I. A. R. Wylie

“ Though at first sight it seems unlikely, there are few among us who do not know what it feels like to fall down a cliff, to be pursued by a runaway locomotive, or to find oneself walking insouciantly in some highly populous and fashionable district clad in a bath towel. Where reality fails, dreams step in to supply the deficiency.
But even in dreamland the sensations of a perfectly respectable bona-fide duchess, with a fat rent roll, goodness knows how many ducal residences, and an easy conscience, wandering the streets of London in the early hours of a spring morning, are probably unique. ”

“ The colonel muttered to the effect that he didn't care a damn, and she went on with sad disapproval: “And very unkind. It was unkind to confront youth with old age—the has-been with the what-is.”
“You are lovelier than you ever were,” the colonel declared passionately. “The what-is is a hundred times more beautiful than the has-been.”
Mrs. Cochrane avoided his eyes.
“I didn't ask for flattery. Won't you understand once and for all that I am an old woman, not so much in years as in feeling? All that makes for youth—all that I cared for—is dead, has been in the grave these many years. ”

“ The duchess has not been murdered. I can assure you on that point.” She smiled with the consciousness of creating a real effect on these simple, quite delightfully honest people. “You see, I am the Duchess of Ashminster,” she said.
Mr. Albert Jakes, with his resisting wife, had reached the door. He turned and stared back.
“Duchess!” he said. “Yer looks like one, don't yer?”
The door slammed. The key turned in the lock. There was the sound of voices arguing heatedly and the fading thud of feet on the stairs. The duchess was alone with Sir John's silver and the Jakes' baby. ”

“ It is very difficult for a duchess to understand that anything can be the matter with anybody not of a certain social position, and the process of understanding was painful. Then suddenly the woman turned her head. Her face was so white that it shone through the darkness, and its expression caused the duchess another disagreeable pang.
“My good creature——” she began, and then, not liking the phrase, hastily changed it. “My dear, what has upset you? Won't you tell me? Can't I help?”
“You? Ye're a lidy, aren't yer? Lidies don't understand nothink.” ”

“ You've never cared for any one except Captain Cochrane—you're always saying so. If Colonel Magree does drop down dead, I don't see why you need make a fuss.” Her voice shook. “And, anyhow—he isn't your mother lying in the Thames,” she added hoarsely.
Mrs. Cochrane rose with tragic dignity and rang the bell.
“I'm going after him” she said. “If this is the end, I must be there. I know poor Douglas would wish it. Griffins—a taxi!” ”

“ The four occupants of Colonel Magree's library started violently from their various meditations. Sir John O'Neill turned his white, drawn face in the direction of the stoical Griffins.
“Show them up at once.”
In the interval of waiting, they endeavored to compose themselves, with but faint success. The colonel paced restlessly backward and forward, muttering and counting under his breath. The Lady Angela looked faintly uneasy, though skeptical. Mrs. Cochrane divided her distressed attention between the two men.
“Douglas, do try to be calm. You know how bad it is for your heart. ”

“ Sir John started and glanced at Mr. and Mrs. Jakes. They stood together, the man's arm about the woman's shoulder, defying the worst.
“No, certainly not—a friend of the duchess—— He can keep the stuff, for all I care. I—we owe Mr. Jakes a debt of gratitude. What do you say, colonel?”
But Colonel Magree shook his head gloomily.
“It's beyond me,” he said. “I ought to be dead. I ought to have dropped down hours ago. I can't think what's wrong. That fellow Barclay must be an ass.” ”

“ Cochrane began.
The Lady Angela flopped exhaustedly into the nearest chair. It must be admitted that, as a duchess' daughter, she was not a conspicuous success.
“You old fogies take things so seriously,” she said. “I know mother's only been up to a lark.”
“Can you imagine your mother being up to a lark?” the colonel asked coldly.
“Oh, I don't know. I have moods, you know, that make me prepared for anything in mother.”
Mrs. Cochrane wrung her hands.
“And, anyhow, we've got to help Sir John. We must encourage him to hope for the best. His state of mind must be terrible. ”

“ Only, the duchess had one advantage over the canary—she could call a taxi and drive back. She made up her mind that she would call the very first one that passed. She was going home—back to the pompous house and the seven-course dinner—if any of it could be procured at such an ungodly hour—back to James and his ten satellites, back to the Louis XVI. bed, with its twentieth-century spring mattress, back to the shelf where reposed other elderly folk, that faithful knight Sir John O'Neill among them. ”

“ It's sickening! Other people,” he went on, with gloomy significance, “are every bit as chock-full of romance and all that stuff, every bit as devoted, but because they're stout and bald, they are passed over, forgotten, slighted. Women can't see below the surface, and—and it's a damned shame!”
“Colonel!”
“Well, it is,” he insisted sullenly.
The conversation languished. The colonel smoldered over his grievance, and Mrs. Cochrane sighed and stared at the carpet. It was evident that the tragic disappearance of the duchess had faded into the background, at any rate for the time being. ”

“ Mr. Jakes proved a tall young man who, like his wife, would have been positively handsome if he had not been so thin—so harassed looking, “chivvied,” as Mrs. Jakes would have expressed it. He carried a large carpenter's bag in one hand; the other arm was flung over his wife's shoulder. As he saw the stranger, he started and blanched visibly.
“Wot's that?” he asked, with a jerk of the head.
The opening was not propitious or flattering. The duchess stared back rather haughtily, and Sally Jakes disengaged herself from her husband's arm and came forward. ”

“ No wife—no child——”
“Douglas—is that all our friendship means to you?”
“Friendship!” he exclaimed, with tragic contempt. “Friendship! Haven't you just said that all you cared for was in the grave?”
“Oh, but—I didn't mean——” she began tremulously.
But what she did or did not mean was fated not to be elucidated. The door opened suddenly, admitting a young lady whose appearance was heroically prepossessing in the face of ostentatiously slapdash and artistic apparel. She entered unannounced, having left the panting Griffins well behind in the race up the stairs. ”

“ My name is Elizabeth——”
“Mary Jane, for all I care,” was the rude interruption. “All I knows is a respectable woman don't wander about the streets at one in the morning, that's wot I knows.”
The duchess felt the accusation acutely and faltered under the constable's grim disapproval.
“Maybe you've been up to mischief already,” he continued. “Shouldn't wonder if you're wanted already.”
This also being painfully near the truth, the duchess remained speechless. The constable hunched his shoulders. “You take my advice,” he said. “You move on.”
The duchess moved on. ”

“ What has happened?”
“The duchess—the duchess has disappeared.”
Colonel Magree counted to four and then sat down on the nearest chair. He tried to keep his mind fixed on something else, but without conspicuous success.
“Disappeared?” he echoed stupidly.
Mrs. Cochrane nodded.
“It's awful. Angela rang me up this morning. It's in all the papers—though we're trying to keep the thing quiet. The police have been at it all night—with their usual result—nothing. We—we daren't think what has happened. Angela has just gone round to see some swell detective or other, and then she is coming on here. ”

“ We'd gone two days without a bite an' 'e was desperate. 'E's got a soft 'eart, 'as Bert, an' 'e couldn't bear to see me an' the kid starve. That's why I was goin'—in there.”
She pointed to the black waters at their feet, and the duchess shuddered. But she was thinking fast. Sir John O'Neill's house was in Berkeley Square. Sir John's silver was famous. The duchess' elderly heart beat with an almost youthful passion of adventure. ”

“ A tyke gets scraps chucked at 'im or 'e gets pushed into a lethal chamber an' turned off easy. But 'oo gives us scraps? We've got to live, we 'ave—that's the law. 'Ow we live don't matter to nobody.”
He seemed to have forgotten his companions, to be addressing some invisible court of justice in which judge and jury were other than those which he had already faced to his cost. ”

“ Please be very, very good to the Jakes, and don't let any one “chivvy” them again. Also, take care of Angela and see that she does not do anything foolish. She is inclined to be headstrong and unconventional. And don't worry about your affectionate old friend,
Elizabeth. P. S—Try and keep all this out of the papers. I shall want to come back some day, P. S. S—John dear, I wonder if we are really as old as we thought we were?
Sir John said nothing. He handed the letter to Colonel Magree, who read it with the Lady Angela and Mrs. Cochrane peering over on either side. ”

“ He looked depressed, and Doctor Barclay tapped him on the shoulder with that familiar air of professional optimism which is calculated to give even the journey across the Styx the aspect of a pleasure outing.
“There's nothing seriously wrong, colonel. All you have to-do is to go easy. Remember your years. Don't try and do things you can't do. In horsy metaphor, your hunting days are over. No more hedges and ditches and long cross-country runs. But in the park, now—a nice, easy canter, eh? ”

“ He gave a short, sarcastic laugh. “Let me tell yer 'oo those rings belong to—I knows. They belong to the Duchess of Ashminster.”
“Obviously,” the duchess agreed, with some coldness.
“Ah, so yer owns to it! P'r'aps yer know wots 'appened to 'er?”
“Most certainly I do.”
“So do I.” He drew himself to his full height and pointed his finger in the duchess' face. “So does every one wot reads the mornin' papers. 'Er grace, the Duchess of Ashminster”—he ennunciated his words with terrific significance—“'er grace disappeared last night. Her shawl was found on the Thames Embankment. ”

“ Moved in the 'ighest circles, 'aven't yer, Lizzy?”
“Quite the highest,” the unhappy duchess agreed.
She sat down on the one chair and stared helplessly at the silver glitter spread out on the table before her. Mr. Albert Jakes also considered his spoils with a gloomy, meditative eye.
“Fine, ain't it?” he said. “Nuf there to get us clean out of 'ere an' give us a fresh start where they won't chivvy us. But I 'ates it. I 'ates the 'ole bloomin' thing. It's like bein' a dirty tyke—stealin' wot ain't 'is. Wot's we t'do? Just tell me that! We ain't 'ad so much as a tyke's chawnce. ”