After such an interview, Mrs. Mildmay did not, of course, call in Grosvenor Place again. Nor did she ever tell a soul, saving only her husband, what had passed between her and her sister-in-law. She did, however, hear what the world had to say concerning Lady Basingstoke’s subsequent behavior. For that lady, far from hiding herself in the seclusion expected of a widow, began to go abroad in the world.
“I saw her in Hyde Park, my dear, astride her horse, if you please. I would not have credited it had I not seen it with my own eyes. And looking quite brown and dried-up, for all the world like a farm wife, and so hideously plain you’d think that horrid Darwin justified in declaring us all the grandchildren of apes.”
“Lady Glencora!” Madam Max admonished her, with a glance at Mrs. Mildmay.
Lady Glencora was at once contrite. “Oh, Mrs. Mildmay, I beg your pardon to speak so of a close connection, but surely the woman is not mistress of herself, to be riding astride in the company of a gentleman in the most appalling hat.”
“Dr. Drago,” murmured Mrs. Mildmay.
“He might be the Grand Cham of Arabia if he chose; it still wouldn’t be proper. And it is common knowledge that her servants have left her without notice, and Lizzie Berry says her new bootboy tells such blood-curdling stories of Lady Basingstoke’s household that the servants all suffer from nightmares.”
Feeling Lady Glencora’s curious eyes upon her, Mrs. Mildmay schooled her features to gentle dismay. “How difficult for Lady Berry,” was all she said, but her heart burned within her, and she thought of Lady Basingstoke’s astonishing remark, that England was governed by wizards. Lady Glencora’s husband, Plantagenet Palliser, was said to be performing miracles as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Were they miracles indeed? Did Lady Glencora think she knew, or was she deriving amusement from her ignorance? Prey to melancholy reflections, Mrs. Mildmay brought her visit to an end as soon as she might do so without betraying the agitation the conversation had caused her, and went home again wishing that Alvord had seen fit to take her more fully into his confidence.
A month passed. The Season’s round of balls and card parties was enlivened by stories of Lady Basingstoke’s eccentricities, which grew wilder with each telling. Lady Basingstoke had thrown scones at the waiter at Liberty’s Tea Room; Lady Basingstoke had snatched a fruit-woman’s basket of apples and run away with it; Lady Basingstoke had bitten a policeman on the arm. Mrs. Mildmay was privately mortified by her sister-in-law’s behavior, and took full advantage of her own state of mourning to regret all invitations that might bring her into Lady Basingstoke’s erratic orbit. But she could not avoid the morning-calls of ladies eager to commiserate and analyze, nor the occasional glimpse of her brother’s widow, gaunt, unkempt, and draped in black, dragging on Dr. Drago’s arm as if it were all that kept her upright.
Then, as suddenly as she’d emerged, Lady Basingstoke disappeared once again into Grosvenor Place. Society looked elsewhere for its amusement, and as the Season wore on, Mrs. Mildmay ventured to hope that she had heard the end of the matter. In mid July, her hope was frustrated by Mr. Chess, who called upon her once again, this time accompanied by one of his clerks.
“I don’t know how sufficiently to beg your pardon,” Mr. Chess told her, his honest hound’s eyes dark with distress.
“It wasn’t Mr. Chess’s fault, madam,” his clerk said. “It was all mine. If you intend to go to law with someone, it’ll have to be me, and I won’t contest the charge, indeed I won’t.”
“Let us have no talk of going to law,” said Mrs. Mildmay. “Please, tell me what has happened.”
And so the unhappy story came out. Apparently, the afternoon of the day upon which Sir Alvord had changed his Will, he had returned to Mr. Chess’s chambers and left in the possession of the clerk (whose name was Mr. Rattler) a thick packet, with instructions that it be conveyed to Mrs. Mildmay as soon as possible.
“But it wasn’t possible, not if it were ever so, not with the Queen vs. Phineas Finn coming up to trial, and me run clear off my feet until ten of the clock. So I took it home so as to be sure and deliver it next morning on my way to Chambers, and my old mother was taken ill in the night, and that’s the last I thought of the packet until I was sorting through things yesterday—for she died of her illness, I grieve to say, and the house is to be sold—and found it, dropped behind the bootrack.”
The poor man looked so close to tears that Mrs. Mildmay was moved to give him her full forgiveness. “I have the packet in my hand now, after all, and we must hope that there’s not too much harm done. Why don’t you wait in the library while I read it, Mr. Chess, in case there is something in it I don’t understand?”
“Certainly, Mrs. Mildmay,” said Mr. Chess, and withdrew, herding the wretched clerk before him.
Now, if the reader be tempted, like Mrs. Mildmay, to pity Mr. Rattler, the reader may put his mind at ease. Mr. Rattler, less honest than provident, was not to be pitied; for upon discovering Sir Alvord’s packet behind the bootrack, he had lifted its seal with the aid of a heated knife, read it through, whistled thoughtfully, and immediately set himself to copy it all over. It was a long document, and the task took him the better part of the night, but his labor was well paid, for he sold the copy to one of the more sensational papers for a sum sufficient to buy passage to America, where we may only hope he found honest employment. Mr. Rattler’s industry, in the meantime, has relieved the present writer of reproducing the whole text of Sir Alvord’s letter to his sister, as the document was published in full soon after the Grosvenor Place Affair became public, and may be read by anyone who cares to ask for the July ___ edition of The People’s Banner.
In brief, the letter recounted how, not long after his marriage to Margaret Kennedy, Sir Alvord Basingstoke had taken himself off to Ceylon, where he had wandered, lost in impenetrable forests, for nearly two years. His adventures in this period were numerous, but in the letter, he restricted himself to the month he spent with a tribe whose god was an idol in the shape of a great ape carved of wood and inlaid with gold and precious stones.
Its teeth were pearls, perfectly matched, the largest I have ever seen, and it was crowned with beaten gold set, in the Eastern manner, with rough-cut sapphires, emeralds, and rubies. But its chiefest glory were its eyes, that were perfectly matched cabochon rubies of great size, each imprisoning a perfect, clear, bright star that gave the creature an air of malevolent intelligence. I chaffered with the king of those people, who was a wise and far-sighted woman, and brought her to understand that it would be much to her advantage to accept from me half the arms and ammunition I had brought with me, along with certain cantrips I had learned of a warrior-wizard in Katmandu. In exchange for all this, which would almost certainly ensure her victory over some two or three neighboring tribes, I would receive the left eye of the ape-god.
The gift came hedged around with warnings and restrictions, the greater part of which I have been able to circumvent or neutralize. I could do little, however, with the fundamental nature of the stone, which is likely to manifest itself in the form of a dreadful curse. I am exempt from this curse, as are all persons related to me by blood. But anyone else who wears it upon his finger, be it the Queen of England or Mr. Gresham or His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, will most assuredly and inevitably regret it. If you do not feel equal to the role of caretaker, dear Caroline, or harbor any doubts as to the fitness of young Wilson to undertake this responsibility, I enjoin you to send to (mentioning the name and direction of a gentleman whose position in Society commands our complete discretion) and tell him how the land lies. He’ll know what to do. You’ll need to call upon him in any case, to initiate you and your boy into the uses and rituals of the stone.
In the course of reading this extraordinary document, Mrs. Mildmay was forced to ring for brandy, and when she had finished, sat for a few minutes with the sheets of her brother’s narrative spread on her knees. Poor Alvord, she thought. And poor Margaret. She rang again for Mr. Chess and his
clerk and her hat and cloak and her carriage to take them all to Grosvenor Place.
“For I’ll certainly want you for witnesses or help, or both,” she told them. “And there’s not a moment to be lost, not that it probably isn’t too late already.”
When the carriage pulled up to Lady Basingstoke’s house, all seemed as it should be, save that the steps clearly had not been swept nor the door brass polished in some time.
“There, you see?” said Mrs. Mildmay. “Something is dreadfully amiss. It is unlike Margaret not to have hired new servants.”
“Perhaps she couldn’t find any to hire,” Mr. Chess suggested.
“Servants are always to be had in London,” said Mrs. Mildmay, “unemployment being what it is.”
A distant crash within put an end to idle conversation and inspired Mr. Chess to try the door, which was locked. A thin, inhuman screech from an upper floor sent him backing hastily down the steps, drawing Mrs. Mildmay, protesting, by the arm. “This is a matter for the police, dear lady, or perhaps a mad doctor. Rattler, find a constable.”
While Rattler was searching out a member of the constabulary, Mr. Chess suggested that some tale be agreed on to explain the necessity of breaking into the town residence of a respectable baronet’s widow, but in the event, no explanation was needed, for such a screeching and crashing greeted the constable’s advent as to lend considerable weight to Mrs. Mildmay’s plea that the door be forced at once.
With a blow of the constable’s truncheon, the lock was broken. He set his broad shoulder to the door, and, with the help of Mr. Chess and Mr. Rattler, thrust it open upon a scene of chaos. The rugs had been tumbled about and smeared with filth. Furniture had been overturned, paintings ripped from the walls, draperies torn, and a display of native weapons cast down from the wall. The noise had ceased upon their entrance, and a deathly, listening silence brooded over the ruined hall.
Mrs. Mildmay was the first of the quartet to regain her presence of mind. She stepped forward to the foot of the stairs and called: “Margaret, are you there? It is Caroline Mildmay, with Mr. Chess and a constable. Answer us if you can.”
At the sound of her voice, the noise began again, a wild gibbering and screeching like a soul in torment, and a figure appeared upon the gallery above the hall, wrapped in a voluminous pale dressing gown. The figure tore off the gown, threw it down upon the pale faces turned up to it, and swung itself from the gallery high over their heads to the great central chandelier, where it crouched, chattering angrily.
“It’s an ape,” said Mr. Chess unneccessarily.
“And a bleedin’ ’uge un,” said the constable, “beggin’ the lady’s parding.”
But Mrs. Mildmay hardly noticed, for she was examining the creature—which was indeed one of the great apes that make their homes in the remoter reaches of the East—with more dismay than fear. “Why, it’s Margaret,” she exclaimed. “I’d know that chin anywhere. Oh, Mr. Chess!”
“Pray calm yourself, Mrs. Mildmay. Mr. Rattler shall alert this rude fellow’s superiors of our predicament so that he may have help in subduing the creature, after which we may search the house for news of Lady Basingstoke.”
“But we have news of Lady Basingstoke, I tell you! Look at her!” Mrs. Mildmay indicated the ape in the chandelier, whereupon the creature burst into a frenzy of hooting and bounced furiously up and down.
“Pray, Mrs. Mildmay, don’t agitate it, or you’ll have it down upon our heads. This is no place for a lady. Perhaps you’d best step outside until it is disposed of. Let the official gentlemen do their jobs and we’ll sort it all out later.”
But Mrs. Mildmay would not have it so, not unless Mr. Chess were to carry her bodily from the house. They were still arguing the point when the ape gave an almost human scream of rage and leapt from the chandelier.
Its intention was clearly to land upon Mrs. Mildmay’s head, which, given the height of the chandelier and the weight of the ape, would certainly have snapped her neck. Fortunately, the constable, who had in the interval snatched a wicked-looking spear from the pile of weapons, cast it at the ape, catching it squarely in the chest. The ape screamed again and fell to the marble floor with a terrible thud.
In a moment, Mrs. Mildmay was kneeling beside it, careless of the spreading pool of blood, examining its leathery paws while Mr. Chess wrung his hands and begged her for heaven’s sake to come away and leave the filthy thing to the authorities.
“Do be silent, Mr. Chess,” said Mrs. Mildmay abstractedly. “I can’t find the ring. We must find it—don’t you see?—before it does further harm. I made sure it would be upon her finger, but it is not.”
As she commenced gently to feel over the inert body, the ape groaned and opened its eyes. Mrs. Mildmay’s hand flew to her mouth, and at this last extremity, she was at some trouble to stifle a scream. For the ape’s right eye was grey and filled with pain and fear. And the ape’s left eye—the ape’s left eye was red as fire, smooth and clouded save for a clear star winking and sliding in its depths: the Parwat Ruby.
“Poor Margaret,” said Mrs. Mildmay, and plucked the stone from the creature’s head. As soon as the ruby was in her hand, the ape was an ape no more, but the corpse of an elderly woman with a spear in her breast.
As to the aftermath of this terrible story, there is little to say. Mr. Chess and the constable together searched the house in Grosvenor Place. Of Dr. Drago, no trace was found, saving a quantity of bloody water in a copper hip-bath and some well-chewed bones in my lady’s bedchamber. In the ruins of Sir Alvord’s study, Mr. Chess discovered some papers that suggested that Lady Basingstoke had extracted the codicil from the document box in Mr. Chess’s chambers by means into which he thought it best not to delve too deeply. He thought it likely, also, that Lady Basingstoke had been instrumental in her husband’s death, an opinion shared by Mrs. Mildmay and her husband, when she told him the story. Yet all were agreed that Lady Basingstoke, having suffered the most extreme punishment for her crimes, should not go to her grave with the stigma of murder upon her name. There was a brief period when no London jeweler could sell any kind of ruby, even at discounted prices, and no fashionable gathering was complete without a thorough discussion of the curse, its composition, and effect. But then came August and grouse-shooting, with houseparties in the country and cubbing to look forward to, and the nine-days’ wonder came to an end.
As for the ruby itself, Mrs. Mildmay wore it on her finger. It was perhaps a coincidence that Mr. Mildmay’s always lively interest in politics soon became more active, and that he successfully stood for the seat of the borough of Lessingham Parva for the Liberals. After he became Minister of Home Affairs, he introduced and forced through the House the famous Poor Law of 18__, which guaranteed employment to all able-bodied men and women, and a stipend for the old and helpless. In all his efforts, he was ably seconded by his wife, who became in her later years a great political hostess and promoter of young and idealistic Liberal MPs. After her husband’s death, at an age when most women are thinking of retiring to the country, Mrs. Caroline Mildmay mounted an expedition to the impenetrable forests of Ceylon, from which journey neither she nor the Parwat Ruby ever returned.
The Faerie Cony-Catcher
In London town, in the reign of good Queen Bess that was called Gloriana, there lived a young man named Nicholas Cantier. Now it came to pass that this Nick Cantier served out his term as apprentice jeweler and goldsmith under one Master Spilman, jeweler by appointment to the Queen’s Grace herself, and was made journeyman of his guild. For that Nick was a clever young man, his master would have been glad for him to continue on where he was; yet Nick was not fain thereof, Master Spilman being as ill a master of men as he was skilled master of his trade. And Nick bethought him thus besides: that London was like unto the boundless sea where Leviathan may dwell unnoted, save by such small fish as he may snap up to stay his mighty hunger: such small fish as Nicholas Cantier. Better he seek out some backwater in the provinces where, puffed up
by city ways, he might perchance pass for a pike and snap up spratlings on his own account.
So thought Nick. And on a bright May morning, he packed up such tools as he might call his own—as a pitch block and a mallet, and some small steel chisels and punches and saw blades and blank rings of copper—that he might make shift to earn his way to Oxford. Nick put his tools in a pack, with clean hosen and a shirt and a pair of soft leather shoon, and that was all his worldly wealth strapped upon his back, saving only a jewel that he had designed and made himself to be his passport. This jewel was in the shape of a maid, her breasts and belly all one lucent pearl, her skirt and open jacket of bright enamel, and her fair face of silver burnished with gold. On her fantastic hair perched a tiny golden crown, and Nick had meant her for the Faerie Queene of Master Spenser’s poem, fair Gloriana.
Upon this precious Gloriana did Nick’s life and livelihood depend. Being a prudent lad in the main, and bethinking him of London’s traps and dangers, Nick considered where he might bestow it that he fall not prey to those foists and rufflers who might take it from him by stealth or by force. The safest place, thought he, would be his codpiece, where no man nor woman might meddle without his yard raise the alarm. Yet the jewel was large and cold and hard against those softer jewels that dwelt more commonly therein, and so Nick bound it across his belly with a band of linen and took leave of his fellows and set out northward to seek his fortune.
Now this Nick Cantier was a lusty youth of nearly twenty, with a fine, open face and curls of nut-brown hair that sprang from his brow; yet notwithstanding his comely form, he was as much a virgin on that May morning as the Queen herself. For Master Spilman was the hardest of taskmasters, and between his eagle eye and his adder cane and his arch-episcopal piety, his apprentices perforce lived out the terms of their bonds as chaste as Popish monks. On this the first day of his freedom, young Nick’s eye roved hither and thither, touching here a slender waist and there a dimpled cheek, wondering what delights might not lie beneath this petticoat or that snowy kerchief. And so it was that a Setter came upon him unaware and sought to persuade him to drink a pot of ale together, having just found xii pence in a gutter and it being ill luck to keep found money and Nick’s face putting him in mind of his father’s youngest son, dead of an ague this two year and more. Nick let him run on, through this excuse for scraping acquaintance and that, and when the hopeful Cony-catcher had rolled to a stop, like a cart at the foot of a hill, he said unto him:
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