Mrs. Fitz

by J. C. Snaith

  CHAPTER III

  THE CASE FOR THE PROSECUTION

  "I know, Mrs. Catesby, I'm not much of a chap," said Brasset, "butwhat's a feller to do? I did drop a hint to Fitz, you know."

  "Fitz!!" The art of the _litterateur_ can only render a scorn sosublime by two marks of exclamation.

  "What did Fitz say?" I ventured to inquire.

  "Scowled like blazes," said Brasset, miserably. "Thought thecross-grained, three-cornered devil would eat me. Beg pardon, Mrs.Catesby."

  The noble Master subsided into his glass of beer in the most lamentablyineffectual manner.

  I cleared my voice in the consciousness that I had an uncle a judge.

  "Brasset," said I, "will you kindly inform the court what are thespecific grounds of complaint against this much-maligned andunfortunate--er--female?"

  "Don't make yourself ridiculous, Odo!"

  "Odo, you know perfectly well!"

  It was a dead heat between Mrs. Arbuthnot and the Great Lady.

  "Order, order," said I, sternly. "This scene belongs to Brasset. Now,Brasset, answer the question, and then perhaps something may be done."

  It was not to be, however. The nephew of my uncle failed lamentably toexact obedience to the chair.

  "My dear Odo," said Mary Catesby, in what I can only describe as herAlbert Hall manner, with her voice going right up to the top like aflag going up a pole, "do you mean to tell _me_----?"

  "That you don't know how Mrs. Fitz has been carrying on!" the Madamchipped in with really wonderful cleverness.

  "I don't, upon oath," said I, solemnly. "You appear to forget that Ihave been giving my time to the nation during this abominable autumnsession."

  "So he has, poor dear," said the partner of my joys.

  "Like a good citizen," said Mary Catesby, most august of Primrose Dames.

  "Thank you, Mary, I deserve it. But am I to understand that Mrs. Fitzhas flung her cap over the mill, or that she has taken to ridingastride, or is it that she continues to affect that scarlet coat whichlast season hastened the end of the Dowager?"

  "No, Arbuthnot." It was the voice of Brasset, vibrating with such deepemotion that it can only be compared to the _Marche Funebre_ performedupon a cathedral organ. "But it was only by God's mercy that lastTuesday morning she didn't override Challenger."

  "Allah is great," said I.

  "Upon my solemn word of honour," said the noble Master, speaking fromthe depths, "she was within two inches of the old gal's stern."

  "Parkins," said a voice from the breakfast table, "bring another glassof beer for his lordship."

  To be perfectly frank, liquid sustenance was no longer a vitalnecessity to the noble Master. He was already rosy with indignation atthe sudden memory of his wrongs. Only one thing can induce Brasset todisplay even a normal amount of spirit. That is the welfare of thesacred charges over which he presides for the public weal. He willsuffer you to punch his head, to tread on his toe, or to call himnames, and as likely as not he will apologise sweetly for anyinconvenience you may have incurred in the process. But if youbelittle the Crackanthorpe Hounds or in any way endanger the humblestmember of the Fitzwilliam strain, woe unto you. You transform Brassetinto a veritable man of blood and iron. He is invested with pathos anddignity. The lightnings of heaven flash from beneath his long-lashedorbs; and from his somewhat narrow chest there is bodied forth a farricher vocabulary than the general inefficiency of his appearance canpossibly warrant hi any conceivable circumstances.

  Mere feminine clamour was silenced by Brasset transformed. His blueeyes glowed, his cheeks grew rosier, each particular hair of hisperfectly charming little blond moustache--trimmed by Truefitt once afortnight--stood up on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine. Inlieu of pink abasement was tawny denunciation.

  "I'll admit, Arbuthnot," said the Man of Blood and Iron, "I looked atthe woman as no man ought to look at a lady."

  "Didn't you say 'damn,' Lord Brasset?" piped a demure seeker afterknowledge.

  "I may have done, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I admit I may have done."

  "I think that ought to go down on the depositions," said I, with anapproximation to the manner of my uncle, the judge, that was verytolerable for an amateur.

  "I _honour_ you for it, Lord Brasset. Don't you, Mary?"

  "Endeavour not to embarrass the witness," said I. "Go on, Brasset."

  "Brasset, here's your beer," said Jodey, rising from the table andpersonally handing the Burton brew with vast solemnity.

  "I may have damned her eyes," proceeded the witness, "or I mayn't havedone. You see, she was within two inches of the old gal, and I mayhave lost my head for a bit. I'll admit that no man ought to damn theeyes of a lady. Mind, I don't say I did. And yet I don't say Ididn't. It all happened before you could say 'knife,' and I'll admit Iwas rattled."

  "The witness admits he was rattled," said I.

  "So would you have been, old son," the witness continuedmagniloquently. "Within two inches, upon my oath."

  "Were there reprisals on the part of the lady whose eyes you had damnedin a moment of mental duress?"

  "_Rather_. She damned mine in Dutch."

  Sensation.

  "How did you know it was Dutch, Lord Brasset?" piped a seeker ofknowledge.

  "By the behaviour of the hounds, Mrs. Arbuthnot."

  "How did they behave?"

  "The beggars bolted."

  Sensation.

  "My aunt!" said the occupant of the breakfast table with solemnirrelevance.

  "So would you," said the noble Master. "I never heard anything likeit. In my opinion there is no language like Dutch when it comes tocursing. And then, before I could blink, up went her hand, and shegave me one over the head with her crop."

  Sensation.

  "Upon my solemn word of honour. I don't mind showing the mark toanybody."

  "Where is it, Lord Brasset?"

  Mrs. Arbuthnot rose from her chair in the ecstatic pursuit offirst-hand information. Her eyes were wide and glowing like those ofher small daughter, Miss Lucinda, when she hears the story of "TheThree Bears."

  "Show _me_ the scar, Reggie," said a Minerva-like voice.

  "Let's see it, Brasset," said the occupant of the breakfast table,kicking over a piece of Chippendale of the best period and incidentallybreaking the back of it.

  The somewhat melodramatic investigations of a thick layer of Rowland'sMacassar oil and a thin layer of fair hair disclosed an unmistakableweal immediately above the left temple of the noble martyr in the causeof public duty.

  "If it don't beat cockfighting!" said Jodey in a tone of undisguisedadmiration.

  "If it hadn't been for the rim of my cap," said the noble martyr inresponse to the public enthusiasm, "it must have laid my head cleanopen."

  "In my opinion," said Mary Catesby, speaking _ex cathedra_, "that womanis a perfect devil. Reggie, if you only show firmness you can countupon support. They may stand that sort of thing in a Continentalcircus, but we don't stand it in the Crackanthorpe Hunt."

  "Firmness, Brasset," said I, anxious, like all the world, to echo theoracle.

  The little blond moustache was subjected to inhuman treatment.

  "It's all very well, you know, but what's the use of being firm with aperson who is just as firm as yourself?"

  The Great Lady snorted.

  "For three years, Reggie, you have filled a difficult office passablywell. Don't let a little thing like this be your undoing."

  "All very well, Mrs. Catesby, but I can't hit her over the head, can I?"

  "No, but what about Fitz?" said a voice from the breakfast table.

  "Ye-es, I hadn't thought of that."

  "And I shouldn't think of it if I were you," said I, cordially. "Fitzwith all his errors is a heftier chap than you are, my son."

  Brasset's jaw dropped doubtfully--it is quite a good jaw, by the way.

  "Practise the left a bit, Brasset," was the advice of the breakfasttable. "I know a ch
ap in Jermyn Street who has had lessons from Burns.We might trot up and see him after lunch. Bring a Bradshaw, Parkins.And I think we had better send a wire."

  "I wasn't so bad with my left when I was up at Trinity," said Brasset.

  Mrs. Arbuthnot shuddered audibly. She has long been an out-and-outadmirer of the noble Master's nose. Certainly its contour has greatelegance and refinement.

  "Brasset," said I, "let me urge you not to listen to evilcommunications. If you were Burns himself you would do well to playvery lightly with Fitz. He was my fag at school, and althoughsometimes there was occasion to visit him with an ash plant or atoasting fork in the manner prescribed by the house regulations at thatancient seat of learning, I shouldn't advise you or anybody else toundertake a scheme of personal chastisement."

  "Certainly not, Reggie," said Mary Catesby, in response to Mrs.Arbuthnot's imploring gaze. "Odo is perfectly right. Besides, youmust behave like a gentleman. It is the woman with whom you must deal."

  "Well, I can't hit her, can I?" said Brasset, plaintively.

  "If a cove's wife hit me over the head with a crop," said the voice ofyouth, "I should want to hit the cove that had the wife that hit me,and so would Odo. I see there's a train at two-fifteen gets to town atfive."

  Brasset's eyes are as softly, translucently blue as those of MissLucinda, but in them was the light of battle. He no longer tugged athis upper lip, but stroked it gently. To those conversant with thesemysteries this portent was sinister.

  "Is Genee on at the Empire?" said he.

  "Parkins knows," said Jodey.

  Parkins did know.

  "Yes, my lord," said that peerless factotum, "she is."

  In parenthesis, I ought to mention that Parkins is the _piece deresistance_ of our modest establishment. Not only is he highlyaccomplished in all the polite arts practised by man, but also he is awalking compendium of exact information.

  "How's this?" said Jodey, proceeding to read aloud the telegram he hadcomposed with studious care. "Dine self and pal Romano's 7.30. Empireafterwards. Book three stalls in centre."

  "Wouldn't the side be better?" said Brasset. "Then you are out of thedraught."

  Before this important correction could be made Mary Catesby lifted upher voice in all its natural majesty.

  "Reginald Philip Horatio," said the most august of her sex, "as one whodressed dolls and composed hymns with your poor dear mother before shemade her imprudent marriage, I forbid you absolutely to fight with sucha man as Nevil Fitzwaren. It is not seemly, it is not Christian, andNevil Fitzwaren is a far more powerful man than yourself."

  "Science will beat brute force at any hour of the day or night," wasthe opinion of the breakfast table.

  Mrs. Catesby fixed the breakfast table with her invincible north eye.

  "Joseph, pray hold your tongue. This is very wrong advice you aregiving to a man who is rather older and quite as foolish as yourself."

  The Bayard of the breakfast table rebutted the indictment.

  "The advice is sound enough," said he. "My pal in Jermyn Street haswon no end of pots as a middle-weight, and he'll soon have a go at theheavies now he's taken to supping at the Savoy. He'll put Brasset allright. He's as clever as daylight, a pupil of Burns. I tell you what,Mrs. C., if Brasset leads off with a left and a right and follows upwith a half-arm hook on the point, in my opinion he'll have a walkover."

  "Reggie, I forbid you _absolutely_," said the early collaborator withthe noble Master's mother. "It is so uncivilised; besides, if NevilFitzwaren happened to be the first to lead off with a half-arm hook onthe point, we should probably require a new Master. And that would beso awkward. It was always a maxim of my dear father's that foxes werethe only things that profited by a change of mastership in the middleof December."

  "Your dear father was right, Mary," said I, gravely.

  "Dear father was infallible. But seriously, Reggie, if anythinghappened to you we should really have nobody to take the hounds nowthat for some obscure reason they have made Odo a member of Parliament."

  "If a cove's wife hit me," came the refrain from the breakfast table ina kind of drone, "I should want to hit the cove that had the wife thathit me. See that this wire is sent, Parkins, and tell Kelly that I amrunning up to town by the 2.15 and shall stay the night."

  "Jodey, don't be a fool," said I. "Brasset, I want to say this. Ihope you are listening, Mary, and you too, Irene. Where Fitz and hiswife are concerned, we have all got to play lightly."

  I summoned all the earnestness of which I am capable. Even MaryCatesby was impressed by such an air of conviction.

  "I fail to see," said she, "why we should be so especially considerateof the feelings of the Fitzwarens, when they are the last to considerthe feelings of others."

  "You can take it from me, Mary, that Fitz and his wife are not to bejudged altogether by ordinary standards. They are extraordinarypeople."

  "Tell me what you mean by the term extraordinary?" said myinquisitorial spouse.

  "Does it really require explanation, _mon enfant_?"

  "It means," said the plain-spoken Mary, "that Nevil Fitzwaren is anextraordinarily reckless and dissolute type of fellow, and that Mrs.Nevil is an extraordinarily unpleasant type of woman."

  I am the first to admit that that ineffectual thing, the mere humanmale, is not of the calibre openly to dissent from a consideredjudgment of the Great Lady. But to the amazement of men and doubtlessof gods, for once in a way her opinion was publicly challenged.

  You could have heard a pin drop in the room when the occupant of thebreakfast table took up the gage.

  "Fitz is a bad hat." Joseph Jocelyn De Vere removed the pipe from hislips. "Everybody knows it. But Mrs. Fitz is a thousand times too goodfor the cove that's married her."

  Such an expression of opinion left his sister open-mouthed. MaryCatesby lowered her chin and her eyelashes at an indiscretion soportentous.

  "The Fitzwarens," said that great authority, "are a very old family,and Nevil has the education, if not the instincts, of a gentleman, butas for this circus rider he has brought from Vienna, she has neitherthe birth, the education nor the instincts of a lady."

  This tremendous pronouncement would have put most people out of actionat once. But here was a man of mettle.

  "She's tophole," said that Bayard. "I've never seen her equal. If youask my opinion there's not a chap in the Hunt who is fit to open a gatefor Mrs. Fitz."

  The young fellow had fairly got the bit between his teeth and nomistake.

  "One doesn't ask your opinion, Joseph," said Mary Catesby, with abluntness that would have felled a bullock. "Why should one, pray? Iknow no person less fitted to express an opinion on any subject."

  "I've followed her line anyhow, and I've been proud to follow it. Shecan ride cunning, too, mind you. I've never seen her equal anywhere,and don't suppose I ever shall."

  "No one questions her riding. She was born and bred in a circus. Buta more unmitigated female bounder never jumped through a hoop in pinktights."

  It was below the belt, and not only Jodey but Brasset, who, inefficientas he is in most things, is unmistakably a sportsman of the firstclass, also felt it to be so.

  "Mrs. Fitz has foreign ways," said the noble Master, "but she can be asnice as anybody when she likes. I've known her be awfully civil."

  "She is not without charm," said I, feeling that it was up to me toplay up a bit.

  "She's _it_," said Jodey. "She's the sort of woman that would make achap----"

  "Shoot himself," chirruped the noble Master.

  Disgust and indignation are mild terms to apply to Mrs. Catesby's wrath.

  "Pair of boobies! You are as bad as he is, Reggie. But it was alwaysso like your poor mother to take things lying down."

  "Oh, come now, Mrs. Catesby, haven't I said all along that she had noright to hit me over the head with her crop?"

  "The safest place in which to hit you, anyway." The Great Lady was inperi
l of losing her temper.

  The question of Mrs. Fitz was a very vexed one in the CrackanthorpeHunt. It had already divided that proud institution into two sections:i.e. the thick and thin supporters of that lady and those who would nothave her at any price. It need excite no remark in the minds of thejudicious that the male followers of the Hunt, almost to a man,admired, as much as they dared in the circumstances, a very remarkablepersonality; while its feminine patrons, with a unanimity quite withoutprecedent in that august body, were conspiring to humiliate, as deeplyas it lay in their power, a personage who had set three counties by theears.

  The Great Lady proceeded to temper her wrath with some extremelydignified pathos.

  "It is a mystery to me," said she, "how men who call themselvesgentlemen can attempt to defend a creature who offered a public affrontto the Duke and dear Evelyn."

  "I presume you mean the affair of the bazaar?" said I.

  "I do; a lamentable fracas. Dear Evelyn never left her bed for afortnight."

  "Dear me! Are we to understand that actual physical violence wasoffered to her Grace?"

  "Don't be childish, Odo! I was present and saw everything, and I cananswer for it that no such thing as violence was used."

  "Then why did the great lady take to her bed?"

  "Through sheer vexation. And really one doesn't wonder. It wasnothing less than a public insult."

  "Tell me, Mary, precisely in three words what did happen at the bazaar.All the world agrees that it was a desperate affair, yet nobody seemsto know exactly what it was that occurred."

  Mrs. Catesby enveloped herself in that mantle of high diplomacy thatshe is pleased so often to assume.

  "No, my dear Odo, I don't think it would be kind to the Duke and dearEvelyn to say actually what did occur. To my mind it is not a thing tobe spoken of, but I may tell you this--it has been mentioned atWindsor!"

  It was clear from the Great Lady's demeanour that at this announcementwe were all expected to cross ourselves. Only Mrs. Arbuthnot did so,however.

  "Oh, Mary!" The china-blue eyes swam with ecstasy.

  "If you wish to convey to us, my dear Mary," said I, "that a royalcommission has been appointed to inquire into the subject, allexperience tends to teach that there will be less prospect than ever offinding out what did happen at the bazaar."

  "Tell us what really did happen at the bazaar, Mrs. Catesby," saidBrasset. "I am sorry I wasn't there."

  "No, Reggie, I am _much_ too fond of dear Evelyn to disclose the truthto a living soul. But I may tell you this: the incident was far worsethan has been reported."

  "I understand," said I, solemnly lying, at the instance of thehistrionic sense, "that Windsor earnestly desired that the incident,whatever it was, should be minimised as much as possible."

  The bait was gobbled, hook and all.

  "How did you come to hear that, Odo? Even I was not told that."

  "Who told you _that_, Odo?" Mrs. Arbuthnot twittered breathlessly.

  "There was a rumour the other day in the House."

  "The idle gossip of the lobbies," the Great Lady was moved to affirm.

  But we were straying away from the point. And the point was, in whatmanner was public decency to mark its sense of outrage at the conductof Mrs. Fitz?