Her Ladyship's Elephant Part 23

"Bright!" she said sternly.

"Beg pardon, my lady," giggled Bright, his face still wreathed in smiles; "but the way you put it."

"What have you done with this person's belongings? Have my orders been carried out?"

"You mean in regard to the--the----"

"Trunk. Yes, let it be put off the place immediately."

"Please, your ladys.h.i.+p," he replied, with difficulty restraining his laughter, "it won't go."

"Will not go?"

"No, my lady; it's been rampaging through the greenhouses, and is now on the terrace, where it douched Anne most awful."

"Leave me at once, Bright, and do not let me see you again till you are in a more decent state," she commanded, and swept by him, ignoring his protestations of innocence and respect.

She found Scarsdale awaiting her in the reception-room, and accorded him a very frigid greeting, suggesting that they should have their interview on the terrace, where he had left Mrs. Allingford safely ensconced in an armchair, while he went to meet his great-aunt.

Her ladys.h.i.+p had been considerably ruffled both by her interview with Bright and by the arrival of Scarsdale, towards whom, in the light of recent events, she felt a strong resentment; and a vision of the Consul's wife perched most indecorously on the shoulders of Hercules, which she beheld as she emerged on the terrace, did not tend to calm her already excited nerves. But before she could speak her eyes followed the direction of the unknown lady's gaze, and she saw, for the first time, her unwelcome visitor.

When you come suddenly face to face with an elephant seated amidst the wreck of cherished Chippendale and ancestral Sevres, it is not calculated to increase your composure or equalise your temper; and Lady Diana may be pardoned, as the vastness of the Consul's impudence dawned upon her, for giving vent to expressions both of anger and amazement, albeit her appearance produced no less of a disturbance in the breast of him who sat amidst the ruins of the breakfast-table. The elephant felt that in the presence of the Maharanee, for such he believed her to be, his position was undignified. She was, without doubt, the wife of the "Damconsul," and, as such, should be paid all proper respect and deference. He, therefore, bowed his head in submission, completing in the process his work of destruction. Whereat Mrs. Allingford shrieked and clung more closely to the protecting shoulders of Hercules.

Serious as the situation was, it was not without its humorous side, and it took all Scarsdale's command of himself to control his face sufficiently to address his relative with becoming respect.

"Why, aunt," he said, "I didn't know that you had gone in for pets!"

"Harold Stanley Malcolm St. Hubart Scarsdale," replied her ladys.h.i.+p--she prided herself on never forgetting a name--"you are one of the most impudent and worthless young men that I have the honour to count among my relatives; but you have been in India, and you ought to know how to manage this monster."

"I've seen enough of them," he answered. "What do you want him to do?"

"Do!" she cried wrathfully. "I should think anybody would know that I wished it to get up and go away."

"Oh," said he, and made a remark in Hindustani to the elephant, whereat the beast gradually and deliberately proceeded to rise from the wreck of the breakfast, till he seemed to the spectators to be forty feet high.

Then, in response to Scarsdale's cries of "Mail! mail!" (Go on) he turned himself about, and, after sending the teapot through the nearest window with a disdainful kick of one hind leg, he lurched down the steps of the terrace and on to the lawn, where he remained contentedly standing, gently rocking to and fro, while he meditatively removed from his person, by means of his trunk, the fragments of the feast, with which he was liberally bespattered.

Scarsdale, seeing that his lords.h.i.+p was in an amicable frame of mind, hastened to a.s.sist Mrs. Allingford to descend from her somewhat uneasy perch.

"St. Hubart," said Lady Melton, who, throughout this trying ordeal, had lost none of her natural dignity, "you have done me a service. I shall not forget it."

Scarsdale thought it would be difficult to forget the elephant.

"I will even forgive you," she continued, "for marrying that American."

"It was so good of you to receive my wife," he said. "I trust you are pleased with her."

"I am not pleased at all," she said sharply. "I consider her forward and disrespectful, and I am glad she is gone."

"Gone!" he exclaimed.

"You may well be surprised," said his great-aunt, "but such is the case."

"But where has she gone?"

"That I do not know; she left without consulting me, and against my advice and wishes."

"Did she go alone?"

"She went," replied her ladys.h.i.+p, "with one of the most insolent persons it has ever been my misfortune to meet. He is owner of that!" And she pointed to the elephant.

"But who is he?" demanded Scarsdale, not recognising, from her description, his friend the Consul.

"He disgraces," she continued, "a public office given him by a foreign Government."

"You are surely not talking about Allingford!" he exclaimed.

"That, I believe, is his name," replied Lady Melton.

"What, my husband!" cried the Consul's wife, who up to this point had kept silence. "You dare to call my husband a disgrace----!" Here Mrs.

Allingford became dumb with indignation.

"If he is your husband," returned her ladys.h.i.+p, "I am exceedingly sorry for you. As for 'daring' to apply to him any epithet I please, I consider myself fully justified in so doing after the indignity to which he has condemned me. I am glad, however, to have met you, as I am thus enabled to return you your husband's property, with the request that you take your elephant and leave my grounds as quickly as possible."

"Do you mean to say that my husband owns that monster?" gasped Mrs.

Allingford.

"Such is the case," replied Lady Melton, "and I leave it in your hands.

St. Hubart, I trust _you_ will join me at breakfast as soon as another can be prepared."

"Excuse me," he said apologetically, "but really, you know, I can't leave Mrs. Allingford in the lurch. Besides, I must follow my wife."

His great-aunt faced round in a fury.

"That is sufficient!" she cried. "Leave my presence at once! I never desire to see either of you again."

"Don't let us part as enemies, aunt," he said, offering her his hand; but she swept past him into the house.

Scarsdale gloomily watched her depart, and then became conscious of a hand laid on his arm.

"I am so sorry!" murmured Mrs. Allingford. "I only seem to bring you trouble."

"Oh, you mustn't feel badly about this," he said. "We have quarrelled ever since I was born. I'm much more worried about you."

"What am I going to do with it?" she exclaimed, looking hopelessly at her husband's property as it stood rocking before her.

"The first thing is to get it off the place," replied Scarsdale, a.s.suming a cheerfulness which he did not feel. "We may find its keepers at the lodge, and we can make our plans as we walk along."

"Come on, Jehoshaphat, or whatever you may happen to be called!" he cried, addressing the elephant, and at the same time grasping the rope bridle which still dangled from its neck; and the beast, recognising a kindred spirit speaking to him in his native tongue, followed docilely where he led.