The Haunted House
Page 19
“Down’t yer mike answer to me, Ilda Miple! I’m Mattie Huggins, I am, and I’d have yer to know that I could take on a dozen of yer! Any dy of the week!”
She put her right arm akimbo and snapped the fingers of her left hand finely in the air, “That for yer damn Rackham Catchings!” She put her left arm akimbo and snapped the fingers of her right hand with still nobler violence, “That for yer old Drury Lane stige barn!” She put both arms akimbo and leant forward over the end of the banisters shouting with titanic power, “Burn it down for the insurance, you bitch! Burn it an’ keep quiet! For yer’ll never get a penny out of Hus! And so I tells yer strite!”
Her face was crimson, panting and sweating; her voice almost exhausted. But she had the strength to add, before she turned to the ambulance and to the last attentions due to her dear one: “Jest you wite till I tells the Prime Minister about you, Hilda Maple! You’ll see what ’e’ll do to yer! Yus, he will 1 Not arf!” And with that, amid the embarrassed, the horrified, the discreet crowd about her, she sobered down to give still breathless but intelligible orders, sat herself down in the ambulance beside her husband, against all rules, and was gone.
* * * * *
Rackham Catchings was as quiet as the dusty scene of an explosion when the rumble is over: but it was as wrecked. And Hilda Maple sat down, a wreck herself, her elbow upon the table of the hall, her dizzy head supported in her left hand.
Lord Hambourne did not fail—he could not fail—upon such an occasion.
“I’ve c-c-come to say g-g-good-bye,” he grinned, as though it were the most ordinary morning that ever had dawned. Hilda Maple could hardly manage to be civil. She half rose, she asked him if he had a vehicle, she mechanically said she hoped he would come again.
Hardly had he gone when footsteps approached. It was the cook, heading her phalanx once again.
“Not as I’d disturb any Lady in your Circumstances, ma’am,” she declaimed, “but if you please, ma’am, I must be going this very day. Ow, never mind the month’s wages,” she added loftily, as Hilda attempted to speak. “And all these poor things,” waving at the herd, “they say the same as me.”
“Not Alphonse?” asked poor Hilda of the crowd, feebly.
“Not that Toad!” said Mrs. Fry. “Not that I knows on. I won’t speak for him—I’ll have nothing to do with him. But this day we goes, ma’am, all of us. We ’re all resolved. We won’t sleep under this roof again—for sleep we can’t.” And there were murmurs and groaning exclamations of assent from the rest.
“Not Corton?” said poor Hilda, in a still lower voice.
“Mr. Corton,” said Mrs. Fry with dignity, “has informed us that he prefers to speak to you privately. He will then say whatever he has to say.”
And with that she sailed out, and with her followed her attendant nymphs and gentlemen - in -waiting.
Hilda had hardly time for breathing space when John in his turn appeared.
“John,” said the unfortunate woman, “I feel faint.”
“Of course, Aunt Hilda,” he said sympathetically. “I must give you some brandy.”
“It’s a thing I never do,” said Aunt Hilda, as her nephew poured out a stiff dose from a derelict decanter of the night’s debauch, and squirted a sufficiency of soda into it.
“Drink that, Aunt Hilda,” he said.
“I suppose it’ll do me good,” she answered in a voice still faint. “I feel more dead than alive.”
She was breathing heavily. Then she said:
“Well, John …”
“I’m still here, Aunt Hilda,” said John dutifully.
“Whatever you want me for, I’m still here. And … And, Aunt Hilda, I’ll still buy Rackham.”
“You’ll still what?” said Aunt Hilda, with the ghost of her former energy reviving.
“What I said,” doggedly repeated John, in an echo of so many insistencies. “I’ll buy Rackham. You ’ve got the papers, Aunt Hilda, and I ’ve got a copy of them here.”
There worked in Hilda Maple’s mind, violently surging one against the other like opposing strong tides in a strait, the two currents which have shaken men and women since first they dealt with buying and selling. She was ruined-—no one would buy the place. Her reason told her in a flash that she was lucky to have such a chance even as this. It would clear her, at any rate.
And the other current was her pride—after having stood out for so long, and after having felt such contempt for the foolish boy. Above them the figure of the Ancestor grinned fatuously, and the young man of twenty-three and the woman of fifty sat silent under its gaze.
John put the papers down upon the table, and his fountain-pen by the side.
Then in that silence the Ancestor spoke from his frame. He spoke in a deep voice, and with a gravity that belied his features.
“Woman! Woman!” he boomed.
Aunt Hilda swerved round, stared a moment at the incredible Thing, gave a little squeak like a bird.
“Woman! Woman!” boomed on Sir Harry Murtenshaw, Knight, from the depths of his painted chest. “Is he not the Rightful Heir?”
“Oh, sir!” came abruptly and strongly in sharp agony from Hilda Maple’s lips, She sank suddenly upon the floor to her knees and clasped her fingers convulsively, imploring the clemency of her dreadful visitant, “Oh, sir, I am a sinful woman!” She buried her face in her hands. Even as she did so she heard that solemn voice again for the third time, and in yet deeper tones:
“Is he not the Rightful Heir?”
She reeled a little. John Maple helped her up and seated her. She signed.
* * * * *
“John,” sighed the unfortunate woman, as she laid down the pen, and when he had handed her his acknowledgment—the instrument of her release, the paper that would stop the Esthonian’s bark—”leave me, dear boy. Leave me!”
“Can’t I …?” he began.
“No, my dear,” she said feebly. She had never been a tithe so affectionate to him in all these years, as now when he had done her so ill a service; and it burnt him with remorse—but there was the strong image of Bo in the background to keep him to the mark. “Leave me,” she said. And he walked out with bent head.
Hilda Maple broke into a flood of tears, putting her head down upon her crossed arms, and sobbing freely. She gave full vent to her relief; and minutes passed before she raised her face again, stained, distraught—hideous, she was sure. And when she raised it, there stood respectfully at the door, hesitating whether he should come in, the tall figure of Lord Hellup. Alone of that household the night vigil had not ruffled him at all. He had simply changed from his evening dress to his morning clothes, with all the creases where they should be. He had shaved, he was as fresh as a daisy. No wonder they make money, and keep it. But then, they also have hearts of gold.
As she raised her face he knew at once that he was intruding, and turned to go. But she, the unfortunate, was on her feet.
“Hannibal! …. I mean, Hamilcar!” she cried, stretching forth her extended hands.
He returned. She tottered. And fifty fell into the arms of sixty years. But there! What difference does ten years make at that time of life?
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © 1927 by Hilaire Belloc
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ISBN: 9781448204342
eISBN 9781448203758
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