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by P. G. WODEHOUSE
1921
Through the curtained windows of the furnished apartment which Mrs.Horace Hignett had rented for her stay in New York rays of goldensunlight peeped in like the foremost spies of some advancing army. Itwas a fine summer morning. The hands of the Dutch clock in the hallpointed to thirteen minutes past nine; those of the ormolu clock in thesitting-room to eleven minutes past ten; those of the carriage clock onthe bookshelf to fourteen minutes to six. In other words, it wasexactly eight; and Mrs. Hignett acknowledged the fact by moving herhead on the pillow, opening her eyes, and sitting up in bed. She alwayswoke at eight precisely.
Was this Mrs. Hignett the Mrs. Hignett, the world-famous writeron Theosophy, the author of "The Spreading Light," "What of theMorrow," and all the rest of that well-known series? I'm glad you askedme. Yes, she was. She had come over to America on a lecturing tour.
The year 1921, it will be remembered, was a trying one for theinhabitants of the United States. Every boat that arrived from Englandbrought a fresh swarm of British lecturers to the country. Novelists,poets, scientists, philosophers, and plain, ordinary bores; some herdinstinct seemed to affect them all simultaneously. It was like one ofthose great race movements of the Middle Ages. Men and women of widelydiffering views on religion, art, politics, and almost every othersubject; on this one point the intellectuals of Great Britain weresingle-minded, that there was easy money to be picked up on the lectureplatforms of America and that they might just as well grab it as thenext person.
Mrs. Hignett had come over with the first batch of immigrants; for,spiritual as her writings were, there was a solid streak of businesssense in this woman and she meant to get hers while the getting wasgood. She was half way across the Atlantic with a complete itinerarybooked before 90 per cent. of the poets and philosophershad finished sorting out their clean collars and getting theirphotographs taken for the passport.
She had not left England without a pang, for departure had involvedsacrifices. More than anything else in the world she loved her charminghome, Windles, in the county of Hampshire, for so many years the seatof the Hignett family. Windles was as the breath of life to her. Itsshady walks, its silver lake, its noble elms, the old grey stone of itswalls—these were bound up with her very being. She felt that shebelonged to Windles, and Windles to her. Unfortunately, as a matter ofcold, legal accuracy, it did not. She did but hold it in trust for herson, Eustace, until such time as he should marry and take possession ofit himself. There were times when the thought of Eustace marrying andbringing a strange woman to Windles chilled Mrs. Hignett to her verymarrow. Happily, her firm policy of keeping her son permanently underher eye at home and never permitting him to have speech with a femalebelow the age of fifty had averted the peril up till now.
Eustace had accompanied his mother to America. It was his faint snoreswhich she could hear in the adjoining room, as, having bathedand dressed, she went down the hall to where breakfast awaitedher. She smiled tolerantly. She had never desired to convert her son toher own early rising habits, for, apart from not allowing him to callhis soul his own, she was an indulgent mother. Eustace