Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/322

308 certainty that I knew his lordship's ways made them give in.

The affair was to be confined to the family, his lordship the only guest, this being thought discreet for the night of his arrival in view of the peculiar nature of his mission. Belknap-Jackson had hoped against hope that the Mixer might not be present, and even so late as the day of his lordship's arrival he was cheered by word that she might be compelled to keep her bed with a neuralgia.

To the afternoon train I accompanied him in his new motor-car, finding him not a little distressed because the chauffeur, a native of the town, had stoutly—and with some not nice words, I gathered—refused to wear the smart uniform which his employer had provided.

"I would have shopped the fellow in an instant," he confided to me, "had it been at any other time. He was most impertinent. But as usual, here I am at the mercy of circumstances. We couldn't well subject Brinstead to those loathsome public conveyances."

We waited in the usual throng of the leisured lower-classes who are so naïvely pleased at the passage of a train. I found myself picturing their childish wonder had they guessed the identity of him we were there to meet. Even as the train appeared Belknap-Jackson made a last moan of complaint.

"Mrs. Pettingill," he observed dejectedly, "is about the house again and I fear will be quite well enough to be with us this evening." For a moment I almost quite disapproved of the fellow. I mean to say, he was vogue and all that, and no doubt had been wretchedly mistreated, but after all the Mixer was not one to be wished ill to.