John Collis
Mrs. Fitz
CHAPTER I
ACCORDING TO REUTER
"It is snowing," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"Worse luck!" growled I from behind my newspaper. "This unspeakable climate! Why can't we sack the Clerk of the Weather?"
"Because he is a permanent official," said Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther, who was coming into the room. "And those are the people who run the benighted country."
Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther was in rather smart kit. It was December the First, and the hounds – there is only one pack in the United Kingdom – were about to pay an annual visit to the country of a neighbour. With conscious magnificence my relation by marriage took a bee-line to the sideboard. He paused a moment to debate to which of two imperative duties he should give the precedence: i.e. to make his daily report upon the personal appearance of his host, or to find out what there was to eat. The state of the elements enabled Mother Nature "to get a cinch" on an honourable æstheticism. Jodey began to forage slowly but resolutely among the dish covers.
"Kedgeree! Twice in a fortnight. Look here, Mops, it won't do."
Mrs. Arbuthnot was perusing that journal which for the modest sum of one halfpenny purveys the glamour of history with only five per cent. of its responsibilities. She merely turned over a page. Her brother, having heaped enough kedgeree upon his plate to make a meal for the average person, peppered and salted it on a scale equally liberal and then suggested coffee.
"Tea is better for the digestion," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, with her natural air of simple authority.
"I know," said Jodey, "that is why I prefer the other stuff."
"Men are so reasonable!"
"Do you mind 'andin' the sugar?"
"Sugar will make you a welter and ruin your appearance."
A cardinal axiom of my friend Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins, née Ogbourne, late of Brownville, Mass., is "Horse-sense always tells." Among the daughters of men I know none whose endowment of this felicitous quality can equal that of the amiable participator in my expenditure. It told in this case.
"Better give me tea."
"Without sugar?" said Mrs. Arbuthnot, with great charm of manner.
"A small lump," said Jodey as a concession to his force of character.
The young fellow stirred his tea with so much diligence that the small lump really seemed like a large one. And then, with a gravity that was somewhat sinister, he fixed his gaze on my coat and leathers.
"By a local artist of the name of Jobson," said I, humbly. "The second shop on the right as you enter Middleham High Street."
"They speak for themselves."
"My father went there," said I. "My grandfather also. In my grandfather's day I believe the name of the firm was Wiseman and Grundy."
"It's not fair to 'ounds. If I was Brasset I should take 'em 'ome."
"If you were Brasset," I countered, "that would hardly be necessary. They would find their way home by themselves."
"Mops is to blame. She has been brought up properly."
"It comes to this, my friend. We can't both wear the breeches. Hers cost a pretty penny from those thieves in Regent Street."
"Maddox Street," said a bland voice from the recesses of the Daily Courier.
"Those bandits in Maddox Street," said I, with pathos. "But for all I know it might be those sharks in the Mile End Road. I am a babe in these things."
"No, my dear Odo," said the young fellow, making his point somewhat elaborately, "in those things you are a perisher. An absolute perisher. I'm ashamed to be seen 'untin' the same fox with you. I should be ashamed to be found dead in the same ditch. I hate people who are not serious about clothes. It's so shallow."
My relation by marriage produced an extremely vivid yellow silk handkerchief, and pensively flicked a speck of invisible dust off an immaculate buckskin.
"My God, those tops!"
"By a local draughtsman," said I, "of the name of Bussey. He is careful in the measurements and takes a drawing of the foot."
"'Orrible. You look like a Cossack at the Hippodrome."
"The Madam patronises an establishment in Bond Street. One is given to understand that various royalties follow her example."
"They make for the King of Illyria," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"That is interesting," said I, in response to a quizzical glance from the breakfast table. "The fact is, my amiable coadjutor in the things of this life has a decided weakness for royalty. She denies it vehemently and betrays it shamelessly on every possible occasion."
"Very interestin' indeed," said her brother.
In the next moment a cry of surprise floated out of the depths of the halfpenny newspaper.
"What a coincidence!" exclaimed Mrs. Arbuthnot. "There has been an attempt on the life of the King of Illyria. They have thrown a bomb into his palace and killed the brother of the Prime Minister."
"In the interests of the shareholders of the Daily Courier," said I.
"Be serious, Odo," said Mrs. Arbuthnot. "To think of that dear old king being in danger!"
"Yes, the dear old king," said Jodey.
"I think you are horrid, both of you," said Mrs. Arbuthnot with the spirit that made her an admired member of the Crackanthorpe Hunt. "Those horrid Illyrians! They don't deserve to have a king. They ought to be like France and America and Switzerland."
"They will soon be in that unhappy position," said I, turning to page four of the Times newspaper. "According to Reuter, it appears to have been a bonâ fide attempt. Count Cyszysc – "
"You sneeze twice," suggested Jodey.
"Count Cyszysc was blown to pieces on the threshold of the Zweisgarten Palace, the whole of the south-west front of which was wrecked."
"The wretches!" said Mrs. Arbuthnot. "They are only fit to have a republic. Such a dear old man, the ideal of what a king ought to be. Don't you remember him in the state procession riding next to the Kaiser?"
"The old Johnny with the white hair," said Jodey, reaching for the marmalade.
"He looked every inch a king," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, "and Illyria is not a very large place either."
"In a small and obscure country," I ventured to observe, "you have to look every inch a king, else nobody will believe that you are one. In a country as important as ours it doesn't matter if a king looks like a commercial traveller."
"By the way," said Jodey, who had a polite horror of anything that could be construed as lèse majesté, "where is Illyria?"
"My dear fellow," said I, "don't you know where Illyria is?"
"I'll
