The interview over, I made my report to the duchess, who was in a little room adjacent to the hall. She followed me out to ask a final question just as I was on the point of taking my hat. The hat handed to me by the butler was, however, a new hat I had never seen before. It was of a shape I disliked. The butler, with due submission, said it was the hat I came in. I replied it was impossible, and, putting it on my head, showed that it was so small as to be absurd. The duchess, who was a lady of prompt convictions, exclaimed, “Ridiculous; that was never your hat!” The butler could say no more: he was convicted of error. The duchess then seized upon the only other hat on the table and held it at arm’s length. “Whose is this?” she cried. “Heavens, it is the shabbiest hat I ever saw! It cannot be yours.” (It was not.) Looking inside, she added, “What a filthy hat! It is enough to poison the house.” Handing it to the butler as if it had been an infected rag, she exclaimed, “Take it away and burn it!”
The butler did not at once convey this garbage to the flames, but remarked—as if talking in his sleep—“There is a pianoforte tuner in the drawing-room.” The duchess stared with amazement at this inconsequent remark. Whereupon the butler added that the new hat I had rejected might possibly be his. He was at once sent up to confront the artist, whose aimless tinkling could be heard in the hall, with the further message that if the dirty hat should happen to be his he was never to enter the house again. The butler returned to say that the musician did not “use” a hat. He wore a cap, which same he had produced from his pocket.
While the butler was away a great light had illumined the mind of the duchess. It appeared that Lord Andrew, her son-in-law, had called that afternoon with his wife. He had just left, his wife remaining behind. It was soon evident that the duchess had a grievance against her son-in-law. When the light fell upon her she exclaimed to me, “I see it all now. This horrible hat is Andrew’s. He has taken yours by mistake and has left this disgusting thing behind. It is just like him. He is the worst-dressed man in London, and this hat is just the kind he would wear.”