissors in my pocket, and with them I cut the string. They were a very small pair, and the string was thick and it was wet. It took me a long time to cut it. But I succeeded at last. I was adrift on the waters!