laid his hand affectionately on his follower’s white-turbaned head, something with the protecting gesture with which he might caress a favourite and faithful dog.
“After you had saved my life, Mujeebez,” he said.
“I would have died to save it, sahib,” answered the Hindoo. “A kind word sinks deep in the heart of the Indian.”
“And there was no doubt of the guilt of this nephew?” asks Blurosset.
“I cannot say, sahib. I did not know the English language then; I could understand nothing told me, except my poor master’s nephew was not hung, but put in a madhouse.”
“Did you see him—this nephew?”
“Yes, sahib, the night before the murder. He came into the room with my master when he retired to rest. I saw him only for a minute, for I left the room as they entered.”
“Should you know him again?” inquired the student.
“Anywhere, sahib. He was a handsome young man, with dark hazel eyes and a bright smile. He did not look like a murderer.”
“That is scarcely a sure rule to go by, is it, Laurent?” asks the Captain, with a bitter smile.
“I don’t know. A black heart will make strange lines in the handsomest face, which are translatable to the close observer.”
“Now,” says the officer, rising, and surrendering his pipe to the hands of his watchful attendant—“now for my morning’s ride, and you will have the place to yourself for your scientific visitors, Laurent.”
“You will not go where you are likely to meet——”
“Anyone I know? No, Blurosset. The lonelier the road the better I like it. I miss the deep jungle and the tiger-hunt, eh, Mujeebez?—we miss them, do we not?”
The Hindoo’s eyes brightened, as he answered eagerly, “Yes, indeed, sahib.”
Captain Lansdown (that is the name of the officer) is of French extraction; he speaks English perfectly, but still with a slightly foreign accent. He has distinguished himself by his marvellous courage and military genius in the Punjaub, and is over in England on leave of absence. It is singular that so great a friendship should exist between this impetuous, danger-loving soldier, and the studious French chemist and pseudo-magician, Laurent Blurosset; but that a very firm friendship does exist between them is evident. They live in the same house; are both waited upon by Egerton Lansdown’s Indian servant, and are constantly together.
Laurent Blurosset, after becoming the fashion in Paris, is now the rage in London. But he rarely stirs beyond the threshold of his own door, though his presence is eagerly sought for in scientific coteries, where opinion is still, however, divided as to whether he is a charlatan or a great man. The materialists sneer—the spiritualists believe. His disinterestedness, at any rate, speaks in favour of his truth. He will receive no money from any of his numerous visitors. He will serve them, he says, if he can, but he will not sell the wisdom of the mighty dead; for that is something too grand and solemn to be made a thing of barter. His discoveries in chemistry have made him sufficiently rich; and he can afford to devote himself to science, in the hope of finding truth for his reward. He asks no better recompense than the glory of the light he seeks. We leave him, then, to his eager and inquisitive visitors, while the Captain rides slowly through Oxford Street, on his way to the Edgware Road, through which he emerges into the country.
Chapter V
The New Milkman in Park Lane
The post of kitchenmaid in the household of the Count de Marolles is no unimportant one, and Mrs. Moper is accounted a person of some consequence in the servants’ hall. The French chef, who has his private sitting-room, wherein he works elaborate and scientific culinary combinations, which, when he condescends to talk English, he designates “plates,” has of course very little communication with the household. Mrs. Moper is his prime minister; he gives his orders to her for execution, and throws himself back in his easy-chair to think out a dish, while his handmaiden collects for him the vulgar elements of his noble art. Mrs. Moper is a very good cook herself; and when she leaves the Count de Marolles she will go into a family where there is no foreigner kept, and will have forty pounds per annum and a still-room of her own. She is in the caterpillar stage now, Mrs. Sarah Moper, and is content to write herself down kitchenmaid ad interim.
The servants’-hall dinner and the housekeeper’s repast are both over; but the preparations for the dinner have not yet begun, and Mrs. Moper and Liza, the scullerymaid, snatch half-an-hour’s calm before the coming storm, and sit down to darn stockings,—
“Which,” Mrs. Moper says, “my toes is through and my heels is out, and never can I get the time to set a stitch. For time there isn’t any in this house for a under-servant, which under-servant I will be no more than one year longer; or say my name’s not Sarah Moper.”
Liza, who is mending a black stocking with white thread (and a very fanciful effect it has too), evidently has no wish to dispute such a proposition.
“Indeed, Mrs. Moper,” she said, “that’s the truest word as ever you’ve spoke. It’s well for them as takes their wages for wearin’ silk gowns, and oilin’ of their hair, and lookin’ out of winder to watch the carriages go in at Grosvenor Gate; which, don’t tell me as Life Guardsmen would look up imperdent, if they hadn’t been looked down to likewise.” Eliza gets rather obscure here. “This ’ouse, Mrs. M., for upper-servants may be ’eaven, but for unders it’s more like the place as is pronounced like a letter of the alphabet, and isn’t to be named by me.”
There is no knowing how far this rather revolutionary style of conversation might have gone, for at this moment there came that familiar sound of the clink of milk-pails on the pavement above, and the London cry of milk.
“It’s Bugden with the milk, Liza; there was a pint of cream wrong in the last bill, Mrs. Mellflower says. Ask him to come down and correctify it, will you, Liza?”
Liza ascends the area steps and parleys with the milkman; presently he comes jingling down, with his pails swinging against the railings; he is rather awkward with his pails, this milkman, and I’m afraid he must spill more milk than he sells, as the Park Lane pavements testify.
“It isn’t Bugden,” says Liza, explanatory, as she ushers him into the kitchen. “Bugden ’as ’urt his leg, a-milkin’ a cow wot kicks when the flies worrits, and ’as sent this young man, as is rather new to the business, but is anxious to do his best.”
The new milkman enters the kitchen as she concludes her speech, and releasing himself from the pails, expresses his readiness to settle any mistake in the weekly bill.
He is rather a good-looking fellow, this milkman, and he has a very curly head of flaxen hair, preposterously light eyebrows, and dark hazel eyes, which form rather a piquant contrast. I don’t suppose Mrs. Moper and Liza think him bad-looking, for they beg him to sit down, and the scullerymaid thrusts the black stocking, on which she was heretofore engaged, into a table-drawer, and gives her hair a rapid extemporary smoothing with the palms of her hands. Mr. Bugden’s man seems by no means disinclined for a little friendly chat: he tells them how new he is to the business; how he thinks he should scarcely have chosen cowkeeping
