CHAPTER XXXVI.
TO MEET THE SHAH-DA-SHAH.
Mr. West returned home early in the season, and inaugurated his arrival with new horses, new liveries, new footmen, and gave a series of most recherché dinners. He would have bidden Mr. Wynne to one of these banquets, for the old gentleman had a tenacious memory (especially for things that his daughter expressly wished he would forget), but she quietly turned the subject; and did not encourage the idea of entertaining her husband under her unsuspicious parent’s roof.
“But he belongs to my club, The Foolscap. I see him there now and then, and he seems a popular chap, and to know every one. I heard Fotherham—Lord Fotherham—pressing him to spend a couple of days with them up the river, and they say his articles and writings are quite popular.”
“Oh, I don’t think literary people are very interesting; you have always to get up all their works, and be able to stand a stiff examination in them, if you want to invite them here. Did you see the failure of a great bank in Australia—it was among the telegrams in the Echo this evening?” she added artfully.
“No. Bless my soul! what bank? Where is the paper?” in great excitement. And Mr. West’s mind was hurried away into another channel, and Mr. Wynne’s invitation-card was not despatched.
Madeline found time to pay many stealthy visits to Harry, who was really a beautiful child, of whom even the most indifferent mother might well feel proud. He could talk and walk so nicely, and was such a pretty, endearing little fellow, that her visits, from being spasmodic and irregular, became of weekly occurrence.
Impunity had emboldened her, and every Saturday morning, when her father imagined her to be shopping, or in the Park—found her in Mrs. Holt’s old-fashioned garden, walking and playing between high hollyhocks, sunflowers, and lavender bushes, with a fair-haired little boy. What would Mr. West have said had he seen his lovely daughter running round and round, and up and down the gravel path, driven by two knotted reins, and a small fierce driver, wielding a long whip with a whistle at the end of it?
Mr. and Mrs. Wynne never met, for her days, as we have seen, were Saturdays, and his were invariably Sundays.
Low fever was prevalent that sultry month of June, also typhoid and diphtheria. The latter fastened its grim clutch on little Harry. It was a case which developed rapidly. The child had been hot and heavy, and not his usual bright talkative self, when his mother saw him on Saturday. Mrs. Holt attributed this entirely to the oppressive weather, and to thunder in the air. On Sunday his father, justly alarmed, summoned the local doctor, who at once pronounced that the little patient was a victim to diphtheria.
On Monday Madeline was sent for. The child was a shade better, though still very ill. He lay in his cot and gazed at her with large distended eyes—and gasped out “Mummy—mummy,” as he held out his little hot hands.
She remained all day, for it so happened that her father was out of town; but, under any circumstances, she assured herself, she would have stayed all the same; and when she finally departed, late in the evening, the patient was sleeping, and the doctor’s opinion more encouraging. He assured her that she need not alarm herself, as he walked down with her to where the fly stood waiting in the lane.
“You really need not be uneasy, my dear madam,” he said impressively, “unless things take a most unexpected turn, and then, of course, we will let you know. He is a fine healthy child, and admirably nursed by yonder good woman,” nodding towards the house.
“She is indeed a good woman!” returned Madeline fervently, as her thoughts recalled Mrs. Holt’s unwearying care and night and day attendance on her nursling. She even seemed to grudge her permission to feed him, or to moisten his lips.
“I’m afraid I can’t come to-morrow, unless I am really needed,” said Madeline plaintively. “You say there is no danger now—you are sure? I may rely on you to tell me?”
“Yes; there is none whatever at present.”
“Because if there were, I should remain all night.”
“There is no occasion, especially if you are urgently needed elsewhere,” rejoined the doctor, who nevertheless thought it rather strange that this pretty, tearful, agitated young lady should not find it the most natural thing to remain with her sick child—her only child.
Promising that she should have early news the next morning by telegraph, he handed her into the fly, and bowed her off the scene, just as another inquiring relative—equally near and equally anxious—came hurrying up to him—in fact, the child’s father, who had taken the short cut from the station by the path across the fields.
“Most peculiar state of affairs,” thought the doctor to himself; “there must be a screw loose somewhere. The child’s parents apparently well-off, fashionable people, living apart and visiting the farm separately, and never alluding to one another. What did it mean?”
Mrs. Holt promptly set the matter before him in three words. It meant that “they had quarrelled.” Mr. Wynne remained at the farmhouse all night, sharing Mrs. Holt’s vigil, and watching every turn, every movement, every breath of the little sleeper as anxiously as she did herself. In the morning there was no positive change one way or another. The pendulum of little Harry’s existence seemed to have paused for a time before it made that one vital movement in the direction of either life or death.
A message was despatched to Miss West in these laconic words—“Slept pretty well; much the same.” And Madeline, relieved in her mind, entered on the work of a long and toilsome day. In short, she continued the grand preparations for a ball that they were giving that evening. It was to be the ball of the season.
Invitations had been out for four weeks. A native Indian prince, and some of the lesser Royalties had signified their intention of being present. Mr. West looked upon the festivity as the supreme occasion of his life, the summit of his ambition—fully and flawlessly attained—and he was happy. Only, of course, there is a thorn in every rose; in this rose there were two thorns. One—and a very sharp one—the disquieting rumours of financial affairs in Australia, where a great part of his huge income was invested; and the other and lesser thorn—the announcement of Lord Tony’s engagement to an old acquaintance and partner, Miss Pamela Pace.
And so his dream of calling Lord Tony by his Christian name, as his son-in-law, was at an end. However, he was resolved to make the most of the delightful present, and to give an entertainment, the fame of which should ring from one end of London to the other. He fully carried out his motto, “money no object.” The floral decorations alone for hall, staircase, ballrooms, and supper-table came to the pretty penny of two thousand pounds. The favourite band of the season was, of course, in attendance. As to the supper, it was to be a banquet, the menu of which would make an epicure green with envy; and Madeline’s dress was to come direct from Doucet, and had been specially designed for the occasion by Mr. West’s commands.
With all these splendid preparations in view, it will be easily understood that it was with some trepidation that Madeline asked her father to postpone the ball.
She made her request very timidly, with failing heart and faltering lips—indeed, the end of her sentence died away in the air when she beheld the terrible expression on her parent’s face.
“Put off the ball!” he roared; “are you mad? You must have a shingle short. Put off the swells, after all the work I’ve had to get them! Put off”—he actually choked over the words—“the Shah-da-shah, when you know there’s not another day in the season! Every night is taken. Why, what do you mean? What’s your reason?” he almost screamed.
“I—I thought the intense heat—I fancied Ascot—races happening to-morrow, and I’m not feeling very—well,” she faltered lamely.
“Oh, bosh! You look as fit as possible. Your reasons are no reasons. I suppose you are cut up about Tony—though why you should be is more than I can say—seeing that you refused him twice.”
“On the contrary, I’m delighted at his engagement. Pamela Pace is, as you know, a friend of mine. He promised to bring her to the dance without fail.”
“And the dance comes off on Wednesday without fail.”
The suggestion of its postponement had been made on Monday—after her return from the farm.
“And remember, Madeline, that I shall expect you to stir yourself—look after the decorations, have an eye to the supper-tables, and see that the men do the floors properly, and that there are no old waltzes in the programme. You will have your work cut out, and I mine. It will be the busiest day in your life—one to talk of and look back on when you are a grandmother. It’s not a common event to entertain the Shah-da-shah!” As he said this he jumped up and began to pace the room, rubbing his hands, in an ecstasy of anticipation.
On the morning of the ball Mr. West was early about, arranging, ordering, superintending, and sending telegrams.
“Here’s a pile,” he suddenly exclaimed at breakfast-time, indicating a heap of letters. “I got these all yesterday from people asking for invitations—invitations for themselves, cousins, aunts, and so on, from folk who wouldn’t know us last season; but it’s my turn now! I’ll have none of them. Whatever else the ball will be, it shall be select,” waving his arm with a gesture that was ludicrous in its pomposity. “By the way, that fellow Wynne—he belongs to my club, you know—and besides that, Bagge and Keepe have given him a brief in a case I’m much concerned in. You remember him, eh?”
“Yes, I remember Mr. Wynne,” she answered rather stiffly.
“Well, I met him in the street yesterday morning, and asked him for to-morrow. He’s a presentable-looking sort of chap,” nodding rather apologetically at his daughter; “but, would you believe it, he would not come; though I told him it would be something out of the common. And fancy his reason”—pausing dramatically—the little man was still pacing the room—“you will never guess; you will be as astounded as I was. He said his child was ill.”
Madeline never raised her eyes, but sat with them fixed upon a certain pattern on the carpet, not looking particularly interested, merely indifferent, white and rigid.
“He appeared quite in a fright,” proceeded Mr. West, volubly, “and very much worried and put out. He had a case on in court, and wanted to get away. I had no idea that he was a married man; had you?”
Before Mr. Wynne’s wife’s dry lips could frame an appropriate answer to this awkward question, a footman entered with another bundle of notes on a salver, and thus Mr. West’s attention was diverted from his unhappy daughter.