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Page 28
"By the way, dear old girl," inquired Reggie, "did your little
business come out satisfactorily? I forgot to ask."
"Not very. But it was awfully sweet of you to take me into town."
"How would it be," said Reggie nervously, "not to dwell too much on
that part of it? What I mean to say is, for heaven's sake don't let
the mater know I rallied round."
"Don't worry," said Maud with a laugh. "I'm not going to talk about
the thing at all."
Lord Belpher, meanwhile, in the library, had begun with the aid of
a whisky and soda to feel a little better. There was something
about the library with its sombre half tones that soothed his
bruised spirit. The room held something of the peace of a deserted
city. The world, with its violent adventures and tall policemen,
did not enter here. There was balm in those rows and rows of books
which nobody ever read, those vast writing tables at which nobody
ever wrote. From the broad mantel-piece the bust of some unnamed
ancient looked down almost sympathetically. Something remotely
resembling peace had begun to steal into Percy's soul, when it was
expelled by the abrupt opening of the door and the entry of Lady
Caroline Byng and his father. One glance at the face of the former
was enough to tell Lord Belpher that she knew all.
He rose defensively.
"Let me explain."
Lady Caroline quivered with repressed emotion. This masterly woman
had not lost control of herself, but her aristocratic calm had
seldom been so severely tested. As Reggie had surmised, she had read
the report of the proceedings in the evening paper in the train, and
her world had been reeling ever since. Caesar, stabbed by Brutus,
could scarcely have experienced a greater shock. The other members
of her family had disappointed her often. She had become inured to
the spectacle of her brother working in the garden in corduroy
trousers and in other ways behaving in a manner beneath the dignity
of an Earl of Marshmoreton. She had resigned herself to the innate
flaw in the character of Maud which had allowed her to fall in love
with a nobody whom she had met without an introduction. Even Reggie
had exhibited at times democratic traits of which she thoroughly
disapproved. But of her nephew Percy she had always been sure. He
was solid rock. He, at least, she had always felt, would never do
anything to injure the family prestige. And now, so to speak, "Lo,
Ben Adhem's name led all the rest." In other words, Percy was the
worst of the lot. Whatever indiscretions the rest had committed, at
least they had never got the family into the comic columns of the
evening papers. Lord Marshmoreton might wear corduroy trousers and
refuse to entertain the County at garden parties and go to bed with
a book when it was his duty to act as host at a formal ball; Maud
might give her heart to an impossible person whom nobody had ever
heard of; and Reggie might be seen at fashionable restaurants with
pugilists; but at any rate evening paper poets had never written
facetious verses about their exploits. This crowning degradation had
been reserved for the hitherto blameless Percy, who, of all the
young men of Lady Caroline's acquaintance, had till now appeared to
have the most scrupulous sense of his position, the most rigid
regard for the dignity of his great name. Yet, here he was, if the
carefully considered reports in the daily press were to be believed,
spending his time in the very spring-tide of his life running about
London like a frenzied Hottentot, brutally assaulting the police.
Lady Caroline felt as a bishop might feel if he suddenly discovered
that some favourite curate had gone over to the worship of Mumbo
Jumbo.
"Explain?" she cried. "How can you explain? You--my nephew, the
heir to the title, behaving like a common rowdy in the streets of
London . . . your name in the papers . . . "
"If you knew the circumstances."
"The circumstances? They are in the evening paper. They are in
print."
"In verse," added Lord Marshmoreton. He chuckled amiably at the
recollection. He was an easily amused man. "You ought to read it,
my boy. Some of it was capital . . ."
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