The Honourable Frederic Augustus Hythe Goodwyn-Sandys meanwhile stared at us all calmly but firmly through his eye-gla.s.s. I saw young Horatio Saunders meet that gaze and sink into his carpet slippers. I saw Mr. Moggridge frown terribly, and cross his arms.
Sam Buzza came forward--
"Ah, how d"ye do? How d"ye do, Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys? Looking round for the governor? He"s been in bed for a week."
I think we all envied Samuel Buzza at this moment.
"Ah, nothing serious, I hope?" drawled Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys.
"Serious, ha, ha! Haven"t you heard--"
"Sam, dear!" expostulated Mrs. Buzza.
"All right, mother. He can"t hear," and Sam plunged into the story.
The ice was broken. In a few moments a whist party was made up to include the Honourable Frederic, and Miss Limpenny breathed more freely. Mr. Moggridge was led up by Sam, and introduced.
"Ah, indeed! Mr. Moggridge, I have been so longing to know you."
Sam looked a trifle vexed. The poet simpered that he was happy.
"Of course I have been reading "Ivy Leaves." So mournful I thought them, yet somehow so attractive. How _did_ you write it all?"
Mr. Moggridge confessed amiably that he "didn"t quite know."
"Let me see; those lines beginning--"
"O give me wings to--to--"
"I forget for the moment how it goes on."
""To fly away,"" suggested the bard.
"Ah, exactly; "to fly away." So simple--just what one _would_ wish wings for, you know. It struck me very much when I read it.
When did you think of it, Mr. Moggridge?"
The poet blushed and began to look uncomfortable.
"Ah! you are reticent. Excuse me; I ought not to probe a poet"s soul. Still, I should like to be able to tell my friends--"
"The--the fact is," stammered Mr. Moggridge, "I--I thought of them-- in--my bath."
Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys leaned back and laughed--a pretty rippling laugh that shook the diamonds upon her throat. Sam guffawed, and by this action sprang that little rift between the friends that widened before long into a gulf.
"I shall ask you to copy them into my Alb.u.m. I always victimise a lion when I meet one."
This was said with a glance full of compensation. Mr. Moggridge tried to look very leonine indeed. Across the room another pair of eyes gently reproached him. Never before had he tarried so long from Sophia"s side. Poor little heart! beating so painfully beneath your dowdy muslin bodice. It was early yet for you to ache.
"Oh, ah, d.i.c.k Cheddar--knew him well," came in the sonorous tones of the Honourable Frederic from the whist-table. "So you were at College with him--first cousin to Lord Stilton--get the t.i.tle if he only outlives the old man--good fellow, d.i.c.k--but drinks."
"Dear me," said the Vicar; "I am sorry to hear that. He was wild at Christchurch, but nothing out of the way. Why, I remember at the Aylesbury Grinds--"
Miss Limpenny, who did not know an Aylesbury Grind from a Bampton Lecture, yet detected an unfamiliar ring in the Vicar"s voice.
"He fought a welsher," pursued the Vicar, "just before riding in a race. "Rollingstone," his horse was, and Cheddar"s eyes closed before the second fence. "Tom," he called to me--I was on a mare called Barmaid--"
I ask you to guess the amazement that fell among us. He--our Vicar-- riding a mare called Barmaid! Miss Limpenny cast her eyes up to meet the descent of the thunderbolt.
"Lord Ballarat was riding too," the Vicar went on, "and young Tom Beauchamp, son of the Bishop--"
"Died of D.T. out at Malta with the Ninety-ninth," interpolated the Honourable Frederic.
"So I heard, poor fellow. Three-bottle Beauchamp we called him.
I"ve put him to bed many a time when--"
It was too much.
"In the Great Exhibition of 1851," began Miss Priscilla severely.
But at this moment a dreadful rumbling shook the room. The chandeliers rattled, the egg-sh.e.l.l china danced upon the what-not, and a jarring sensation suddenly ran up the spine of every person in the company.
"It"s an earthquake!" shouted the Honourable Frederic, starting up with an oath.
Miss Limpenny thought an earthquake nothing less than might be expected after such language. Louder and still louder grew the rumbling, until the very walls shook. Everybody turned to a ghastly white. The Vicar"s face bore eloquent witness to the reproach of his conscience.
"I think it must be thunder," he gasped.
"Or a landslip," suggested Sam Buzza.
"Or a paroxysm of Nature," said Mr. Moggridge (though n.o.body knew what he meant).
"Or the end of the world," hazarded Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys.
"I beg your pardon," interposed Mrs. Buzza timidly, "but I think it may be my husband."
"Is your husband a volcano, madam?" snapped Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys, rather sharply.
Mrs. Buzza might have answered "Yes," with some colour of truth; but she merely said, "I think it must be his double-ba.s.s. My husband is apt in hours of depression to seek the consolation of that instrument."
"But, my dear madam, what is the tune?"
"I think," she faltered, "I am not sure, but I rather think, it is the "Dead March" in _Saul_."
There was no doubt of it. The notes by this time vibrated piteously through the party-wall, and with their awful solemnity triumphed over all conversation. Tones became hushed, as though in the presence of death; and the Vicar, in his desperate attempts to talk, found his voice chained without mercy to the slow foot of the dirge. He tried to laugh.
"Really, this is too absurd--ha! ha! _Tum-tum-tibby-tum_." The effort ended in ghastly failure. _Thrum-thrum-tiddy-thrum_ went the Admiral"s instrument.
Miss Limpenny grew desperate. "Sophia," she pleaded, "pray sing us one of your cheerful ballads."