“I agree,” said her host grimly. “Then it’s superb. How does it look there?”
Blanche started violently. Then as a matter of form she suffered her gaze to follow the damning finger.
“I—I—frankly, I don’t quite like it,” she stammered. “You know. It seems out of place.”
“It is,” said Mr. Blatchbourne. “Those doors are of oak.” Mrs. Cheviot shuddered. “Even if they were of deal, I should not have chosen pink. Look at the walls,” he continued. Blanche obeyed tremulously. “Above all, observe the ceiling. And then that chimney-piece. I was away at the time, but I’m told they rigged up a derrick to get that in place.”
“Unhappily—yes. Otherwise my wife would not have been bamboozled and betrayed, madam, into seeking and then taking the advice of as arrant a gang of scoundrels as ever bluffed a fool out of his money.”
“How—how terrible,” quavered Mrs. Cheviot.
“One hundred guineas,” roared Mr. Blatchbourne, slamming the arm of his chair with a hand like a maul. “And another two hundred for another couple of rooms which I’m afraid to enter.” Blanche made ready to die. “Once this was a gentleman’s apartment: now it is ‘A Cheviot Room.’ There’s the cipher, madam, they had the effrontery to affix. That set the seal of their approval upon this—this barbarous pleasantry.” He rose to his feet and flung clenched fists to heaven. “Oh, if I’d only been here when the blackguard came down for his cheque.”
He laughed like a madman and, crossing to the hearth, stared violently upon the fire.
So he stood for a moment. Then, as though to brace himself, he laid hands upon the mantelpiece.
The screech of agony which instantly succeeded this action would have done any torturer credit.
For one long hideous moment Mrs. Cheviot, whose knees were knocking, supposed that insanity had supervened. Then a frightful apostrophe brought the butler’s warning to her mind.
“Goats and monkeys!” screamed Blatchbourne, uplifting his palms. “_I’ve done it again._”
That the household had recognized the burden of the plaint was manifest.
Three servants arrived at a run, bearing oil and linen with which they proceeded to minister to their injured lord.
The latter, half-mad with pain, submitted blasphemously to their attention, alternately reviling his wife and cursing the house of Cheviot, root and trunk and bough, till Blanche could have fallen in her tracks.