Chapter 22. Squaring Accounts

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_ CHAPTER XXII. SQUARING ACCOUNTS

Almost simultaneously Mr. Wibberley-Stimpson and his son and daughters opened their eyes, then rubbed them, and sat up and looked about them with a bewilderment that gradually gave way to intense relief. For, although the light had faded, their surroundings were reassuringly familiar. They were in their own drawing-room at "Inglegarth." It occurred at once to most of them that they had never actually left it--an impression that was pleasantly confirmed by Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson's first remark as she awoke later.

"Why, hasn't the dinner-gong gone yet?" she inquired crossly. "Cook gets more and more unpunctual!"

"I don't think it can be eight o'clock yet, my dear," said her husband, "it's quite light still."

"Nonsense, Sidney, it must be long past dinner-time! I've been so lost in my own thoughts that somehow I----"

"Now, Mother, you know you've been asleep and only just woke up!" said Edna, from one of the chintz couches.

"Have I? Perhaps I _did_ drop off just for a few seconds. In fact I must have done--for I begin to recollect having quite a curious dream. I dreamed that you and I, Sidney, were King and Queen of some absurd fairy Kingdom or other, and that--well, it was not at _all_ a pleasant dream."

"It's a most singular coincidence, Selina," he said, "but I've been dreaming much the same sort of thing myself!"

The others looked at one another, but none of them ventured to express just yet what was in all their minds.

"Have you?" said his wife languidly. "I suppose it was telepathy or something of that kind. Ring for Mitchell, Clarence--I hope dinner has not been allowed to get cold. And--and Miss Heritage seems to have left the drawing-room. Run up, Ruby, and tell her to come down."

"I don't believe she's upstairs at all, mummy," said Ruby. "No, of course she _can't_ be. We left her in the Palace--don't you remember? _She's_ Queen now, you know?"

"Queen! Miss Heritage! Why, you don't mean to tell me you've been dreaming that too?"

"So have I, as far as that goes, mater," said Clarence. "If it _was_ a dream, and not--not----"

"How could it be anything else? Besides, here we all _are_, exactly as we were!"

"We've got our cloaks and things on, though," said Ruby. "_I_ know how it was! We've been brought here in the stork-car while we were fast asleep. We sat up ever so long waiting for it."

"It can't be! I won't believe anything so absurd. Draw the curtains, somebody, and pull up the blinds.... It's odd, but it certainly looks more like early morning than any other time. Clarence, go out and strike the gong. Perhaps the maids haven't finished dressing yet."

Clarence went out accordingly. The gong bellowed and boomed from the hall, but there was no sound of stirring above. "I say," he reported, "I've just looked into the dining-room, and all the chairs are upside down on the table. That looks rather as if we'd been away for a bit--what?"

"Clarence! You're not beginning to think that--that all that about our having been a Royal Family may be _true_?"

"Well, Mater," he said, "if we haven't been in Maerchenland, where _have_ we been? Oh yes, we've been Royalties right enough--and a pretty rotten job we made of it!"

At this time there was a deprecatory knock at the drawing-room door. "Mitchell!" cried her mistress, "don't you know better than to--?" However, it was not Mitchell that entered--but a person unknown--a respectable-looking elderly female, who seemed to have made a hasty toilette.

"Askin' your pardons," she said, "but if you were wishing to see the family, they're away just now."

"We _are_ the family," replied Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson. "We have been--er--abroad, but have returned. And we should be glad of breakfast at once."

"I can git you a cup of tea as soon as the kittle's on the boil," she said, "but I'm only put in as caretaker like, and I've nothink in the 'ouse except bread and butter. The shops'll be opening now, so if you don't object to waiting a little, I could go out and get you a naddick and eggs and such like."

"Yes, buck up, old lady!" said Clarence, "and I say, see if you can get a _Daily Mail_ or a paper of some sort."

"What are you so anxious to see the paper for?" inquired Edna after the caretaker had departed.

"Only wanted to know what month we're in," he said. "It would have looked so silly to ask her what day it is. We must have been--over there--a good long time."

"At least a year!" said Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson, no longer able to sustain the dream theory. "More. When we left it was quite early Spring--and now all the trees are out! Sidney, what _will_ your firm say to your having been away so long without letting them know where you were?"

"I can't say, my love. I'm afraid they might make it a ground for a dissolution of partnership--unless I can give them a satisfactory explanation of my absence."

"The difficulty will be to find one!" said his wife. "As for you, Clarence, they will be too glad to see you back again at the Insurance Office to ask any questions."

"I dare say they would, Mater, only--it didn't seem worth mentioning before--but, as a matter of fact, I--er--resigned the day we left."

"Then it seems," said Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson bitterly, "we have been sent back here to find ourselves in comparative poverty! I hope and trust"--she felt furtively in her bead handbag before continuing more cheerfully--"that we shall be able to struggle through somehow."

She knew now that they would not be without resources. She could feel them through the handkerchief in which they had been wrapped--two pieces which she had had the presence of mind to pick up from the Halma board as she passed through Edna's and Ruby's chamber the evening before. One was carved from a ruby, the other from a diamond, and each of them was worth a small fortune. Her one regret now was that she had not pocketed several more while she was about it. But, although she would have been perfectly within her rights in doing so--for were they not her own property?--she had thought at the time that it would be risky to take any number that could be noticed. There was always the chance that Miss Heritage might count them!

However, she said nothing about this to her family just then; it would be a pleasant surprise for them later on.

"But," she continued, "I _do_ think it might have occurred to Miss Heritage--I can't and won't call her by any other name--that, as she was known to be in my employment when we left 'Inglegarth,' our returning without her may expose us to very unpleasant remarks. People may think I've discharged her--left her stranded in foreign parts--or I don't know what!"

"That is what she _calculated_ on, no doubt!" said Edna.

"Oh, stop it, Edna!" said her brother, "you ought to know her better than that!"

"Oh, of course she's an angel--in _your_ estimation! But she could have saved mother from being misunderstood if she'd wanted to--and since she hasn't--well, I'll leave you to draw the obvious inference!"

Ruby, who had been roving about the room during this conversation, now broke in:

"Mummy," she cried, "there's a letter here for you, and it looks like darling Queen Daphne's writing!" And she brought it to her mother. It was enclosed in a folded square of parchment--envelopes, like other modern conveniences, being unknown in Maerchenland--and fastened with the royal signet, which Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson broke with a melancholy reminiscence of the satisfaction it had given her to use the seal herself.

"Dear Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson_," she read aloud--"_As I am about to be married here very shortly, my return with you to England will naturally be impossible. It is a great grief to me to have to part from my dear little pupil Ruby, to whom I have become so deeply and sincerely attached. Will you please tell her from me that I shall never forget her, and miss her very much indeed.--Believe me, very truly yours,_

DAPHNE HERITAGE."

"Well," commented Mrs. Stimpson, while poor Ruby's tears began to flow afresh, "that is certainly a letter which I could show to _anybody_. Though I notice she doesn't say anything about being grieved to part with anyone but Ruby. A deliberate slight to the rest of us! And then the meanness of turning us out without the slightest return for all we've done for her! It _does_ show such petty ingratitude!"

"Easy on, Mater!" said Clarence. "She don't seem to have let us go away quite empty-handed after all. I mean to say there's a box or something over there that I fancy I've seen before in the Palace."

He went up to examine it as he spoke. It was an oblong case, rather deeper and squarer than a backgammon box, covered with faded orange velvet and fitted with clasps and corners of finely wrought silver set with precious stones.

Inside were the emerald and opal "halma" board and ruby and diamond pieces, and with them a slip of parchment with Daphne's handwriting. "_I thought perhaps_," she had written, "_you might care to have this. Princess Rapunzelhauser tells me she is afraid two of the men are missing, but I hope she is mistaken and they are really all there.--D._"

"_I_ shall never play with them!" declared Ruby breaking down once more. "I--I couldn't bear to, without Her!"

"Of _course_ you will never play with them, my dear," said her mother, "they are far too valuable for that."

A very inadequate impression of Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson's strength of character must have been given if anyone expects that this gift would cause her the slightest degree of shame or contrition; on the contrary, it only served to justify her in her own eyes--not that she needed any justification--for having appropriated those two pieces. She had merely anticipated--and nothing would be easier than to put them back in the box without being observed.

"A magnificent present!" pronounced Mr. Stimpson. "Really what I should call very handsome indeed of her. If we ever had to sell this set they'd fetch a colossal sum--_here_--simply colossal!"

"And a minute ago, Mater," said Clarence, "you accused her of being mean!"

"Well," she replied, "and what are these things, when all is said, to the riches we've surrendered to her? A mere trifle--which she'll never even miss!"

"You're forgetting they were hers--not ours--all the time. And we've left her precious little gold to go on with. It makes me sick to hear you running her down, when, when ... well, anyhow, Mater, I'll be glad if you won't--in _my_ hearing!"

"There's no occasion to use that tone to _me_, Clarence. I have my own opinion of Miss Heritage, and I am not likely to alter it now. But if you choose to keep your illusions about her, _I_ shall say nothing to disturb them."

"You may be very clever, Clarence," said Edna, "I know you _think_ you are, but there's _one_ subject at all events you're hopelessly ignorant about--and that's _Women_!"

"I don't mind owning it," he retorted. "I'd have taken my oath once that a highly superior cultivated English girl like you could never have cottoned to any Johnny in the Ogre line of business. But you've shown me my mistake!"

Edna, who was scarlet with wrath, would no doubt have made an obvious rejoinder had not a diversion been caused by the caretaker, who appeared with that morning's _Daily Mail_.

"Ah, so you managed to get a paper?" cried Clarence. "Good!" and he took it from her hands and opened it. "I say," he announced as soon as they were alone, "we haven't been away so long as we thought. We're still in 1914. Saturday, twenty-fifth of July."

"Is that all?" said his mother. "But I remember now that tiresome old Court Godmother saying that Time went quicker in Maerchenland than it does here. I don't understand how--but there's evidently _some_ difference. The twenty-fifth of July? Dear me, the Pageant must be over and done with long ago! Not of course that I should have cared to take part in it _now_!"

"Well, my boy," said Mr. Stimpson as Clarence ran through the columns of the paper, "and what's the latest news?"

"First defeat of Middlesex," replied Clarence; "Surrey's at the head of the table now for the Championship! Fine batting by Gloucester at Nottingham yesterday--319 to Notts 299 first innings, and 75 for three wickets!"

"Capital!" said his father without enthusiasm, "and what about Politics? Got Home Rule yet?"

"I'll tell you in a minute.... Looks as if they hadn't. Breakdown of Home Rule Conference at Buckingham Palace. Wonder what the Government will do _now_."

"They've only to be firm," said Mr. Stimpson, in his character as ex-autocrat. "If Ulster chooses to resent the will of the People as expressed in the last General Election, well, she must be put down, or what's our Army _for_, I should like to know. Any other news?"

"Nothing much, except that Austria's just sent an ultimatum to Servia. Seems the Austrian Grand Duke's been assassinated, and Austria believes the Servians were in it. Anyhow, they've got to knuckle down by six o'clock to-night or they'll be jolly well walloped. But of course they'll give in when they're up against Austria.... I see these writing chaps are doing their best to work up a scare, though. Here's one of 'em actually saying it may 'plunge all Europe into War.' Good old Armageddon coming off at last, I suppose. How they can write such tommy-rot!"

"It's only to send up their circulation," said Mr. Wibberley-Stimpson. "Depend upon it, there'll be no War. None of the Powers want it--too expensive in these days. They'll see that it's settled without fighting. And even if they can't, _we_ shan't be dragged in--we shall just let 'em fight it out among themselves, and when it's over we shall come in for a share of the pickings!"

"Well," said Clarence, as he crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it away, "we needn't worry ourselves about Armageddon--got something more serious to think about."

"What do you mean, Clarence?" inquired his mother uneasily.

"Why," he said, "it seems we've been away about four months. We can explain now why Miss Heritage hasn't come back with us. She's made that all right by her letter--and a trump she was to think of it! But what are we going to say when people want to know--and you can bet they _will_--where we've been all this time and what we've been doing?"

"We can simply tell them we have been temporarily occupying exalted positions in a foreign country which we are not at liberty to mention," suggested Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson hopefully.

"We _could_," he said; "and the reply we should get would probably be 'Rats.' They might put it more politely--but that's what it would amount to. Believe me, you'll never make people here swallow you and the governor as the late King and Queen of Fairyland--it's a jolly sight too thick! Besides, there's nothing particular in what we've done there to brag about--what?"

"_I_ at least have nothing to reproach myself with," said his mother virtuously. "Still I agree with you, Clarence, that perhaps it _would_ be better if we could give some account of ourselves which would sound a little less improbable."

"We shall have to invent one. And as soon as we've done breakfast I vote we put our heads together and fake something up. But, whatever it is, we must all remember to stick to it!"

And after long and strenuous cogitation, the Stimpson family managed to construct a fairly plausible story of an unexpected summons to a remote part of the world, in which they were obliged by circumstances to remain without any facilities for informing their friends of their situation.

There was one danger which Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson foresaw. At any time she might encounter the Duchess of Gleneagles or Lady Muscombe in Society. However, she decided that the risk was almost negligible. After all, their respective circles could not be said to intersect and, if she ever _should_ come across either of these distinguished ladies, it would be easy to deny all recollection of ever having met them before.

And thus reassured, she was able to support the official version of the family adventures so whole-heartedly that she ended by accepting it as the only authentic one.

Ruby, it is true, confided a widely different account in secret to one or two of her most intimate friends.

But Ruby's story met with the fate that is only too certain to befall this veracious and absolutely unexaggerated narrative--nobody was ever found to believe a single word of it! _

Read next: Epilogue

Read previous: Chapter 21. "Whose Lights Are Fled, Whose Garlands Dead"

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