"The drawing-room window was left open, and there are two burglars in the hall!"
"Oh, I say, no! That"s rather rotten!" said Eustace.
"I saw them and heard them! I--oh!" Mrs. Hignett"s sentence trailed off into a suppressed shriek, as the door opened and Jane Hubbard came in.
Jane Hubbard was a girl who by nature and training was well adapted to bear shocks. Her guiding motto in life was that helpful line of Horace--_Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem_. (For the benefit of those who have not, like myself, enjoyed an expensive cla.s.sical education,--memento--Take my tip--servare--preserve--aequam--an unruffled--mentem--mind--rebus in arduis--in every crisis). She had only been out of the room a few minutes, and in that brief period a middle-aged lady of commanding aspect had apparently come up through a trap. It would have been enough to upset most girls, but Jane Hubbard bore it calmly. All through her vivid life her bedroom had been a sort of cosy corner for murderers, alligators, tarantulas, scorpions, and every variety of snake, so she accepted the middle-aged lady without comment.
"Good evening," she said placidly.
Mrs. Hignett, having rallied from her moment of weakness, glared at the new arrival dumbly. She could not place Jane. From the airy way in which she had strolled into the room, she appeared to be some sort of a nurse; but she wore no nurse"s uniform.
"Who are you?" she asked stiffly.
"Who are _you_?" asked Jane.
"I," said Mrs. Hignett portentously, "am the owner of this house, and I should be glad to know what you are doing in it. I am Mrs. Horace Hignett."
A charming smile spread itself over Jane"s finely-cut face.
"I"m so glad to meet you," she said. "I have heard so much about you."
"Indeed?" said Mrs. Hignett coldly. "And now I should like to hear a little about you."
"I"ve read all your books," said Jane. "I think they"re wonderful."
In spite of herself, in spite of a feeling that this young woman was straying from the point, Mrs. Hignett could not check a slight influx of amiability. She was an auth.o.r.ess who received a good deal of incense from admirers, but she could always do with a bit more. Besides, most of the incense came by post. Living a quiet and retired life in the country, it was rarely that she got it handed to her face to face. She melted quite perceptibly. She did not cease to look like a basilisk, but she began to look like a basilisk who has had a good lunch.
"My favourite," said Jane, who for a week had been sitting daily in a chair in the drawing-room adjoining the table on which the auth.o.r.ess"s complete works were a.s.sembled, "is "The Spreading Light." I _do_ like "The Spreading Light!""
"It was written some years ago," said Mrs. Hignett with something approaching cordiality, "and I have since revised some of the views I state in it, but I still consider it quite a good text-book."
"Of course, I can see that "What of the Morrow?" is more profound," said Jane. "But I read "The Spreading Light" first, and of course that makes a difference."
"I can quite see that it would," agreed Mrs. Hignett. "One"s first step across the threshold of a new mind, one"s first glimpse...."
"Yes, it makes you feel...."
"Like some watcher of the skies," said Mrs. Hignett, "when a new planet swims into his ken, or like...."
"Yes, doesn"t it!" said Jane.
Eustace, who had been listening to the conversation with every muscle tense, in much the same mental att.i.tude as that of a peaceful citizen in a Wild West Saloon who holds himself in readiness to dive under a table directly the shooting begins, began to relax. What he had shrinkingly antic.i.p.ated would be the biggest thing since the Dempsey-Carpentier fight seemed to be turning into a pleasant social and literary evening not unlike what he imagined a meeting of old Girton students must be.
For the first time since his mother had come into the room he indulged in the luxury of a deep breath.
"But what are you doing here?" asked Mrs. Hignett, returning almost reluctantly to the main issue.
Eustace perceived that he had breathed too soon. In an un.o.btrusive way he subsided into the bed and softly pulled the sheets over his head, following the excellent tactics of the great Duke of Wellington in his Peninsular campaign. "When in doubt," the Duke used to say, "retire and dig yourself in."
"I"m nursing dear Eustace," said Jane.
Mrs. Hignett quivered, and cast an eye on the hump in the bedclothes which represented dear Eustace. A cold fear had come upon her.
""Dear Eustace!"" she repeated mechanically.
"We"re engaged," said Jane.
"Engaged! Eustace, is this true?"
"Yes," said a m.u.f.fled voice from the interior of the bed.
"And poor Eustace is so worried," continued Jane, "about the house." She went on quickly. "He doesn"t want to deprive you of it, because he knows what it means to you. So he is hoping--we are both hoping--that you will accept it as a present when we are married. We really shan"t want it, you know. We are going to live in London. So you will take it, won"t you--to please us?"
We all of us, even the greatest of us, have our moments of weakness.
Only a short while back, in this very room, we have seen Jane Hubbard, that indomitable girl, sobbing brokenly on the carpet. Let us then not express any surprise at the sudden collapse of one of the world"s greatest female thinkers. As the meaning of this speech smote on Mrs.
Horace Hignett"s understanding, she sank weeping into a chair. The ever-present fear that had haunted her had been exorcised. Windles was hers in perpetuity. The relief was too great. She sat in her chair and gulped; and Eustace, greatly encouraged, emerged slowly from the bedclothes like a worm after a thunderstorm.
How long this poignant scene would have lasted, one cannot say. It is a pity that it was cut short, for I should have liked to dwell upon it.
But at this moment, from the regions downstairs, there suddenly burst upon the silent night such a whirlwind of sound as effectually dissipated the tense emotion in the room. Somebody appeared to have touched off the orchestrion in the drawing-room, and that willing instrument had begun again in the middle of a bar at the point where Jane Hubbard had switched it off four afternoons ago. Its wailing lament for the pa.s.sing of Summer filled the whole house.
"That"s too bad!" said Jane, a little annoyed. "At this time of night!"
"It"s the burglars!" quavered Mrs. Hignett. In the stress of recent events she had completely forgotten the existence of those enemies of Society. "They were dancing in the hall when I arrived, and now they"re playing the orchestrion!"
"Light-hearted chaps!" said Eustace, admiring the sang-froid of the criminal world. "Full of spirits!"
"This won"t do," said Jane Hubbard, shaking her head. "We can"t have this sort of thing. I"ll go and fetch my gun."
"They"ll murder you, dear!" panted Mrs. Hignett, clinging to her arm.
Jane Hubbard laughed.
"Murder _me_!" she said amusedly. "I"d like to catch them at it!"
Mrs. Hignett stood staring at the door as Jane closed it softly behind her.
"Eustace," she said solemnly, "that is a wonderful girl!"
"Yes! She once killed a panther--or a puma, I forget which--with a hat-pin!" said Eustace with enthusiasm.
"I could wish you no better wife!" said Mrs. Hignett.
She broke off with a sharp wail. Out in the pa.s.sage something like a battery of artillery had roared.
The door opened and Jane Hubbard appeared, slipping a fresh cartridge into the elephant-gun.
"One of them was popping about outside here," she announced. "I took a shot at him, but I"m afraid I missed. The visibility was bad. At any rate he went away."
In this last statement she was perfectly accurate. Bream Mortimer, who had been aroused by the orchestrion and who had come out to see what was the matter, had gone away at the rate of fifty miles an hour. He had been creeping down the pa.s.sage when he found himself suddenly confronted by a dim figure which, without a word, had attempted to slay him with an enormous gun. The shot had whistled past his ears and gone singing down the corridor. This was enough for Bream. He had returned to his room in three strides, and was now under the bed. The burglars might take everything in the house and welcome, so that they did not molest his privacy. That was the way Bream looked at it. And very sensible of him, too, I consider.