Mrs. Fitz. Snaith John Collis
go up to town this afternoon and have a talk with them at Scotland Yard.
"I was afraid that would have to happen. I wanted it to be kept an absolute secret, you know."
"You can depend upon the Yard to be the soul of discretion. It is not the first time they have been entrusted with the internal affairs of a reigning family. If the Princess is still in this country and she is still alive, and there is no reason to think otherwise, I believe we shall not have to wait long for news of her."
Coverdale spoke in a tone of calm reassurance, which at least was eloquent of his tact and his knowledge of men. Overwrought as Fitz was, it was not without its effect upon him.
"Ought not the ports to be watched?" he said.
"I hardly think it will be necessary. But if Scotland Yard thinks otherwise, they will be watched of course. Whatever happens, Fitzwaren, you can be quite sure that nothing will be left undone in our endeavour to find out what has really happened to the lady we shall agree to call Mrs. Fitzwaren. Further, you can depend upon it that absolute discretion will be used."
We left Coverdale, imbued with a sense of gratitude for his cordial optimism, and I think we both felt that a peculiarly delicate business could not be in more competent hands. He was a man of sound judgment and infinite discretion. Throughout this singular interview he had emerged as a shrewd, tactful and eminently kind-hearted fellow.
As a result of this visit to the sessions hall at Middleham, poor Fitz allowed himself a little hope. He had been duly impressed by the man of affairs who had taken the case in hand. However, he was still by no means himself. He was still in a strangely excited and gloomy condition; and this was aggravated by his friendlessness and the feeling that the hand of every man was against him.
In the circumstances, I felt obliged to yield to his expressed wish that I should accompany him to the Grange. As the crow flies it is less than four miles from my house.
The home of the Fitzwarens is a rambling, gloomy and dilapidated place enough. An air pervades it of having run to seed. Every Fitzwaren who has inhabited it within living memory has been a gambler and a roué in one form or another. The Fitzwarens are by long odds the oldest family in our part of the world, and by odds equally long their record is the most unfortunate. Coming of a long line of ill-regulated lives, the heavy bills drawn by his forbears upon posterity seemed to have become payable in the person of the unhappy Fitz. Doubtless it was not right that one who in Mrs. Catesby's phrase was a married man, a father of a family, and a county member, should constitute himself as the apologist of such a man as Fitz. But, in spite of his errors, I had never found it in my heart to act towards him as so many of his neighbours did not hesitate to do. The fact that he had fagged for me at school and the knowledge that there was a lovable, a pathetic and even a heroic side to one to whom fate had been relentlessly cruel, made it impossible for me to regard him as wholly outside the pale.
I can never forget our arrival at the Grange on this piercing winter afternoon. My car belonged to that earlier phase of motoring when the traveller was more exposed to the British climate than modern science considers necessary. The snow, at the beck of a terrible north-easter, beat in our faces pitilessly. And when we came half frozen into the house, we were met on its threshold by a mite of four. She was the image of her mother, with the same skin of lustrous olive, the same mass of raven hair, and the same challenging black eyes. In her hand was a mutilated doll. It was carried upside down and it had been decapitated.
"I want my mama," she said with an air of authority which was ludicrously like that of the circus rider from Vienna. "Have you brought my mama?"
"No, my pearl of price," said Fitz, swinging the mite up to his snow-covered face, "but she will be here soon. She has sent you this."
He kissed the small elf, who had all the disdain of a princess and the witchery of a fairy.
"Who is dis?" said she, pointing at me with her doll.
"Dis, my jewel of the east, is our kind friend Mr. Arbuthnot. If you are very nice to him he will stay to tea."
"Do you like my mama, Mistah 'Buthnot?" said the latest scion of Europe's oldest dynasty, with a directness which was disconcerting from a person of four.
"Very much indeed," said I, warmly.
"You can stay to tea, Mistah 'Buthnot. I like you vewy much."
The prompt cordiality of the verdict was certainly pleasant to a humble unit of a monarchical country. The creature extended her tiny paw with a gesture so superb that there was only one thing left for a courtier to do. That was to kiss it.
The owner of the paw seemed to be much gratified by this discreet action.
"I like you vewy much, Mistah 'Buthnot; I will tell you my name."
"Oh, do, please!"
"My name is Marie Sophie Louise Waren Fitzwaren."
"Phoebus, what a name!"
"And dis, Mistah 'Buthnot, is my guv'ness, Miss Green. She is a tarn fool."
The lady thus designated had come unexpectedly upon the scene. An estimable and bespectacled gentlewoman of uncompromising mien, she gazed down upon her charge with the gravest austerity.
"Marie Louise, if I hear that phrase again you will go to bed."
As Miss Green spoke, however, she gazed at me over her spectacles in a humorously reflective fashion.
Marie Louise shrugged her small shoulders disdainfully, and in a tone that, to say the least, was peremptory, ordered the butler, who looked venerable enough to be her great-grandfather, to bring the tea. The congé that the venerable servitor performed upon receiving this order rendered it clear that upon a day he had been a confidential retainer in the royal house of Illyria.
"I am afraid, Miss Green," said I, tentatively, "that your post is no sinecure."
"That mite of four has the imperious will of a Catherine of Russia," said Miss Green, with an amused smile. "If she ever attains the estate of womanhood, I shudder to think what she will be."
Fitz entreated me to dine with him. I yielded in the hope that a little company might help him to fight his depression. The meal was not a cheerful one. Under the most favourable conditions Fitz is not a cheerful individual; but I was obliged to note that of late years he had learned to exercise his will. In many ways I thought he had changed for the better. He had lost his coarseness of speech; he was scrupulously moderate in what he ate and drank, and his bearing had gained in reserve and dignity. In a word, he had grown into a more civilised, a more developed being than I had ever thought it possible for him to become.
It was past eleven when I returned to my own domain. The blizzard still prevailed, and I found Mrs. Arbuthnot in the drawing-room enthroned before a roaring fire, which happily served as some mitigation of the arctic demeanour with which my return was greeted. This, in conjunction with the adverse elements through which I had already passed, was enough to complete the overthrow of the strongest constitution.
The ruler of Dympsfield House – Dympsfield House is the picturesque name conferred upon our ancestral home by my grandfather, Mr. George Arbuthnot of Messrs. Arbuthnot, Boyd and Co., the celebrated firm of sugar refiners of Bristol – the ruler of Dympsfield House was ostensibly engaged in the study of a work of fiction of a pronounced sporting character, with a yellow cover. Works of this nature and the provincial edition of the Daily Courier, which is guaranteed to have a circulation of ten million copies per diem, are the only forms of literature that the ruler of Dymspfield House considers it "healthy" to peruse.
When I entered the drawing-room with a free and easy air which was designed to suggest that my conscience had nothing to conceal and nothing to defend, the wife of my bosom discarded her novel and fixed me with that cool gaze which all who are born Vane-Anstruther consider it to be the hall-mark of their caste to wield.
"Where have you been, Odo?" was the greeting that was reserved for me.
"Dining with Fitz," said I, succinctly.
A short pause.
"What did you say?"
I repeated my modest statement.
A