A fortnight later Jeannie, Miss Fortescue, and Arthur were all staying at the Black Eagle Hotel, employed in settling in. Morton had been let, but let unfurnished, and in order to avoid the expense of storing, it was laid upon them that they should cram as much furniture into 8 Bolton Street as it would possibly hold. Thus from morning to night the greater part of the street was congested with Pantechnicon vans, and Jeannie and Arthur might be seen many hours a day measuring wardrobes, and finding for the most part that they would not go into any of the rooms. Miss Fortescue sat in a large chair in the middle of the street and made scathing comments on the appearance and behaviour of the others.

“I little thought,” said this magisterial lady one day, “that the time would come when I should see my nephew in his shirt-sleeves wrestling with towel-horses in the Queen’s highway.[35]”

“No, dear Aunt,” said Arthur, “and if you will look round you will see a distressed bicyclist who wants to pass. You must move.”

Miss Clifford, in fact, was approaching. She did not ride with any overpowering command over her machine, and from the desire to avoid Miss Fortescue was making a beeline for her. A collision was just avoided by Miss Fortescue’s extreme agility in removing herself and her chair.

A wardrobe was just blocking the front door, and Arthur threw himself down in another unoccupied chair for a moment’s rest. Jeannie’s voice sounded in passionate appeal from inside the hall, but till the wardrobe had been passed it was impossible to go to her aid.

“Oh, it is hot!” he said. “Why on earth did we move in this broiling weather? Aunt Em, dear, I’m going to send for some beer from that wine-merchant’s opposite, and if you don’t like to see me drink it in the Queen’s highway you must look in the other direction.”

“The Aveshams have no sense of dignity,” said Miss Fortescue, sweepingly.[36]

“No, but it doesn’t matter; they’ll think that I’m not me, but the footman.”

“You’re much too badly dressed for any footman,” said Aunt Em.

“Well, they’ll think you are the cook and I’m your young man,” said Arthur.

Arthur sent one of the Pantechnicon men to get some beer, and while he was gone:

“They told me there was so little traffic here,” he said, “and the street is crowded with vans. Oh, there’s that man again! He has passed and repassed a dozen times this morning, besides standing at the corner for ever so long. Is he a friend of yours, Aunt Em?”

The man in question was Colonel Raymond, no less, strutting and swelling down the other side of the street, and bursting with uneasy curiosity. He had, as Arthur said, passed and repassed a dozen times, longing to speak to one of them, and manage to introduce himself in some way. Once he had given a hand to one of the van-men with a bookcase, but as ill-luck would have it, all three of the house-party, as he called it, were inside at the moment, and when the danger[37] of the bookcase falling on a washing-stand was over there was no excuse for lingering. On another occasion he had waited a full two minutes while the foot-path was congested, and on it being made possible for him to pass, he had raised his hat with a gallant flourish to Jeannie, who stood at the door. But she had appeared quite unconscious of his salute, and the Colonel was working himself into a fever of impatience. It was one thing to be able to say at the club that he had spent his morning in Bolton Street, where his cousins had taken Number 8, but it was another to have them definitely established in Wroxton, not knowing him from Adam. The trying climate of India was nothing compared to the sultriness which loomed over his prospects.

The amiable and kindly interest in the minutest dealings of others, which is known as curiosity, was not wanting in the town of Wroxton. Miss Clifford had hardly passed on her bicycle when she realized that it was idle to struggle with so overmastering an emotion, and dismounted at the end of the street, for she was no adept at turning round, and rode straight back again. She would[38] have done so if only to get another look at the furniture which was being unloaded, though, as they had got on to a bed-room layer of it, it might not have seemed engrossing to the ordinary mind; but this was not all. She would get another look at the lady who sat in the middle of the road, and at the young man in his shirt-sleeves. She might even, if lucky, catch a glimpse of Miss Avesham herself, whom she had not yet seen.

So she rode slowly back, and when about thirty yards distant saw Arthur drinking out of a pewter mug. The disappointment was intense, for he might even have been Lord Avesham himself, come to help his brother and sister in the settling in. But this beer-drinking in public made it impossible. It could only be the foreman of the Pantechnicon, or perhaps—this would be better than nothing—the footman or a valet of peers. But as she passed she distinctly heard him say, “Do have some beer, Aunt Em.”

Miss Clifford rode on towards the High Street, away from the direction of her home, lost and stupefied in a whirl of conjecture and perplexity. If he was the footman, what[39] was his Aunt Em doing there, unless—and this was just possible—his Aunt Em was the cook? If, on the other hand, he was the foreman, the presence of his aunt was still more difficult, for that foremen of furniture companies should bring their aunts with them to superintend seemed a proposition which might almost be negatived offhand. Could it be—No, it was not possible, and Miss Clifford, by this time having reached the High Street, dismounted again and determined to go home without more delay. The shortest way home lay down Bolton Street—at least to go down Bolton Street was so little longer that the excellence of the road quite made up for it—and a minute afterward she was again opposite the house. No very great change had taken place since she saw it last. The possible footman was still standing in the doorway with the pewter pot in his hand, and his Aunt Em was sitting on a low black oak chest, which suggested to Miss Clifford’s romantic mind all sorts of secret drawers and unsuspected wills, confessions of crime, and proofs of innocence. As a matter of fact, it contained Jeannie’s boot-trees and[40] a knife-board, but Miss Clifford did not know this. But her perseverance had its reward. Even as she passed, a voice of lamentation sounded from the inside of the house.

“Oh, Arthur,” it wailed, “you said it was only four foot six, and it’s four foot nine, and won’t go in. Do come here.”

And the possible footman put his pewter pot on the black oak chest and went inside.

The chain of evidence was growing massive. Supposing, as before, Aunt Em was the cook and Arthur’s aunt, whose was the wailing voice inside? Could it be the lady’s-maid’s or the house-maid’s? Miss Clifford’s masculine intellect decided that it scarcely could. Again, had not she and her sister spent an hour last night in following the history of the Avesham family in Debrett’s Peerage into all its ramifications and collateral branches? “Sons living, Hon. Arthur John Talbot, b. 1873, ed. at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford”—how was it possible for a person of intelligence not to connect the subject of that entry with the person called Arthur who lounged with a pewter pot? The coincidence was too glaring to be overlooked. One thing[41] would settle it, and Miss Clifford cursed her defective memory. If either Lord Avesham or his wife had a “sister living called Emma or Emmaline, that must be the Aunt Em” who had sat so truculently in the highway and been offered beer. Miss Clifford turned quite cold at the thought that she had perhaps been within an ace of running into a sister or a sister-in-law of a peer. What would her mother have said if she had been alive to see such a day?

Miss Clifford wasted no more time, but went home like a positive race-horse, arriving in a breathing heat. She went straight to the room called by her and her sister “the libry,” and took the Peerage from its shelf.

No, the late Lord Avesham had only one sister living, who was called Lucy, which could not possibly be abbreviated into Em, but he married Frances Mary Fortescue, second daughter of late Mr. John Fortescue. It was but the work of a moment to turn to the Fs in the landed gentry and find John Lewis Fortescue, Esq., son of late John Fortescue, Esq., who had one sister living, Emma Caroline. The thing was as good as proved, and[42] Miss Clifford was practically face to face with the fact that peers (at any rate, the brothers of peers) drank beer in shirts, and that she had nearly run down the sister of a peeress. It had been a most exciting morning, and she waited with weary impatience for the return of her sister, who was out, to pour into her horror-struck ears these revelations about the aristocracy. “No wonder many people turn Radical,” she said to herself.

Colonel Raymond’s temper at lunch that day bordered on the diabolical, and when he savagely announced that he should take the children for a walk afterward, the hearts of those unfortunate infants sank in their shoes. They well knew what kind of an afternoon was in store for them. While on the level they would be able to keep up, but they knew from experience that when their father was in the state of mind which Mrs. Raymond referred to in their presence as “looking worried” that their way would be dark and slippery, and that their father would march up the steep sides of the downs as if he was storming a breach. Long before the most[43] active of them was half-way up he would be there, and he would revile them with marrowy and freezing expressions. Then as soon as their aching legs had scaled the summit he would be off again, and ten minutes later the same scene would be re-enacted with the same trembling and breathless mutes. Occasionally, on the worst days, he would take one by the hand and—“he called it helping”—drag her along in a grasp of iron.

Poor Mrs. Raymond always looked more than usually insignificant when her husband was looking worried, but when things were very bad indeed sometimes a strange sort of recklessness came over her. If you can imagine a mouse or some soft feathered bird in a reckless humour, you will have some picture of Mrs. Raymond when the Colonel was looking worried. She had asked him some question about where he had been this morning, and had been treated to a reply of this kind:

“Where have I been? Did you ask where I have been, Constance? You are devoured by curiosity—devoured; and it would be better if you tried to check it sometimes.[44] But I’ll tell you—oh, I’ll tell you. I’ve been hanging about Bolton Street all morning, and not one of those infernal aristocrats had a word to say to me.”

“Do you mean the Aveshams, Robert?” asked his wife.

“Yes, I mean the Aveshams, and why shouldn’t I mean the Aveshams? Eh?”

“I don’t suppose they recognised you.”

“Not recognised me? I tell you, they cut me. Cut me, Constance. Blood is thicker than water—thicker than water—and it’s a motto that I’ve always stuck to myself, and it would be a good thing if others did the same.”

Then Mrs. Raymond began to be reckless.

“You’re not a very near relative, Robert,” she said, in her meaningless voice.

“Not a near relation?” stormed her husband. “Do you mean to put me in my place? Confound it all, your brother-in-law’s sister, your sister-in-law in fact, indeed my sister-in-law, was the late Lady Avesham. If we don’t hang together it’s the ruin of England!”

Mrs. Raymond’s recklessness increased.[45]

“If I were you I shouldn’t go about talking of the Aveshams as your relatives, particularly now they’ve come to live in the town,” she said; “it will only make people laugh.”

The Colonel glared at her a moment; he could literally not find words.

“Anything else, madam, anything else?” he asked at length.

The fit of recklessness was passed.

“No, that is all, Robert,” she said, listlessly; “I didn’t mean to make you worried.”

“I shall call there this afternoon,” he said, “and you will go with me.”

Mrs. Raymond brightened.

“Then you won’t take the children out?” she asked, with a ray of hope in her voice.

“Certainly I shall take them out,” he said, “and—and they shall come and call, too. Go and get your things on, all of you.”

“You won’t go far then, if you are to be back in time to call?” asked his wife.

“We shall go a good brisk walk,” he said, grimly, “and we shall be home by four. Now, am I to wait all day?”

Dismal, faltering feet came down the pas[46]sage outside, and the three little victims appeared in the doorway.

“Now then, march,” said the Colonel.

It was some little while after four when the hot and jaded expedition returned. The walk had been more severe than usual, and even the Colonel flung himself with an air of fatigue into a chair.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said; “I shall not go near the house. Not go near it. At least, I sha’n’t go to-day. Tea—isn’t tea ready? Let it be brought.”

Even the friends of the Colonel might have felt inclined to accuse him of a slight duplicity for his action on this occasion. He had returned by way of Bolton Street, like the burned moth to the candle, and sending the children on with instructions to go home after waiting for five minutes at the end of the street, he had rung the bell, which was opened by a surprised maid. The hall was full of miscellaneous furniture, and the maid had to go warily among pictures and stools to the drawing-room, bearing his card. Jeannie’s voice was what is known as “carrying,” and she did not reflect how near the front[47] door was to the drawing-room, where an agonizing measurement of a carpet was going on. Her words were distinctly audible.

“Colonel who? Colonel Raymond. I never heard of him. Fancy calling when we are in this state! Tell him we are all out. Did you say fifteen foot six or fifteen foot eight, Arthur? It makes just the whole difference.”

Then somebody said “Hush!” and Jeannie’s voice said “Oh!”

A moment afterward the maid came out of the drawing-room, shutting the door carefully after her.

“Not at home, sir,” she said, without a blush or a tremor in her voice.

The children did not have to wait long at the corner. The pace home was perfectly appalling.